AllConsuming.org.uk

Sun beds cause you cancer. Organic food doesn’t do you any good. Orange offer students phone ads deal. Coca-cola introduce fizzy milk drinks. Peter Mandelson hints at increase in university tuition fees.  A 77 shopaholic dies and can’t be found under purchase for five days.

All headlines from the last two days. What do they have in common? Go on take a wild guess. Can’t get it?

Shopping that’s what. I know you are shocked and saying to yourself “so Neal, are you trying to tell us that there is a link between so many rubbish things going on and the domination of our lives by turbo-charged consumer capitalism?” Funny you should ask because yes I am. But probably only because I’ve got a book to promote.

Last night I was catching up with an old school friend consuming pints of beer when I got a call from Newsnight about the Tories use of primaries to select their candidates and would I go on the programme to talk about uit? Again what’s this got to do with shopping?

Well as you might be starting to tell; I think pretty much everything is to do with shopping. Just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you and all that.

Anyway primaries open up the selection of candidates to all voters not just party members.  Where is the harm in that I hear you say. Well I want candidates who believe in something and don’t try to be all things to all people.  I also believe in a proportional electoral system that makes everyone votes count.  Then democracy becomes the clash of big ideas and competing visions of the good society and not an attempt to appeal, like some retailer, to the median voter. I want an agenda for a post consumer society.  You won’t get that with primaries only a no-change mush in the centre probably with Esther Ranzen as the candidate.

If you have nothing better to do you can watch the programme here.  Its the second item after a Peter Mandelson interview.

On Saturday I went to a football match in Kingston.  It was AFC Wimbledon versus Football Club United Manchester.  Today’s quiz is what do these two teams have in common?  Yes of course – they were both started and are owned by their fans after corporate greed took old Wimbledon to Milton Keynes and Manchester United into debt.  So what’s all that to do with shopping I hear you say.

Well not a lot necessarily but both clubs are examples of people taking control over something important to them and refusing to be part of the corporate treadmill.  Somethings belong to the community and have a value beyond pounds shilling and pence.  Both clubs are flourishing because they have the energy and vitality of their supporters behind them.  What was the result I hear you ask?  2.0 to the Dons but people not profits were the real winner.

Last night I did a meeting of Dialogue with Islam near Brick Lane on How do we cure our greedy society?  I did my party piece on the market machine, why we buy, the consequences and what we might do instead. But the respondent and the points from the floor were thought provoking to say the least.  Sheikh Haitham al-Haddad talked about Islam and greed.  His first point was that Muslims are taught and encouraged to spend – not on themselves but on others.  They hive a lot away.  Second, they against usury and the ending of money for profit. Finally I thought he said ‘shopping the hand’ which may have been a reference to heavy bags on the way back from the shops.  Of course what he said as chopping the hand – of the greedy who steal. Perhaps this should have been in my list of policies? Anyway there are commons points of interest between Islam and critiques of consumer society we need to explore.

We debated the place of morality and as non-believer in any God I was put on the spot about how we can be held to account for our morals if there is no afterlife to reward or punish us. I held out the hope of democracy to be the vehicle for accountability. That is where my faith lies. But we certainly need something more to believe in than just the here and now.

As I have said before, society has become more secular but we still know we are going to die. So we buy our youth and eternity through clothes and cosmetic surgery. I remember a shoe shops called Faiths.  They had soul.

Today Apple, the iPod and computer maker, posted profits that defied the recession. It’s Apple, the iPod and its computers and now mobiles that as much as anything else really forces me to confront my shopping desires. Apple make great products that look and feel wonderful and bring me pleasure. I can’t deny that I like my iPod and iTunes on my PC.

But what if we were all seduced by Apple and their conveyor belt of new must have gadgets? By all I mean the 6 billion people on the planet. There wouldn’t be enough resources to do it. But surely everyone should be free to own an iPod? And what of their rather phoney here to help you ‘we are not shops’ but gadget surgeries – like some high tech swish version of the NHS?

There is nothing wrong with a bit of shopping – but how do we keep the balance right when products like this appear? And let’s face it most iPods don’t last a year and serve as irresistible objects of desire in playgrounds and the streets for kids who can’t afford the trappings of consumer success.

