Tesco, Mill Road, Cambridge

Alex Brown recently blogged about a Tesco planning application in his local area. He describes the local campaign as organised and professional when compared with the noooxml campaign. I somehow don’t think that marching around the CICG wearing hi-vis jackets and waving hand painted banners made out of old sheets would have conveyed a professional image. Be thankful for small mercies Alex.
The continuing lack of coverage in the mainstream media astonishes me. This is one of the most interesting global stories I have ever followed. There are pockets of intrigue everywhere, off the top of my head I can think of interesting things that have happened in Norway, Germany, Malaysia, France, Poland, Ivory Coast, Brazil, Croatia, Kenya, Denmark, Venezula, now perhaps something weird in the UK and lets not forget Sweden where the gloves came off.
To stretch Alex’s metaphor a bit, lets imagine that the East Area Committee consisted of 23 people, 21 voted against Tesco and 2 voted for the extension (one works for Tesco, the other works for a small hand carwash business that washes cars in Tesco carparks). Then lets imagine that 20 of the No voters were then chucked out of the room and a revote held. Now lets imagine that the council is not democratically accountable and it wasn’t even your local council, but one in another country.
Now lets imagine that if the planning goes through then the Tesco will pressure the government to mandate that all groceries sold anywhere must have Tesco lables on them. (They promise that anyone can stick Tesco lables on groceries and sell them and they won’t sue, so that isn’t at all anti-competitive is it?).
Good job this is all make-believe isn’t it.

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2 Comments

  • From the lack of BBC coverage of the recent ISO announcement (even on their tech blogs too, which is weird, they seem to mention any tripe…), I’m a little shocked.
    Is it just to avoid the inevitable forum that they might give to people who are genuinely shocked that not only did ISO approve it, but the BSI did too!
    From reading posts on Digg, Slashdot, Twitter, and the few RSS Planets I subscribe to, it seems overwhelming that people understand how detrimental OOXML being accepted by ISO is.

    So what happened to our media? Does that certain company have such sway to control the news now?

  • Alan Lord says:

    Hi John,

    I am as surprised and confused about the lack of coverage as you are. I do wonder if there is a financial incentive for the press and commercial media between Murdoch and Microsoft – I bet they have a BIG advertising budget to play games with… However the Beeb is a different matter; although they are now infiltrated with a few ex Microsofties (for and after the iPlayer fiasco) so perhaps they also have some sway.

    Of course it might just be that no-one other than the nerdy types really give a shit…

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