four letter word

Frome has just lost yet another garage. The owners are whingeing that it's because of supermarkets, but the real reason is staring them in the face. The four letter word that they should have covered up if they'd wanted to keep customers - E-S-S-O.

What sort of businesspeople would lumber themselves with the modern form of leprosy and trade under the banner of a company that 90% of British people would NEVER patronise?

Obviously garage closures are an inevitable portent of the end of oil, but it's Esso garages that are the most vulnerable. Esso did not only spend decades perpetuating the hippy myth that climate change was not happening, but even actively supported hippy organisations that DENIED global warming. This was business suicide, and that's what we're seeing. Rather that employing communist christians perhaps they should have employed forward-thinking economists and businesspeople.

Expect Esso nostalgia on eBay any time soon.