Google Street View has rolled out across the UK. I’ve just found a curious inconsistency between the Street View images and the Satellite maps. Here is King Edward VI School (as was) in Stafford, originally founded as a grammar school, and the satellite shows the school, and to the left, the school playing fields, surrounded by mature trees.
But the road and the item in the middle of the playing fields tells the story: “Tesco Stores”. Looking on Street View down that road, across the playing fields, I see this:
The local authority has sold the playing fields to the supermarket developer, leaving the Gothic school perched incongruously on the corner.
But … Google has recorded this piece of history.
1. Boy, that’s crass of the town.
2. Why on earth would a supermarket want to plop down in the middle of a town anyway? Supermarkets belong on the outskirts, so there’s room for parking. It’s a rule.
3. Why on earth would a supermarket want to be right next to a school? The kids sneak out and go there, and either cause the school dilemmas about reporting truancy, or make trouble. Whatever trouble would usually hang around the back of the school comes and hangs around the back of the supermarket.
4. Isn’t illegal for a school not to have some sort of playground and sports field? I thought England was all for healthy minds in healthy bodies. Isn’t this a regressive step?
5. What happens when the supermarket goes out of business or moves elsewhere, as it someday will? Are people really okay with an abandoned supermarket standing right next to a school, right in the middle of the scenic part of town?
Sigh. OTOH, I guess it’s good to know that the idiots who develop stuff in the US don’t get any smarter by being born in the UK instead….
Most likely the councillors made money from it. In the town in question, even in the 70’s, it was said that if they put up a pig on the XXX party slate, it would get elected. People who are in power too long tend to start thinking they are Napoleon, or get corrupt and self-interested. The supply of money and favours by businessmen in return for planning permission has a long history in the UK in certain areas.