Earlier today I was on Canadian radio, joining the wonderful Costas Halavrezos on his show, Maritime Noon. Unfortunately, technical glitches meant I missed the first part of the show, which included this classic and almost-certainly-documentary footage from the beginning of How To Get Ahead in Advertising. ... read more »

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Posted on 19 March, 2008 - 22:07

Credit: Abfab27

There have been a couple of articles in the British press recently, following up on the Competition Commission's report on the anti-competitive practices of UK supermarkets. The response tells a great deal about how supermarkets have managed to wiggle their way into our lives, and made themselves indispensable. ... read more »

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Posted on 17 February, 2008 - 17:54

Prompted by a reader, I've realised that I've not yet posted this fantastic video by the good people at Free Range Studios. It's an oldie, but for a die-hard Star Wars junkie, this short gets closer to the spirit of the movie series than The Phantom Menace ever could.

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Posted on 7 December, 2007 - 18:01

The good people at the Food Ethics Council have run a piece I did on the politics of vegetarianism. It appears in December's issue of Food Ethics magazine.

If Meat is Murder, What’s Vegetarianism? ... read more »

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Posted on 30 November, 2007 - 17:19

Slow Food was an invention of the Italian Communist Party, and has some important roots in workerist organising, with a radically egalitarian vision of why everyone needs to be able to savour food more. In Slow Food sites outside Italy, this rather tends to get lost, and Slow Food becomes just an alibi for a certain kind of conspicuous consumption. So I was very pleased to speak with someone from Slow Food Perth, where I am at the moment, and where people are aware that theirs is a political project. They've got Edible Schoolyard-type projects, and they're a great resource on how to avoid supermarkets in Perth (which, I've been told by more than one reader, is very hard to do). ... read more »

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Posted on 11 September, 2007 - 21:07

The Financial Times carries a story in the King Kong Vs Godzilla vein. Wal-Mart, the world's largest private employer, is jumpy about the arrival of Tescos, the UK's largest supermarket chain, into the US market. The Walton empire is pondering how to develop new 'Wal-convenience' stores, along the same lines as the smaller 'Tesco Extra' stores in the UK, to fend off what is likely to be a very aggressive push from the UK firm. But just like the old Tokyo disaster movie, regardless of whether one or other side wins, the battleground is home to millions of ordinary people, whose architecture and lives are likely to be severely remodelled in the deathmatch. ... read more »

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Posted on 27 August, 2007 - 08:49

The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) have come out with some useful research on the nation’s health, and food poverty. The message from the media seems to be this: ‘the poor don’t have it as bad as we thought’.

To some extent this is a welcome message – it goes some way to countering the national sport, as British as cricket, of heaping contempt on poor people (though I suspect that it’ll take a little more than this report to make the practice disappear completely).

... read more »

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Posted on 17 July, 2007 - 18:39

So, John Mackey, Chief Executive Officer of Whole Foods Inc is in trouble. This is the John Mackey who has encouraged something of a cult of personality around his attempts to bring goodness back into the food system. This is also the same John Mackey who, under the pseudonym "Rahodeb", posted a number of taunts trashing his competitor, Wild Oats, while simultaneously praising himself and his haircut. This is the same John Mackey who later offered to buy Wild Oats for near $600 million. ... read more »

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Posted on 13 July, 2007 - 00:58

ActionAid, one of the UK's best aid organisations, has come out with a new report:

Who Pays: How British Supermarkets Are Keeping Women in Poverty".

Covering nuts, bananas and clothing, the report does a fine job of looking at the chains of exploitation that link British consumers to women workers in the third world. Really top stuff, and a great teaching resource, this.

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Posted on 26 April, 2007 - 06:02

The Financial Times yesterday carried this announcement, on the expansion of the empire of supermarkets in India.

India opens western-style supermarkets

By Jo Johnson in New Delhi

India's national capital region will enter the modern retailing era today, with the opening of the first recognisably western-style supermarkets in this sprawling conurbation of 15m people.

At a preview of one of three stores that will open in Noida, a satellite city of Delhi, prices of key vegetables were about half those of other grocers in the capital, a big draw in such a cost-sensitive market. ... read more »

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Posted on 31 January, 2007 - 18:44