Posts Tagged ‘consumerism’

Bluewater Labour: shopping has sucked the joy out of misery

01/05/2011, 11:09:13 AM

by Dan Hodges

I have decided to create a political movement. It will be called Bluewater Labour.

I intend to take the traditional  values of blue Labour, and recast them in a modern setting. Not where working class Britain used to live, but where it lives today. Or rather, where it shops, and works.

In the name of political research I went to conduct a detailed socio-economic analysis last Saturday morning. That’s because I believe the  path to Downing Street lies in a former chalk quarry just off junction 2 of the M25.

I went by car, a sin admittedly, and an unnecessary one, given the store’s commitment to sustainability. But yes, I shunned the bus interchange. Shoot me.

As I set foot inside, I realized that to many on the progressive left I had not entered a shopping centre but crossed a boundary into enemy territory. Bluewater represents the blackest recess of the dark underbelly of capitalism. Or it’s evil twin cousin, consumerism. At some point, I’m not sure when, the later supplanted the former in the hierarchy of oppression. The mill owner elbowed aside by the purveyor of the decaf caramel latte.

Laid out beneath its glistening rotunda, prime retail space extends as far as the eye can see. It is probably an optical illusion, but it appears that you could shop into infinity.

I can’t help thinking of my good comrade, Neal Lawson. To him, Bluewater is the Seventh Circle of Hades. An engine room of “turbo consumerism”, a modern phenomenon in which our lust for, “consumer goods and paid-for experiences, of hi-tech and high-end shopping” create “the driving force for crime”  in a society where “failed consumers will lie, cheat and steal to gain the trappings of success so that they can be regarded as normal”.

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