An excellent article, at of all places, The Grauniad.
Choice quoatations:
In 1919, after serving with the RAF during the first world war, 21-year-old Jack Cohen invested his £30 demob money in surplus food stocks and a stall in the East End of London. … The idea that Tesco has always been a corner-shop-crushing colossus is a lie, one perpetuated by bitter, third-rate businessmen who would dearly love to have achieved a quarter of what Cohen did but lacked the ability and luck to pull it off, and who now seek to clothe their envy and hypocrisy in the rhetoric of care for the community.
And let me please declare that I, for one, wasn’t put on this earth to make life easy for British farmers … The EU has done enough to feather their nests; I don’t need to add to their nest eggs when I go shopping.
Whenever I hear the word “family” used as a moral absolute, I immediately reach for my amyl nitrate and my whistle. Families are only as good or as bad as the individual family in question; seeing the word used as shorthand for all that is good and pure is ridiculous.
I have no fear of the modern world, a fear that runs like mad mercury through those who celebrate small shops. But it is the modern world which has given so many of us the right to follow our hearts, live our dreams and hold fast to our freedom.
We should be celebrating the wonderful diversity that the supermarkets offer us. We can eat fruit at any time of the year (whilst increasing the incomes of people across the world). I can get good quality beef for a reasonable price - something previous generations could only dream of. Guinea fowl, pheasent, poussin and other delicacies are available, prepared with cooking instructions at low prices. This surely lowers the barrier to eating a wider range of food for the slightly adventurous person lacking in confidence.
