THE WAITROSE QUESTION

Guest Post by "Annie"

Do you shop in Waitrose?  

If not, why not?  

If you live in Scotland it could be because you don't have one near you. Even if there was, could you afford to shop there?  

Waitrose is well known as a high-end supermarket where a £50 bag of messages will set you back £50 for the groceries plus £10 for the privilege of shopping in Waitrose.  

There are only 3 in Scotland.  Unsurprisingly they are in the upmarket environs of Edinburgh, Newton Mearns and Stirling (wonder if the people from the Raploch go there).

Now London Labour has taken up the cudgel on behalf of the downtrodden.  In a recent Financial Times article it is reported that the latest salvo against “big business” they have Waitrose in their sights. Their attack is focused on the myWaitrose loyalty scheme which they say is having a bad effect on small coffee shops on the UK’s high streets.  

The scheme allows shoppers with a "myWaitrose" card to have a free daily tea or coffee, even if they don’t buy anything else in the store.  Fair enough you might say.  

But the Labour Party’s view certainly accords with that of Waitrose customers who don't like the scheme because it attracts the “wrong type” of customers.  (This will be why they don't have many shops in Scotland – too many plebs!). 

But wait a minute, is Waitrose not the food retailing arm of John Lewis – an employee owned company and previously hailed by the same Labour Party as the acceptable face of capitalism?  Is it not the sort business “red” Ed wants to encourage in his drive against “big business” – the companies that treat their customers and shareholders with contempt?  

Or it could just be that the high heid yins in the Labour Party, who live most of their lives in London, have suddenly noticed whilst shopping in their local Waitrose that there are all these people there drinking free coffee, and they would rather not rub shoulders with them outwith their constituency surgeries. 

If this is the sort of thing that the Labour Party in Westminster think is worthy of a campaign it is one more reason to think that their view of Scotland, where “The Waitrose Question” does not arise, remains that it is a far off place of which they know little.  

Yet another argument for Scotland being run from Scotland by the Scots.

I wonder what Keir Hardie would think of this storm in a coffee cup and more importantly, would he be shopping at Waitrose?