AllConsuming.org.uk

I saw this on the side of a choclate vending machine. Its M&Ms.  It makes you wonder what they have in store, literally, for the uneducated consumer?

Isango! is a travel and experience company managed to get an email into my spam box.  It caught my eye amongst all the other virtual flotsam and jetsam because it was headed Ship till you drop. This is what it said:

“Treat yourself to a shopping expedition in Italy in this tour. Browse through the outlets of high fashion stores of Gucci and Prada and pick up some designer clothes at reduced prices. Discover the high world of fashion in Italy. Whether you want to update your wardrobe or reinvent your look, the tour ensures you get the best of what you are looking for.”

The home of the Renaissance and modern civilisation is now marketed as a shopping destination site.

Here is the in ternary:You are picked up from Piazza Stazione at the corner with Piazza dell’Unita.

Depart from Florence to reach the Prada outlet. After spending about an hour and half, proceed to the famous center The Mall. For the next two hours and forty five minutes, browse through the stores of the prestigious high fashion companies including: Gucci – Giorgio Armani – Fendi – Ferragamo – Y.S. Laurent – Valentino – Ungaro – Zegna – Bottega Veneta – Sergio Rossi – Loro Piana.

You can enjoy a snack at the pleasant Café in the Center.

At the end of the tour, you will be returned to Piazza Stazione at the corner with Piazza dell’Unita

But hey what’s so wrong with a bit of shopping.

I took this picture while ‘dumping’ some old electrical goods from my partner house. This sight of all this discarded ‘waste’ brings home to us just how much we throw away. Stuff is too cheap to fix and quickly becomes obsolete – through look or design. We must have the newest thing. The land fills get fuller, carbon emissions rise and we go on pretend we live a free and fulfilling life. I think it’s us that’s being wasted.

The report out today from Cambridge University on the state of primary education makes dismal reading.  Kids are under too much pressure, too early in their life. Schools are being dictated to and managed by central government.  The question is why? The government have been suckered into the politics of global competition; the human equivalent of the arms race. Other countries are churning out brighter and better kids so we have better out perform them.  The race to win a greater share of the market then trickles down.  From the nation fighting for its place every children and student has to fight for theirs.  Its school against school, university and university, parent against parent, teacher against teacher.  To win in this competitive system children have to go to the right primary, feeder junior, secondary and then university.  They are tested and sorted at every stage.  Along the way the rich get them tutored – the best school is never enough. This arms race of learning for earning has to stop.

I was at the cinema yesterday with my son Joe (witching Zombieland if you must know – he is 18 and I am 15.  And it was great fun with a brilliant cameo by Bill Murray. Damn the global entertainment industry seducing me into falsely enjoying myself).  Anyway they showed this advert for Chivas Regal. You can watch it here.  Its amazing stuff.  Sounds like its an advert for Ghandi or Mandela but its for blended whisky. How on earth are we to compete with that?

I’ve been watching the X Factor.  For the uninitiated who have something better to do with their Saturday evening i.e. a life it’s the ITV talent show judged by the zeitgeist figure of Simon Cowell. I watch with and for the kids – natch – I’m much too serious a person to be seen dead watching it for my own pleasure. But it’s easy to get swept up in. I can’t pretend I don’t enjoy it. It’s got human interest, drama and occasionally some talent.  It’s the tale of ordinary folk doing well or badly and it makes for great TV.

But of course its about selling a dream of fame and fortune.  Every kid wants to be a star.  Some of them can’t sing a note and are distraught and outraged at their rejection. After all you are nothing if you are not famous. X Factor is the epitome of a turbo-consuming society. It seduces us, eats up the space for any alternative and kids us we can all have it all.  The planet burns and poor get poorer but if you can be the next Girls Aloud then why not.

