Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

the South Park ep on Walmart was pretty accurate in its depiction of nobody wanting the store there and everybody using it

god knows the Free Market is a laughable lie but i don't think when we live in a barren wasteland populated only by giant supermarkets and charity shops the supermarkets will start jacking the prices up, cos a) they are competing with each other and b) if they tried this, people wd start small businesses to undercut them and ze circle of life continuez

But then the steelworkers union didn't exactly support the miners when they were being decimated so i dunno should we bothered about them either

not rly cuz then the supermarkets would immediately undercut them! they have a pricing point elasticity that small shopkeepers will never enjoy xp

i don't think that's especially true or an ish. i'm not saying "where were they?" i'm saying shopkeepers on the whole are some flavour of little Tory and have little room to complain at being gamed by the system they presumably favour

xp

if they tried this, people wd start small businesses to undercut them and ze circle of life continuez

Is this really possible? A supermarket can run a loss in a particular place all day long - can certainly hold their breath a lot longer than any local store could even dream about

i don't think it's fair to cast our nation of shopkeepers as conniving lil nazis, and i can sympathize with some of their perennial complaints wrt regulation and taxes cuz running a little shop seems like a lot of work

i mean a lot of this comes down to should we support this particular place or that particular industry or this other store and maybe there's no particular obligation for any particular one, but cumulatively i think actually it does come down to ending up with a barren wasteland populated only by giant supermarkets and charity shops and empty buildings

but how much did people moan about the passing of the blacksmith and other suddenly irrelevant businesses? also the mega supermarkets are pretty good at running imitation gouging-corner-shop businesses on they own, right?

ie as long as there is a market for people who can't get to a big out of town store to buy bog roll or emergency 3 in the morning munchies there will be somebody willing to overcharge them for it

sympathy purchasing seems like a dreadful idea and will only inculcate resentment, or the unrealistic expectation that small businesses will be 'mes que un shop' and rush to give their customers unsolicited beejes in exchange for buying overpriced groceries

With the issue of space I'm not saying it'll get like the US, but gutted towns with out-of-town boxstore complexes that need a car to get to I just don't see anything good about...shall we go to the suburbs thread?

i wd buy overpriced groceries for unsolicited beejays.

again, i'm not saying all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, i'm just saying that big businesses eating small ones is part of a bigger, nastier picture in which i have little concern for the small sharks just cos they small

but how much did people moan about the passing of the blacksmith and other suddenly irrelevant businesses?

don't really see why the fact that people didn't bemoan this at the time should mean people shouldn't do it now - maybe people, in the 21st century landscape of corporations and chain stores, have more of a sense of what they're missing? maybe history doesn't just blindly repeat itself after all?

also not sure how a nation of shopkeepers is worse than a nation of minimum wage employees of vast corporations that do their best to evade taxes and regulation at every point.

just saying that big businesses eating small ones is part of a bigger, nastier picture in which i have little concern for the small sharks just cos they small

think it really does come down to the 1 tyrant 3000 miles away vs 3000 tyrants 1 mile away thing with this, but...

not saying sympathy for any particular small shark is good but a) to me, seeing local businesses as sharks is sort of a divide-and-conquer type tactic, blame the people around you rather than those in power stuff and b) towns with the small sharks gone can get bad real quick

Also a side issue not really mentioned (and this is more to do with out-of-town superstores more so than the tesco express or nandos type thing really) is the function that local shops play other than just providing goods. If mixed usage is a sign of health of a town or neighbourhood then once local stores are pushed out of business and there's a decline in the actual number of functioning stores, it really makes a place not just less cohesive but gradually more unsafe (obviously this isn't whats happening in stoke newington but the removing the shopping function from the high street has more effects than just small shops going out of business or loss of 'character' or 'realness')

Somebody asked how big the Tesco in question is, it's a metro/express thing, whatever the smallest size was. Some other local facts about this particular one and some of the events surrounding the riot:

It was a supermarket about 7 or 8 years ago (Bi-Lo) before it got taken over by the guy who turned it into Jesters comedy club. He then declared himself bankrupt in order to let his partner finance the move of Jesters over the road to eventually become Metropolis, in the building that had been a Wetherspoons. It lay derelict for well over a year, maybe 18 months?

