And talking of increased competition from those nasty supermarkets, the Office Of Fair Trading has asked the Competition Commission to investigate the position of the major player supermarkets amid accusations that, while there are four of them, together they act unfairly, and in doing so are putting independent traders out of business.
The OFT's decision to order the investigation has been well received by the independent traders that find themselves struggling to compete with the supermarkets, which includes independent record shops (and, as we have seen, not so independent record shops). But insiders say those traders shouldn't expect too much.
Firstly any investigation will take at least two years, so even if it did propose legislation to curtail the major supermarket chains, nothing will happen for sometime yet. And perhaps more importantly, most of the OFT's concerns relate to property (ie supermarkets purchasing land just to stop competitors opening supermarkets there, or selling land with so called 'restrictive covenants' in place that prevent subsequent buyers from building supermarkets there), so many of the concerns of independent traders might not even be considered.