Neil Davenport’s take over at Spiked! on why British liberals hate Tesco seems markedly similar to why American liberals hate Wal-Mart:
Tesco does not impose a blue-and-red homogeneity (blimey, it’s only a shop, not a police state). Instead it sells a fairly staggering array of quality goods at very reasonable prices. By expanding on the ‘one stop shop’ ethos, it actually helps people save on a very precious commodity: time. Would Tesco’s critics prefer us to go back to the days when we had to trudge around different shops for hours on end? It’s hard to see how being chained to the shopping-basket could enable anybody’s individuality to flourish.
Many critics appear aghast at Tesco’s motivation to be the biggest and best. It is interesting to see how the company turned around its ailing fortunes and shook up the retail trade in the process. There was nothing sinister or malign about this development. In fact, you could argue that in an age where know-your-limits modesty and demands to rein in our potential are all-pervasive, Tesco’s ‘bigger, better, stronger’ drive makes a refreshing change. Far from shouting this down, we could do with a lot more of this guile and gumption across society as a whole – including in areas that have a greater capacity to revolutionise our lives than shops which sell food, clothes and cheap televisions.
Okay, I posted this mainly because I wanted to use that Sneaker Pimps reference in the title. Sue me.
Good, because it’s stupid.
I agree and you KNOW Wal-Mart blows for sooooo many reasons, namely locking its employees inside the store to work overtime, having management meetings at Hooters, no health insurance ( a major drain on us, given they are the nation’s largest employers) and environmental anarchy. I love you to death, but your blog politics of late are a tad crazed. That said, I am for cheap televisions.
Oh– and my friend Jonathan at http://www.tinyrevolution.com has this to say on his blog:
Monday, Wal-Mart announced plans to put nine new stores in areas across the US which are in need of economic revitalization. With luck, Wal-Mart hopes to create the same thriving economy, community spirit, and sense of hope for the future it has spread throughout so many of America’s small towns.
…Said Wal-Mart Vice Chairman John Menzer, “Areas like this don’t need another jobs program. They don’t need the government coming in and telling everybody what to do. No. What America’s struggling communitiies need are 50 pound jars of dill pickles. And a 78-year-old woman carrying it out to your car.”
You must admit…it has the funny.
To be clear, I’m not thinking of the politics when I call that article a nasty, dumb piece of work. It’s more the rhetorical strategy: putting a claim he doesn’t like in quotes, using anecdotal evidence over and over again but saying “lack of proof” against a point he doesn’t like, invoking bogeyman Michael Moore, and so on.
I do appreciate Gil’s headline, however.
I hear your complaints about the rhetorical side of the argument. As far as the politics go, you can be like my brother, who doesn’t shop at Wal-Mart, and explains to his daughters, “It’s because they don’t treat girls as well as they treat boys.”
For my part, I don’t shop there because
a) they only established here recently and
b) I don’t shop for cheap shit.
That said, I don’t think we need to legislate to stop other people who choose to shop for cheap shit or choose to work at a place that sells it.