England Q: <It's a Co-Op Hearse>
 

Last night on our over a year-delayed Coronation Street episode, Vera has died and it's her funeral day.

And neighbors are gathered around the Street and the hearse pulls up -carpeted in more flowers than you could ever imagine

And that old sour puss Blanche whispers to others &quot;It's a Co-Op one&quot;

Which begats my Q about England's Co-Op Society.

I think the Co-Op movement started largely in England decades ago - probably some socialist type thing of providing goods at cheap prices on a non-profit system.

I think i've seen CoOp Funeral services advertised but is it a genuine Co-Op type thing - and i see the COOP supermarkets - are they all one large movement of genuine COOPS?

Just curious - thanks

what other things would be Cooperative in true Coop nature?

The point - as it would be from Blanche - is the social status involved. Co-op (for her) would be (ssh!) <i>skimping</i> on the final send-off. No doubt there will be pointed remarks over the quality of the refreshments after the ceremony (I honestly can't remember this bit).

Co-op Funerals are Britain's largest undertaker operation. The Nationwide Building Society - our largest proper surviving mutually owned S&amp;L - was part of the movement, though most of its other operations are in the mire a bit

The movement is generally thought to have started a a grocer in the 1840s in Rochdale, though there were societies around about a century earlier. When I started proper, (sit at a desk with a phone and secretary) work, Co-op societies together were Britain's largest grocer with a combined share about the same as Tesco has today. They were also notoriously as corrupt as a Chicago Democratic meeting: most of their buyers &quot;earned&quot; about 3d a week as a wage and took home several thousand times that in supplier kickbacks.

The movement went through a really crap 30 years from the mid-70s to around 2000. It's now partly revived. Not in Corrieland (like that absurd garment factory that would have closed down 15 years ago in the real world, Coops in the back to back heartland got killed by Kwiksave around 1990).

Its two success stories are now:
- the Coop Bank, which is now THE ethical financial services business in Britain. Won't invest in anything Mother Theresa wouldn't support and it's a bit iffy about her because she's a bit sectarian, and:

- modern supermarkets in tiny towns. In the civilised belt of Middle England, if you can't be bothered driving to the Waitrose 10 miles away, you walk up the road to get your goat's cheese from a Coop that gets rebuilt or refitted out about twice a decade. Taking your bag, of course, because they nag you into not using one of their plastic ones. VERY impressive operation these days. IMHO, the best run convenience stores anywhere in the world outside Japan.

I was impressed by the new COOP food market - would not call it a supermarket but like flanner a large convenience store but with stuff at supermarket prices nearly right by the Eltham train station (or New Eltham - Alzheimer's kicking in)

Previously on the Eltham High Street there was an old dingy COOP store and they closed that and moved right across from the train station exit and bus pool. That a Super Store opened by their old High Street location probably pushed the move

But the new store is bright and cheery and handy for my nearby B&amp;B. (Hope the old Irish lady don't die!)

But thanks all for illuminating the COOP movement and i will go out of my way to shop at the COOP in Eltham rather than the Super Sainsbury's down the street.

In England, most of them are 2,999 sq ft these days - which in the US would be a bit titchy even for a 7-11.

That way they can open all hours on Sundays - even Easter Sunday when anything bigger has to close all day.

In a bizarre way, their fairtrade, not-for-profit, no-bag ethic makes them the perfect complement to Tesco and Wal-Mart/Asda. Almost fashionable, and as far from the smelly (and long, long departed) germ factory at the end of my Liverpool street as you could imagine.

flanner - you speak of rigid by law Sunday hours for super stores? What are these hours, please - just for my info - curious

am i right in thinking on other days super food stores can be open 24 hours or not? thanks

Ah Coronation Street - watch carefully and it can give you acute insights into places to visit or avoid.

When Vera went missing, Jack traced her by virtue of wonderful logic to Southport where they spent their first dirty weekend. Vera in relief informed Jack that she would have been about to walk out to sea to drown herself; Jack empathically responded &quot;Well Vera you'd better get a move on because the tide is going out&quot;. The distance of the sea to the shore at Southport is stuff of legend.

In England and Wales, stores 3,000 sq ft and over:

- may open for no more than 6 hours on a Sunday
- may not open on Easter Sunday at all.

As I recall, the compromise we negotiated in 1993 banned opening totally only on Easter Sunday. Since then, someone might have slipped a similar ban onto Christmas Day too. There's now next to no local or ethnic variation in English/Welsh laws on this: before the late 1980s, there was widespread local autonomy - and Jews could open a shop on Sundays, provided they closed it on Saturdays. A wonderful, at least a century old, example of how variable ethnic geometry in lawmaking can produce a highly civilised solution for everyone.

Scotland has different rules: when I was involved in all this they could be tweaked by Scottish local authorities, so big shops in Catholic/mainstream Presbyterian Glasgow stayed open all Sunday, while in the Wee Free fundieland everything closed. I think that still applies

In France the Grandes Surfaces (sp?) as hypermarches are called cannot ordinarily open on Sundays (except before Christmas and in some tourist designated areas i believe)

and one reason i think is that small shopkeepers would lose out and also, more importantly i think, unions are fiercely opposed i think as well of being made to work on Sundays

Flanner (or others) - from your viewpoint did Sunday openings of English and Welsh grandes surfaces

1- Increase overall store sales by allowing consumers more time to shop - on Sunday when they do not work

2- cause any unions to claim they were forced to work on Sunday?

