It’s been a tough couple of weeks for Tesco.

After those disappointing fourth-quarter results, its bank holiday began with the wrong sort of bang when a shiny new Express in Bristol was targeted by militants “dressed like ninjas”, according to one widely quoted bystander.

While it’s hard to imagine those elite warriors of feudal Japan swapping stealth and finely honed steel for Molotov cocktails and balaclavas from Milletts, the injuries to police suggest the Stokes Croft rioters also meant business.

It’s hard to know whether the riot was simply idiots looking for trouble, the consequence of heavy-handed police tactics – a depressingly familiar refrain these days – or, just maybe, the expression of righteous fury against an increasingly homogenised economy.

What’s for sure is that the protestors/rioters weren’t thinking about the £1bn in sales of products sourced locally that Tesco announced last week.

You can argue all day about whether the shoppers of Bristol would benefit from having the opening of what was the 31st Tesco in their city. But there are more constructive ways for opponents to make their feelings clear – like getting involved in running the sort of community shops backed by the Plunkett Foundation.

As Judy Sharp discovered in the most recent edition of The Grocer, these stores are far more resistant to the mults’ expansion than the 400 village shops that close their doors every year. They also offer a far more eloquent case than any number of part-time ninjas smashing shop windows.

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