TV Money School.

Glazing out over TV adverts I noticed a pattern. Obviously, though not necessarily beneficial to the viewer, 60% are about the virtues of spending money; never ending happiness, undreamt of joy, attraction to the opposite sex, that sort of thing. The other 40% are how to acquire said money. These include PPI repayments, injury insurance claiming, lotteries and gambling and payday loans. The gist is get money for nothing and spend it all. Now call me old fashioned but I earned money, saved it and only spent it on what I deemed necessary. I noticed there were no advert about not spending, on saving and on working and acquiring the skills to earn it. The impression is it will come in as a cheque from ‘Injury Lawyers for You’ and go out on a myriad of products to make you or your bathroom look ten years younger. But there seems something a tad unsustainably about this scenario. For one why bother going to school after you’ve learnt to fill in a claims form and enter six numbers on a lottery ticket? Why earn money when you can get it for free or can borrow it? Why save money when nobody’s explained the concept? And for, I think this is four, why resist the urge to spend when everyone wants you to buy everything? And everyone else on TV lives in Kensington and can afford to spend money like it’s golden rain. But of course reality kicks in and you feel shafted on the way to Lidl’s for a tin of beans. ‘Why can’t I get £5,000 for twisting my ankle on a discarded Magnum wrapper from Waitrose?’ along with a thousand other rhetorical questions. Is it that you’ve been set up to think that way by adverts? But here’s the rub. All those cunningly conceived ads are beginning to backfire. Nobody’s got any money to spend anymore apart from the top 5% and they can’t eat more than one restaurant meal a day or buy a hundred times the average amount of toiletries. And companies can’t find skilled workers because they’re too busy filling in bogus claim forms, and you don’t need to work or know stuff when you can get money for nothing. I know that because I learnt it at TV Money School.

Heads I win, Tails you can’t.

As Princetown’s academics prove America is not a democracy anymore, rather closer to an oligarcy, I wonder where we go from here. It seems the rules have changed while we’ve not been paying attention. The rules are now being made by the top 1%. It will soon be illegal to refuse to buy whatever they are making a profit on. If I don’t buy enough Coca-Cola’s in any one year they will be able to sue me for loss of income. If I refuse to purchase X dozen disposable nappies reasoning my children are pushing forty they can still charge me for restricting their future profits. This is heads I pay them, tails I pay them. It sounds ludicrous but if we’ve let them make the rules you’ve got to admit it’s a pretty neat rule. Imagine going to B&Q and the auto check-out machine says, “In order for us to maintain our projected profit growth for the current year your purchases must total £523.30. As your current total is £252.50 you must spend a  further £270.80 or incur a loss of profits charge of £221.15. This charge will be automatically deducted from your account on the 31^st December 2016. Thankyou for shopping at B&Q.” So there’s your choice, buy stuff or get charged for not doing. You can’t opt out because that’s the law, you can refuse but you’d end up in court. And anyway who are you to unfairly restrict corporate profit? A terrorist? So how can we put the shoe on the other foot? Interesting problem. OK their legal logic is it’s unjust to restrict the corporate right to earn a profit; if there is profit to be made I am legally obliged to let them. Now under the common law’s recognition of quid pro quo, where something of value must be exchanged for something else of value, this concession between corporate and individual must be exchanged for a similar concession between individual and corporate. Might this be, “It is unjust to restrict the individual’s right to take readily available goods even if said individual doesn’t have the money to pay for them.” That seems to even things up heads and tails wise. 

Taking it Out on Me.

Well not me: There’s been a rise of 70% in youngsters, 10 to 14, self-harming in two years. So how do I identify with that? A spokeswoman said, “It is the pressures of the modern world and some of these pressures are unprecedented.” Something about that reading irks me. It quietly condones “the pressures of the modern world” as noble and being unable to cope with them as failure. It’s a view of ‘us and them’ from our adult ego protecting itself. Where we as adults create situations these youngsters are in the hands of the situations we create. And we have created the toxicity, not pressure, that they are responding to, and not in ‘the modern world’ but a malignant world of our making. They are only manifesting ‘the toxicity of the malignant world’ of our adult creation. The answer is not in helping young minds cope with their problems but to blast the cancerous cobwebs out of our old minds. Not a few poorly performing parents, the next scapegoats on the list, but our minds. How are we in a miriad of different ways providing a toxic environment for this next generation? Kids often blame themselves because they haven’t sufficient understanding of what is being done to them and self harming, ‘taking it out on me’, is a perfect example. As a Rogers organism all they know is something is wrong. It’s up to us as adults to see the toxicity we’re creating and put it right. 

How to be the Centre of Attention.

Right now you’re probably thinking along traditional lines, telling jokes at a party, singing ‘I did it her way’ or disrobing due to surfeit of alcohol. Of course old school always works but TV has rendered them a bit samie what with East Enders and Big Brother etc. It’s all a bit keeping up with the Kardasians who, though I haven’t seen it, are probably congenitally programmed to grab the spotlight of one’s awareness like an oncoming drunk driver. But there are more subtle ways. Last week at Spirit Camp I decided to wear a mini skirt. It felt delightful, very free and flappy compared with the masculine tubes of shorts and jeans. It may sound feminine but, as I realised later, it was close to the look of the Indian braves I used to shoot as a kid; both apropos the occasion and decidedly macho. And it caused me much attention especially from women, who, instinctively knowing the greater availability offered by a skirt, took to sexually harassing me. Luckily as the gender roles were reversed it was mutually pleasurable rather than grounds for prosecution. But there’s an even subtler way to be the centre of attention. Buy a pair of reading glasses and leave the little sticker on showing the strength. Honestly it’s like moths to a flame. People have been queuing up to tell me I’ve left the sticker on. “I know!” I’ve had to explain countless times I bought two pairs, ‘2’ and another ‘2.5’ and to know which was which I’ve left the sticker on. It’s simple enough but no, it causes attention like you wouldn’t believe. I tell you if Paris Hilton ever appeared with a sticker on her glasses she’d break twitter and when Madonna wants to make a come back, forget the ice-cream cone bras girl, leave the sticker on your glasses!