I find personally that if you catch yourself committing acts of violence out shopping, then it’s a trigger for going home and having a nice cup of tea.
It’s nuts: we all know it. A friend who works in retail tells me about the calm that prevails for the fortnight before BF. Because that’s how it works. People hold off buying stuff until the big day, worked up to a pitch of covetousness by carefully calibrated advertising. And so, when it comes to the day, it’s like letting greyhounds out of a trap: all that pent-up will to purchase. It’s not extra spending; it’s displaced spending. So it doesn’t really benefit anyone.
And indeed, things do seem a little expensive prior to Black Friday, like the top shelves of wine in supermarkets where prices stay unnaturally high until, miraculously, they’re discounted by half a few weeks later and put at eye level. It’s a game: for shops and shoppers. And it’s ongoing. After Black Friday there’s Cyber Monday three days later. Yay!
This is, in the US, the day after Thanksgiving, so I can see there might be a rationale there for selling cut-price turkeys and pumpkin pie filling, to make space for the Christmas stuff. But this is Britain. We do not — yet — celebrate Thanksgiving, so there is no discernable justification for this bacchanal of discounting. My favourite Black Friday offer was in Holland Barrett: discount whey protein. Run!
There is something quite creepy about a retail culture in which no one seems willing to pay full price for anything, ever. What happens to quality, to ethical production standards, to shop wages when the discount season goes on all year? Once Black Friday or Cyber Monday, or whatever it is, is over, we’ll be onto the next round of sales.
Because, of course, this isn’t just one day. As a man from Dixons in Brentwood pointed out this morning, they’ve moved to an entire Black Week starting last Monday, to even out demand.
Our condition is one of perpetual willingness to shop in a calendar of discount opportunities. It’s like buying rugs in Istanbul, where the price you’re first quoted is, as both parties know, entirely notional, there to be argued down. Yet in a civilised Turkish bazaar there’s an etiquette of bargaining, a human exchange in which both parties have some actual idea of the value of the thing being purchased.
I like buying things too. Yesterday I got a lovely Herend china plate for seven quid... in a charity shop. A bargain, and no one got hurt and no one lost out.
Nigella needs a hair net more than gloves
Let’s see whether Nigella Lawson brings her Midas touch to latex gloves the way she did for avocados. As she says: “Once you start using them, you’d be surprised how often you find them invaluable.” I’m a soap-and-water person myself when it comes to mess, but each to her own.
But there’s one thing I do think she should consider with all that hair. I have quite a bit myself and I can tell you, reader, that if you don’t wear a net when you’re cooking, you’re bound to end up with hair in the food, and there is nothing more horrid.
This may, perhaps, diminish her appeal for those shallow viewers who watch the programme for the cook rather than the cooking but Miss Lawson will, I’m sure, feel this is less important than setting a good example. They do nice ones in Boots.
You’re welcome.
It’s a GCSE in nothing, then
The unbelievers got their way. A court ruling means the new GCSE in Religious Studies must include atheism, or the view that “there is no discernible purpose in the universe”.
It’s odd, this notion you can teach the absence of something. Or at least for long. The ad on the Atheist Bus, “There is probably no God so get on and enjoy your life”, pretty well sums up agnosticism and could probably be taught in one class.
I’m in favour of scripture lessons for all, myself.
We need a better class of atheist.
* Jeremy Corbyn is right about Syria. Wrong in his conclusions, mind you, but spot-on elsewhere.
Specifically, he has pointed out that the PM has not “been able to explain what credible and acceptable ground forces could retake and hold territory freed from IS control by an intensified air campaign.”
Well, indeed. David Cameron’s pronouncement yesterday that the UK could rely on 70,000 anti-Assad rebels to provide ground support should have floored MPs.
The quest for moderate, anti-Assad but also anti-IS forces in Syria is a bit like the hunt for the hippogriff or the unicorn. We know they’re out there but where? As Patrick Cockburn has pointed out on these pages, “a US general admitted it had just four such fighters in Syria after spending $500 million on training them”. Which means that apart from the Kurds, the only real option is to use Assad’s ground forces.
Mr C is right, too, that attacking IS would not “keep Britain safe”, but wrong to say it’s a reason not to strike. That’s a coward’s argument.
- More about:
- Black Friday
- Cyber Monday