supermarket

When supermarkets first opened they seemed to offer a fabulous array of choice foods, far beyond the means of local butchers and grocers,  and quick service at checkouts. Far better than your local shop where, for instance, you'd wait for ages to be sold some manky, earth-clodden turnips by a surly green-grocer (nowadays of course we'd fight tooth-and-nail and pay a fortune to get these wonderful organic foods).

But once they'd stolen the market, supermarkets were no longer interested in pleasing their customers. Only in maximising their profits. Gone now is the quick service. No longer is there choice - after all why offer it when the customer has nowhere else to go - except to another supermarket? But as they all operate a cartel that is no problem anyway. And why not get food into the shops as cheaply as possible? Forget quality or local business or the environment - runner beans flown in from Kenya are the cheapest.

And as for customer service! Make them collect and park their trolleys; charge them for parking their cars if they stay longer than they need to; and if they don't like the long queues let them check-out themselves.

Sadly, though, this phenomenon is not confined to supermarkets. The same philosophy is proliferating throughout our lives into banking (when did I last have contact with my "local" branch?), local government services (refuse collection?), health (Traps Hill surgery is now a 'walk-in' service like A&E), education (TAs now can replace teachers and teaching and learning is about filling buckets not setting things on fire), social life (facebook, chain restaurants etc) and the list goes on.

It won't be long before we are expected to dig our own graves. Or, perhaps, we already have as we seem to be too pathetic to stand up for ourselves against this monstrous relentless drive to squeeze as much money out of the public for as little return as possible.

Postscript: There is a recent article in the Guardian on this subject. The article, though, only looks at what is happening on the High Street and not how this malaise is affecting all aspects of living. A better and more locally pertinent article was written by Peter Wilby, also for the Guardian, a short while ago.

There is also the mystery of why French High Streets manage to keep their boulangeries and boucheries and still have supermarches, which generally are vastly superior to ours. Maybe this problem is a British one?