Hevva! Hevva! - Waitrose all at sea with foreign fish!

Hevva! Hevva!

Waitrose all at sea with foreign fish!

Waitrose Supermarkets, which has just the one store in Cornwall at Saltash (called ‘Essa’ in Cornish, not that Waitrose could ever understand that!) appear to be all at sea over their fish.

Much band width on social media sites has recently been taken up by discussions over a mysterious new fish found in Cornwall and marketed by Waitrose, preferred store of Duke Charles, notably the ‘Cornish sardine’.

Further, these ‘sardines’ are marked as Cornish by the inclusion of an English flag of Saint George on the product.

Geographically challenged Waitrose have apparently not heard of Cornish pilchards, the staple diet of generations of Cornish people and of the many traditions surrounding that great fish. Nor are they apparently aware of the fact that Cornwall (called ‘Kernow’ by thousands but again, this would be a mystery to Waitrose) has its own flag and indeed, its own non English traditions.

We thought it would be fun to let them know of the error of their ways and so joined many others in ‘tweeting’ helpful pictures of both sardines and Saint Piran flags at them (their twitter is @Waitrose and is to be found here: https://twitter.com/waitrose).

However, they were apparently so busy stacking up their overpriced boxes of Duchy Original biscuits – another one of the Dirty Duke’s dubious money spinners – that they failed to respond.

We then joined a few others in visiting the Waitrose Facebook site to be found at: www.facebook.com/Waitrose?fref=ts and again posted useful photographs of pilchards and Piran flags. Surprise, surprise, the posting were removed almost as quickly as HRH pockets millions of pounds of Cornish money by developing greenfield sites into housing estates with conveniently placed Waitrose stores planned.

So we then sent an email to Waitrose at: customersupport@waitrose.co.uk and just by way of a courtesy, phoned them on 01344 825080.

We were told over the ‘phone that the use of national flags was introduced to help Waitrose customers to quickly identify UK produced fish and shellfish. Waitrose decided to use national rather than the regional flags as these are more easily recognised by our Customers. Cornwall is recognised as a county of England within the United Kingdom and therefore the use of the English flag to denote Cornish sourced product is correct.

We are still waiting for a reply to our email.

Well, the way ahead seems to be to vote with ones feet, so no more Waitrose either store or on line. If the ‘Royal’ store can’t be bothered to support Cornwall, then we shouldn’t be bothered to support them. But in the meantime, if you should be minded, please do join us in reminding Waitrose that we have pilchards in Cornwall, not sardines and that our flag is that of St Piran not of St George. Feel free to email them, tweet them or post helpful pictures on their Facebook wall.

Here are the details again:

Twitter: @Waitrose https://twitter.com/waitrose
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Waitrose?fref=ts
Email: customersupport@waitrose.co.uk
Phone: 01344 825080 01344 825080 FREE  end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Must go now. Off to the Huer’s Hut on the lookout for pilchards. Hevva, hevva! and all that!