CONFUSED 1. What do you make of the free plastic shopping bag issue? Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, and the Daily Mail, a fearsome duo, want to see an end to free plastic bags because they are nasty environmental threats. Both are determined they will be banned.
And former Booker boss Sir Stuart Rose, who gets our vote as an expert on consumers, will ask M&S customers to pay 5p for every plastic bag they request from May. It's a big deterrent.
It looks like the end of the free plastic bag. But does it? ACS and BRC, another fearsome duo, want the proposed ban to be blocked in the Commons as hurtful to retailers. The Vigilante household is vehemently and actively anti-plastic bag, free or not, but pro-ACS and ferociously anti-BRC. It's confusing for her indoors.
CONFUSED 2. Meanwhile, the enlightened core of the My Shop is Your Shop team - the five-year-old campaign is now inspiring Nisa-Today's and Costcutter's new community scheme - foresees the end of the free plastic bag and has done for months.
The MSYS group of campaigning suppliers, wholesalers and award-winning independent retailers - positively promoting the unique community role of the independent - has agreed a design for a least-cost cotton MSYS bag for life(above).
This generic bag bears the consumer friendly slogan "I'm an independent person" following a PRAG discussion in which it was said that any self-respecting trend-setter would not be seen dead carrying a nice bag imprinted with a local shop logo.
Confusingly, no buttons have yet been pressed to kick-start this cost efficient and shopper-friendly initiative. Retailers say they want it.
CONFUSED 3. What's going on? Why is the Grauniad so frenzied about the tax avoidance scheme which Tesco is using to hide more than £1bn of tax on its profits in the Cayman Islands?
And why are wholesaler anti-Tesco lobbyists picking up the panning directed at the giant multiple and saying how gross and unfair and immoral it all is?
Confusingly, every wholesaler and every independent retailer and caterer known to the author sets out to reduce his tax bill as an automatic action when March comes along.
They use legal methods, as does Tesco. Crusading on moral grounds never ever suited our industry, but perhaps times have changed and wholesalers are now cheerfully and generously stumping up tax revenues and avoiding "immoral" savings.
DELIA. When will the wholesale/independent sector sign on its own celebrity chef?
Jamie helps Sainsbury to coin it in, and Delia Smith now publishes How To Cheat at Cooking, which will produce high volume sales of tins and bottles of processed this and that in the giant multiples.
Delia, Norwich City chairman, is famous for her cry of "Let's be having you" when, in a happy mood, she grabbed a mike and urged fans (in vain) to raise their vocal support in a match against Manchester City.
Her book instructs readers to buy a tin of mince at M&S for spag bol. But what about the carbon cost of driving to the store, the food miles and so on.
We need a powerful celebrity chef who can put a similar spell on families and singles but directing them to the nearby family business to cut carbon footprints and shop local.
Booths. Chairman Edwin is correcting sloppy reporting in The Daily Telegraph on March 4 which said, direct quote "Despite more than 150 years in the trade, Booth says many of the challenges have remained the same".
Edwin has been with his independent family supermarket firm for a long time, and chairman for 11 years, but he was not around on launch!
Refreshingly as ever, he says a common problem in family firms is "endless talking about how everyone can get along better" and going on "away days".
"I want to run a great business rather than be a good family business and I took steps early on to hammer that home to the company," he asserts. Booths now employs 3,000 people.
Is there something in this hard-line business culture for independent wholesalers? Is too much time spent on internal family bits and pieces rather than on the serious business of running the business and making money?
VITRIOL. Sathnam Sanghera, the Business Life writer in The Times, slammed local shops in his column with such loathing that this reader believes his feelings may have been hurt by falling out of his pram when his mum, as he recounts, shopped at local independents in the 1970s.
Doffing his cap to the CC, he complained that shopping at independents "was as enjoyable as sipping diesel" while strangely asking "Isn't Boots a nicer place to be than your average independent Happy Shopper?"
He dreams of the day when one of his four Indian convenience stores is replaced by a Tesco. Send in the clones, he wrote. Some will agree with Mr Sanghera. But who will take him to visit and write about a star in the independent firmament so he can regain his balance?
MONEY-OFF. Another big feature promoting the independent retail sector will appear in the Daily Mirror/Daily Record on May 30 with big brand money-off coupons. Wholesalers will ensure they have these brands in stock when retailers seek them out for NIW on June 2.
MSYS is simply copying a strategy which helped to make the Big Four big. The coupons offer a total saving of £3.10 (at the last count) off big brands in distribution in local shops. With a little management focus and flare, this reality marketing could make a splash in local stores in NIW. Tesco would say "Every £3.10 helps".
blame. The Today programme (6.3.08) broadcast to millions that "small shops" were fuelling teenage criminal activity by supplying alcohol to youngsters.
The allegation, without evidence, was included in a report on a brutal murder of a young girl by a drink-and-drug crazed attacker. This sad anti-small shop propaganda is getting out of hand.
The sector needs to counter it urgently.
Will Government proposals to ban the display of tobacco in retail premises damage the wholesale sector?
