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?