Tesco's a-comin'

The Caffyns garage is slowly metamorphosing into a shiny new Tesco. Disaster! The arrival of the UK's biggest and hungriest retailer will mean the end of independent shops in Seaford and change the character of the town for ever.

Well, hang on a minute. Isn't it better that the building is restored for a useful purpose than left to fall derelict? And haven't shops been closing in Seaford prior to Tesco's arrival? Yes, and yes. As for Tesco itself: I don't particularly want to shop there, but judging by the number of delivery vans seen around the town every evening, quite a few people clearly do. Who's to say they're making an error in their lifestyle choices?

People talk about the Tescofication of Britain as if it's somehow the fault of tyrannical captalist evil-doers, lily-livered planning departments and spineless (or corrupt) ministers. The truth is far simpler than that, and possibly harder to accept.

The reason Tesco is opening in every high street in the land, stealing market share from large and small rivals and moving into peripheral businesses like insurance, music downloads and probably its own airline is that people like buying stuff from it. Elemental supply and demand economics: nothing more.

If Tesco succeeds in Seaford it will be because local people want it to. If nobody chooses to shop there, it will close down. I wonder which it will be.

Going a bit radio rental

I've tuned into Seahaven FM a couple of times: local radio doesn't get much more local than this, except perhaps on CB. I'm all for it. At a time when regional media quite obviously haven't got a clue about the geography of the area they report on (the Argus thinks Seaford is between Brighton and Peacehaven, according to one memorable story) it's nice to have a radio station based a bike ride away.

The broadcast I happened upon involved a long and tedious link about a policy that had been introduced in some flats, restricting residents to a maximum of one dog. Oh well, not exactly a story that the Today programme will be kicking themselves for missing, I thought, but that's what community radio is all about: reflecting the peculiar and sometimes trivial concerns of its local audience.

Turned out the story wasn't from Seaford but Peru. My bemusement was then compounded by the first 30 seconds of William Shatner's version of Common People and soon afterwards my experiment with Seahaven FM was at an end. I may venture back for more, but first I'm going online to see if any stations in Lima are doing stories about the state of the Salts.