One of the campaigners used to run a fruit and veg shop nearby, and is using it shutting down as an example of why supermarkets shouldn't be allowed in as they put people like him out of business. Actually, there were three things that put him out of business - the fine for benefit fraud after the DSS found out he was claiming disability benefit because allegedly he couldn't walk without sticks, the fine for keeping an unsatitary property after he was caught selling peast-infected produce, and the proportion of his profits he was injecting (although he's clean now).

The local general store type shopkeepers are currently being investigated on two counts by the council - one of price fixing between them, and secondly for keeping some goods unpriced so they can charge you what they like depending on how desperate they think you are. The remainder are organic "£15 a jar of honey" type places (3, I think) and an Italian deli that's only open on certain days.

The three written objections by the protesters, which they can't understand why the council didn't support, to the Tesco planning permission were that it was Tesco, that they'd lower the price of booze and attract alkies (to which Tesco promised to use their overall policy in the store, and didn't point out the White Lightning for £1.99 in the local stores) and that their refrigerated cabinet would be too loud and would spoil the area.

A condition of the Tesco development was that they would fund some affordable social housing in the area to save the council money, and would deliberately divert some of their vouchers for schools thing to a local primary.

This store isn't even in Stokes Croft, it's in Montpelier. The main street in Stokes Croft has two really obvious brothels on it, which the protesters don't seem too bothered about.

The rioters who have been in court aren't even from the area, except the one with No Fixed Abode who could be from a local squat. One's from Easton (2-3 miles, and across the motorway), one's from St George (3-4 miles, and across the motorway) and one's from Filton (5-6 miles, not even in Bristol).

2500 postcards got sent by 'locals' protesting the opening. According to Bristol councils stats, circa 1500 live in Stokes Croft. There's a large number of people, such as in the flats at Kingsdown just behind, who are living on benefits and I'm betting £1.00 carrots aren't on their 'local' shopping list. Maybe why they weren't consulted on the protest postcards or the survey that proved people were against it is because they can't afford to eat and drink in The Canteen.

Gloucester Road is a pretty fair comparison - there's a Sainsbury's Local, a Co-op and a Tesco Express within about half a mile of each other, but there's also handful of local grocery stores, a bread store, a couple of butchers, a fishmongers... they all meet different needs and manage to co-exist.

Also, you should crosspost that in the latest Guardian thread.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/25/stokes-croft-tesco-bristol

i'm saying shopkeepers on the whole are some flavour of little Tory and have little room to complain at being gamed by the system they presumably favour

This seems like a truly grotesque generalisation that I can't help but resent. I am certianly not any flavour of little tory - as I grow older I'm turning more into some horrible hybrid of little makhno x little lenin - and was not so at any point during the years I ran my little shop in South Shields. I don't recall any of the shopkeepers who were my neighbours being so either. The main memory I have of little shop vs big shed shop is that no matter what I did, if B&Q started selling something I sold, it just stopped selling out of my shop, one line I sold for a while till the big shop wiped me out, they had it in for three times the price I sold it for, and still they took all my sales away, fucking hopeless, man. It kind of felt like not so much a level playing field as a vertical wall with them at the top and you at the bottom., ugh too annoyed to even be coherent about it.

v. sorry Pash, always make mental exceptions to my smash the system ramblings for people i like. but point took.

also mrs v. is opening a shop for the charity she works for, so what kind of double hypocrite bullshitter does that make me?

^^^ had forgotten that earlier

that sounds crazy depressing pash

even disregarding political arguments, that every fucking town in england looks like

what is bromsgrove?

is immensely dispiriting

what kind of double hypocrite bullshitter does that make me?

Oh, you're a terrible, terrible man, for sure ;)

Probably a cliche to even relate it - when we took on the shop in Dean Road, in IDK 1980 or thereabouts, there was a butcher shop, 2 greengrocers, baker shop, fishmonger all in the area of 3 blocks, every one of them got ground out of business as the big supermarkets expanded into the town. Now the street is the archetype of a small town shopping street - all charity shops, shortlived hairdresser shops, a bunch of shuttered up shops. Pretty fucking sad for a whole bunch of reasons beyond sentimentality or archetypal guardian readerish hand-wringing (which I am prone to admittedly, being an archetypal guardian & all that)

thanks for all that info aldo - interesting, definitely good to hear from someone on the ground rather than falling into the automatic "protesters GOOD tesco BAD" mindset that so many do.

in other news MARINA HYDE IS BACK! omfg can we ensure she never gets pregnant again, can't take this long without her again. bitch still has it obv.

