Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Surveillance Supermarkets

What used to be once a month posts about government intrusion are becoming daily. On my last post about insupportable enquiries into our private lives, Julia M suggested everyone questioned should tell the sex-lives inspectors to fuck off. Just so, but who do we tell when the government recruits... well, read it yourself:

The Government wants councils to spy on supermarkets shoppers to find out where eastern Europeans are settling in Britain.
[...]
Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary told MPs today: "The Local Government Association has recently suggested that we look at footfall in supermarkets.

"They reckon Tesco has pretty good accurate information about the people who use their stores.

"I welcome that kind of imaginative thinking if it can help us to get a better and more accurate view at the local level of what the impact [of migration] is."
They will not be limiting this to information about migrants.

2 comments:

JuliaM said...

"Retailers are extremely professional in ensuring that they have accurate data on the number of people that are shopping, or being shopped for in their stores."

Yes, but how exactly do they gather information about who is Eastern European and who isn't..?

The only thing I can think of is the amount of 'ethnic' food sold in those supermarets (I've noticed Polish delicacies popping up alongside the now-usual Indian and Jewish specialities in my own local stores recently).

But this is such a nebulous, fuzzy calculation I can't think it'd be any more accurate than the Government's current 'finger in the air' method...

Anonymous said...

The trouble with the new screwtop bottles of wine is that some shoppers apparently untwist them and have a wee drink before returning them to the shelves. No doubt that correlates with something-or-other. I think Tesco should tell us.