Author: Darren Worrow

For what it’s worth, I’m impartial to the prospect of McDonalds, Tesco too. I’ve got viewpoints to waffle endlessly with no real conclusion, if you’ve nothing more important to be getting on with, but I’m certainly not all-out “lovin’ it”….

The initial article announcing the McDonald’s proposal in Bishop’s Cannings was a rush job, to beat the stream of social media. Now I can reflect, provide an opinion piece, you might be surprised. Especially as I hinted I was in favour because it would bring employment, particularly for our younger residents; mud sticks!

Someone submitted their objection, spoke of it on Facebook with an accompanying comment they tagged me in: “don’t shoot me Darren Worrow!” Perhaps they mistook the term “drive-thru” for “drive-by” for which my little knowledge from American movies suggests two entirely different things! I’m certainly not going to shoot anyone, and pray no one returns fire!

Here we go, dispelling myths and hearsays about the golden arches, their global ethical ethos and the redevelopment proposals here, in my own special manner, and purely for your amusement only. Repeat after me, I’m not a councillor!! Imagine though….

The food is rubbish!

That’s subjective or at least debatable, surely? As the advert suggests, some people love that frightfully processed, calorie-dense, diabetes welcoming shit, and will queue all day in their cars for it. If they want to eat foam burgers, battery farmed chicken offcuts and offal, that’s their prerogative, and they will if you object or not. It’s the pickles they tend not to like and launch them from their car windows in some kind of pickle protest; but they are pigeon-friendly and biodegradable.

The company has made strides in responsible sourcing, apparently, but the nutritional value remains equal to eating a mattress. The “O” in a “Fillet O Fish” stands for “oh, did it really come out of the sea?” when allegedly it did, but so do old wellington boots from time to time. Can you point out where the McNuggets are located on a chicken?! 

Expect a rise in obesity in Devizes!

Hello to the terminally bewildered! Our kebab shops sell “donor meat and chips,” because “salad is for lightweights.” For the gentlemen with a larger appetite I’ve watched them squeeze an XXL kebab into a 12” pizza box, for crying out loud into a bag of statins.

McDonalds might not be much better, but no worse, and definitely less on portion size. Though both these first two points worryingly open Pandora’s box; how ethical McDonalds is.

McDonalds is unethical!

Unfortunately, you are right, any “restaurant” chain which over-packages its products even if you eat inside has a dinosaur-sized environmental footprint; bring back Wimpy, they served you with a plate, what is so wrong with a plate these days?!

The company pledges to reduce carbon emissions and achieve deforestation-free beef sourcing, but can something on the sheer scale of McDonalds’ global supply chain ever really avoid widespread pollution and deforestation, and how hard does it really try to in Trump’s America? Awl, the dribble from that bastard’s gobshite damped his cardboard straw.

Yet, these are global issues which the McDonald’s Corporation must improve, while we’re on about having one in our town, in a country where there’s already over 1,500 locations, and being there’s not one east of Devizes for some considerable distance, you know their application will be granted somewhere, if not here. Unlike their plastics, which is a “dump,” rejecting this is a “drop” in the ocean, and the only thing you’ll achieve will be Devizes folk shit out of their McFlurry, and having to drive to the Sham.

Sadly, deflecting a global corporation by rejecting one store is putting a plaster on a severed limb.

They exploit their staff!

Again, globally yeah. Long-standing labour disputes and lawsuits regarding low wages and poor working conditions are plentiful. I’d argue that’s the world the low-skilled worker lives in, unfortunately. The economy relies on companies taking the piss, and I don’t recall a company I’ve ever worked for, large or local, who haven’t taken the piss and been generally ignorant to their staff’s concerns, to be frank.

They will, and Tesco too, however, create new and stable jobs here, and in doing so, employ younger people, which, aside from unethical practices, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Let’s not forget those franchise delivery companies might develop, also creating jobs and delivering for our local takeaways too; nobody says Just Eat in Devizes…. yet!!

Hey kids, welcome to the world of work, expect to be exploited, but let it be a lesson, as you’ll delightfully discover the chances of the same crap happening wherever you work is more likely than it is not! It’s the British way! Keep calm, tip your cap when the boss passes and carry on.

It’s unsightly and lowers the tone of the town!

No, it really doesn’t, at least no more than the aesthetics of the industrial estate. We have beautiful rolling downs stretching for miles to Beckhampton, it is a breathtaking drive but when you get to Devizes it’s over and the practicality of civilisation has to begin somewhere. 

Seeing a Maccy D’s is standard issue now. No posh couple intending to spend a small fortune in our antiques shops are going to yell, “oh my! They’ve got a McDonalds, George! Turn the car around quickly!!!” Because nearly every other town has one, there is no escape.

The area will be littered!