Being prime minister is rather like being able to play the fantasy dinner party game for real, so the fact that Tony Blair could have rifled through a near-limitless Rolodex of fascinating public figures, yet plumped for Vernon Kay, speaks volumes about his character (were further volumes in any way required). That Vernon should once again find himself at our nation's high table says more about Where We Are At than any number of dystopian social treatises, and we can only await the Boltonian Zelig's next state appearance with infinite resignation.

these sentences are perfect <3

Except she misspelled "riffled".

I think both spellings are ok.

nah you would riffle thru a rolodex but rifle thru a wardrobe

blame the subs

one line I sold for a while till the big shop wiped me out, they had it in for three times the price I sold it for, and still they took all my sales away, fucking hopeless, man

:(

If mixed usage is a sign of health of a town or neighbourhood then once local stores are pushed out of business and there's a decline in the actual number of functioning stores, it really makes a place not just less cohesive but gradually more unsafe

i.e. well street, which is now

all charity shops, shortlived hairdresser shops, a bunch of shuttered up shops.

and an oversized tesco metro stuck up at the top of it, selling books, flowers, videogames, stationery, kitchen utensils, etc.

guess where jack cohen (tesco founder) got his start? at a stall on well street, back when market traders could earn a living... back when there weren't any tescos

hackney is the centre of the universe

all charity shops, shortlived hairdresser shops, a bunch of shuttered up shops.

Should try Paisley, they have fake shops there now, to try to make you feel less suicidal when you visit the town centre

I have a correction, one of the accused in court isn't from St George, he's from St Paul's which is much closer.

Protesters chased out of a community meeting on Saturday, particularly after they told the guy from the bike shop he should just put up with the broken window as "there are innocent casualties in every war".

xpost Do you mean the Arnotts building in Paisley town centre with the pictures of people shopping over the old windows and "Park Lane" signs over the walls? That's really grim, especially when you see foxes running in and out the holes they've chewed in the boarded up windows and doorways.

No, they've actually got fake shop fronts in the High Street, blown up photos of butchers shops and cafes etc

Still, it's work for makers of fake shop fronts... every cloud...

jesus christ that's absurd

fuck...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1255162/Fake-shopfronts-built-improve-look-recession-hit-high-streets.html

Apparently it's increasingly common, seems to have started in the North East

(xp)

There's a Tesco Metro at one end of my road and a medium-sized Sainsbury's at the other and any number of small shops (both Mr Patel-style convenience stores and the pastel-coloured places that middle class people like), all of which seem to be doing reasonably well. There's been a thriving street market on Lewisham High Street for decades despite that having both a Tesco and a Sainsbury's there for as long as I can remember.

It's as much to do with the social make-up of an area as anything else. Most of the people who live on Well Street will be shopping in that Tesco because it's cheaper and more affordable for people with limited cash - can't blame them. But if the people with the disposible income aren't going there and putting money into it then you might as well blame them, or blame Broadway Market or somewhere, as much as Tesco.

... yes, they say shit like "This could be a shoe shop" (but it's not it's only a photograph of one) (xp)

^ this is massively fucking depressing, aye. The only actual shops left are WH Smiths, JD Sports, MacDonalds, and a fuckload of charity and pound shops.

xposts about Paisley

There's a Tesco Metro at one end of my road and a medium-sized Sainsbury's at the other and any number of small shops (both Mr Patel-style convenience stores and the pastel-coloured places that middle class people like), all of which seem to be doing reasonably well.

Pretty sure London's a different case entirely

as a cheapskate who only buys 2nd hand books, i like the high streets that are lined w charity shops

The only actual shops left are WH Smiths, JD Sports, MacDonalds, and a fuckload of charity and pound shops.

Don't tell me the tanning salons have gone tits up? ;_;

Pretty sure London's a different case entirely

Different to Hackney?

hackney is the centre of the universe

it is though! for me.

But if the people with the disposible income aren't going there and putting money into it then you might as well blame them, or blame Broadway Market or somewhere, as much as Tesco.

broadway market is only on saturdays. the rest of the time bway market shopping is basically on par with well street unless you want some expensive coffee table books or argentinian steak - which i don't think is too much of a threat to well street businesses.

what should people w/disposable income be putting money into? the shops that couldn't compete with tesco are gone now.

I get a bus through Paisley every other day and I've never noticed that many fake shops - either they're really convincing at masquerading as shops, or they're so terrible that I don't take them in as shops at all. Either way I can't imagine being able to feel less suicidal when spending time there.