Well here’s as clueless a piece of commentary as I’ve ever seen:

Give me a Tesco over my local fleapits any old day

I can only guess that the author, Sathnam Sanghera, was hoping to inflame the Times readership with ridiculously short-sighted comments like:

“One independent Indian convenience store/Portuguese café/fried chicken outlet seems much like any other to me”

Sanghera goes on to build his argument on the foundations of two falsehoods; that disliking large chains has to have something to do with a fondness for something called the golden age of the British high street and that “complaints about high street homogeneity often come from a position of privilege and snobbery“.

Both statements miss entirely that the disregard so many people now have for chains is based on how much more accessible information is now than it was just a few years ago. Technology and in particular the Internet now means that the average shopper is way more informed than he or she used to be. They are now using this information to point out that the bigger chains treat customers like cattle, aim for the lowest common denominator and always always put profit before customer satisfaction.

Of course not all small independent places are perfect, but it’s stating the obvious that if you have a problem with a small outlet it’s a) far easier to speak to someone in authority about the problem and b) that any subsequent bad word of mouth is way more damaging. Smaller places rely far more heavily on the individual and are therefore much more accountable and often far more willing to meet local community needs.

Plus whether the final product is a meal, a drink or even a book, the more personal attention you get away from the large chains provides a way more satisfactory experience. For example, I was in a large book chain store recently and overheard a potential customer asking for a copy of Reading “Lolita” in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. Not only was the person on the information desk unfamiliar with the title (which was in the shop’s own top 10 section) he then asked the customer to spell ‘lolita’. The only chance of a similar mistake happening across the road in Foyles is if the bookseller, after finding Nafisi’s novel immediately, also recommended Nabakov’s Pale Fire as a good follow up to the original Lolita.

Does this show me up for a snob? Only if it’s also wrong to want to know where my food comes from rather than buying some processed mush that’s piled high and sold cheap. As with most things it comes down to the value of educating oneself and you don’t need to be a literature buff to come to the conclusion that something called a turkey twizzler is just wrong. You should also expect your local bookseller to read the occasional book.

Rather than dismiss the current concern over the way we consume as somehow not wanting “to look like the rest of plebby Britain” (whatever that is - who is it again with the superiority complex?) shouldn’t we simply be setting a higher standard for everyone, together? That way we force the chains to compete on our terms and not simply waltz in and determine a community’s needs based on how many units it needs to move to satisfy its shareholders.

And not to pick on the poor Times columnist too much, but please take a look at this BBC story concerning the very working class fight to save a traditional Staffordshire Oatcake shop. Perhaps Sanghera thinks the locals would be far happier/better off with a McDonalds…