Sainsburys can afford better

We heard someone say that Sainsbury's could not afford to do anything better than the pile of white tosh they are proposing for Crosby Village, because of the recession and all that. You know.... the property market has collapsed and nobody has any money, etc etc, wouldn't you be pleased if anybody made any investment in your community now??


Well we all need to eat, which is what makes supermarkets such a win, win, win deal for their owners. Things have to be really bad before the rest of us stop buying food.


Sainsbury's recent full year financial results 2010, http://www.igd.com/analysis/channel/news_hub.asp?channelid=1&channelitemid=14&nidp=&nid=6842 , report a 17.5% increase in profits to £610 million, on £19.96 billion sales.....hmmmm. Considering most of us are pleased to still have a job or be breaking even, it seems like the supermarkets are laughing all the way to the bank as others, like local businesses, fall by the wayside.


Sefton Council had budgeted gross revenue expenditure of £546m for 2008/9, and from the governmental news we imagine this might be the high water mark for sometime. So yes, Sefton's entire annual budget for all our local public services is less that Sainsbury's annual profits. With these kind of figures big corporations surely must pay more than lip service to their social responsibilities. 


Going back to Sainsbos big profit numbers - reading their exciting annual report 2009  http://www.j-sainsbury.co.uk/ar09/ states they have 16,191,000 square feet of sales area in the country. Their proposed new Crosby store at 50,000 square feet (20% bigger that the nice new ASDA in Bootle which is 41,100 sq ft) will only be 0.3% of that national total - but 0.3% of £19.9 billion sales is still a whole truck load of money (£61m sales per year with nearly £2 million profit per year). With these figures, and the amount of money we have put through their tills in Crosby for years, you would really think they would pay the local community a little more respect with the quality of their proposals. After all as they claim in their annual report.....








.......  their own goals 3,4 & 5 are surely relevant to development projects and in terms of their current idea of 'making a positive difference to our community' .. frankly it's corporate BULLS**T.


Sainsbury's people - PLEASE TRY HARDER, your not 'Making Sainsbury's great again'