Life in occupied Edinburgh

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1Today, a few words about a supermarket.

TESCO DOESN’T LOVE THE PEOPLE OF EDINBURGH!

I was instore at Tesco metro on Clerk street yesterday. More check-in than checkout, the till queues stretched backwards and deep into the aisles, where shoppers had to negotiate lines of lightly snoozing customers, and a basket-strewn floor to select the least guilty-looking Israeli pepper. The alarm system at the door exit was oversensitive, obliging the uniformed security man to further detain those lucky enough to have paid for their stuff and almost got clear of the place, only to have their bags subject to a further rummaging. But the long wait, parked beside toiletries and pre-washed salads provided adequate time to scrutinise the various suspended ad boards, urging you to save more efficiently, spend more conveniently, and, with the money that’s left, get insured with Tesco Finance.

But despite all those garish invitations to help manage our lives, and ease us through the labyrinth of consumer choice, Tesco doesn’t love us really. It loves profits and passing trade and opportunities for self promotion, but it doesn’t love us. It doesn’t give a monkeys about local traders, be they in booze Britain or South East Asia, but it does have time for local council planners, and pliable government officials. It does of course like docile Clubcard holders (an analysis of spending habits is, after all, a great way to get to know somebody better), but it really has a problem with anybody who dares think ill of their manners or motives, and worse still, gives vent to them. All of which simply encourages the subversive in me. How soon after starting to parade along the shopping forecourts of Tesco outlets with a placard denouncing the company’s muscular intolerance to criticism or handing out fliers with some politely stated facts and figures about the ramifications of its actions, and attitudes, before the corporate legal might of this global grocery giant raises its great clunking fist, in the conviction that it simply has no other option but to sue, and to sue BIG.

http://www.seapabkk.org/newdesign/newsdetail.php?No=852

Then onwards to Edinburgh’s west end. And oh, urban dislocation most magnificent! The sheer abeyance of the city’s main thoroughfares under the full assault of the current road works has become so bad that it’s actually rather good fun. I can think of no greater restriction on vehicular or pedestrian progress currently in force at the end of Princes Street than a full US occupation. With America having already invaded Scotland on account of its part in the long-suspected UK-wide incubation of Islamist terror, one could imagine the barriers and fencing along Shandwick Place and half of Lothan Road to be a security measure in an attempt to curb the upsurge in sectarian violence. Although intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants is not uncommon in recent times, the tensions aroused by a conspicuous and sometimes cavalier military presence seems to have stoked old enmities. Yellow-jacketed private security men, (with alleged links to Tesco) armed with plant machinery and very long bits of piping now patrol the buffer zones in between Russel Square and Queensferry Street, while overall control is being co-ordinated from the golf clubhouse at Murrayfield, the palatial headquarters of Edinburgh’s Green Zone.

Sitting on a window stool at Pret a Manger watching the steady stream of pallid faces sliding by, I am reminded of the exceptional stoicism of the Scottish people. And as they silently, grimly manoeuvre themselves from pillar to post, past all the chaos of a city they once called home I wonder if the promises of the coalition authority (under the auspices of TIE) will ever deliver effectively for a population it supposedly descended upon to liberate from its own penny-pinching resistance to change. A succession of platitudinous viceroys and medal-encrusted military chiefs have publicly committed themselves to infrastructure improvement in general and to the “That’s Right, Another Money Scandal” (TRAMS) project in particular. But it could be a long time coming and the final cost is anybody’s guess. The occupation it seems, could be with us for many more years yet, but as the defenders of such interventionism are prone to say, be it about the progressive policies of Margaret Thatcher or the West’s re-engineering of unfriendly countries, history will be a kinder judge. I Can’t wait.

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