Sunday bloody Sunday

Let's consider some of the problems we face in the UK these days: a consumer culture that leads to high levels of debt, pollution and excessive energy consumption, <i>low-order</i> social crime... Can we name the root of these ailments? Evil, thy name is out-of-town Sunday shopping!
Let's consider the evidence.
On an environmental level, who can doubt the negative impact of these retail monstrosities? Built on playing fields or flood plains, their tarmac testifies to our conservational negligence and irresponsible, unthinking short-termism. There's no creeping nostalgia in this observation: I don't believe that retail parks have corrupted arcadia. They have, however, usurped our breathing space to supplant it with an iron lung.
For now our weekend pursuit is to shop. We shop at weekends because we're too busy to find time in the week. Because there's nothing else to do. Because it's a social event; though there's rampant social exclusion. You can't partake if you have a poor credit rating, where a hoodie, or have to work at weekends...
Let me return briefly to the credit aspect. Consumer culture, to which these retail parks stand as temples, thrives -- indeed relies -- on our weekly devotion and on the widow's mite. Supermarkets don't care if you can afford to <i>taste the diference</i>, or need the latest gadget: you're there to buy, on anyone's money. Seven-day-a-week social shopping doubtless encourages this.
For this is the opportunity for people to herd around a water hole. The retail parks like to give us the impression it's all yummy mummies in Starbuck's, but in reality, it's mostly teenagers whose playing fields have been concreted over. They don't go to Starbuck's but head instead to KFC or McDonald's: so not only do they lose out on an environment in which to exercise, they gorge to obesity on trans-fatty acids. Then, high on sugars and preservatives, they roam the mobile 'phone stores until one can summon the courage to accost an off-licence.
So what we're looking at is an invention that ruins our environment, causes social and economic strife and ruins my Sundays. Can anyone rid us of this social blight?

Testing 1... 2... 3...

This is my first attempt at posting from on the move, via a 3G connection on my new converged device.
I'm also testing Blogger's mail facility, so if you're my guinea pig now, you should benefit from more posts in future.

When a rule is not a rule

Now we're being told by a member of the cabinet, the most powerful body in our government, who has never been elected, that human rights are relative. Lord Falconer wants to enshrine the principle that one person's rights cannot be used to "trump" the public's right to safety. In other words, there's no such thing as a fundamental human right. If you (i.e. the government) can demonstrate you're protecting public safety, you can do what you like to any number of individuals.
As I pointed out in my previous entry, the U.S. has already agreed a law that allows governments to define what constitutes torture; we're now only a short step from this ourselves. Perhaps when the Lord Chancellor tells us our rights are as British as beer he means that they don't apply to Muslims?
Let's extend this a little further. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? So, if I walk out onto a pedestrian crossing in front of a bus, should it stop? There are more people on the bus and their safety would be compromised by an emergency stop, even though I'm on a zebra crossing.
And does this apply just to safety? If the majority of a company's employees are male and the company is successful, why should it jeopardise its corporate culture by employing a woman?
The purpose of government is to benefit individuals in ways that they could not achieve as individuals: provide education, security, infrastructure that no single individual could implement. Constraining individual rights in the name of a common good is the complete antithesis of this principle.