Well, I have dealt with the morning post, been to the shops for the things I forgot to order from Sainsbury's, put some flowers in the dining room -- some mini Gladioli, they're very pretty -- and have settled down to write my second blog entry to the strains (sp?) of Verdi, after having eaten a rather yummy cinnamon whirl. I have also just been reminded of The Telegraph business section's leader of a few months ago which told us that the CEO of the London Stock Exchange was refusing to sell it to NASDAQ, hence the 'Furse Says No'. All is set.
In the spirit of intelligent journalism (perhaps that's worth a try after all), 'Furse Says No', and money, the topic of buying things has been active in my mind. I saw in Tesco this morning a toaster for £3.75. I don't normally shop in Tesco you understand, that statistic about £1 in every £8 in the UK is spent in Tesco has put me off. Also I much prefer Sainsbury's. Anyway, I needed a few bits and a new one has opened next to the post office where I sent out this morning's letters, so in I went. It's all right as they go, a normal sort of tiny supermarket that has one of most things, but not the one of it you normally buy or at the price you normally buy it so one is invited to try something slightly different but at a greater cost. Except for the toaster which costs £3.75 of course. I have no idea how much they normally cost, I haven't been to enough weddings as an adult and been unoriginal enough to buy an instrument for cooking wheat a second time so I don't know. £3.75 does seem very small though.
It reminded me of the Ikea debate. That's not the one about how it's pronounced -- that being Ick-ey-a, not Eye-key-a as most people pronounce it -- but about the things they sell. I have been twice, well to two once each and don't regret it but it does make me frown slightly. Firstly, they are a successful international company which manages to be so without, as far as I know, any sales over the Internet. A rare beast these days. More importantly something one of my colleagues said when a few of us talked about Ikea in the office has stuck with me. "It's so easy to spend money there". Why should that be? Presumably it's because it seems like good value and so one picks things up, thinking 'oh I could do with one of those'. Very understandable. The trouble with cheap things, in my prejudice/opinion is that they are crap. Based on the idea that you get what you pay for (one of three pearls of wisdom from my late grandmother, though the other two were more original I think), and market economics, if it's cheap it can't be as well put together as something that is well made and therefore more expensive. I have often said, and I still believe it to an extent despite it sounding a bit self-important out of context: "crap stuff annoys me". Well, it does. You buy something cheaply, try and use it and it breaks or doesn't work properly, that's just a waste of time and effort, and possibly a lot else, and you need another one. As a PhD student, I am not all that flushed any of the time -- I wasn't as an undergraduate either, but I decided I wanted to invest in things that I needed, would use again and again, and that would last longer if I didn't buy crap things. Well, I did that with a dinner service. Well I call it a dinner service, it's a collection of crockery, cutlery and flatware, and kitchen utensils that I liked that I put together for my own use. I spent a few hundred pounds, much to the annoyance of my mother who showed her renewed disappointment in me by refusing to support me any further at University. What she refused to listen to was that in the coming years she in fact cost me money when hers and my father's income went up, my means tested student loan promptly going very sharply down, but that's beside the point. So the purchase of my own kitchen stuff was a false economy in that respect, however, I have recently got most of it back after it being stored with a friend for the last nine months or so. I bought it just over six years ago, it has moved with me countless times since then and is all pretty much still as I bought it. Had I been to Ikea I would have spent a third or half as much -- ignoring the delivery costs I would have incurred, which would have made it the same amount, but let's not go there. Leaving out style issues, I would have had cutlery and flatware with plastic handles, plates that are too small and too easy to spill from, but most importantly it would all have been crap and broken twice over by now. The up-side is that I could have thrown it away and bought new things quite easily. It probably wouldn't have been worth it for me financially though one does have a responsibility to help make the good stuff last. But which would you have chosen -- Ikea or John Lewis?
I don't regret my decision, but I don't like regretting things and actively try not to -- chiefly by only doing what I think is best at the time and not thinking 'what if...'. Another little thing it brings me on to, if you'll forgive me, is decadence. It's one of those things that we have mental images of but seems miles and miles away from ourselves. We think of lounging Romans, reports written by socialist revolutionaries in France in the early 18th century about their aristocracy's behaviour, and of cartoons in Punch about the Kings George of the House of Hannover here in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, how do we know we are not decadent? Will Self -- who makes as many mistakes as anyone else -- once said that we live in a decadent society. I think the word society is unhelpful because despite what The Guardian says it doesn't actually exist -- by virtue of that word being abused to describe pretty much anything from random people on the street to whole countries and cultures (that's another blog all to itself I think). Anyway, Self said that we are decadent because of our attitude to money: consumerism. We buy some food, it comes in a packet, we throw the empty packet away and neither think nor care about it any further. Is that what happens when we buy cheap (and crap) flatware from Ikea, and throw it away a year later when it breaks? Or am I decadent for spending twice or three times as much on what I think of as stylish stainless steel and crockery from John Lewis? It's hard to believe that the French aristocracy had cheap eating utensils that broke quickly and were unstylish, but easy to believe that they were decadent; it's harder to believe that we are decadent now, despite the effect on the environment of throwing away the cheap stuff that breaks quickly. So which would you go for?
