I read recently in The Long Tail that the supermarket contributed to the downfall of communism. The supermarket "showcased how a free market economy could deliver abundant, affordable food and became a metaphor for what capitalism could do and Communism could not". Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation recalled in his autobiography, recounting a visit to a supermarket in 1989, "When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons, and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people."

Luckily it wasn't Tesco he visited. The empty shelves, damaged produce and long checkout queues might have given him an entirely different vision of the economy.

Photo: Vision of the future or simply a queue arising from a lack of checkout staff or is it confused souls waiting for food to be moved from cages to the shelves.....