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Up and down the country local authorities, independent retailers and residents complain that rents are squeezing out interesting independent retailers and creating "Clone Town Britain".

Well, I have an idea. This week the Co-operative Group agreed terms to acquire Somerfield supermarkets. There are some, say management, which directly compete with existing Co-op shops and so one or other may be up for sale. One of these is in Headington in Oxford where there is a fairly recently refurbished MidCounties Co-op store on one side of the road and a Somerfield on the other.

Some people are all excited that someone like Waitrose might step up and buy it - and in a sense there could be no better buyer as far as the Co-op goes - the other end of the market and a sort of a worker co-operative in its own right.

But as I was in a social enterprise meeting earlier today my mind wandered to Headington supermarkets (!) and I wondered if, given it is the Co-operative who have bought them, there might be mileage in proposing a sale to a more local group - perhaps a permanent base for an indoor/farmers' market, or a space which, like the Covered Market in town, could provide "protected space" for independent retailers we wanted to see revived in Headington, set up say as a secondary co-op or a community land trust type structure (or even bought by MidCounties from Co-op Group) enabling local people a say in its management, policies and ownership.

It would require some work of course actually to work out whether the relatively recent decline of independent fresh food retailers in Headington for example has been, as often claimed, because of rent and rates issues where such a facility might be able to help by lowering the cost of access. But if it does seem viable would it be worth trying?

Or would Waitrose or Sainsbury still be a more attractive offering?

I suppose it's probably a very long time since The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was required reading for a Labour minister. And maybe my initial calculations are wrong on the "budget"...

But am I right in thinking that those of us who labour all our lives but can't afford to buy a home are now going to be paying more in tax than the rack landlord on his buy to let investment he's fleecing us to occupy? In another era even the most liberal of economists would have recognized this as robbery of the returns to labour.

Nice one Dahling! New Labour, New Rentier.

The Telegraph is reporting that the US backs Lord Ashdown for Afghanistan role:

US backs Lord Ashdown for Afghanistan role
By Tom Coghlan in Kabul and David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:24am GMT 04/12/2007

The United States is backing Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader who served as the international community's "high representative" in Bosnia, to be the United Nations new "super envoy" to Afghanistan. The proposed role would see Lord Ashdown being charged with uniting the efforts of both Nato and the UN in Afghanistan. Nato officials are understood to support his candidacy for a job with exceptional power.

Can anyone doubt the talents of the man, or the esteem in which he is held around the world? But, given the history of foreign intervention in Afghanistan, could this one be a bridge too far for any international statesman? It's a pity he's probably already too old to be in the running for General Secretary after Ban Ki Moon has done two terms though.

In her defense of the surveillance state (sorry if I've misunderstood but that's what it sounds like!) at CCTV conspiracy mania is a very middle-class disorder there's one little sentence that gives it all away. She says:

There is a sad lack of voices to praise the benign state these days.

Maybe that's because there is no such thing as "the benign state", now or at any point in history that immediately comes to mind.