In the spirit of intelligent journalism (perhaps that's worth a try after all), 'Furse Says No', and money, the topic of buying things has been active in my mind. I saw in Tesco this morning a toaster for £3.75. I don't normally shop in Tesco you understand, that statistic about £1 in every £8 in the UK is spent in Tesco has put me off. Also I much prefer Sainsbury's. Anyway, I needed a few bits and a new one has opened next to the post office where I sent out this morning's letters, so in I went. It's all right as they go, a normal sort of tiny supermarket that has one of most things, but not the one of it you normally buy or at the price you normally buy it so one is invited to try something slightly different but at a greater cost. Except for the toaster which costs £3.75 of course. I have no idea how much they normally cost, I haven't been to enough weddings as an adult and been unoriginal enough to buy an instrument for cooking wheat a second time so I don't know. £3.75 does seem very small though.
It reminded me of the Ikea debate. That's not the one about how it's pronounced -- that being Ick-ey-a, not Eye-key-a as most people pronounce it -- but about the things they sell. I have been twice, well to two once each and don't regret it but it does make me frown slightly. Firstly, they are a successful international company which manages to be so without, as far as I know, any sales over the Internet. A rare beast these days. More importantly something one of my colleagues said when a few of us talked about Ikea in the office has stuck with me. "It's so easy to spend money there". Why should that be? Presumably it's because it seems like good value and so one picks things up, thinking 'oh I could do with one of those'. Very understandable. The trouble with cheap things, in my prejudice/opinion is that they are crap. Based on the idea that you get what you pay for (one of three pearls of wisdom from my late grandmother, though the other two were more original I think), and market economics, if it's cheap it can't be as well put together as something that is well made and therefore more expensive. I have often said, and I still believe it to an extent despite it sounding a bit self-important out of context: "crap stuff annoys me". Well, it does. You buy something cheaply, try and use it and it breaks or doesn't work properly, that's just a waste of time and effort, and possibly a lot else, and you need another one. As a PhD student, I am not all that flushed any of the time -- I wasn't as an undergraduate either, but I decided I wanted to invest in things that I needed, would use again and again, and that would last longer if I didn't buy crap things. Well, I did that with a dinner service. Well I call it a dinner service, it's a collection of crockery, cutlery and flatware, and kitchen utensils that I liked that I put together for my own use. I spent a few hundred pounds, much to the annoyance of my mother who showed her renewed disappointment in me by refusing to support me any further at University. What she refused to listen to was that in the coming years she in fact cost me money when hers and my father's income went up, my means tested student loan promptly going very sharply down, but that's beside the point. So the purchase of my own kitchen stuff was a false economy in that respect, however, I have recently got most of it back after it being stored with a friend for the last nine months or so. I bought it just over six years ago, it has moved with me countless times since then and is all pretty much still as I bought it. Had I been to Ikea I would have spent a third or half as much -- ignoring the delivery costs I would have incurred, which would have made it the same amount, but let's not go there. Leaving out style issues, I would have had cutlery and flatware with plastic handles, plates that are too small and too easy to spill from, but most importantly it would all have been crap and broken twice over by now. The up-side is that I could have thrown it away and bought new things quite easily. It probably wouldn't have been worth it for me financially though one does have a responsibility to help make the good stuff last. But which would you have chosen -- Ikea or John Lewis?
I don't regret my decision, but I don't like regretting things and actively try not to -- chiefly by only doing what I think is best at the time and not thinking 'what if...'. Another little thing it brings me on to, if you'll forgive me, is decadence. It's one of those things that we have mental images of but seems miles and miles away from ourselves. We think of lounging Romans, reports written by socialist revolutionaries in France in the early 18th century about their aristocracy's behaviour, and of cartoons in Punch about the Kings George of the House of Hannover here in England in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, how do we know we are not decadent? Will Self -- who makes as many mistakes as anyone else -- once said that we live in a decadent society. I think the word society is unhelpful because despite what The Guardian says it doesn't actually exist -- by virtue of that word being abused to describe pretty much anything from random people on the street to whole countries and cultures (that's another blog all to itself I think). Anyway, Self said that we are decadent because of our attitude to money: consumerism. We buy some food, it comes in a packet, we throw the empty packet away and neither think nor care about it any further. Is that what happens when we buy cheap (and crap) flatware from Ikea, and throw it away a year later when it breaks? Or am I decadent for spending twice or three times as much on what I think of as stylish stainless steel and crockery from John Lewis? It's hard to believe that the French aristocracy had cheap eating utensils that broke quickly and were unstylish, but easy to believe that they were decadent; it's harder to believe that we are decadent now, despite the effect on the environment of throwing away the cheap stuff that breaks quickly. So which would you go for?
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