How do the retail kings fare as supporters of good design?

I have often talked about the threat of risk in our society and how it militates against architectural innovation and new thinking; and the rise of the project manager and the QS whose prime responsibility is to stem the notion of pushing at the edges. They do this by overpricing elements that, as yet, have not been properly exposed to analysis - evidence that Thatcher's, and now Blair's, children are ultra-conservative and see only profit as the prime objective. I am therefore interested ...