supermarket architecture

version

Well-known member
WTD-17.png
 

luka

Well-known member
huge economies of scale. monopoly capitalism. globalised food production. corporate serfdom. car dependence.
 

version

Well-known member
Something like that Waitrose helps me stave off the negative feelings we were talking about re: Spar yesterday. The supermarket of a slightly more exciting world.
 

luka

Well-known member
do you remember a few months ago when Corpsey had just moved Peckham and he went to an Asda. it was like when the Buddha took his first trip out the palace compound and saw the old and infirm, the sick and the poor.
 

version

Well-known member
I suppose the "more than human" thing is what the machine is selling as an ideal. Whether or not its true doesn't matter.

Apologies if I've been cloth-eared.

I have been thinking about this stuff in the last few weeks as I've just moved to an area of London where the juxtaposition of middle-class comfort and working-class ... can't think of a good word for this... I don't want to say squalor, but it's something like that. Anyway, those two states of life are right up against each other.

This will sound appropriately pathetic, but I went into an Asda the other day (which I'd normally be too snobby to go in) and it all seemed nice, but then I picked up some cookies that were reduced but turned out to be completely stale, and the contactless machine took ages to work (I am ashamed to be typing this) - and it was just a little indication of "oh, when you have this much less to spend your life is just less likely to run as smoothly as I'm used to".

For the last four/five years I've been living in an area of London which is pretty much all middle-class families, very green, insulated in large part against poverty. And I can see that my attitude to politics has been effected by this.

There's also a fascinating repulsion I feel towards poverty - fascinating in that I can see why people erect mental barriers against believing it can really be that bad, or that its worth thinking about that, because its viscerally different to being comfortable, it's not somewhere you want to be.
 

version

Well-known member
"oh, when you have this much less to spend your life is just less likely to run as smoothly as I'm used to".
This is something I feel isn't mentioned enough when it comes to poverty. People seem to feel you just have to go without a few things, but life is more or less the same. They don't see the pressure it exerts on everything you do. The friction. It's almost the opposite of dematerialisation. Your dishwasher doesn't work properly so you're back to washing things by hand. Your phone's cheap and the touchscreen's unresponsive. Your toilet paper's rougher and thinner. Your toothbrushes are worse, the bristles are too hard for your teeth and gums. An endless series of minor inconveniences which make everything that bit more draining.
 

luka

Well-known member
yeah well put. fabric is a big one too. clothes that irritate the skin and give you a rash. and beds. a bed that fucks your back up and ruins your life. this is what corpsey sleeps on
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version

Well-known member
Washing powder. Having to put in a fiver's worth of petrol. A microwave door that sticks.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Funnily enough for some shadowy reason I was just listening to and reading about 'Common People'.

"Cocker felt that 'slumming' was becoming a dominant theme in popular culture and this contributed to the single's rushed release. Cocker said "it seemed to be in the air, that kind of patronising social voyeurism... I felt that of Parklife, for example, or Natural Born Killers – there is that noble savage notion. But if you walk round a council estate, there's plenty of savagery and not much nobility going on."
 
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