And so begins the golden age of the Supermarket Diploma. A society where this certificate of education is the highest anyone but the well monied ruling elite can aspire to. Don't expect the SD to cover anything beyond basic shop functions - shelf stacking, pricing, bagging, trolley collecting, etc, all that good stuff is surplus to requirements. There wont' be degress in geology for instance, we don't need those in the Supermarket.
Instead we train people to the level of supermarket staff. After all it's good honest work for idle hands.
Then of course the Supermarket expands: because it's staff earn the NMW (which means, to quote Chris Rock, 'if i could pay you less, I would') all they can afford is to shop at the Supermarket. Therefore more jobs become available as it expands like a cancer across the land. Local businesses are consumed, high streets become ghost towns and havens for drugs and alcohol and antisocial behaviour. There will be no entrepreneurship because only China can manufacture the stuff cheaply enough and noone can compete with that for a bottle of 'head and scalp' shampoo, for instance. So there's no need for skills and disciplines beyond working in a supermarket. Such levels of knowledge become the purview of the rich and the best that the young can aspire to is a couple of weeks seasonal work for the Supermarket knowing that they don't even have to offer a wage. The taxpayer foots the bill through benefits which aren't even half the NMW, and so the Supermarket, for a small fee (a bit like the way it avoids tax), gets around the wage laws.
Those that don't want to work for the Supermarket are maligned in the populist press, itself on sale in the Supermarket next to the booze and fags and scratch cards, they are to be feared by those working in the Supermarkets. Either you will become like them through moral incorrectness or through idleness. Then you get rehired for your benefit. Or sent to one the Supermarket's training camps where the same thing happens.
Meanwhile there's a sale on in the Supermarket's media section: you can buy a freeview digital TV for £20. It was made in China by people so desperate they'd rather commit suicide like a cult than be slaves to the capitalist dream, but the clock wont' strike 13 just yet, and people in England need their products. The TV only broadcasts one programme, on the Banker network: Deal or No Deal. Over and over, punctuated by adverts for the Supermarket because every little helps...
Instead we train people to the level of supermarket staff. After all it's good honest work for idle hands.
Then of course the Supermarket expands: because it's staff earn the NMW (which means, to quote Chris Rock, 'if i could pay you less, I would') all they can afford is to shop at the Supermarket. Therefore more jobs become available as it expands like a cancer across the land. Local businesses are consumed, high streets become ghost towns and havens for drugs and alcohol and antisocial behaviour. There will be no entrepreneurship because only China can manufacture the stuff cheaply enough and noone can compete with that for a bottle of 'head and scalp' shampoo, for instance. So there's no need for skills and disciplines beyond working in a supermarket. Such levels of knowledge become the purview of the rich and the best that the young can aspire to is a couple of weeks seasonal work for the Supermarket knowing that they don't even have to offer a wage. The taxpayer foots the bill through benefits which aren't even half the NMW, and so the Supermarket, for a small fee (a bit like the way it avoids tax), gets around the wage laws.
Those that don't want to work for the Supermarket are maligned in the populist press, itself on sale in the Supermarket next to the booze and fags and scratch cards, they are to be feared by those working in the Supermarkets. Either you will become like them through moral incorrectness or through idleness. Then you get rehired for your benefit. Or sent to one the Supermarket's training camps where the same thing happens.
Meanwhile there's a sale on in the Supermarket's media section: you can buy a freeview digital TV for £20. It was made in China by people so desperate they'd rather commit suicide like a cult than be slaves to the capitalist dream, but the clock wont' strike 13 just yet, and people in England need their products. The TV only broadcasts one programme, on the Banker network: Deal or No Deal. Over and over, punctuated by adverts for the Supermarket because every little helps...
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