Mill Road Preservation Society

First came Tesco, and now we are told Sainsbury's, want to trade in the wonderfully diverse and eclectic mix of the Mill Road, Cambridge. The local people do not want them here when we have so many fantastic independent businesses which we are extremely proud of, and which we do not want to see being swallowed up by the big chains in these difficult times. So this is my contribution to the protest. Keep Mill Road Eclectic!

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Mill Road
• Cambridge
• Mill Road Cambridge
• No Tesco
• No Sainsbury's
• Tescopoly
• Al Amin
• Arjuna
• ethnicity
• taking the mickey
• diversity
• culture
• Al-Amin
• God save little shops
• reality checkpoint

[ChelseaPinkyBlue]

The problem isn’t 'too much' competition but power of majors (to an extent Costa and Subway franchises) especially the 'big four' supermarkets (Tesco-Sains-Asda-Morrisons) to use predatory pricing (loss leaders) to disrupt fair competition with independent traders.

With a ‘cheap’ sliced loaf people pick up other ‘basics’ at no great saving. Independents lose sales of basics; they fail to survive on ‘specialities’ alone; rapidly we have a far narrower choice of food and no proper newsagents.

[ChelseaPinkyBlue]

Thanks for the info on that benvonapfelstrudel - really helpful and as you say hopefully this will clear things up a bit. I put the video on youtube so that as many people as possible can access it and hoped that it would increase awareness of the current concerns, but I can't necessarily answer everything myself. And hopefully the meeting next week will get a good turn out :-)

[aaantoniaaa]

just wondering, but why did no one complain about costa coffee opening? apparently, there is a greggs opening on the romsey side, too, what are we gonna do about that? :(

[ChelseaPinkyBlue]

@aaantoniaaa My husband took a great deal of time photographing almost all businesses in the Mill Road. We kept the Costa shot as it shows what has already been allowed to happen. I don't know about Greggs. Perhaps if you come to the meeting next Wednesday you could raise this issue, rather than raising it on youtube with me and critiquing our efforts. If you have some suggestions for the campaign, I'm sure the committee would be pleased to listen.

[aaantoniaaa]

@benvonapfelstrudel thank you! :)

[aaantoniaaa]

@ChelseaPinkyBlue i didnt mean to criticize you at all, i like what you did, really good idea! .. was just wondering. see you tomorrow!

[Ebeneeza]

to put it simply. If this goes ahead my friend and his family will be forced to pack up their business and leave Cambridge. They are devastated.

[benvonapfelstrudel]

[part 2] People have objected to the retrospective planning applications Costa have put in (they 'forgot' to mention a few things last year).

The other site is going to be an indian restuarant apparently - according to someone who knows the owner, so presumably true. The Greggs story seems to be a classic bit of Mill Road rumour, like the McDonalds one that appears every now and then.

Hope this clears things up a bit!

[benvonapfelstrudel]

Hi aaantoniaaa, No-one complained about Costa before it opened because they kept their name off all the paperwork and so people didn't know. The councillors apparently knew in advance but didn't tell anyone. There might have been more objections, even though people didn't know who it was, if the council planning department hadn't broken the law and failed to advertise the application.