More Melons, 1.6 Million Tonnes of Wasted Food & Anti-social Behaviour

Co-op are a pretty decent company. They make more of an effort than their competitors where ethical business is concerned. http://www.co-operative.coop/ethicsinaction/sustainabilityreport/Ethical-Consumerism-Report/. I guess the message behind this story is about however hard companies like Co-op try at being responsible they just don't understand their role in the havoc we are seeing in our neighbourhoods. The result is stoopidnesss that even the most of creative abstract thinking satirist could never think up. I spotted the last melon. It just stood out in the fruit section hypnotised me and convinced me to stick it in the trolley. Got to the till and noticed there was a queue behind me. Disaster strikes. Apparently, the cashier cannot sell me the melon because there is no label on it. Something to do with EU law. I politely suggest searching for the code on till representing a melon. The code is a key to price information about the melon. These codes are either programmed locally into the till or downloaded from some computer hosted in a datacentre in the middle of nowhere. I offer 3 quid for the melon as some underage hoodies trying to buy booze start to get agitated. Now I'm screwed as the cashier has to call the manager using the ringer. Store managers are normally out back doing managerial stuff where you need them most. The 'outback' is usually outside the audible range of the ringer. The kind which is a black rectangular box with a white button and a single battery. While waiting I enquire about what will happen to the Melon if I cannot have it. The answer astounds me. It cannot go back on the shelf and will have to be thrown away. Retailers generate 1.6 million tonnes of food waste each year. Have they not heard of industrial ecology where one organisations waste is another's raw materials. Are the supermarkets aware of inter-generational equity i.e. leaving the planet in a reasonable state for the next generation? 1.6 million tonnes of food is enough to prevent a lot of children in the world suffering from malutrion and starvation. Now the hoodies are saying, 'Hurry up geezer'. I tell her to serve the Hoodies while the manager makes his from the 'outback'. Clearly, the Hoodies are under-age and very intimidating. The cashier does not ask for proof that they are over 21. I give up on the melon. Later that evening the Hoodies are hanging outside my house screaming obscenities and being sick. I call the non emergency number to ask the police to move them on. As its Friday night all the police in the city centre policing the night time economy. Pub prices are too high so everyone goes to the supermarket for cheap booze to get tanked up for the early evening. You know stuff like White Lightening brewed by Scottish Courage. A 3 litre bottle contains 22.5 units of alcohol (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=white+lightning). Next day I go to the papershop for the morning paper. NHS in the headlines again about the post code lottery for new types of drug treatments to offer hope. The cost to the NHS for dealing with the consequences of binge drinking is 40 billion a year. My car mirror has been snapped off and there are cans of Fosters and fast food wrappers on the pavements. There is also vomit on my back window tinged with the odour of piss in the air. The police never got my call when I called the contact centre using the non emergency number(SNEN). It was written down on a dispatch note on paper that never found its way to the person in the contact centre co-ordinating things with the police. Think the management consultants call this swivel chair integration. Allegedly, the investment in e-government and joined up working was meant to get rid of swivel chair integration. After all the local authority and police spent 100000s of tax payer cash on 800 quid a day CRM and information mangement consultants. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w41WcTCUY_Y