Christmas food shopping- a new way?

I admit that I don't shop that often. I wouldn't say that I was the main shopper in our household. Yet I did find myself authorized to do some food shopping before Christmas and I found myself experiencing nostalgia not really for the items on offer but the methods of shopping.
I'll start with a general gripe. The expression 'stocking fillers' in bold type seemed to me to send out the wrong signals to any young child who could read but still believed in Father Christmas.
Then there is the question of customer service. However good the training, it just is not possible to get sufficient information, sufficiently easily if you are shopping in an aircraft hangar of a building that sells a huge variety of goods and cannot therefore have so much expertise on tap. Specifically on food however there was something about being able to  smell and examine vegetables and fruit for example without them being wrapped and packed and plastered in stickers, which has now disappeared from many shops.
I stuck lucky in Crediton- our local market town. Firstly I could drive right into the centre and park. There were spouts available in sufficient quantity and loose and not in shrink wrapped packets of six! There is, Alleluia, a cheese shop selling, amongst others, local cheeses that the 'big' food retailers now seem to have withdrawn from their shelves ( not surprising that the dairy farms are struggling). There is an ironmonger too.
Do you remember those card games of 'happy families' that we played as children? Mr Bun the Baker for example. The pack of cards would be small today.
Much has been said about the 'death of the High Street' and I accept that urban planning is challenged in this area. Product price is an issue as is convenience and cheap or free parking. I just wonder whether there is a model that allows independent shops to come together and offer a combined facility for customers which will enable them to survive against the advantages of the large retailers.
There would need to be a way of drawing in outside investment and the independents too would need some equity share and the planners would have to be on side. It would provide a more secure and sustainable outlet for those farms who supply farmers markets. #justsaying
I hope that you had a good Christmas and that 2016 is good for you

Come back King Solomon- Wisdom needed

This week will see the publication of the Government's long anticipated National Planning Policy Framework.
This has already been the subject of a 'phoney war' carried out between Developers and Conservationists in an increasingly shrill way mostly in the media.
Most of those genuinely interested in rural areas will have, I suspect, the same broad aims. These include allowing businesses that are responsible for providing jobs and looking after the landscape in rural areas to prosper. This means allowing justified expansion of premises; the use of cars (which will soon be carbon neutral) and the construction of sufficient housing for those working in such businesses to live locally. It also includes however the protection of our most valuable habitats,biodiversity and landscape- whether designated or not; preserving the setting of historic buildings and monuments; ensuring that 'brownfield' land has been looked at first before 'greenfield' and creating sensibly designed housing developments that do not 'concrete over the countryside'.
At the best of times it is difficult to reconcile these aims. When fossilisation of the countryside is advocated by rich bankers seeking to protect the view from and value of their second home or the need for critical mass and therefore large scale housing is argued on viability grounds by developers who can bemuse local planners with their financial calculations, we need an arbitrator.
Traditionally the balance has been provided by planning policy both national and local. The local, in the form of Development Plans, takes into account the national, in the form of Planning Policy Guidance.
The question therefore is will there be sufficient guidance to provide some future certainty for those on either side of the debate? However much of a fan you are of 'localism' it is essential to have consistency around the Country.
One problem, identified by many, is the lack of a definition of sustainable development.If you are going to have a presumption in favour of something you need to know what it is.The widely used 'development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs' doesn't really help us come up with answers in a particular case. What is a 'need? What does 'compromise' mean? The Government's 5 guiding principles from 2005 are ambitious but imprecise.
The laudable aim of reducing unnecessary beaucracy may leave scope for continuing argument which could end up with horse-trading or in the Courts. This won't speed the process up. Let's hope that the megaphone diplomacy of recent months will have resulted in a sensible document this week. If not we will need King Solomon back to adjudicate on every planning application in the country.