Categories: uncategorized
Date: 20 January 2007 14:26:42
The BBC thing was a piece in their series about how high streets are changing and whether supermarkets are destroying traditional high streets and independent retailers etc. They visited the town where I live, because the council here have just thrown out an application to build a giant ASDA on the site of the cattle market. They followed a lady her kids doing a 'weekly shop' and bemoaned the fact that the independent butcher, baker and greengrocer are all inconvenient with a buggy and expensive. They also visited a shop where the toy department is upstairs and showed her leaving the buggy with her daughter while she took her son upstairs to choose a toy.
What it didn't mention was:
a) she could have gone to tesco, since there is one of those
b) the shop with the upstairs toy department has ramped access and she could have got the buggy upstairs
What none of any of the reports I've seen about the whole issue seems to acknowledge is that the issue is the closure of the cattle market, regardless of what goes in its place. It's the loss of the cattle market that is going to change the character of the town. Sensitive thought to what goes there instead might mean that the change is not necessarily a bad one, but the town will be entirely changed nonetheless.
I could go on about this for ages, but I'll spare you.