modern airbrushing

As you may be aware, Tesco is the official supermarket of the England world cup team, though I bet you’re not aware of it if you happen to live in Scotland, Ireland or Wales. Elsewhere, the stores are festooned with tat and bunting. 

Someone working for the Great Beast of retail tells me that the word’s gone out for people who fancy a bit of overtime to come in early Wednesday evening and take all the tat and bunting down: every bit of it, from deely boppers to vuvuzelas, though I suppose all those crappy t-shirts will be marked down for sale as fuel for the bonfires on which effigies of the traitor Rooney will be burned. 

Obviously, this won’t happen if England somehow struggle through. But I think there’s a bit more to it than contingency. Tesco are in the habit of consulting widely – with meteorologists, for instance, to co-ordinate spikes in temperature with raises in the price of beer – and I think there’s a fair possibility that they conducted a little research before putting out the word. In fact, this is near as we’re going to get to an official acknowledgment that we’re on our way out.

Comments

[john b]

meteorologists, for instance, to co-ordinate spikes in temperature with raises in the price of beer

I'm actually disappointed that Tesco never hired me for that one. In one of my previous incarnations, we built quite a serious model showing both seasonal and short-term-fluctuation weather demand that called the UK beer market better than any of the financials lot managed. The problem was that it didn't internationalise and we were moving the whole team to India, so much more boring predictive methodologies needed harnessed.