AllConsuming.org.uk

A report from Scottish Widows this week shows that only half of us are saving enough for our retirement and a quarter are saving nothing. They want us to save more because that is how they make a profit.  But hold on a minute; what are we saving for, why and how much do we need?  We certainly save less now because we spend more.  No one wants to delay gratification in a consumer society.  But why do we need so much when we retire?  Do we have to stay on the same consumer treadmill? And will we save more while we continue to be bombarded with messages to spend now, to keep up and be normal.  In the book I suggest three things about retirement; first is that we should all consume less and therefore earn and spend less; second we are probably going to have to be forced into saving more through a compulsory scheme and third if we can we should have jobs we enjoy and are fulfilling and therefore we never want to retire from.

In the book I mention a few times the technique that on line sellers like Amazon are refining of building up a buying pattern and prompting us to buy more.  If you have bought X then you might like to know Y has just been published. Well I’ve bought a lot of books about shopping from Amazon for my research and have they sent me a prompt yet to buy All Consuming? Of course not. Where is the dynamic, creative and innovate free market when you need it most.

Today bring news that junk food companies have perfect the ingredients of their fast foods to trip a ‘bliss point’ which get us to eat more even when we are full. We eat it but we don’t know what the chemicals and ingredients are doing to us.  Its just like cigarettes all over again. And there will be plenty of places to buy all the jink as the supermarkets use the property price crash to buy up land for future development. Meanwhile the politicians merely tamper with the symptoms of over spending as they try and slow down the rate at which we get into cred card debt. Unless we   understand why we buy and how we are being sold to then it will have little if any impact. I’m off to Sweden for a two day political festival in Visby.  Ill try to blog from there and have an insight into Swedish shopping.

Today a bought a garden parasol from John Lewis. I can’t stand sitting in the sun – so that is all the justification I needed. I often find excuses to buy thing; I haven’t bought anything for ages, its worn out, its just basics etc. I cant admit to myself that its just the urge to splurge.

Sadly the papers are packed with consumer lunacy today.  Not least the Tim Dowling piece in G2 on Firefly – the new mobile phone for four years olds. Tim describes the lunacy well. Also in the Guardian (which is really the only paper I consume and which I love, but amuses me with its readers offers for things like gilded bird cages) was a splash on the return of the pay gravy train in the City.   Finally there is a story about the the threat to sharks because of over fishing.  Often its just the fins that are wanted and the bodies are dumped back in the sea.  Shark fin soup has moved like every other consumer good from an elite to an afforadbale must have. There is a deep irony here.  In the book I describe the market as a shark; a monster that has no morality but just endlessly feeds.  The shark has met its match.

Two stories caught my eye today. The first in the Guardian finance section claimed luxury goods firms are back in fashion.  Green shoots  are being seen in the rich soil of Hermes and Mulberry bags.  Apparently. The other story was on the front  page of the Mail Pensions: the painful truth.  We are spending too much and saving too little. I don’t have one and think I will just have to keep working and spending less.  But I don’t have a £4,000 handbag either. Victoria Beckham famously has all 100 version of the Birkin bag, which are at least £4k each.  Will the recession be a blip or a turning point.   As ever – its down to us.

I did a discussion today on this.  You can listen to it here – its about 20 minutes in. At the end the presenter, Jane Garvey, said its all a bit gloomy – I was crestfallen.  There was time to say ‘its not gloomy at all’. Its about real freedom, real lives and new pleasures.  Being truly human.  I need to get better at making my case.  The other person who was on was Lucia van der Post  – she founded the FT’s brilliant consumer magazine How to Spend It.  Like many of us she railed against being told she might be on the consumer treadmill too.  Like most of us what we do doesn’t count – its everyone else that is caught up in it.  Anyway WH is a great programme and I feel humbled to have been on it.

There is an essay in today’s Sunday Herald which summarizes some of the themes of the book. You can read it here.

Few institution exist which instill in us our role in society as citizens rather than consumers.  The BBC is one of them and perhaps the most precious. It is a vital non-market organisation that is paid for by everyone through a compulsory tax- the licence fee Through it the country is bound together and shares a common culture. That is why its under constant attack by the private  sector to open it up to competition and allow them to make a profit for them.  Of course it should offer good value for the tax.  But it does. The government should treat it as the jewel it is rather than top slice its income to pay for broadband access when BT, Virgin and Sky wont.

On Saturday the Guardian ran this extract from the book. It focused on the rise and rise of shoplifting.  It is a good way to understand our shopping habit – they are a more extreme example of the loss of control.

I also spoke at the Compass conference about the book on the same day.  Richard Sennett the sociologist helped me with the session.  The people who came along had some great comments that really pushed me.   One women liked a lot of what I said but argued at the end that she enjoys shopping so much and I shouldn’t say its not good for her.  Getting the tone and style of this criticism right is going to be tough.