THE GOVERNMENT NEVER SAYS NO TO TESCO: Interesting news from Liverpool - especially trotted out in the semi-secret Christmas week - with the news that the government has over-ruled local councillors and the wishes of the people who live there and allowed Tesco permission to build on the university sports ground on Mather Avenue.

One of the biggest protests was raised because opponents said the larger store would encroach into green space.

But the inspector said the hockey pitches, with their artificial surfaces, had little positive visual quality as far as green space was concerned.

Yes, that's right: government policy now seems to insist that an ugly, block-designed shedstore is as nice to look at as a hockey pitch.

On their corporate website, Tescos claims that they are "committed" to minimising environmental impacts. It's not clear how doubling the size of a store by building on green space, when there's already a large store a few minutes walk from the current site, is a plan that has been designed to minimise environmental impact. We've emailed them to ask if they can clear that up.

Perhaps you might want to ask them as well: cr.team@uk.tesco.com

 
CAN YOU TRUST MURDOCH NEWS ORGANISATIONS?: Obviously, everyone would like to trust Murdoch's media, but it has a patchy record around the world. It's just been found guilty of breaching the CAP advertising code 7.1 (truthfulness) - in other words, of lying - to customers of one of its catalogue items.

The ASA upheld a complaint that a News of the World branded adverts for a sauna wrap and a bunion corrector made claims that could not be substaniated. Part of the reason for upholding the complaint was that the News of the World never even bothered to respond to enquiries about the advert from the ASA.

Of course, you can't directly infer that a news organisation is totally untrustworthy because one department of one of its media outlets shows contempt for the self-regulation network designed to protect consumers and is caught lying to people; however, that contempt and loose attitude to the truth is perhaps something to bear in mind when you watch, say Fox News telling you what's happening in the world, or The Times suggesting how you should vote. If a company can't keep things straight when it's selling bunion patches, how can it be trusted on the big matters?

Post tags: media murdoch news of the world