Local shops

Also, and most importantly, you get better goods at large chain stores.

and usually it's cheaper and you get a better service.

Also, my guilty liberal conscience always feels bad when I shop at a local store, knowing I'm funding the most exploitative scumbags out there.

We've got the same thing happening in Sudbury (little market town in West Suffolk), and from that I'd say depends on the circumstances. If you're talking about an area that is already primarily urban, very high population etc, I'd be tempted to go with Cantdo and Jack because of the logistical side and severe limits to space implied.

On the other hand, because of the centralised nature of a chain like Tescos, for example, which is moving into Sudbury, taking all profits away into a central national pot and then into the hands of extremely wealthy people who then spend it in very wealthy unrelated areas such as London or on very expensive high-class commodities (again, most likely produced abroad or in London) is a fucking retarded idea if you're talking about the health of a small local economy.

The likely loss to the community in Sudbury is estimated to be £4m a year once the local shops, with their local owners close (that's for a small rural town), as custom deserts not only the shops, but their - primarly local - service industries as well. Rural towns in particular die on their arse when supermarkets come in because, for example, a dead town centre means a dead community life, less social interaction, exodus of the skilled labour force to the centralised production sources producing for the Tescos.

Edit: Come to think of it, doesn't help the average carless villager much either, as buses to the Tesco aren't as regular or direct as your average town centre route.

neither do i really, not keen on the idea of reducing production of goods though.

At present large outlets and chain stores dominate retail and I wasn't really saying we needed a lot more chain stores right now, i mean fairly obviosuly we have plenty of tescos, just that i don't think we should be replacing them with smaller stores.

well thats a totally different arguement, i don't see how having lots of small industries is going to be more efficient though.

Well if you could afford a lot of food then yeah, but for large numbers of people a meat ration of eight ounces vastly improved your diet.

http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/War/londonEvac.html#nat

The myth of rationing being ''really hard'' to bear during ww2 has mostly been put about by conservatives, it carried on till the 50's and there were never any major protests against it.

Generally WW2 saw a huge shift to the left in the UK, trade union membership doubled, membership of the communist party was 60,000 in 1943, wages increased massively, it was the foundation of the welfare state basically.

Well yeah i agree with that. I mean take colchester, part of the bus development plan is for the replacement of small retail stores with a few new large retail outlets but fairly obviously I'm not going to support that and i don't think we really need another house of fraser. Like you say its a case by case basis realistically.

Amazed no one has posted this image yet:

greets

if you have a car or live nearby then tescos et al are very good ways of getting your shopping done.

if, however you live 10 miles from the nearest town with big supermarkets you'll want the small local shops in your village to survive. only because they don't get the discount breaks from suppliers that larger shops get they're nearly always more expensive.

another point - if you want tescos / wal-mart to determine what magzines you buy fair enough. personally i like the service i can get from local newsagents (mind you - they can only get what the near monolpoly wholesalers sell, but there's always the possibility they'll put other mags on their racks/ counters)

another point - village shops often serve as a post office. if the shop goes under the village loses its post office. means you have to travel miles just to get stamps / post letters etc.

generally we won't defeat capitalism buy buying commodities in shops of whatever size or location. but for people in rural communities we'd prefer to keep our local shops.

mal

would that be the local wokers co-op supermarket that sacks people when the devlop RSI?

yeah, one ofg my friend is looking at taking them to an industrial tribual cos she was 'let go' after developing RSI. Not the first time its happened either.

thats a bastard. Hope she wins - funny how you can get a totally different picture from different people, eh? I know some people who work there and for them thats a fantastic place to work with no special qualifications and so on. They are quite pleased, but of course thats never the full story.

Different grades of shit i guess...

Anyways, the place is miles better than anything else around.

Cantdo, you're mad arguing against less production of goods.

The problem with loads of big retailers (like Dixons, PC World, ASDA etc.) is they sell over-priced tat that's built to fall apart in 5 minutes. The issue isn't the quantity of goods available, it's built-in obsolescence and overpricing. Small shops sell tat as well, but they can also (sometimes) provide a much more personalised service than big retailers- like actually repairing things instead of selling inflated 3 year insurance policies. Food from greengrocers, fishmongers, butchers, delis and market stalls is often much cheaper and fresher than it is from supermarkets.

For economies of scale, the most efficient method is on-line mail order, not big box retailing. The postal service, or even delivery vans, is a way more efficient method of getting goods to people than them driving miles to retail parks. It also allows for a much, much bigger selection, and a warehouse takes up much less space than a shop.

With companies like TESCO, which are increasingly moving into the "local small shop" market - the reason their prices are cheaper aren't because of economies of scale, it's because they squeeze producers. A delivery to a small shop from an own-brand distribution centre isn't all that different to a delivery to a small shop from a wholesaler. What's different is the purchasing power of a large company.

Hi

More robust supply due to diversity and a safe level of redundancy. Competition to develop better quality and price. Adaptability to change. Greater potential for innovation and technological advance. Easier to implement workplace democracy and forge direct links with local communities. That's a decent cost/benefit payoff, and hence “efficient”.

Love

Chris

jack you are soo talking shit.

Anyway your a shit veggie so you don't appreciate good food.

Jack - you're an idiot. Have you not heard of built-in-obsolescence?

Someone on here who you know used to work at Dixons and part of his job was smashing up equipment with a big hammer, when the new model came in!

Hmm, in terms of what local shops can be good for, I'd certainly add butcher, grocer, baker to that list, also post office as Catch said, quite possibly bookshop, music store.

Butcher and grocer, because they don't have the ability to pursue overseas buying, and would anyway likely be cut out by supermarkets' monopoly buy status, tend to get their food more locally. Because of Britain's more stringent pesticide/fertiliser law, and tight EU regulation, and short journey time, high tech farming methods developed inthis country to try and keep up with overseas scale efficiencies, the quality of the food is both better and more efficiently produced.

Dunno who reads 'A sideways look' here as well, but he did an excellent piece explaining the nutritional content of mass produced bread etc in Freedom which is well worth reading when talking about comparison between bread produced in a massive factory (removes all the goodness) and bread made in small bakeries in local shops. In terms of the extra costs, it's still almost certainly more efficient to buy from a bread shop simply because per bite, you're ingesting more goodness.

Bookshops/record stores are likely to actually be cheaper than their big store equivalents, cos of second-hand options, and often, because of the local connection, they'll develop contacts to suit their regualr customers, unlike the big stores. In both cases, the small-scale individual nature of the business actually makes it more flexible when dealing with the often eccentric needs of customers. They also help provide more variety than the superstores, in that they will likely stock personal choices of the owners, local stuff tht wouldn't make it into the big stores, who stock things which you already know about from the mainstream media advertisers, usually online.

Oh right, I forgot ebuyer was a local shop, as opposed to the online equivalent of a highstreet electronics retailer.

Why lie to yourself like this? Clearly Tesco is going to be fucking cheaper. I mean, try find a pint of milk for 30p in a local shop. Stuff from Tesco tastes nicer than stuff you get from local shops, too.

That's an excellent argument. I forgot that if you buy a PC from a local shop that time around you freezes, and the rate of required updates goes down. Or that if you buy an ipod from an independant retailer the battery lasts for 4 years. Great train of argument you have there.