Sainsbury's drop a bombshell on Tonbridge....

Well, well well! Who'd have thunk it? Sainsbury's it seems have done the dirty on Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council (TMBC) and it ain't a cruel April Fools joke. Their, much trumpeted new store, combined with a cinema and leisure centre complex on Bradford Street has been canned. It seems to be in the face of "changing retail patterns" by which I think they mean that they've just noticed this new way of shopping called the internet. It took them long enough but they got there in the end! They have now worked out that, instead of a giant hyper market style store in Tonbridge town centre, all they actually need is a couple of nerds and a few computers in a building in a low rent, poor part of Wales and tiny little "Xpress" shops (or is that Tesco?!) on the High Street. So a bit like the Spa shops model of about 40 years ago except now you don't even have to bother to leave your house and order the food, you can just lay around at home in your underpants, watching Jeremy Kyle and Heir Hunters whilst ordering your fruit and veg and cheap baked beans, only bothering to drag on a pair of stained jogging bottoms when the delivery man arrives at your house. Pretty soon they too will be replaced by robots! Anyway, I digress. Sainsbury's have really dropped a bombshell here as Councillor Nicholas Hedgelop will testify. In fact he's jolly hopping mad at the amount of work he and the rest of the council have put in on this. Especially the scheme to build a new leisure centre and cinema on a flood prone street. He is said to have commented that it really wasn't cricket to stop the building of this site which they hoped would, in the next few years, be able to match the flooded swimming pool, football and rugby pitches so that fitness fanatics, and just casual visitors of all standards, plus the unemployed, who can enjoy services at a fraction of the cost of peak time users, who just want to give badminton or underwater table tennis a go without feeling committed, can play sports in a river water themed, relaxed, semi-aquatic environment. Sainsbury's were unavailable for comment except to say that they are really, really, really sorry. They were last seen examining the Iron Age Castle Hill fort site off the A21 which they reckon will be flood free for at least another 2 years and also very handy for that shopping trip to the North Farm estate.....