Re: Tesco - Prices Are Fiction?

On Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:19:40 +0100, MM <kylix_is@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

But all those old cars DID last! Cars made in the 1930s were still
being repaired in the 1950s and even the '60s and spares were widely
available.

Yeah, great. Just think, had they *really* have been built to last we
could all still be driving around in cars with drum brakes and
bodywork that is not intentionally weakened with such silly ideas as
crumple zones.

There just wasn't the throwaway mindset that you seem to
extol.

I know. And yes, I do believe that the throwaway attitude has many
advantages. Not that there is not also disadvantages, but overall I
believe it wins out over the "last a lifetime" philosophy.

As for halting progress, that's ridiculous. There was nothing
stopping people from selling their cars and moving to a bigger or more
impressive model, but nothing like it is today, well, up until a year
or so ago once the recession started to bite.

If the mindset is that you should keep everything for as long as
possible, and repair rather than replace, people will tend to keep
what they have for as long as it does what they need it to do. If the
idea is to replace your car every 5 or 6 years, what's the point in
designing them to last for many decades?

Today, for example, I have found the fault on my upright vacuum
cleaner and it is the thermal fuse that has blown. One trip to Maplin,
69 pence and, well, most people would have gone out and bought a new
cleaner by now. Idiotic! Many people, probably the majority, have
succumbed to your kind of conditioning to think that repairing is
silly.

Unless the new vacuum cleaner was better than your old one in terms of
doing the job, or convenience.

I think it would be far better if houses cost the same as a car and
were scrapped and replaced with about the same frequency.

Oh, no! I'm having to prepare myself for this new masterplan by Cynic
Inc!

It will happen eventually. And people will wonder how we ever put up
with living in the same house for many years, or why we had to move to
a different location just because we needed an extra bedroom. Or why
the poor builders had to work outdoors in the cold and rain. Or why a
house should have cost many times a person's annual salary.

Waste is ALWAYS bad! There is NOthing good about waste.

I assume that you eat only astronaut type foods that have no fibre or
roughage at all. After all, it would be terribly bad, according to
yourself, to be flushing all that undigested waste down the pan every
day.

Do you equate *** with wasted food that is thrown away because it's
past its best before date or because householders failed to budget and
plan with more thought and consideration for the planet?

You stated that waste was always bad. It is a fact that *** *is*
waste.

Wasted food is probably the most innocuous waste because it
bio-degrades in a very short time, and often benefits the food chain
in so doing by providing nutrients for plants or other animals.

If I buy an apple but throw it away before I eat it, is that all that
different to a case where the apple was never picked in the first
place (because there was nobody to buy it) and so it fell from the
tree and rotted on the ground? The only difference AFAICS is that in
the former case it has assisted the economy.

*If* there was a food shortage, or the land used to produce it is
desperately needed for other things, then the waste would be a bad
thing. But seeing that there is *not* a food shortage, and no
desperate need to use food production resources for other purposes, I
see no particular problem with food waste, only advantages.


--
Cynic

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