Looked at overall they have done significant damage, in the same way that supermarkets have done damage to our food buying and eating habits.
They have destroyed the traditional retailers who genuinely knew about the products they sold, and knew what was rubbish and what was not (cf how easy is it these days to find proper butchers, proper bakers, proper greengrocers, proper fishmongers, who understand their products, who care about their products, who can give you trusted advice about their products?)
In the same way that supermarkets now scour the world for the cheapest food they can find and to **** with the welfare of the farmers etc, and to **** with the environmental damage caused by flying in asparagus from Peru, and to **** with the well-being of their customers to whom they gleefully sell the monstrous fat- sugar- and salt-laden highly profitable sh*te churned out by the "food" scientists in multinational "food" companies, the DIY sheds have flooded this country with poor quality and in many cases dangerous tat, and have fostered the belief that all you have to do is buy it and take it home and you too can be a builder/plumber/electrician/whatever.
Well - guess what, you can't.
Just like buying a ready meal, even the posh ones which come disassembled, won't make you a Ferran Adrià, or a René Redzepi or a Paul Bocuse, buying a solar-powered lighting kit from B&Q won't make you a lighting designer.
They have destroyed the traditional retailers who genuinely knew about the products they sold, and knew what was rubbish and what was not (cf how easy is it these days to find proper butchers, proper bakers, proper greengrocers, proper fishmongers, who understand their products, who care about their products, who can give you trusted advice about their products?)
In the same way that supermarkets now scour the world for the cheapest food they can find and to **** with the welfare of the farmers etc, and to **** with the environmental damage caused by flying in asparagus from Peru, and to **** with the well-being of their customers to whom they gleefully sell the monstrous fat- sugar- and salt-laden highly profitable sh*te churned out by the "food" scientists in multinational "food" companies, the DIY sheds have flooded this country with poor quality and in many cases dangerous tat, and have fostered the belief that all you have to do is buy it and take it home and you too can be a builder/plumber/electrician/whatever.
Well - guess what, you can't.
Just like buying a ready meal, even the posh ones which come disassembled, won't make you a Ferran Adrià, or a René Redzepi or a Paul Bocuse, buying a solar-powered lighting kit from B&Q won't make you a lighting designer.