I’m often intrigued by the difference between classic and timeless design, which must be a good thing, and the conveyor belt of techno rubbish.  We need some beautiful and functional things around us.  So what is the difference?

Credit is central to our consumer society. It takes the waiting out of wanting. Today my bank Lloyds/TSB sent me a letter to say that my credit card limit had been extended to £7500. If I ever use a credit card, and being such a dedicated anti-shopper I hardly ever do, I pay the monthly balance off straight away. The bank of course exists to make as much money as possible which they do by people borrowing as much as possible and paying a huge amount in interest. You can’t blame them. Dogs bark, ducks quack and companies try and make a profit. The fact that debt wrecks lives and families is not their concern.

But it is or should be the concern of government who could restrict such lending practices. There are over 70 million credit cards in circulation in the UK. But in Germany they manage with only 2.3million. Different laws and different cultures which we can change and adapt if we want. Our government won’t act because they want us to spend our way out of recession that was built on a credit bubble. It makes obvious sense.

While searching for a credit card image I found this – a Hello Kitty credit card. Erica, my partners daughter who is eleven likes Hello Kitty accessories for her hair.  Should I get her the credit card to match?

Today we learn that the singer Beyonce has spent £36,000 having her nails done. That’s £3600 per finger. It seems a tad expensive. But then I’m sure she thinks she is worth it and anyway it’s her money and she earned it. Her new nails will cement her celebrity status and push the record sales up so it’s probably a good investment.

Of course ordinary folk can’t spend £3600 having one nail done let alone ten times that amount. But they will aspire to spending more on their manicure. Perhaps £100 instead of the usual £40.  The hurdle of consumer success has been pushed a bit higher.  After all we no longer want to over throw those at the top we just want to be like them. Debt, insecurity and the chasing of an impossible dream of happiness through consumption will result. Billions who live on less than $2 a day will wonder, if ever find out, how someone could spend so much on such a small part of one body.  The finger of guilt points at Beyonce.

Today it was announced that Microsoft is ‘king’ of the UK brands. They came top in a judged survey based on quality, reliability and distinction. The leading brands are deemed to offer “significant emotional and/or tangible advantages over other brands, which customers want and recognise”.  I don’t know why Microsoft came top – they don’t score for me on any of the measures. My PC is always crashing becasue of them.

Brands are one of the ways we seek to belong to our chosen herd while differentiating ourselves within it through tiny signals of style and taste.  We get the security of belonging and the feeling of freedom. Of course the brands just want us to buy and use our emotional needs to sell us whatever they can. The word brand comes from the mark placed on cattle to prove ownership. Is it better that someone brands us like slaves or that we work to buy to brand ourselves?

I try to keep what I write in the book and here as bright and breezy as possible. I don’t want to sound too dark – it would persuade few.  Someone once referred to me as the ‘Eyeore of the left’ when I, of course, see myself as more Christopher Robin character. I can dream on.  But there are times and events that just make you feel sad and disorientated.  I read this weekend Denise Hendry, the wife of footballer Coin, who died at the age of 43 after a botched cosmetic surgery operation.  She underwent liposuction surgery in 2002 in a private clinic and it went wrong. Denise, a mother of four, suffered multiple organ failures as a result of the surgery.

I can’t begin to imagine how devastated her family and friends must be. To die so young is awful but to die so needlessly in the pursuit of plastic perfection is just tragic. Around £1.2 billion will be spent in Britain this year on cosmetic surgery. Much of the industry is unregulated and the demand for it grows inextricable as we chase the dream of youth and bodily perfection. Our bodies have become our temple. Women as young as 19 are having breast surgery and Botox at 21. It is simply a sad condemnation of a society that is all consuming

We need something more to believe in than looking not just good but better and better – we need faith. Not necessarily in any religious sense but in terms of our ability to take control of our world and the lives the only way we can; together.

Many people dont’ like being told they on the consumer treadmill.  The claim not to follow any fashion.  Yer right! As Dexy’s Midnight Runners once sang “If you’re so anti-fashion why not wear flares?”.  Everyone buys there own ‘fashion’.  In choosing one thing they exclude thousands of others.  We all make finely calibrated decision about what is right for us. We do it more and more for more and more things. That’s one reason why we are turbo consumers.

There is a good piece on the book today by Carol Midgley in the Times Can shopping make us happy? Dont worry it can’t.