Tesco, Britain’s biggest supermarket, have lost £1.2billion in a failed attempt to get into the American grocery market.

The decision to close its Fresh & Easy stores came after annual profits fell by more than 50% in a retail landscape very different from the UK, as the company’s marketeers would have known.

Following rising numbers of customers shopping online, Tesco are also scrapping more than 100 planned store developments in the UK, plans for which they had already acquired land at a cost of £804 million, and with the help of their well-paid lobbyist Lord Hill, the leader of our impartial House of Lords. (See Issue 31, DAVY PULLS IT OFF)