pumpkinstrokemarrow

Some readers may be familiar with the custom of disguising your wheelie bin with a sort of sticky plastic wallpaper, typically with some green foliage pattern, typically ivy. It rather lifts the tone of the drive to have a block of ivy rather than a block of green plastic. A custom which was brought to our road from Scotland, where, we believe, it originated. Now the news item is that I have spotted a couple of these things at Number 609, Wandsworth Road, somewhere near Wandsworth Road Station. The first time I have seen such things in the inner city.

Back at Epsom, much debate about whether Tescos should be allowed to put up another supermarket in a vacant site on Upper High Street. How big does their bribe have to be to make their shop acceptable? So far they are offering 18 affordable houses and a bit of work on paths and roads in the vicinity. What is puzzling me is the value add for the country at large. There are several large supermarkets within, say, five miles. There is a large Sainsburys about a mile away at Kiln Lane, with a much more convenient car park than the multi-storey affair proposed for Upper High Street. There are a few food shops in Upper High Street itself, including one of Epsom's two remaining butchers. Given that the total amount of food that we buy does not vary much, the new Tescos will presumably survive by taking trade from these other places and the existing food shops in Upper High Street will presumably close. So Tescos spends a lot of money to create new distribution capability in the expectation that we will make less use of existing capability. The people living in and around Upper High Street will get both the noise and the benefit. Assuming that Tescos are indeed better than other folk at distribution, the car shoppers among us (I imagine the big majority) get a marginally better service. The various other distributors take a hit, some go under. Some wind up on benefit. Tescos make money, or presumably they would not do it. Which leaves me with two thoughts. First, retail margins must be quite big for all this to be worth Tescos while. Second, the amount of waste involved in all this is large. Not really a very good thing when we are supposed to be calming down to save the planet. But the good news is that the market forces of capitalism roll foward. Our shops get bigger and smarter all the time.