h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Wal-mart - what can you say. They're the bad boys of the super market world, but only because their shameless in their application of the tactics of all the supermarkets. Pay the producer less, keep the shopfloor union free to manipulate the workforce, drive down the price to defeat the opposition, and once you have a local monopoly through swamping the regional market, centralise for maximum profit.

They all do it.

In the UK it's such a shame, because they bought out Associated Dairies (ASDA) - which had at least in part kept to it's croots of value AND quality. Their budget lines have droppe dramatically in quality since the Wal-mart takeover.

The notable exeption to this is the Co-op, whose rots in the socialist movement were all but forgotten, until a recent change of heart (led by their banking wing) that a visible return to leftist principals might be a good branding tool. Good on 'em i say. I know i've changed banks.

"Despite the embrace of polyethnic imagery, market-driven globalisation doesn't want diversity; quite the opposite. It's enemies are national habits, local brands and distinctive regional tastes."

What a brilliant sentence. In a nutshell it sums up the root so many of the issues that our society faces as a result retail and marketing monopolies.

Culture / cultures in the media are not celebrated for their difference and richness, but instead a paradigm of homogeneous cultural blandness is prescribed, we are told to anticipate an ideal of living hand in hand with other cultures with no miss-understanding no need for dialogue or middleground or even disagreement and no difference in tastes, goals and values. It's no wonder that even those who set out to live harmoniously with other cultures have these preconceptions upset. And so we provide a platform for the likes of the BNP.

In fact we have never lived in such a harmonious community, even before we were multi racial, multi language, multi faith, or even multi class (which is where most friction rears it's head). We should live side by side and expect to disagree, we should expect to be confused, and even confronted. It doesn't matter who your neighbours are or where they're from - you will disagree. With out having to leave the house, does anyone live in a family where every one has the same beliefs, aspirations and experiences and where they never argue, misunderstand or confront each other? That's what humans do. To propagate the idea that it should be any different between diverse communities is ridiculous.

However, in their attempts to blanket market both in advertising and the other media, this is the ideal we are forced toward. Everyone should be the same -what a horrible and tedious world that would be.

In the words of the wonderful Leslie Woods "We're equal - but different".

There are only two of us in this house -we will have been married for 51 years next week and we don't agree on many things - but we still live together in comparative peace.
It would be dull and lifeless if we agreed all the time about everything.
Jazz

Sorry folks I'm going to be off line for 3 weeks - going off to Bonnie Scotland in my caravan - keep the thread alive till I come back

Jazz