Every little helps…

… As the Tesco slogan goes. Still, I don’t think that £250 million accounting ‘error’ will be regarded as a little. What the hoohah obscures, however, is what Tesco’s poor trading performance tells us about the so-called economic recovery. Tesco is in trouble because people are increasingly turning to the cut-price supermarkets (mainly Lidl and Aldi). Waitrose, meanwhile, is booming. Which, being translated, means that poorer people in Britain are feeling increasingly squeezed, while the upper middle classes who are Waitrose’s staple customers (just look at the car park the next time you visit one of their stores) are doing just fine. Some ‘recovery’.