Once a week on a Thursday evening I have the great pleasure of skimming through the (first twenty) pages of the Stourbridge News (the rest are all property and adverts). This beacon of journalism is an interesting mix of press releases and local interest stories, like any other free town newspaper.
Fantastically though, the Stourbridge News has aspirations. It also has a Conservative/conservative bias. I don’t think it’s particularly intentional, just the editorial team can’t disguise their voting preferences.
Many a time has it’s strange take on events, and especially vehement ‘Letters to the Editor’ section (where Disgusted of Norton expresses his hatred of foreigners and their evil ways) become a topic of great merriment over a few pints at the Crisp or a balti down the Lye.
One of my particularly favourite stories that has run for years is the anti-Tesco campaign that has been a long standing favourite amongst the journalists and the politically mobilised members of Stourbridge Town. It’s been going on for at least seven years, if not longer.
To give you some background, The ‘Bridge was wrapped in by a ring road in the 1960s and ever since saw a decline as large shopping centres like Merry Hill became a shopper’s paradise (or hell, depending on your point of view). Despite the fact Stourbridge Town has lost all it’s major independent and local stores, sold out to the mainstream high-streeters, some people are still under the illusion it is 1954 and the Russians are out to get us.
Therefore in the eyes of these over-vocal and time-displaced residents, the idea of having a Tesco in a ‘market town’ is abhorrent. In case nobody had got the drift, this last week’s front page reads as in the image, “Held to Ransom, Fury As Tesco Bag Prime Site”.
Essentially what has happened is this. Tesco, who have been constantly denied plots of land outside of the ring road for the past seven years, went and bought a large empty unit in the rather underused Crown Centre. The space used to be occupied by Safeways, then Morrisions, but both failed to sustain business (due to how much of a rubbish space it is) and closed a while ago.
Disgusted of Norton, along with the anti-progression brigade are once again absolutely fuming and on the warpath, claiming it is a purely cynical move to stop Sainsbury’s moving into the town centre. I think you now realise how ‘middle class’ Stourbridge believes it is. Of course Sainsbury’s would be fine, but Tesco?! With it’s extra value ranges and it’s bland branding, well it’s quite probably the first step towards communism. The Russians!
I watch with the utmost fascination how the population of Stourbridge wind themselves up into a cataclysmic stupor about a supermarket opening that will probably only help bring people back to the town. Disgusted of Norton has nothing to worry though. His/her letters still make great reading, and clearly he/she has enough hatred to write until the end of time. Stourbridge News will continue the crusade until everyone of those Bolshys are sent back to where they came from!