Sunday 3 February 2013

Sir Terry Leahy is right about supermarkets...

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About supermarkets:

Asked if seeing boarded-up shops made him sad, Leahy said: "It does, but it is part of progress. People are not made to shop in supermarkets, they choose to shop there.

"High streets– some of them are medieval and the way that we live our lives now is very different, so what you have to do is make sure the benefits do outweigh the costs, and I think that they do."

It pains me to agree with Sir Terry since I like those independent shops. But he's right - there is no doubt that, on balance, society has gained from the success of supermarkets like Sir Terry's beloved Tesco. Just as we no longer have to pound away washing clothes by hand, bash at carpets with a big stick or get on our knees to scrub the hearth, we no longer have to spend hours each week traipsing from small shop to small shop merely to get the things we need.

Instead we can read, we can sing, we can enjoy a bit of leisure - make the most of all the good things progress (and I mean real progress here, the fruits of capitalism, not the fake progress socialists offer) has brought us. Television, computers, games, foreign holidays, thousands of songs on one little pod.

Our lives are richer than they've ever been and the supermarket has played a big part in creating those riches. Rather than a limited selection at the shop on the corner, we've access to thousands of different products under one roof. We don't have to walk round in the rain, snow and sleet but can make our choices in the warmth and light of indoors - choosing vegetables and fruit throughout the year, flown in from Peru, Kenya and Sri Lanka. We can experiment with odd foreign grains, with twenty types of rice and a hundred different teas and coffees.

All this isn't just available to the elite. Everyone has this choice on the doorstep. And it enriches our lives in a hundred ways. Yes, Sir Terry, supermarkets are great!

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You mean,your car's on the doorstep.
Where's the supermarket?