Vandalism at Tesco Express on Lower Clapton Road
We have heard that the windows have been smashed at the Tesco Express on Lower Clapton Road. We want to emphasise that this has nothing to do with the No Clapton Tesco campaign. We have always used legitimate and community agreed means of protesting about this shop and its threat to our local economy and we don’t agree that destroying property is the way forward on this issue.
We wil be asking the shop’s management to meet the local community to discuss the issues that some local people clearly have with its presence.
Hmmm, yeah, good luck with that. After fighting them at every stage during planning, you really think they care what locals think? Clapton Tesco is just another balance sheet sent into head office. I doubt anyone with any real authority at Tesco’s has ever been there. There comes a time when only direct action makes a difference.
@Davey I have to say as someone who lives in the estate that they are on, that they have been pretty responsive on a lot of elements of the day to day operations, this mainly includes how they are on the estate (the back of the store is inside the estate) – we shall see how the delivery operations improve or not.
I do think that it’s worth talking to the store about how they can improve things for local residents now they are in, this of course helps on a local level rather than national level.
We have no proof that this was anti-Tesco or just general vandalism, but personally I do not agree at all with vandalising the store, I’m not sure how that benefits anyone.
it’s just so sad that it’s resorted to so-called ‘direct action’ – have lived in Clapton for 12 years now and though I understand people’s concerns about Tesco’s policies on a national level – this is the first time that that stretch of Lower Clapton Road has looked so clean in years and at least it wasn’t yet another ‘massage’ place or betting shop. I love the people in Palm – but they have loyal customers and I don’t think their customers will let them go under. I’ve had to go to Tesco’s for some things – we’ve got a big family and sometimes it’s actually quite useful to get things there that we can’t get at Palm – we always shop at Palm first though and get what we can locally. The smashing windows harks back to the days when broken windows were a normal occurence around here (and a lot of gun crime)- it seems such a shame – this protest (if as emily points out might not be directly related but it seems likely to be a ‘protest’ of some kind) seems really misguided. This vandalism really, really does nothing for our community (perhaps the vandals don’t live locally so don’t care) – and if the perpetrators are reading this I’d really like them to know that this mindless vandalism in not wanted in our community, close to the school where we send out kids, and certainly doesn’t help local businesses like Palm – it just makes everyone edgy and very, very sad.