The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Paying less for sports goods can cost in human misery
It is no small feat for a company infamous for the treatment of its own employees to ruin the lives of workers at another firm altogether.
And yet remarkably, this is just what Sports Direct, possibly the least popular high street store in the country, achieved this week.
The firm told Tesco it is not renewing its lease for the supermarket giant’s busy Murraygate store in Dundee city centre.
The shop will close its doors for the final time in November leaving the future of its 78 stuff up in the air.
While Tesco has a number of other stores around Dundee, staff could soon find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own.
Sports Direct may be good at offering discounted sporting wear and oversized coffee mugs but its reputation as an employer has been shot to pieces in recent years.
Three years ago MPs said working conditions at the company’s shops and warehouses were akin to “Victorian workhouses”.
Evidence presented to the politicians portrayed a company that appeared to view its employees as chattels rather than living, breathing human beings.
As well as failing to pay the minimum wage in many cases, MPs also heard evidence about how employees were publicly humiliated, asked to work extra hours for no pay, penalised for taking short breaks and even fired for taking too many days off due to illness.
It was even claimed one warehouse worker gave birth in a toilet because she was afraid of missing a shift.
Owner, the controversial billionaire Mike Ashley, has plenty of business acumen and cares little for how he or his businesses are perceived.
The bottom line is all.
His company, which also owns a number of other brands, wants to create new Sports Direct and USC stores when Tesco pulls down the shutters for the final time.
Whatever its eventual replacement, the supermarket’s departure will be keenly felt by customers, although staff will obviously be hit hardest.
That so many people are now faced with the thought of losing their jobs just a few weeks before Christmas when Tesco has indicated it would be willing to pay more rent seems especially cruel.
Ashley’s attitude towards business is cut-throat and it seems his approach to people is similar.
In a bid to prop up his ailing House of Fraser brand, he launched a legal challenge to prevent Debenhams enacting a company voluntary agreement in its bid to survive.
It was thrown out this week but had he succeeded, thousands of more jobs could have been put at risk.
Sports Direct offers shoppers goods at bargain prices but, as we have found with many online retailers, the hidden, human cost behind such cheap goods is often far too high. Nailed to a perch The Scottish Government’s Named Person’s Scheme was finally put out of its misery this week. This parrot, so to speak, is no more, it has passed on. Under the scheme, each child would have been given a named person, such as a teacher, who would be the clear point of contact for them until they reached adulthood.
Education Minister John Swinney admitted defeat three years after the Supreme Court ruled parts of the proposal breached Human Rights Laws.
The plan may have been devised with the best of intentions, but millions of pounds were wasted on a policy that was intrusive and flawed from the start.
A few years ago, such a shambles would have led to resignations and mortally wounded a government’s reputation for competency. Luckily
for Mr Swinney, we now live in a time where a prime minister can be filmed lying about the very existence of the camera that has him in frame. Normal rules no longer apply.
A good walk ruined.
There are many who would argue that golf is not quite a sport.
Compared to the harum-scarum bone crunching action we can expect at the Rugby World Cup, the genteel pastime of dinking a little round ball over parkland seems a completely different ball game, which, funnily enough, it is. have to go some to match the drama of the Solheim Cup at Gleneagles last week.
Suzann Pettersen, a controversial wildcard pick after two years out of the game to have a baby, sank the final putt of the match to win the cup for Europe.
It showed just how exciting a sport golf can be and hopefully will encourage more young Scots to pick up the game.
That such an event happened more or less on our doorstep makes Dundee City Council’s decision to close Camperdown golf course next year seem all the more short-sighted.