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02/15/2006: "Lost in the supermarket"
Soundtrack: Rammstein - Rosenrot
"the bloodstream/gets its sugar from the intestine/gets its sugar from the supermarket chain/that left the village drained/every high street same soulless refrain"
They were talking on the radio this morning about the evils of supermarket chains, and their effect on small businesses and local high streets. It seems the government has set up a committee to look into this and possible ways of regulating the supermarkets. To be honest I'd be amazed if it makes a blind bit of difference.
Supermarkets are big businesses, just like any other, and there is a good collection of nasty practices which they get up to (Walmart's approach to trade unions in the states, the pittance which UK farmers are paid for what they produce and the several hundred percent mark-up that it gets sold to us for, for example). But this is only part of the problem.
The big problem is us, the customers, willing to whore ourselves out to the best special offer, buy-one-get-one-free deal. We who have become accustomed to getting whatever we like, regardless of the season or the country of origin. We are prepared to fight through the car park road rage, into aisles littered with stray trolleys and people aimlessly wandering from one shelf to another in search of over-packaged mediocre produce. We argue that it saves us time, that it's convenient. Is it?
Every weekend, I get in a car and drive past the village shops (about 1/4 of a mile away) and carry on another 6 miles to the nearest Sainsbury's. I could walk to the shops and do the shopping in the time it takes to get in through the door of Sainsbury's. Something inside me grates every time I do it but I still do and I don't understand why.
"I looked a little closer at the walls of my house/but to my surprise they were made out of glass/I made my way softly towards my front door/but to my surprise it was bolted shut and barred"
Maybe next weekend...
[both the lines quoted above are from "Holloway Prison Blues" by Million Dead, who were rather good until they split up last year]