The Death of Crippled Super-Market.
When I was only six years old I remember Superman as being the most inspiring charcter to me then, a super hero, with super powers to save people, to help them in times of distress and disaster, to fight injustice wherever it may be, and best of all superman went after the super-villains causing most of the problems in city areas and population centers, superman loved the people, and even animals, I wanted to be like superman and I dressed like him a few times when I visited Stourbridge in the early 1980's, before the age of the giant supermarket chains, before the age of the super-American 'style' shopping mall, and before the shopping mall culture came into my life like an all pervasive new religion: shopping.
The punchline here is supposed to spell out to you my horror and general outrage toward any decision to invite TESCO into Stourbridge Town Center. I have always opposed the superstore, and have spent many years watching their strategy both locally, nationally and internationally; to many this is a story of super-success, Billions in Profits, millions of new jobs and countless 'services' all from one single pivot, surely any critic of such a great money making and employment machine would be hard pressed to provide any meaningful criticism?
To begin with the relationships between Tesco executives and senior members of the British Cabinet raise concerns to my mind, especially in relationship to Tony Blair, and generally the ease by which TESCO in particular are allowed to buy land, build super-stores and expand into thousands of supermarket services, in fact becoming a mini-government all by itself, a Big Brother store for all your needs. That's what I see, and I see the Government and the private enterprise plotting to exploit the poor and vulnerable generally, in every and any way possible when I look at the last decade and the sordid business warfare operations. Others view this warfare as a successful campaign, defined by the it's profits, the numbers, and the employment figures all evidence that in fact, the supermarkets are enhancing our lives, giving us time and gifting us with convieniance, who can argue with that Mr. Pratt? "It's just a damned shop, and if its cheaper than anywhere else I'll shop there god damn it"--Homeless man in Dudley.
Here's some advice if your on the fence about Tesco. Simply look at their wikipedia entry on the internet, and then search for 'Tescopoly' and 'every liitle bit hurts' at your search engine of choice. Ask yourself, will you be the change you wish to see in the world, or do you just want other people to keep doing 'change' for you on T.V.
I am not such a negative and critical person as to be stupid enough to simply denounce the building of a new supermarket, without providing an alternative for new 'areas' in which my vision of what we could achieve together can be realized. How about TESCO invite me and bunch of local friends to help both design the store and attenuate the local production and distribution lines? to work out how to include all the local producers of goods and services that they might also provide.
Lets create a local supermarket partnership where we share our vision for a really supermarket, a supermarket with a cape and funny shoes, lets build a supermarket vision that sweeps all the others out into the car-park area and into the plastic bins where they belong with the plastic trash.
A Supermarket partnership vision that includes every voice, especially the voice of creative criticism and alternative models, superior in vision to those it opposes and therefore obsoleting the opposition with superior methodology. Here's goes.
TESCO stourbridge, when built shall be designed along the lines of two major principles, for starters, laid out by the greatest design scientist I have ever encountered: R. Buckminster Fuller; these primary two principles are.
a) Tensigrity
b) Synergetics
In short every possible way to use less energy in the design process, the construction, and the maintainance of this super-store should be implemented, to strive to create a super-store, where the word 'super' can be seen as synonomous with 'green' and 'effecient' or 'synergetic' to use Bucky's own terms. Why not? why wouldn't the richest and biggest of the UK Supermarket build us a really super market built upon the the most 'super' archetectual and design principles as laid out by the great Buckminster Fuller?
Also in tune with some other ideas I got from Bucky why not have each product have a signiture that can tell you how far it travelled, from where, when, and details about the growing conditions, and the payment and payment schemes of those who grew, packed, sliced, diced or dialled up whatever goods or services you receive. This is not TOO MUCH INFORMATION, but vital information to keep track of 'values', and a fair request in the face of supermarkets tracking the buying habits and details of their customers, the customers should ask their PRODUCTS and their manufacturers for equal information, or, as I propose, a program could simply display the best performers, or the products that produced the smallest carbon footprint, maybe by travelling the least amount of distance to the store? Therefore, we can begin to provide evidence for the whole principle of synergy from root to the fruit to the ceiling.
I would utilize the International reach of TESCO to provide a new interactive multicultural shared information and comparative 'values' resource, where different cultures and peoples can interact and share their local successes, both on-line and in groups, discussing their own day to day uses of all the goods and services they use, being encourgaed once again, for creative criticism and alternative ideas and design solutions opposed to rude, meaningless angry grunts, like '*%^k Tesco, the *;&'£*ing Robbing @0&Ts" These remarks get us nowhere fast, Tescno' however, and 'Tescopoly' seem more like it. 'Tescoticular Cancer' seems boarderline insulting and 'Tesco: A crippled Supermarket' once again, does not help us in a partnership. Name calling and insults are simply way below the belt, and I for one am not messing with no Tesco junk, no sir.
Every piece of packaging would be bio-degradable in no less than the time it takes to come back and buy another of whatever was once inside. Every piece of fruit and every vegetable grown as close to the store as possible, and wherever possible actually outside of the store itself.
The New Tesco should employ the goods and services providers and pay them well to continue doing what they are doing, and have people visit them or contact them for goods and/or services.
TESCO Music could help build a new wave of creativity throughout the land, providing free space, recording facility and International 'in store audiences' to local artists.
TESCO sports could provide free space for healthy fitness activities and support entire communities in their health and nutrition plan, all in harmony with the foods available at the store, and wherever and whenever possible in the local area.
TESCO film could trigger a new local journalistic and creative film revolution by simply buying 200 or so hand held cameras per-store and giving them away 'free' to local creatives to record their local environment and feeback on any concerns they have, especially regarding environmental concerns and how 'tensigrity' and 'synergetics' design science principles may assist and solve.
TESCO god might just be the thing that we have all been waiting for, now, just consider for a moment the greatest strategy I have yet to propose, TESCO GOD, a special god department in the store where you can commune with god and pray for forgiveness, redemption, rapture or some cranberry sauce.
TESCO time-bank could help revolutionize how we view work, shopping and trade by introducing 'time' as a valuable 'currency' and allowing volunteers to work for themselves and invent their own responsibilities in the local community and have a mean to evaluate and share the fruits of any such work.
TESCONO would be my idea of a library and global village space, where anybody can ask a question and is encouraged to say 'no, I'm not satisfied with that answer' whenever possible. As with the usual cheesy sauce advertisement I would go with 'Say Tesknow' marketing strategy.
TESCO nspiracy is an alterantive counter-intelligence operation that creates conspiracy and a small but significant amount of bad press for TESCO. Nspiracy moves the news headlines into crooked and extremely shallow waters, builds a Straw man, burns it and pretends to own all. Every supermarket needs a good local fable and nspiracy operation to help tap into the local community spirit.
Lauren Partridge and Bridge Williams from Black
Country band The Lyrebirds who played live to support the Transition
Stourbridge campaign to Save Our Stour
