March 22, 2006
The English have no loyalty to their own produce – Tesco official
I’ve finally received a response from Tescos regarding their use of Scottish and Welsh flags on Scottish and Welsh produce and the British flag on English produce. Their web site says:
We have dedicated buying teams in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, whose task it is to seek out and develop relationships with suppliers. In the UK, Tesco stocks over 7,000 local products. All products are labelled with the country of origin and, where appropriate, with national flags.They responded to my question about labelling English produce with the same courtesy with this:
We do not place the English flag on "English" products because we have what we term generic core lines. As Tesco view Scotland & Wales as "Regions" for the purposes of merchandising and to ensure we give the customers in these areas exactly what they expect and want (i.e. Welsh& Scottish people have loyalty to their own products), we like them to know that the products they are purchasing are from their own areas /countries hence the reason for the flag. As I am sure customers can appreciate,it is more difficult to do this because of the sheer size and complexity of areas in England.Get that. The English do not have loyalty to their own products. One has to assume that the English do have loyalty to British products otherwise why would Tesco bother using the British flag on English produce? Laura also deals in a little trickery with her response by defining Scotland and Wales as regions, the implication being that any food labelling on English products would have to be region based, hence there would be no need of the English flag if Tesco took this approach. This culminates in her statement that it is more difficult to do this because of the sheer size and complexity of areas in England.Laura Pollock
Tesco Customer Service
And there we were thinking that it was just a matter of putting the English flag on products that were produced in England.
So, in short, you have no loyalty to the produce of your own country so there is no English flag on our products. You do have loyalty to British produce which is why we label our English food as British. The Scots and the Welsh have more loyalty to their national produce than they do to British produce which is why we use their national flags. Oh, and England is big.
I've fired off this to customer.service@tesco.co.uk:
Laura,
I wonder how your English customers feel about your implication that the English have no loyalty to their own products but they do to British products and that England is somehow too big and too complex to be treated with the same courtesy that you afford other British nations?The cat has been out of the bag for some time now and the English are beginning to notice how politicians and organisations such as yours treat England. We are growing tired of the various excuses we are being given.
