Monday 5 March 2012

Tesco-ization

Tesco's empire building is visible along the A621 Abbeydale/Baslow Road and similar things are happening along the A625 Ecclesall Road. Stages along the route towards Totley have a Tesco convenience store or a Giant Superstore or there's a planning application awaiting approval. Where will it stop? Meanwhile on the A625 a planning application is in at Parkhead for a Tesco store, a new Sainsbury's will shortly open before Hunters Bar and a new one is to be built at Banner Cross. Empire Building is what such businesses go in for.

I can remember the start of it - the time when government and various others of the great and the good started to address charities asking them to organise themselves like businesses. That's just what they have now become. RSPB, Wildlife Trusts and the National Trust are serious businesses with the added attractiveness of impenetrably bureaucratic management and administration. And they are bent on land acquisition to expand their empires. Co-operating within SMP is logical in preparing the field for a big sell off (or rather give-away). And there is enough new land coming available for each of the partners to get a share. And a share of the land means a share of the agri-environment money and a certain route to extra funds from N.E. and H.L.F.
Another parallel with the High Street is the uniformity we see and lack of diversity with all centres looking like all the others. And that’s just what grouse moors are like –samey and boring.

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