Kryptonite and the Super-Market
When I was only six years old I remember Superman as being the most
inspiring character to me, back then, he was a super hero with super-powers to save
people from evil, to help them in dire times of distress and disaster, to fight
injustice wherever it may surface, and best of all, superman went after the
super-villains causing most of the problems in urban city areas and population
centers. Superman loved the people, strangers and even some 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
chain-of-tears, before the age of the super-American 'style' shopping mall, and
before the (work-consume-die) shopping mall culture came into my life like an all
pervasive new fundamentalist religion: capitalism the religion of 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'm not such a negative and critical person as to be stupid enough to
simply denounce the building of a new supermarket, without providing
alternative models for new 'areas' in which my vision for what we could achieve
together, can be realized. How about TESCO invite me and bunch of
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. (email me if your reading this: flyagaric23 @ gmail.com)
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 think its a racket between the local council, private business interests and the devil"--Rev. Benny Henry.
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.
-
TESCON'spiracy is an alterantive counter-intelligence operation designed to
creates conspiracy chaos by way of a small (but significant) amount of bad press for
TESCO. Moving the news headlines into crooked and extremely
shallow waters builds a straw man, burns it and then pretends to own it all.
Every supermarket needs a good local fable and the Tescon'spiracy operation may
help to tap into the local community trickster spirit.
--Steven 'Fly agaric 23' Pratt.