Two sub heads struck me in the press this weekend.  Both were in the Observers Music Monthly which I look forward to eagerly. The Sport and Food monthlies do little or me. The Women’s Monthly is better; good for over the top fashion and the article on the couples who have split up and why. Any way back to the sub-heads.  The first was in a Spandau Ballet feature. SB were the first stand out cool band I remember. Although they were for one wet Sunday afternoon watching the Janet Street-Porter youff show which exposed me to the new romantics for the first time.  Thrilling. At least until Tony Hadley revealed himself as a fat, Tory crooner.  The quote from the Spands was “kids have always spent what they have in haircuts, not on books by Karl Marx”.  Too right. And what a soppy haircut Karl had anyway. Consumer Capitalism 1, Communism 0.

The second quote was from a review of the Flaming Lips new album Embryonic which read “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to choose”. Blimey I wish I’d thought of that rather than just read it. Post materialism 2, turbo-consumerism 1.

I like the Music Monthly because at the back is a digest, with star ratings, of the best albums of the month.  It helps me feel I’m not missing out and still getting the best sounds. But the problem is there is just too much to keep up with. At the moment I’m really enjoying a ‘best of’ CD by the Jayhawks.  I mean listening to it like I used to listen to Joy Division when I was 17.  Playing it again and again. Well sort of. But I’ve got the Arctic Monkeys too and there isn’t the time.  And the reviews say I should get Monsters of Folk – but if I buy it I wont really get round to listening to that either.  Then there are the books and DVDs. There is just too much stuff. Charlie Brooker writes about it here.  I read the first para but there isn’t time to read the rest.

PS; I’ve not been blogging much. Was at the Labour conference getting ‘disappointed’ according to the New Statesman. I promise to do better as I enjoy this. Tomorrow I’m gonna write about X factor.  Promise.

The solution to the world recession, of climate change, growing inequality, the social recession and the death of politics – is to get Chinese shoppers to buy more.  At least that is the recommendation of Gordon Brown to the G20. We can’t, it seems, any longer rely on the US consumer to get the world economy going again, now we need the Chinese. It raises a number of interesting questions:

1. Is the model of turbo-consumption the one we want to export?
2. Indeed do we even want it for ourselves?
3. Just because we’ve ‘enjoyed’ growth – is there a moral duty to encourage others to also ‘enjoy’ it?
4. Or is this just about UK exports?
5. Can the plant take it?
6. Is it inevitable that we all end up on the treadmill or more?
7. Why couldn’t Brown follow the argument of Sarkozy for well-being to replace GDP as the measure of national success?

Pessimism or optimism; what’s your bag? At times it feels like a terrible world. The planet burns and the poor get poorer and nothing it seems can be done. The frustration is in the gap between what is needed and could be done and what actually is done. Change is needed, desperately; lots of people want change but our political class have become too timid. Too many people still want to shop.

But then things happen, they always do. The first black man get elected in the USA, a political revolution takes place in Japan, the Chair of the Financial Services Authority calls for a tax on the speculative activity in the City,  the moderate Labour backbencher Paddy Tipping calls for a maximum wage and President Sarkozy calls for a general well being index to replace GDP as the indicator of governmental success. The last three ideas have been knocking around the fringes of politics for years. All of a sudden they are ideas that are in or near the mainstream.  What was impossible suddenly seems at least possible.

That is the problem with the possible, it’s just round the corner and we can see it until its there. That’s why we have to keep looking, pushing and struggling for a better world. It’s nearer than we think.

I was walking along my road on Saturday morning to get the paper (the Guardian of course).  Two things happened. First a motor bike courier pulled up in the front of a female cyclist.  I was expecting some terrible row about dangerous cycling or driving and was starting to think about whether and how to intervene if there was trouble.  The courier pulled off his helmet and the cyclist looked quizzically and then burst into a huge smile. The two then embraced – long lost friends had bumped into each other.  The pleasure was palpable. Walking back, with my paper they were still busy catching up. The joy seemed exquisite.

On a bit from our two friends re-united in a row of houses one stuck out – for the very good reason that it was already plastered in Christmas lights.  My heart sunk. The season to splurge has begun, as it always does ridiculously early. Its a social act to decorate ones house with lights but its also an act of consumption and a symbol of the shopping frenzy to come.

There in a few steps the contrast between what really makes us happy and what keep us on the treadmill.