3- Have a deleterious effect on Mom and Pop shops (as time would have anyway IMO)

I often, from a 24-7 viewpoint here, debate my French relatives about Sunday openings - telling how here workers with most tenure FIGHT to work on Sunday and holidays - for the overtime pay usually mandated by contracts - and folks love to shop on Sunday rather than on Saturdays when the stores are mobbed and no fun.

don't bother to answer if a bother but curious as to what effects Sunday openings had. thanks

It's not at all a bother. Damn issue dominated my life for several years. And almost got me flung into jail (at one stage I agreed to be a Sabbath Martyr: a reference totally lost on the toerag CEO who had a loonie obsession about opening on Sundays in defiance of the law.)

So, IMHO, Sunday opening in England and Wales:

1. Did nothing at all to sales. But, because it made big stores more efficient (bigger volume over same space), it enabled the chains to squeeze the little guys out

2. You can't in Britain force people to work on Sundays, though some union activists claim there is forcing going on. News to me: the key element of the Sunday shopping experience in British supermarkets is that it's definitely the number 3 team on duty. Everything's out of stock, no-one knows how to work the tills, and it's always a 17 yo on the till when the woman in front of me wants to buy booze.

3. By 1994, when the situation was legalised (we'd all traded technically illegally for the previous 15 years), there were pox all conventional mom &amp; pop stores left. There were loads of Indian stores - many of which kept going by just working even longer hours. Here's where it gets really complicated.

There were also a few ethnic chains. These have mostly been bought out by the big guys, so you now have these micro superstore chains called stuff like Sainsbury Really Small. Meanwhile in France, <b> precisely the same effect has happened </b> Where in Britain small stores got killed by local chains - in most of France they've been knocked out by Aldi, Lidl and all those other 4-5,000 sq ft limited assortment discounters.

Sunday closing isn't the issue: it's actually how friendly local planning/zoning laws are. France invented laws in (I think) the 1960s preventing stores over (I think) 30,000 sq ft opening in towns. This meant they opened outside, on the autoroute <i> echangeur </i> instead. But by 2000, Aldi had invented a format that matched hypermarket prices in a tinier shop: French legislators were just too dozy to stop it.

4. In Britain, folks love shopping on Sundays in gardening centres, which is why it's their busiest day. Less true, generally for home improvement/IKEA (you buy the stuff on Sat and screw up installing it on Sun). Sunday's a dullish day for food: I think because the stores are such a godawful mess on Sundays.

You just can't generalise.

thank you very much. Cheers

Don't ask about dry areas of Wales on Sundays!

Another fact about Co-op Funerals.
They have in recent years taking over many independent family-run funeral businesses up and down the country, but largely retaining the former identities and names.
So something sounding traditional and family-run, like Arthur Brown and Sons in Little Deeping may well be part of Co-op!

Flanner mentions Aldi, the German discount store

They are building an Aldi in my town now and there are dozens in surrounding areas - they have been here for some time but are now launching a huge expansion - perhaps at the right time as shoppers become more price-weary in down times.

But i never thought the Aldi method would work in the U.S. - coins to disengage shopping carts - the typically long snake-like lines - the warehouse limited selection and bagging your own and even limited shopping hours compared to supermarkets.

But it apparently is booming and could be one of the rare European food retailers to make it in the tough American retail food sector.

Trader Joe's is also owned by one of the Aldi brothers i think and their approach to the Whole Foods Market markete uses a similar approach - just in limited selections not the carts and no bagging stuff - and they have also been hugely successful it seems.

&quot;So something sounding traditional and family-run, like Arthur Brown and Sons in Little Deeping may well be part of Co-op!&quot;

But at least it's the Co-op.

Two generations ago, all flannerclan funerals were run (and cars for flannerclan weddings provided) by one of six brothers who each had their shopfront in a different bit of Metro Liverpool.

As the next generation started popping off, we were horrified to find that most of the brothers had sold out to Service Corporation International - though the old name (as it might be, O'Herlihy) stayed over the door.

Just one O'Herlihy Bros, Funeral Director (names changed etc) was still actually run by a member of the family that'd presided over our rites of passage since the First Flanner staggered off the Dublin boat. We now have to ship cadavers to the remotest bit of the city. It really buggers up organising the wake - but it wouldn't be a flanner funeral without a real O'Herlihy bringing the coffin into the house and downing the first glass of Paddy's.

These small snippets of extender Flannerdom are a joy to read (no sarcasm intended)

I frequently walk through the cemetery near my workplace. If there is no parking anywhere nearby, and the crowd is huge, it is pretty certain that the departed is a member of the Irish community.

and one less on the dole for hard-working English to support

The English, whether they be idle or hard-working, tend not to make such nasty comments.

Most of them are part-Irish, anyway.

I'm beginning to wonder if flanner's clan includes Lily Savage and her Vera.