Tag: Consumerism
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Changes to the ONS’ CPI Basket of Goods and Lifestyle Changes in the UK
The Office for National Statistics monitors inflation by using the Consumer Price Index, which uses a representative sample of consumer goods and services purchased by households. The easiest way to think about this is to imagine a very large shopping basket full of goods and services which the ‘typical household’ buys on a regular basis…
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Fyre… the biggest festival that never happened
The Fyre Festival of 2017 is a great example of a ‘postmodern’ event…. an unfortunate coming together of consumerism, hyperreality, and hyper-individualised identity-obsessed millennials. In case you missed the furore, you can get a feel for what happened just by watching this trailer on Netflix – which describes the event as a being billed as…
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Merry Debtmass…
A 2016 poll by Nationwide found that the average Brit spends £645 on Christmas. On average, people in the UK spend… £117 on Christmas presents for their partner, £145 on presents for their children, £20 on their pet (lucky pets!). This broadly corresponds with the Bank of England’s findings on Christmas spending which found that…
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A Summary of Zygmunt Bauman’s ‘The Individualised Society’, Part Two – The Way We Think
Part Two – The Way We Think Chapter Seven – Critique – Privatised and Disarmed More than anything else so far this chapter represents a good summary of some of Bauman’s major ideas. What is wrong with our society is that it has stopped questioning itself? We are reflexive but it is a limited reflexivity…