RING, RING - ANYONE THERE?
We all know that Christmas is coming, but the local stores seem determined to convince us that advent calendars should start much earlier. I wanted to buy some gardening stuff from our local supermarket in mid-October, only to find that it had all been removed and replaced with the usual festive assembly of toys, books, DVDs, CDs, yuletide confectionary, booze and much, much too much to eat - all lovingly presented in a deluge of cardboard, plastic and other environmentally-hostile forms of packaging. Save the planet? Don`t make me laugh.
It`s all the falseness that bothers me - the insincerity - the grasping, relentless commercialism of it all, which plays on people`s guilt and expectations. I`m fed up with the rampant materialism that seeks to persuade us that you have to spend loads of money in order to have a good time or, more chillingly, for others to like us. Sorry, I don`t buy it - literally. Humbug.
But I guess I shouldn`t be surprised in a society that, for example, permits TV phone-ins so you can rack up a hefty phone bill by answering multiple-choice questions of such banality that they wouldn`t strain the intellect of the average house fly. Even worse - arguably - is the encouragement we receive to vote (at premium rates, of course) on the future careers of would-be warblers or prancers or who might be evicted from houses or jungle camps. As if I cared about any of them.
Perhaps the worst example was the recent TV phone-in poll which asked people to vote as to whether Saddam Hussein should be executed or not. Cast you vote now - dial this number - send this text - and you too can have a say in what should happen. Nothing, it seems, is beyond the grasp of the chancers who are keen to exploit every opportunity to part us from our money and our common sense. As for Christmas, I am tired of their attempts to seduce me into forgetting what Christmas and all our other `joyful` events are truly about. Roll on January.
Jingle bells!