Skip to main content

The myth of the friendly newsagent

My corner shop
I was listening to a piece on the radio the other day on the way home from the STFC (not a football club - but that's a different story). The piece was bemoaning the rate of closure of local newsagents. 'We are losing a vital local resource,' they said. Are we? Are we really?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of local enterprise and such, but are the typical local newsagents all that wonderful?

As I've mentioned before, my local corner shop, 5 minutes walk from my front door, is a massive 24 hour Asda superstore, alongside the likes of Marks and Spencer, Next and Starbucks, so I'm not exactly typical in local provision. But I've had plenty of experience of local newsagents in the past, and I really can't see what all the fuss is about.

Those on the programme, bemoaning their loss, had two principle arguments - that the local newsagent gave better customer service than a supermarket, and that mostly they are being replaced by 'metro' or 'express' versions of supermarkets, i.e. diabolical large companies, worming their way into the neighbourhood, rather than friendly locals.

I know there are exceptions - but I think in most cases this is not a viable comparison. Yes, I have known one excellent corner shop/newsagent/post office - to be precise a village shop, where the service was very good. But frankly many of the newsagents I go into are dingy and unpleasant, and have surly staff who haven't a clue about customer service, other than taking your money. Oh, and they are expensive to shop in. By comparison, our nearest supermarket 'local' (which I admit I don't use much because it's further to walk than the hypermarket) is bright, clean and relatively cheap. And in my experience the staff are just as friendly, if not more so.

For that matter, I don't really do small talk. I find it embarrassing and irritating with people I don't really know want to act as if they know me. Of course I like to chat to friends, but these aren't friends. I really don't want to have a conversation, I want efficient, quick service. (Which is why I frequently use the self service tills.) But I'll put that down as my failing. I know a lot of people do like to speak people. But the 'better customer service' argument simply doesn't hold water.

Of course you can't really argue against the 'big evil supermarket' bit. I'm no fan of Tesco, say, as a company. However I'm not sure there is more social benefit to be had by contributing to the coffers of one family rather than the many more people who work in a supermarket 'local'. And in the end it is a financial transaction, not a social service. I would like to be able to make that transaction with whoever does it best, not based on a personal bias against a large company.

So are we really losing a hugely valuable local resource when a local newsagent closes? I'm really not sure we are.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...
118 comments
Read more

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...
25 comments
Read more