AllConsuming.org.uk

This report makes interesting reading. I don’t know much about the Worldwatch Institute which calls for a wholesale transformation of values ands culture but doesn’t seem to say how. Unless we understand turbo- consumption and why we shop so much its impossible to move beyond it. People want to create their own lives – this is now hard wired into shopping. We need to come up with better ways of people creating themselves and their world. But the more the problem is pointed out, the more we might look for answers.

Politics continues to be turned on its head.  Yesterday David Cameron said he would outlaw the sexualsiation of children by shops and magazines if retailers fail to heed parental anger.  This is not the first time the Conservative leader has spoken out about the commercialisation of childhood.  It stands in stark contrast to the recent government report that called for more education to help make children more media-savvy i.e., personalise the responsibility for the march of the markert rsather than see it as a social issue to be tackled collectively.   This is what Cameron said:

It also means working with business to reduce the cruder elements of commercialisation in our society. Children today are being sold the idea that the path to happiness lies through excessive consumption.

It’s high time the children’s market and advertisers show much more restraint in the way they operate. We don’t want to resort to regulation. But we will make it clear that if business doesn’t exercise some corporate responsibility, we will not be afraid to impose it.

In the immortal words of Mrs Merton. Who famously went on in one of her interviews to ask Debbie McGee what attracted her to the millionaire Paul Daniels.

Anyway, here is a debate about shopping between Mica Nava an academic at the University of East London and me about shopping.  Mica doesnt think its so bad. I, if you haven’t been follwing it, do. It first featured on the pages of Chartist magazine and has been kindly reprinted by Open Democracy. Enjoy or not – the consumer is of course king or queen.

Today Compass, the pressure group I chair, launched a campaign to stop the government allowing product placement on British TV. Ben Bradshaw the Culture Minister seems to think its a good idea. But all it does is blur further the lines between selling and living. Another line is broken. I always feel cheapened watching films like Bond when you know the gadget or the car is just there as an experience in paid for promotion.  You can read more about the campaign here.

Author John Naish has just launched  this years Landfill Prize for sueless object.  You can enter here. Anyone who suggest my book gets a special prize.  This is last years top ten:

1 Motorised Ice-Cream Cone

For those too lazy to twist their wrists when eating an ice-cream, there is this stupid gadget. You pop your cone in it, stick your tongue out and it does all the hard work for you, ensuring no drips get onto your hand. You can even stick it in the dishwasher – no need to waste energy on washing up.

2 Plane Sheet

As if flying wasn’t bad enough for the environment, now irresponsible travellers can step up their wasteful footprint with this bizarre plane seat cover. Designed to “transform a tired, overused airline seat into a cozy, happy place… while keeping at bay germs, crumbs and spills from previous passengers”, this lurid example of bad taste will put any fears of catching the plague whilst flying at bay. You can even have it monogrammed. Classy.

3 Motorised fork

We would like to nominate a motorised spinning fork that twirls your noodles for you. It is much slower than using your own hand and we think it is useless and wasteful.

4 Folding Fishing Camping Chair

Just what every fisherman needs. No peace and quiet, but a folding fishing camping chair with four speakers.

5 USB Chameleon

My nomination is the USB powered Chameleon. I mean…. for goodness sakes, the damned thing doesn’t even change colour!

6 Nintendo Wii Fit

I don’t need to pay an extortionate amount of money to get fit – I can do it for free by stepping outside the front door and going for a walk. I can talk to my children or/and wife, listen to music or the wildlife or just think about how good life really is without all the gadgets and gizmos that people seem to attach so much importance to.

7 The Guitar Hero franchise

Rather than learn to play an actual instrument, you can now make a virtual cacophony on virtual instruments by pressing primary coloured buttons on a plastic guitar. (Was learning three chords really too difficult?) For a couple of hundred pounds you can complete the set, and get some friends over to play the plastic drums and plastic bass. There’s probably two or three whole minutes of fun to be had before the buyer’s remorse kicks in.

8 Digital Electronic Jumping Rope

Bored with your ropey old skipping rope? How about an electronic version with batteries in the handles, that counts the number of times you jump up and down and “calculates” how many calories you’ve burned? Of course, you could help to save the world by counting the number of times you skip before collapsing in a sweaty heap. As for the onboard calorie calculator, well, hmm: you can’t accurately gauge the number of calories you’ve burnt without making a highly complex guesstimate based on your weight, age, metabolic rate, skipping speed, etc, etc. But then that’s not the point of convoluted exercise gear. It’s supposed to motivate you to exercise for several days… until the “fun” wears off and it gets stuck in the back of a cupboard.

9 The Toyota Prius

I want to nominate the Toyota Pious (oops Prius), the so-called eco-friendly car, which actually comes with two engines. Is it a car or an overblown status symbol to make one look greener than you? How much energy does it actually take to make, use, and dispose of?

