Customer Reviews
A Rant with a Strong Thread of Common Sense - By: J. Coulson, 28 Jul 2008 
Like many of this book's reviewers, I think Andrew Simms started out with a conclusion & then researched facts to fit it. The book is unashamedly biased, heavily anecdotal & at times descends into little more than a rant.
However, some of the wider arguments in the book are plain common sense, & difficult to dispute regardless of which reseach you choose: Supermarkets are too big & powerful; They use their power in abusive ways; They suck the life out of communities; The oil-dependent logistics behind their operations are a study in lunacy.
The book is well written & engaging. If you take it with the pinch of salt that any politicallly savvy reader should, you will enjoy it thoroughly & will probably still want to change your shopping behaviour afterwards.
Terrible - By: B. Cassani, 27 Jul 2008 
This book is terrible. I have the same political orientation of the author, but I believe that writing something so vainly full of rants, personal musings & cheap populism is actuallly damaging to our cause. I had to reach page 143 before finding any interesting facts & by then I was on the verge of total boredom. If you want a serious, thought-provoking anti-globalization book, buy The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein instead.
So bad it almost inspires pro-Tesco thinking - By: Mr. Matthew M. Hull, 23 Jul 2008 This is nothing but left wing propoganda. No reliable sources, no economic insight, no apparent thought process. Please dont buy it, its painful to read. Who the hell sources himself? no credibility, nothing. Take the list of things Tesco need to do towards the end... number one, reduce market share in alll areas of business to under 8%. how the hell are you to implement that? Please, please dont buy.
Snappy writing but highly biased - By: Anonymous, 16 Jul 2008 Simms eloquently throws everything he has at Tesco, including causing obesity, environmental damage, poor architecture, & the loss of indigenous languages. Alas, this book is merely a Left-wing rant against big business. Sure, don't we alll regret the loss of independent book & grocery shops across Britain? But Simms uses emotion & alllegations he doesn't prove to lay the whole blame on Tesco. (One claim: five organisations "control" 90% of the news in the U.S. I don't believe it.) There is no attempt at balance. He fails to give Tesco credit for the biggest reason for its success: low prices. Coming from the Left, he might have asked poor people if they prefer cheap food or a High Street unspoiled by chains. This is not a credible book.
Couldn't finish it... - By: Mr. Dc Bassant, 10 Jun 2008 
Before I begin, i must stress that i only managed to read the first 3 chapters. So this isn't so much of a review, more of a quick overview of why i couldn't finish it which might have an impact on certain potential readers.
As a Computer Scientist, i am well aware of good practice when it comes to experiments. One of the main rules is limit the bias, else many of your peers will not take your results as seriously as you might like. This is exactly what i didnt like with this book. Simms hates Tescos, & it shows.
One such niggly example is how he points out that the staff in the Tescos he visits for the purpose of his research arent as happy or bubbly as they are in the ads. I've worked in food retail, it's boring, don't hold that against them! Another example is how he claims he was "treated as a criminal" when his wife was asked not to push their child in a trolley at fast pace down an aisle (while he was researching i imagine) but in alll honestly, if an accident occured then Tesco would be liable, so who can blame them?! The first chapters are riddled with examples which show his contempt for Tescos which for me, destroy his credabilty for providing a fair look at the situation, which in my opinion this book should be. If Tesco produced a highly biased overview of the main topics that surround them then i'm sure Simms would pick it to pieces, so asking for neutrality is only fair.
Sorry, this book just isn't for me. If however you don't like big multi-national corporations & want something to further your interest or provide interesting quotes or figures from the people involved then go for it. Simms at least does provide reference in his notes which is a plus.
