Boycott ASDA This Christmas

Asda Stores Limited was founded as Associated Dairies & Farm Stores Limited in 1949 in Leeds. The adoption of the Asda name occurred in 1965 with the merger of the Asquith chain of three supermarkets and Associated Dairies; Asda is an abbreviation of Asquith and Dairies. Asda is a supermarket chain which retails food, clothing, toys and general merchandise. It also has a mobile telephone network, Asda Mobile. It has its head office in Leeds.

Asda became a subsidiary of the American retail giant Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, in 1999, and is the second largest chain in the UK after Tesco, having overtaken Sainsbury's in 2003. In 2010, 17% of UK grocery shoppers used Asda for their main shop, with 'special offers' the most cited reason for its popularity. From 1991 until 2000, Archie Norman was Chief Executive and then Chairman of Asda. From 1997 to 2005 he was also the Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells and a shadow front bench spokesperson. He is now the Chairman of ITV.

Andrew James Bond, part-time Chairman, began at Asda as a marketing manager for Archie Norman, when aged 29 in April 1994 after completing as MBA. He had previously worked in the gas industry. He has an engineering degree from Salford University.

He was Chief Executive of ASDA from 2005 until earlier this when he surprised the business world by resigning that post to take up the Chairmanship. He reputedly did not wish to have to move his young family to Bentonville, Arkansas, the home of Wal-Mart. He preferred to raise them in Harrogate, so he's not all bad.

On 18th October Andy Bond signed an open letter calling on the Chancellor to continue the coalition government's plans to reduce the public finance deficit in one term, plans which included swingeing cuts on the poorest members of society and which risk pushing this country into a double-dip recession, the likes of which has not been seen since the last time the tories took power and tanked the economy in the early 80's.

For this reason Andy is considered a fully signed up member of the Big Business Society and we urge people to boycott ASDA.

There are other supermarkets, like the Co-op, or Sainsbury, or some of the smaller ones that are trying to compete with the big boys you can support. I'd also like to ask that alternatives are suggested in the comments to this post.