Nov. 2020; A fool, and his money are easily parted

Growing up in the rather less than glitzy South East of central London, my Nan was always bestowing tiny pearls of wisdom upon me, most oftentimes in the form of one-liner idioms and colloquial expressions. A penny saved is a penny earned. Sound as a pound. Born with a silver spoon in your mouth, or poor as a church mouse. We were far from a well-off family when I was a kid. We mended the holes in our clothes instead of buying new ones, and shoes had to be falling off us before we got a new pair, but we were never hungry and I never really heard arguments about money or financial troubles. Now I’m older and I realise just how expensive things are, rent and groceries and running a car and feeding noisy little monster kids, and I appreciate my being shielded from all that stuff growing up. But life was definitely more church mouse than silver spoon. (Although my Nan did have a silver cutlery set and fine bone china crockery in the display cabinet of her small flat, saying “this is reserved for when the queen comes round for tea.”) (The old cow never did.)

It seems that now, with the everyday use of smart phones and computers and blah blah blah, our senses are bamboozled with a never ending array of ways for us to part with our hard earned cash. From the moment we wake up and glance our eyes over our phone screens, to the posters in the elevator, the side of buses or the inside of taxis and even the swingy handle things inside the metro, companies and businesses and perfectly photoshopped skinned models are all offering us the deal of the century. Save 30% on your life insurance when you sign up for 5 years. Become radiantly beautiful overnight by using this skin cream. Your kid will be a 100% grade A midget genius if you make him take these online lessons. In fact we are so absolutely inured to seeing these vividly colourful claims of blatant lies that they mostly don’t even enter our minds. Or do they…..?

Let’s think of a company. A big one. Coca Cola, there you go. Now Coca Cola is one of the worlds biggest brands, with a 2019 revenue of over $37 billion dollars. Not bad. So, why does one of the worlds biggest and most popular brands still feel the need to advertise so blatantly? On TV, internet, clothes and billboards and sports teams, there’s that big swirly white lettering. Henry Ford once said “stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.“ But surely, if they stopped advertising tomorrow we’d all still be buying their vile sugar-poison in a can? Enter; Subconscious suggestion. This power of suggestion is based on the psychological mechanism that whatever the subconscious accepts, it acts on. We see Coca Cola on some dumb app advert, and we ignore it. But when we get thirsty and we go to the fridge at 7-11, what’s gonna stand out the most to our impressionably minded selves? You got it. Our brains take in this myriad of constant advertising dishwater without us even knowing it, and store it in our wobbly grey stuff for later. (Ever wondered why we can’t remember what we had for lunch 2 days ago, but we can remember all the lyrics to a pop song from 20 years previous? That’s your subconscious doing it’s thing.) Advertising companies have teams of experts who cunningly know exactly how to use these kinds of long held forgotten memories against us, in a bid to win our custom, our brand loyalty, and most importantly, our money. Advertising works. We like the logo or we like the song they use, or we like the celebrity they manipulate and how they pander to our current likes and dislikes. (*Side note; does anybody truly believe that these actresses, singers, sports people etc. actually use or eat this crap? You think that size 2 ravishing white skinned beauty really eats that much KFC?! Or that millionaire actor actually drives a BMW?! But still, we worship them like modern day gods. But, I digress.)

We see that wise looking, white bearded old European gentleman on the adverts for sofas and wooden tables and other expensive furniture. You’ve seen him. Does anybody really believe he’s some mastercraft artisan furniture geezer? Or the fake blond woman with the great white shark smile on the kids online English lessons advert? (She really needs to dye her roots.) These people are just models, probably washed up out of work wannabe thespians who live on cup noodles and the cheapest beer on the shelf and steal tea bags from hotel rooms. But we still believe it. We want to believe it. Watch almost any show on TV here and you’ll notice endless product placements, yoghurt and crisps and mobile phones and more, and all this sneaks in to our subconscious mind and chills there for a while, until the next time we’re in the supermarket or electronics store or thinking about replacing the sofa. (*Side note; wouldn’t it be nice to see Jackie Chan or someone on a TV advert saying “Kids! Eat more green leafy vegetables and talk respectfully to your mother!”) (*Side side note; If you want to know what food is healthy for you and what’s not, ask yourself this; Does it have an advert? If it does, it’s not healthy. Go get an apple.)

The power of suggestion works best when it’s being subtle, but we are now about to embark on the most lurid and repugnant of all recent national traditions to me; the dreaded 11.11. Now I know I may be hearing some booing and hissing right now, but 11.11 to me is the most diabolical and vulgar day in the yearly calendar. Let’s take a look; So it’s November 11th, and you’re a sad, single, lonely loser of a lifeform, and you’re not alone. There’s tens of millions of others just like you, all yearning desperately for some kind of comfort to console yourself with the endless nights of sleeping alone, waking up from a bad dream with nobody there to hold you, the take away dinners for one in front of the TV, and somehow the need to own a cat. (BTW; Cats are bitches. Stop your internal dialogue, end of argument.) Some bright spark brainbox in an office thinks of a way to exploit and cash-in on this inner misery, and abracadabra 11.11 day is born. So instead of seeking solace in the strong arms or warm bosom of another human being, we SPEND SPEND SPEND our misery pennies on boxes of tempo tissues, hotel size cartons of sanitary towels, cell phones and air conditioning units and enough make up to plaster over our anguished and agonized faces, as we swallow and duly choke on the tears of despair. (*Side note; I love writing this dramatic drivel, makes me wish there was some loud, ominous cathedral organ music playing as it’s read out loud.) 

In all seriousness, I find 11.11 a rather vulgar concept. People make up wishlists of things to buy weeks or even months in advance, the shops jack up the prices to compensate, maybe you save a few quid here and there but the delivery guys are working like 24 hour slaves, the countries air pollution rises by unknown amounts from all the extra transport needed, and YOU SEND HALF OF IT BACK ANYWAY!!!!! I see now that even places like Hong Kong and further afield have started doing 11.11 day promotions in-store, but thankfully most of it all happens in e-commerce cyberspace land. I can’t imagine what China would be like if the sales resembled those of Black Friday in the US, people near killing each other for a half price TV set or electric toothbrush. Madness.

Consumerism is alive and well, and the economy needs it. We buy stuff we don’t need, often on credit, then we have to work hard to make that money back, pay the credit cards, work a little overtime and pay more of that lovely tax stuff. A very well designed circular system. The sign of a good economy is people spending money like drunken lords. Thankfully our domestic economy here is doing very well, despite the pretty awful year 2020 has been for the whole world. This weeks Sunday scribble has no pearls of wisdom like my Nan used to pass down to me, no secret messages or enigmatic speeches about being a better human. But on 11.11 let’s be grateful to the delivery drivers busting their asses and risking their lives to deliver our crap to us, and perhaps we could give a little tip to them. And much more importantly, let’s spare a few moments thought for the people around this big blue and green rock of ours who really are struggling through the adverse effects of this terrible year. People who have lost jobs and lost family, but trying not to lose hope. We are very lucky, very blessed, to be where we are, in the situation we are in.

And I was joking about the cat thing, I like cats. (But they really are bitches.)