Our lives being governed by the retail

Hmm, M&S had their big £5 tins of shortbread in the other day - the kind they invariably stock for Christmas.

Must confess to buying one. I'm not mad keen on shortbread but dh likes it, and I do find the tins very useful. Particularly for batches of homemade mince pies, not to mention the fairy cakes etc. I always make for Gdcs' birthday parties, mega-batches of my very cheesy cheese straws, etc.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201908/medium-268139-coral.jpg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201908/medium-785830-healthy-coral.jpg

Last night I listened to an excellent DVD on the Australian Barrier Reef.

Because of our insatiable craving for sugar, more and more cane fields are being built.
The run-off of fertilisers from them leaches into the sea and is ideal for the over-growth of the Crown of Thorns Starfish, which is systematically devastating corals.

It showed the wasteland left behind by thousands of these beasties; it looked like the aftermath of a nuclear war.

Before and after pictures attached.

Think about that when you are shopping for Christmas chocolates and maybe even consider supporting one of the many charities working towards saving our oceans.

Being an eco-angel is not just about refusing to use plastic bags.

I can't say it bothers me - I don't feel manipulated. A lot of people like to spread the cost. I wouldn't normally buy anything C-word-ish until November, though I did buy some C cards at a seaside RNLI shop in July. Oh, and I ordered a C present the other day - a dinosaur book for Gds, having seen a recommendation for it - otherwise I'd probably forget.

Let's just hope I don't now put it away somewhere safe - and then forget where I,put it, or even that I bought it at all - which has occasionally happened with very early C-present purchases....

And we think our kids are pressured! I suppose people in China are brought up being influenced and believing government advertising and that's having a knock on effect with western style commercial advertising. Get this handbag or you're a failure.

I was talking to a young Chinese woman at work today. She told me that in China, young people (mainly girls) crave designer products so badly that they borrow thousands to get them (I'm talking on the lines of a Chanel bag for a 21 year old). When they can't pay back, they are forced into illegal activity, and can end up in real trouble.

She told me a very sad tale of a friend of hers who borrowed money with pornographic pictures of herself as surety. When she couldn't pay, the photos were sent to her parents and friends (whose numbers she had given in order to get the money), and posted on her social media accounts. All to get a designer handbag. It's madness.

I have never met the girl in question, but I can't stop thinking about her, and what a terrible price she paid for something that she has basically been tricked into thinking she needs.

You can't buy 2nd hand chocolate though

I do want some cholcolate now!

granny4hugs
I was in a small shop on Friday, well known now on the High Street, and did buy something I needed.

However, there was a young mum in the shop, looking through women's clothes fairly randomly. In her wake were two small, miserable little boys. One, aged about 7, said plaintively "Mummy, we're supposed to be on holiday having fun and all we're doing is going in shops!" She grabbed their hands and marched them out of the shop- I did hope that they spent the rest of the holiday having fun!

I don't shop very often but there are often families trailing miserable little children around a shopping centre on a lovely day.

I've still got two large unopened Christmas tubs of chocolates from last year. Keep meaning to check the use by dates.

Pamela, that'd be pretty low and cynical of our cherished governments and saintly NHS wouldn't it? Allow us to be swamped with opportunities to get our fat/sugar/alcohol fixes while they rub their hands together at the profit flooding to them as a result? Surely not...

But it seems very true, judging by the absolute rubbish on sale in the hospital shop I visited this afternoon. I was so shocked that I took photographs! Shame on the NHS. They need to stop simultaneously preaching healthy diets and peddling, and profiting from, junk "food".

Happiyogi- it’s slightly off thread but Michael Burke was featured in the newspapers the other day.
Apparently slim, fit people who live a long life cost the country more than the drinkers, smokers and the obese all of whom pay lots of tax and die at a younger age. See the other thread on the subject.

No-one has mentioned the joys of being a second-hand shopper, nothing you buy adds to the mound of things already on the planet.

Perhaps because DH's family were antique dealers, perhaps because my grandmother's asthma meant she spent holidays and odd days in Brighton for the benefit of her health and spent her time searching through the antique shops in the lanes, we have always thought second hand before we thought new. We cannot resist a junk shop or auction sale. Furniture gets swapped round our family like other people swap clothes.

Looking round the house I am hard pushed to find any furniture where we were the first owner. Oh, yes, we had a new sofa last year, after the previous one fell to bits. Our house is over 500 years old (so it construction was emission free), our cars at least 10 years old and run until they are scrapped.

We even now deal in antiques as a hobby, DH spent a blameless day yesterday at an auction sale buying stock for our next outing with our stall to an antiques fair.

Greytin nooooooo, not the purple ones! My fave ones.?