It always amazes me that McDonalds has brought about this bizarre etiquette in other fast food chains too, that customers actually clear away the piles of litter they produce, as no other “restaurant” customers do this. That is why we need this branch to be “eat-in,” and avoid the “drive-thru” concept as much as possible, because that is when litter unfortunately becomes an issue.

Sadly, to see McDonalds packaging jettisoned from a car window abandoned on our roads is more commonplace than seeing a fox or badger at night; but that might be more to do with posh country pricks not hunting Big Mac boxes to extinction.

I’m of the theory, this is done by younger people, borrowing mum’s car, and they don’t want her to know they’ve wasted fuel driving all the way to the Sham purely for a Maccy Ds, so they uncaringly dump that crap out of the window. I cannot see any other logical reason for doing it, then again logic might not play a part in their justifications.

Therefore, the lesser the drive, the more convenient it is to eat in, stay in the carpark where there are bins provided, or to find a bin, by my thinking. So, a McDonalds closer might not increase littering, it might actually help.

That’s the town centre doomed!

This is where I imagine being at a party and the conversation thus: “oh, how terribly rude of me. You guys haven’t met before? Well, let me introduce you. Devizes, this is the 21st century. 21st century, this is Devizes!”

Get off your high horses. Unless you came into town to buy a sponge burger wrapped in more pointless packaging than an entire new kitchen, it’s not going to impact the few coffee houses and charity shops we have still standing in the town centre. Devizes is still conservative top-heavy in ethos, I thought we’d welcome unethical, monopolising commercial corporations?! 

Even freewheelling funky Frome has an out of town commercial service area, with golden arches, and Devizes is never going to be as libtard alternative thinking as Frome! It’s happening everywhere, get used to it.

The old Sommerfield site in the town centre, since Wilko bunked, is one of many redundant shops here. Face reality, no chainstore is going to buy it; the trend is out of town shopping.

Town centres are now for coffee culture, restaurants, pubs, boutiques, hairdressers and charity shops, and I quite like it like that. I don’t want to see Tesco in town, because that drives people into them more than if they had to hop on a bus. I want indie shops in town, and want to see them supported.

Tesco didn’t see the offensive repercussions when they said they’re up for joining the abomination, and bid they’d build a superstore roughly two-thirds the size of the one in Trowbridge. Like we’re only two-thirds as important to them as Trowvegas, what an insult!

It’s kinda like when they build an extra lane on the motorway knowing in a decade they’ll need another. We’ve survived this long without a mega supermarket, on just manky Morrisons and a lonely Lidl. Sainsburys will do, won’t it? I only ever go into Marks & Sparks for confirmation I’m a peasant.

Devizes is expanding without infrastructure improvements; we’ll need bloody motorway services on London Road soon enough, and they come with golden arches as standard!

Tesco, you fail to remember like a Tory slamming Starmer for Brexit, we HAD a museum piece Tesco back in the year OBP (before Poundland) in which all the nice products you could find in other Tescos, all the good stuff, wasn’t available in the Devizes tiny Tesco, only the shitty nineteen-seventies stuff, to suit the decor.

We didn’t have a sushi bar, we had a tub of prawn cocktail, we didn’t have luxury jambon, we had tins of Spam, we didn’t have an iPhone section, we had a lift which occasionally worked, and we certainly didn’t have the one thing we really, really need, a petrol station!

But no, the proposal doesn’t extend to a petrol station; knobjockeys. If you’re gonna do it, Tesco, you could at least go the whole hog. We deserve as much; the kind of supermarket you can get lost in or not at all. Is a little competition to keep fuel price checks healthy too much to ask?! If you want in, Tesco, give us a petrol station in the deal, or bugger ‘arf with your fiver meal deals; a cajan chicken wrap, Boost duo and can of Pepsi isn’t a bloody meal anymore than a Big flippin’ Mac!!

You haven’t even got a conclusion, have you?!

Looky here, I’ve calmed! Before moving to Devizes, I lived in both Swindon and Marlborough, for roughly the same length of time. I guesstimate I actually made more visits to McDonalds living in Marlborough, which doesn’t have a McDonalds, than I ever did during my time living in Swindon, which has too many McDonalds to count without taking my socks off. This is because when things like this are on your doorstep it doesn’t mean you use them any more than when they’re not.

You take them for granted that they’re within reaching distance, but it doesn’t spur you to reach for them more than when they’re not. In fact, the appeal for something you haven’t got is greater than for something you have. I predict novelty appeal in having a McDonalds in Devizes, but within time it’ll be normalised and the novelty will wear off.

You know, so many people say to me, “you’re a sexy beast, Worrow, you know what’s best,” and usually I’d agree, but this one is out of our hands whether we like it or not. So sit back, keep your cobwebbed Clubcard to hand, and face the fate of Devizes head-on, with confidence, and make yours a McHappy meal! Be thankful we might get a McDonalds, but we’re still Reform free!