An illuminating, if somewhat troubling article over in the Guardian concerning a certain coffee chain, whose aromatic tentacles are spreading across the capital faster than an upended Americano in a wind tunnel.
If you stand on the corner of Regent Street and Wigmore Street in central London, you are within five miles of 164 branches of Starbucks
.
As they'd say in Seattle: enough already.
Quoth the Starbucks: Not on your nelly.
Yesterday, the company announced a massive UK expansion, focused on London, where it expects to open new outlets at the rate of one a fortnight over the next 10 years.
Blah, blah, blah further erosion of the diversity of our high streets blah.
Now, we're going to say something alarmingly controversial here, so look away now if you get all queasy when someone advocates an act of mindless consumerism.
Sometimes, a Starbucks refreshment cannot be bettered. No siree. On the hottest days of last year, we'd have been quite beaten without their delightful concoction of fat and sugar that went by the name franana Bappachino, or something. OK, so all that sucrose left us jibbering and humming like a substation for a while, but...mmmmmmmmm.
However, a branch every fortnight for ten years? Wassat? About 260 new outlets. That's like almost every shop on Oxford Street turning into a Starbucks.
And thus we arrive at the perfect means of curbing the local overcrowding.
