Smash The Supermarkets

Tesco sponsored report supports Tesco, suprisingly enough.

2009-11-09T21:43:00.009Z

Nestled on the banks of the River Tawe in everyone's favourite cottage burning principality is a small town known as Ystradgynlais. A town not particularly famous for anything other than hosting the National Eisteddfod in 1954 and having an alarming amount of Welsh speakers.

Ystradgynlais is apparently about to get a Tesco and to justify its erection the official supermarket of the Labour government commissioned a study into what impact putting a bloody great big supermarket selling everything from Apples to Zucchini (alright, I know!) would have on local business.

Now you'd expect a study that they'd paid for into the viability of siting a Forbidden City in a quaint yet slightly dull market town to be ever so slightly biased in their favour but I'm not quite sure how they could possibly expect to sell this, which actually appears word for word in the report:

"the vitality and viability of these comparatively small centres will not be materially harmed by the proposed Tesco store.
"On the contrary, Ystradgynlais is predicated to benefit from a net increase in turnover arising from linked shopping trips to the centre associated with new shoppers attracted to Tesco and Ystradgynlais."

So Emperor Palpatine, sorry, Sir Terry, how's that then?

You put a shop in that sells everything, from cheap lager (a big seller in Jack land one would imagine) through to rope (for Bridgend away days) and you actually believe that it wont have an impact on pre-existing businesses that not only supply a commercial retail need amongst the local consumer base but actively support the idea of a community and support keeping that community active, together and social. Not insular, utilitarian and blue and white bloody striped!

Alright, on the upside it will create some jobs and they will build some retail units to cover the three items they don't sell but to suggest that it won't harm the local area is surely preposterous? People of Ystradgynlais, if you pass this, wave goodbye to your butchers, your bakers and your electrical shops as the Evil Empire will without question lead to their demise.

V.

Christmas Cheer!

2009-11-09T00:02:00.001Z

Apparently, this year we're going to see more supermarkets than usual open on Boxing Day.

Brilliant.

Just what you fucking need when you've spent a week prior to Christmas running around shop after shop buying everything from socks, through toys for the kids to the festive meal. Is there really anyone tragic enough in this fair isle to awake on Boxing Day morning, stomach still full of food and cheap booze from the day before that actually thinks "I know, lets go to the supermarket, that will be nice, won't it Diedre?"

Really, as if the quaint little pagan festival of bringing a tree indoors that's now been hijacked by the weak of mind as an eternal birthday party for a particularly talented tradesman needed to get any more commercial or any more convenient. I'm a capitalist through and through but even I can see that opening your largest shops on Boxing Day isn't a convenience. Its a ploy, a ploy to get cretins high on cheap brandy to purchase awful televisions because they're on offer. It matters not how shit they are of course, as long as they're cheap, thats all that matters.

This is what the supermarket culture has brought, its brought society an expectation of instant gratification. ultimate convenience and slaughtering service at the altar of price.

Ho, ho, fucking ho.

V.

That's ASDA Price

2009-11-08T23:42:00.000Z

Seems Wal-Mart have sold Asda to themselves, mainly to look like they're doing something tangible, rather than possibly swerving tax, for a mere £200m more than they paid for it ten years ago. The deal, made up of cash and shares values the company at £6.94Bn That's ASDA's price, apparently.

V.

Supermarket Game Of The Week - Lime The Chav.

2009-11-08T23:03:00.000Z

We've all seen them, malingering in the spaghetti 'oops aisle or perhaps around the confectionery section, eyes like government scaremongering posters, expressionless faces adorning their pea sized craniums. The late teen social undesirable, the scally, the CHAV.

Invariably these little fuckers will be rude, generally irritating and just plain in the way whilst undertaking the regular purgatory of navigating a supermarket for the only shit they should be allowed to sell (tinned, frozen and cleaning products).

So, why not turn such tedium and constant battling to repress the fantasy of stoving their heads in with a tin of marrowfat peas into a bit of a laugh?

Simpy acquire a lime from the produce aisle (this is invariably the one by the door to make you think that everything inside the fucking place is fresh) then locate a suitable ner do well in a 'hoodie' (I recommend a small one ideally, makes it easier to deposit the lime and they turn out to be less trouble in the long run) and rather than giving them a Cameron-esque hug, deposit said lime in the hood of their jumper and walk away, smiling, safe in knowledge that at some point the appalling displaced field tiller will put their hood up only to have won the prize of a lime in a competition they didn't know they entered.

10 points per lime successfully deposited without knowledge of the CHAV

If a CHAV catches you depositing said lime, all points forfeit for that shopping session.

Winner takes all.