In article ,
Janet wrote:
In article ,
says...

Not so long ago I told Ray that I'd read of a wholesale nursery going
belly up. Today, he learned a bit more about it and said it was
because it had a £3 million order from a supermarket chain which
suddenly decided to halve that order. Then it said that if they potted
the remaining order on, they might buy them. They didn't.
Personally, I don't understand why anyone puts their entire future and
livelihood into the hands of one customer. But neither do I understand
the morals of a customer who will do that to a supplier.

Why make it about morality? It's about business, what the
supermarket can sell, to customers whose choices are led by the weather
and the economy. If there's a late cold spring, down goes the demand for
tender plug plants and GYO salad trays. When budgets are feeling the
pinch paying bills and buying food, customers may spend less on hanging
baskets or pots of bulbs in flower.

It may be very lovely for you, a comfortably off non-working
housewife with a car to spend more time during the day, and more money,
shopping in small businesses. Don't you realise it's a luxury to have
such means and opportunity, one denied to many working parents on a very
tight budget. They need to shop outside working hours. How many small
bakers, butchers and grocers stay open in the evening? Even if they
did, what does a single working parent do with the tired children as
s/he trails them a mile or two from shop to shop ? Carrying the
shopping, because small shops don't have a great big car park, and
trolleys with child seats.

And what you don't realise is that it is people like you who have
driven the alternatives to bankruptcy. It's not only the way that
you shop - it's the political establishment that you support.
I will describe the working hour aspect below. But what is worse
is the harmful effects that you have caused to the rest of society.

Starting with supermarkets, but now in almost all areas of
retail and 'service' (such as banks), we are no longer the customers
but their commodities. Similarly, the government is now the agent
of such organisations, and has often changed the law when they found
it allowed individuals or small organisations to resist - and the
working hours issue is PRECISELY one such.
The country is now dependent on massive imports of oil, and
have essentially damn-all sources of foreign exchange except money
laundering to pay for it. WHEN, not if, we run out of that, we
are going to hit real trouble without the time to deal with it.
It is legally and politically acceptable to pay people less
that it is possible for them to raise a family on, and sometimes
even less than it is possible to live on. It is YOU who are
among the lucky ones, to be able to raise a family and work, and
afford a car. Child care is beyond the unfortunate ones.
And so on.

In article ,
'Mike' wrote:

And IME, the demise of the "corner shop" is as much the result of the
attitude of the owner as anything else. I've seen it here and back in
Cardiff where I used to live. With the right attitude, these little
shops can thrive, even if they back on to a large supermarket's car
park! The common denominator seems to be ethnic!

That is partially true, but also very false. Back in the 1950s to
1970s, the laws on working hours and Sunday trading were changed to
allow small traders to open for longer hours than large shops, and
many did so. The nascent supermarkets got the law changed so that
they had the same privilege, thus removing the only advantage that
a small trader had over them, and the supermarkets abused their
position to force their suppliers and small, competitive shops to
the wall. But it wasn't just that - they got the law changed so
that they are largely except from parking planning regulations
(whereas small traders are not).

Regrettably, since the tories took over the Labour party, we were
left with only the woolly-minded Liberal Democrats as opposition,
and we have seen what a balls up they have made of coalition. It's
a bit unfair to blame them, as they had no direct experience of the
dirtiness of the politics played by the main parties. Unfortunately,
our only hope for improvement is a revolution, and those are never
nice to live through (even when they are bloodless).

God help us all, because doing so is beyond mere sub-deities :-(


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.