Reply #13: Round here it was quite a litteral pain in the arse [View All]

[tjwmason]

And pretty close to a large loss of life - but that's due to local circumstances.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/beds/bucks/herts/4639671.stm - oh and the 'at least a week' of disruption is still fully in place over a month later.

As others have said - there are certainly up-sides and down sides, but I think that we do have to accept the reality that Tesco (et al.) have exploited a hole in the market in terms of opening hours and levels of quality. The old high-street model was fine when women weren't working, and so could potter round the shops every day - but are ridiculous for most people these days. The levels of quality and price which they provide are only really available because of their massive economies of scale.

Personally, I have strong leanings towards the Prince Charles school of food - our whole system of food production (and especially importation, just so that we can have strawberries in December) is utterly unsustainable - and the creation of that was in large part due to the supermarket chains such as Tesco.