IN MAY this year, we reported how Liverpool City Council was creating a team of “Business Champions”.

The team’s job is to engage with the private sector and to bring about a “culture change” in the way council departments deal with business.

If the comments of Cllr Berni Turner last week are anything to go by, then it may have a big job on its hands.

On her Facebook page, Cllr Turner, who sits on the council’s ruling executive board, referred to supermarket giant Tesco as an “evil empire”.

Frank McKenna, chairman of lobby group Downtown Liverpool in Business, said her remarks were “offensive, a little barking and extremely short-sighted”.

However, there is evidence Cllr Turner has some grasp on the dynamics of a free market economy, noting that Tesco “is not there to be a warm and cuddly company, it is there to make money”.

She is supporting a campaign which opposes a new Tesco store opening up in Liverpool’s historic Hope Street, next door to the Philharmonic Pub.

This has provoked a bout of what McKenna calls “Tesco bashing”.

I share his bewilderment as to why such a successful company, and one that has created so many jobs, should receive so much opprobrium.

Opponents of the store believe it could damage the character of Hope Street, described by another councillor, Steve Munby, as “the cultural heart of Liverpool”.

I took a stroll along Hope Street to see for myself.

This is a relatively small commercial unit and I think the aesthetic impact on the street would be minimal.

I also noticed there were about five commercial “to let” signs along the street, so the area could clearly do with some investment.

Realistically, if Tesco wants to go ahead and open the store, there is probably little the campaigners can do to stop them.

However, they do have more power than they perhaps imagine.

In a previous column, I pointed out that those people worried about the threat posed by big supermarkets to smaller traders were free to continue to buy their provisions from the local butcher and baker and therefore ensure their survival.

If people living and working in the Hope Street area really don’t want a Tesco in their midst, then they should simply choose not to shop there.

 There are, after all,  other shops nearby.

If Tesco gets no customers, then it will have to close.

Real consumer power in a free market economy will beat Facebook petitions and posters in windows any day.

A SERIOUS vote of confidence in Merseyside from transport giant Arriva which is investing £28m in new buses.

So far, the company has put 175 new vehicles on routes across the city region and this number will have climbed to 204 by early next year.

Arriva faces strong competition on some routes in Liverpool from rival bus operator Stagecoach.

Yet the firm is prepared to make a major capital investment in the city region, believing there is a return to be made.

Another transport firm, Keolis, would be the operator of the Merseytram scheme, were it ever to be built.

It says the tram will be “commercially robust”.

Perhaps, then, it should consider following Arriva’s lead and make a capital contribution.