Postal gold-buying services
There has been much wittering today about the 'poor value' given by the postal gold-buying services that have sprang up recently, such as "Cash4Gold", famously advertised by DJ Goldie.
When I saw the headline "Cash for gold firms advertising on TV offer 'shockingly bad value'" I expected to read about the differential between the price per ounce paid by these services and the 'spot price'; the price of gold on the open market. I was very wrong.
Consumer magazine 'Which' bought various items of 'gold' jewelry brand new, and then got prices from the postal gold buyers for said items. Lo and behold they were offered considerably less than they had paid for the jewelry.
WHAT DID THEY FRIGGING EXPECT??????
I have a thought experiment for you: Go and buy a brand new car (for say, £15,000) and see how much a scrapyard offers you for the steel in the car. It'll be about £200. Do the same with any metal product you can imagine and the result would be the same. When you buy any manufactured good brand new, you are paying for the effort of making the thing, the perceived value to you, and for the raw materials. You cannot reasonably expect (unless you're a complete fucking moron) to get as much money for the raw materials as for a finished product.
Jewelry is massively overpriced anyway, the prices are based almost entirely on "OOH SHINY!" and have little to do with the cost of the materials or workmanship. That's why Argos charges £30-or so for a thin crappy pair of 9ct earrings. 9ct 'gold' is hardly gold anyway, it's mostly whatever cheap metal was lying around at the factory with a bit of gold melted in to make it look a bit 'golden'. 9ct 'gold' is only 37.5% actual GOLD.
"One of the poorest deals from CashMyGold was at just under £10 for a £215 9ct gold bangle"
No shit.
This is more a case of "gold bangle massively overpriced and contains little gold" than "CashMyGold ripping people off"
Of course from either article it's impossible to say whether these services actually ARE ripping people off, since they give no indication of how much any of them are paying per unit weight of pure gold. Without that figure the whole thing is meaningless.
All I can say is if a company with a decidedly niche market (like gold buying, as opposed to say washing powder or cars) can afford to advertise on TV, they are unlikely to offer superb value.
Links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/gold/7036987/Cash-for-gold-firms-advertising-on-TV-offer-shockingly-bad-value.html
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article6996590.ece
Buying the media
Now as you have no doubt noticed we are approaching the deadline for a general election to be held, and increasingly all political parties are setting out their stalls to try and tempt voters.
What you may also have noticed is the steady drip, drip of increasing government advertising over recent years. The annual budget of the Central Office of Information (COI) now stands at over £500M.
In 2001, the Conservatives accused the government of spending "more than £62m of taxpayers' money advertising itself" over 3 months (£248m/year) in the run-up to the general election that year (note how the advertising budget has more than doubled since then). The theory was that Labour was stimulating lots of advertising to make the government look better- "look at all these fantastic new services/benefits"- with the side effect of making Labour look better, them being the party in power.
If you look at government advertising today however, the tone is quite different to that conveyed back in 2001. The adverts are now usually intended to modify the population's behaviour somehow, much like wartime propaganda. This fact to me suggests that the massively increased advertising of late is not intended to apply any kind of 'electoral halo' to the incumbent party.
If that is the case, is there any electioneering purpose to the advertising, or should it be taken entirely at its paternalistic face value? I believe that something else is going on.
Since the start of the current economic problems in 2008, government advertising has grown to a massive proportion of the advertising market nationally, especially in radio, by virtue of the COI's much larger budget and importantly by the reduction of advertising demand from the private sector due to the recession. The COI is the biggest single advertiser in the country.
The Conservatives, on the other hand, have indicated that if they come to power they wish to slash "Programmes that represent poor value for money, excessive spending on things like advertising".
Now look at the situation from the point of view of a commercial broadcaster, whether an independent or one of the large media empires. One party is providing a huge revenue stream to your operation. The other promises to slash that revenue. It would certainly be tempting to 'nudge' the media output to favour 'the party of plenty', wouldn't it?
Presuming this assertion to be true, what could the Conservatives do to win the 'hearts and minds' and so the output of the commercial media? Like in any industry, money is the language of love, so any sweetener would need to increase their profitability. With budget increases ruled out, and tax cuts highly unlikely in the short to medium term due to a commitment to reduce government debt, there remain only the avenues of reduced competition and reduced regulation.
Funny how they propose cutting competition against the commercial media from the BBC, and reducing regulation to allow larger media groups (also reducing competition), isn't it? Any meshing with core ideology is just the icing on the cake.
Jonathan Ross- hitting the nail on the head
I think Neil Davenport at Spiked hits the nail absolutely on the head regarding Wossy leaving the BBC, and the Sachs scandal.
many adults found Ross’s chatshow filth and sex obsession to be embarrassingly immature rather than edgy or funny...
What offends many of us is that the BBC really does think we’re only deserving of flaccid knob gags, the kind that Bill Hicks used as a threat rather than as a form of entertainment. On top of this, Ross’s adolescent banter was also a transparent exercise in sneering at the imagined conventions of his audience. .... As a rich entertainer, Ross and others like him are looking down their noses at the little people and their silly bourgeois conventions – always a favourite get-out clause for influential people who start to lose their moorings from wider society.
I think the problem at the BBC is that they think, almost, that offence is an aim in itself. It is not. If you're saying something profound or insightful, and in doing so happen to offend a lot of people, good luck to you. If you think that the reverse is true, that 'knob gags' as Neil so perfectly put it, are profound because they cause some people offence, then you're going wrong.
Another problem is that they are desperate to compete with the 'commercial' networks in every way and at all times. If the BBC execs see some fucking celebrity gossip show getting good ratings on 'UKSHITTV3 +1' at 11pm on a wednesday, then by golly they'll try to muscle in on that 'success'; there'll be a program called "OMG ugliest celebrity arses" on BBC3 before you know it.
Why do we all have to pay £140/year in TV license fees to enable the BBC to duplicate the same shit that already exists? I know that the Beeb does output some damn good stuff a lot of the time, but that doesn't mitigate the torrent of 'me-too' shite that makes a large proportion of its output.
Anyway, you can read the full article here: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7926/
Android Dave
One is a human face altered to appear semi-human, and the other is Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek...
Just for the sake of balance, here's Gordon about to pull off his mask, to reveal the terrifying lizard/robot/alien beneath:
Badly targeted junk mail
I have just received a load of unsolicited vouchers in the post for 10p off The Sun newspaper.
Does that mean that I am on a database somewhere as a current/former/potential Sun reader?? (the vouchers were addressed to me)
