Screw you? And me! 2 responses
Every day in every way we are being screwed! There lurk greedy beings galore/ behind every door/ whose job is to keep me and you/ POOR!
Here is my Top 10. Rank the ways YOU are being screwed in order of importance and maybe do something about it? If, of course, you are not enjoying it.
1: Supermarket screws. I blogged about this ages ago, and it still goes on. To sum up (bend over!)
- Shrinkflation (See above!) phenomenon. Tins, packages of all sorts, loaves of bread being sold for the same prices as ever but containing 10 -15% less product than they contained six months ago.
- Bogof is – buy one get one free. Before they make the offer they put the price up and or the quantity down. And then we jump at the chance to buy two, when frankly we only need one
- Bananas in plastic bags which cost £1 when you can buy them out of bags for 59p
- Drinks sold near the sandwiches for £1.80 and the same drink in the juices section for £1.20
- Sweeties at checkout. The Impulse Purchase phenomenon
There are so many more ways supermarkets reach into our pockets! See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/shopping-and-consumer-news/11551372/15-supermarket-rip-offs-that-led-to-an-inquiry.html
- Housing Sharkflation: Purchasing a house or flat in London is impossible for anyone earning below £50,000 pa because rich people and developers and speculators and absentee buy-to-let landlords many of whom live abroad can afford so much more than you can, and drive prices skyward. Rentals therefore zoom up too! And sharks lurk everywhere on the rental market, charging ridiculous fees for doing nothing.
- Software/hardware race: Sharkware! You buy the latest phone or laptop. Nice one. Show it off. Boast about it. Pssst: Software upgrade! Ok…another! Another! Another! Soon the hardware needs more memory or faster processors to handle. Also, your ego cuts in. New hardware! Software upgrade! New hardware! Software upgrade! Make no mistake my friend. Most of the upgrades add features you will never use or don’t care about except to boast about them to your friends.
- Car nation! Similar thing – an old car is an embarrassment. To you, to your kids (especially) and of course to the Environment. Better! Cleaner! Newer! Another loan please babes…
- And following that: Loan sharkation! Wow, ripoff deluxe. Because of all the above plus a few more, the lending luvvies are having a ball. Yours. Madness! That car loan – on the promise that you’ll get a new car every 3 years, you are taking out what is basically a leasing agreement at the end of which you have nothing but a debt! Store cards at well over 23% Apr when the inflation rate is still under 3%. Credit cards with all their goodies and promises. Not to mention the Emergency loan sharks who charge MASSIVE percentages which some people happily agree to, without working out the MASSIVE cost of their loans.
Trust me and the BoE: We are heading for a loans crash which will make 2007 look like a playground with lots of bawling kiddies.
Bend over.
- Politics. Stag nation: How EASY it is to screw the public if you promise them anything they want. You don’t have to DELIVER it, hell no! The Tories have managed not to deliver on almost 100% of their manifesto and who gets a fuck. Us. Brexit promised Greater Britain, reduced immigration and heaven on earth and you can forget that. Trump promised heaven for the blue collars and all he is delivering is a bonanza for billionaires. Bah.
Bend over, Wendover!
- Self-image: Mass turbation! Thanks to the tools (pun intended) of Marketing, we are slaves to our manufactured wants, rather than our needs. A case of perceived value vs real value. Examples: Big Pharma! Chemist shops are rammed to the gills with placebos. Buy this pill and you will…..! 90% of people do not need vitamins. 78% of tablets do not work. And most prescription medicines, whether they work or not are fantasmagorically overpriced and are screwing the NHS into providing massive profits for GSK and their buddies. “We need our huge profits to plough into research!” Bollox. Yours and mine. Cosmetics! Most of which are fantasmagorically overpriced and do little or nothing except for the ego. No wrinkle remover works. Look at my face for proof! Marketing is the enemy….the Liar which Lurks in the Woods.
- Food! Fatation! Fixation! “Low fat” = higher sugar. If you haven’t read all the publicity about this scandal bloody read it. When they take the fat out of prepared foods they feel the need to add sugar. There is sugar in nearly everything. But that’s fine because there’s always someone ready to make a buck out of the latest diet. Usually the same companies which put the added sugar into the food. And incidentally, “Reduced salt” soy sauce has more salt in it than Sainsbury’s Dark Soy sauce. Bloody liars. And FAST FOOD! At the last count there were 56,838 fast food outlets in England alone. An increase of 8% in 3 years. And don’t for a moment think these rapacious voracious expeditious companies are there to give you happiness and convenience. They are there to give themselves massive profits and if that means they have to get you addicted to the sugar and fat in their pretty products, well, it’s all money.
- Wages and salaries: Ruination! Your employers pay the least they can get away with to you, and the most they can get away with to themselves. To put that into figures, CEO pay has headed for the skies. In 1979 they were paid 13x average wage in their company. By 2017, Reed’s CEO earned 130x, and this is typical. (Source: Decoding the news BBC R4 25/7/17
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08zxd90)
So they work your asses off. Darn, difficult to get screwed without an ass but don’t worry they find a way. Zero hours contracts! Ask your next delivery driver bringing you your fast food fix of sugar and spice and all things nice. Ask nurses teachers and firemen.
- Gambling: guesstimation! Lucky for me, I haven’t allowed myself to be screwed by these sharks though I have on occasion lain supine for 1 – 9. Hey, I’m not immune! So easy to register. So easy to go online. A breeze to blow. Tens. Hundreds. Thousands. How the hell do you think these guys make their millions? Come on babe, the odds are worked out by computer and do you think for ONE MINUTE they aren’t in favour of the website? Can you name ONE gambling website, or Casino, or bookies that has gone bust? ONE???? Trust me buddy they know every psychological trick to rope you in and screw you over. Dopamine bud. Google it.
So, which is YOUR top screw? Which one floats your boat? Can you think of a big one I missed out?
WHO is screwing YOU?
From the lovely people who saved money by fitting flammable cladding to buildings to the people who are class-cleansing your Borough, to the supermarket moguls for whom every little bit they squeeze from your wallet helps their profits, to the sharks who give you loans, to the gambling websites that steal your hopes and your future, to your employers who pay the least they can get away with to you, and the most they can get away with to themselves, to the politicos and their billionaire donors, to the rich whose only objective in life is at all costs to get richer…who will always put shareholder value and CEO salary above you, little man. Or me. Or you, little woman. Or you, child.
Either bend over or for heaven’s sake STAND UP and refuse to let it happen to you or yours.
Image: Guardian 25/7/17
If the world is falling prey to effective marketing, shouldn’t the educators teach them how to recognize this scourge and avoid becoming victims?
Absolutely. Unfortunately, the kids are taught the tools and tricks of Marketing so the they can use them to trick people they may regard as tools, and thus make lots of money for themselves. The next step – teaching them how to be cynical selective intelligent consumers, is seldom taken. As a former teacher of Business, I certainly took on the responsibility of teaching scam awareness!