10 The Sat Nag

At £6.99 mocks the Sat Nav device, blasting its owner with 24 annoying comments.  Typical phrases include “You have reached your destination – you may now throttle your passenger.” It’s funny as your mother-in-law sat poking an umbrella in your ear hole.

A telephone box in Carshalton says it all.  The promise of liberation and happiness through another purchase; this time its a pair of new Nike trainers. Until of course you need a another revolution. They appropriate the language of the left and rebellion and sue it for capitalism. You can watch Thoe Walcott the Arsenal and England footballer in a promo video here being revolutionized by a tattoo while wearing his Nike shoe the left meanwhile offers no hope of revolution – just managerial-ism and the continuation of the neo-liberalism.  We need different trainers – people who can help train us to expect just a bit more from life.

How do you know when outrage against bankers is really real? When you read about it in normally right wing papers like the Daily Mail or the Sun?  No.  You know when something has gone from the margins to the mainstream when it is embraced by popular commercial culture. And last night I saw a fantastic example of this.

The market, lets remember, has no morality – it will sell anything it can.  Profit maximisation is all that is hard wired and pre-programmed into it. In this single minded cause it will c-opt and appropriate the icons of the left like Che Guevara, Lenin or Gorbachev to flog t-shirts, vodka or Burberry.  It likes us to feel we are being a bit daring – still radical but oh so chic.

Sometimes, and its not often, it will attack its own side.  Strongbow do just this in one of their latest adverts. It starts with a pre battle scene on a windswept hilltop like Gladiators or Braveheart but the ‘army’ are modern tradesman and businessmen. The ‘general’ walks between them reminding them why they are here – to raise their flagging spirits before the battle ahead. The roofers are there to give shelter to our families; the gas fitters to bring us warmth.  He turns to the bankers – and says “you are because  ….” He can’t think of a reason. Someone in the dense ranks shouts ‘sod off’.  There are more shouts to “sod off” and the general ways the bankers away.  The bankers are turfed out of the lines of  real workers to loud boos and one last responding cry of “sod off”.  The pay off line is “Bowtime – hard earned”.  You can watch it here.

The calculation in the ad agency and the company will have been that few bankers drink Strongbow so they can afford to be offended. But the advert, they hope, would appeal to just about everyone else who works hard and deserves their reward – unlike the fat cat bonus bandits of the City. The creators of the advert will have done their homework before releasing it; they will have  researched attitudes to the rich and bankers, they will have focused grouped  the ideas and tested different versions of the advert.  The advert appears only because they know people are outraged and are tapping into this anger to sell a few more pints of their sweet apple and alcohol drink. And of course they do it for one reason; to earn more money.  The executives at Strongbow and their agency will be amongst the top earners in the country.  Perhaps not as rich as the bankers but in the top 5% certainly.  Do they work any harder – do they add more to society than the bankers? Do they deserve their Bowtime?  It’s debatable.

Writing all this has made me thirsty and for some strange reason I fancy a pint of Strongbow.

The latest Microsoft adverts for Windows 7 are really annoying me.  They are trying to make out that I, we you helped invent it by making suggesting and that it makes us all more powerful – rather than just more reliant on their monolithic technology.  Here is a flavour of a  poster I saw on the the tube:

“I asked for fewer clicks. Now it takes fewer clicks
I’ve never been more influential”

Aaaaargh.  No you have never been more duped into splashing out on an upgrade for feature you don’t understand and will never use. And why am I pretending you even exist.  You don’t.  You are just an imaginary person made up by the MS advertising company.  This is all part of the new technique to make us think we co-produced the product and will therefore have more affinity to it. Very clever.

And another thing. I object to adverts on the tube.  Why should I have to look at commercial posters if I don’t want to.  Our cities and public transport should be free of this rubbish. More on this from Compass soon!

I should have put this up ages ago.  Its an exchange between Guardian journalist John Harris and Times journalist David Aaronovitch. Its a debate about the future of the left in which David calls me eccentric and then brilliantly says that I’m the ‘Mary Whitehouse of shopping’.  I should be so lucky David.  The debate starts here but dies because you need to subscribe to the magazine – which is fair enough. Mary, if you are old enough to remember, was a thorn in the side of what she perceived to be permissive broadcasting. I’m not sure what effect she had – but everyone knew who she was.  I’m not really sure I want that – but I’d settle for being a thorn in the side of turbo-consumerism.

This came in from David.  Its an offer you can refuse from a shopping website called Not On the Hight Street. I would say its priceless but it isn’t.  There maybe many wars going on, the environment, Afghanistan etc, but as long as we keep shopping for stuff like this it will all be okay.

Do send me pictures or links to anything you find.  You can get me at:  info@allconsuming.org.uk.  Thanks