BradfordLass and day6 and Mamacaz .....there’s something about a Yorkshire upbringing that never leaves you isn’t there? ?In my case, I think hearing the expression
‘HOW much?!’ Said by relatives in a incredulous tone, buying anything from a pound of carrots to new dining room furniture, leaves it’s mark.
I don’t mind spending money but do want good value for money.Adults also talked of ‘not spending good money on THAT’ and I had an old uncle who always paid cash and wanted a great discount, if it wasn’t to his liking then he said
‘Then I’ll bid you good day’ turn on his heel and walk out.

Yes, drugs are different to sugar and fat products. Though, as I said some consider sugar to be an addictive and harmful drug.

For the time being, sugar junkies buy in supermarkets and those seeking drugs go to the street. Though there are moves to legalise some drugs so presumably they'd move indoors too.

I wondered which category costs the NHS more, so had a quick look. Latest figures seem to be 2014 and a Telegraph article reported that diabetes prescriptions were costing NHS £2.2m DAILY at that time.

You're right, I don't want to buy either of the categories! But neither do I feel comfortable just allowing market forces to have free rein and make any old harmful junk easily available - just so long as there's a profit to be made.

Happiyogi, I presume that I meant to point out that some people want to buy them.
You may not, I don’t either so I just ignore it. After the first OMG I don’t let it bother me.

Re: drugs- a slightly different subject I think.

Just in case my Yorkshire (and Scottish) reluctance to part with money isnt enough, I have recently started to remind myself to think of our planet and the environment if I am tempted to buy anything frivolous! ?

...Unless, of course, you come from Yorkshire and have never regarded depleting the bank account as any kind of therapy but more like pulling teeth without anaesthetic.

That's me, BradfordLass

I think you are over pessimistic granny4hugs, Most household debt is mortgage debt and something like 45% of all credit card holders pay off the full balance on their card every month. Household debt, is around £2,600, an astronomic amount if you are in the bottom 10% of earners, but for many households,with two incomes coming in, this amount of debt is not unbearable, anyway that is the average and the distribution probably shows that the bigger the income the bigger the debt

You may find this link interesting www.finder.com/uk/credit-card-statistics

I heard a young woman spouting on the radio about consumerism and she said 'we are never not shopping'. And I thought - don't be silly. Then I looked around me next time I was out and she is right of many people. They are either shopping real-time or browsing online. It is an illness. Debt in this country is out of control and easy cheap credit means that regardless of whether a person has the actual money they can buy pretty much what they like. It is making people ill and it certainly makes me sick...

Grandad Please send me some black market sausages.

New Zealand has TWO Christmases.
Since 19th century, British Kiwis have celebrated a mid-winter Christmas in July/August.

Turkeys, hams and mince pies and other Christmas goods, come into the shops May/June.

Xmas trees go up in restaurants who put on special mid- winter Xmas dinners.

The early settlers, finding it unsettling to have Christmas in hot weather, devised this idea.

One thing people on this thread have not suggested, which surprises me, is what messages we are giving our children and grand-children by pandering to their (quite natural in kids) greed?

If you have a large family, does everyone buy a gift for the children?

Do they then get 6, 10, 30 gifts just because every aunt, gran, relative, friend must buy something?

That's what breeds a generation of consumers and leads to the dis-ease of 'retail therapy'.

You don't need me to tell you, but I will anyway, that Oxfam, World Vision, Trade Aid, Greenpeace, Animal Rescue, Help for Heroes, and a myriad other charities, all have vouchers and cards to give to a child which shows your donation - and that there's a needy world outside their own.
Far more in tune with the real message of Christmas.

Moreover, you don't need to struggle round the shops or spend a fortune (unless you wish) and get crackers about crackers in August.

PamelaJ1, "If the goods didn't sell they wouldn't be there" doesn't automatically mean they SHOULD be there. (Try this alternative: "If the drugs didn't sell they wouldn't be there". Who would you blame - the pusher or the addict?)

We've also got used to thinking that if any given situation turns a profit, then it's OK. It's become our only means of measuring success, which is shortsighted of us because a finite world can't for ever yield profit. Resources dry up and disappear - and then what?

The world would be a better place if we stopped measuring everything in terms of profit! (And some experts consider sugar to be as addictive and harmful as drugs.) Maybe we shouldn't think it's our duty to buy everything the supermarkets offer us in their desperation to return a profit to their shareholders. "Do I NEED this, or do I just WANT it?"

Sorry, but the Collective Christmas Madness gets to me every year and it's started even earlier than usual!

On the subject of hot cross buns.

You can buy them in almost every supermarket all year round.
I buy a pack each week from Asda.
Tesco, also have them. Aldi, etc.
I don’t think anything is now seasonal.

I would much rather see Christmas stuff sold during the month of December only, November at the very earliest, but with money being so thin on the ground these days for so many families, being able to buy some stuff earlier is helpful.

Craftycat is correct.
Supermarket shelves have to bring in the money. They even charge companies more for the position they want to be in on the shelf.
If the goods didn’t sell they wouldn’t be there.
Of course gransnetters don’t buy them but ‘someone’ certainly does.

I agree, it’s all too much.