WORTH

I have a real problem with advertisements for products being sold off cheap or given away in a package deal using the word "WORTH" to make us feel that we are getting a good deal. Who is to decide what something is worth? As far as I am concerned, something is only worth what I am prepared to pay for it. Something worth Thirty Pounds to one person might only be worth Ten Quid to me.

The local electrical store has a DAB Digital radio in the window for 99 pounds, and they are giving away a free extension speaker to all purchasers "worth" 30 pounds. It is clearly not worth 30 pounds; it is a cheap piece of crappy plastic dressed up as something it isn't. It may well have a recommended retail price of 30 pounds but it isn't worth 30 pounds. These kind of promotions exist all the time to con us into thinking that we are getting a good bargain and that it is value for money. The only people who get value for money are the brand name owners who have had their products manufactured in some third world country for pennies. That is where the real worth of these products really comes to the fore; pennies paid to a third world population to manufacture consumer goods for a western throw-away culture that is being fleeced of a substantial sum of Pounds, Dollars, Euros, ETC for the latest must-have gadgets. It wouldn't be so bad if the people who make these products were paid a decent living wage instead of the pittance received by many who still live in poverty, but the brand name owners don't care about things like that. They are only interested in lining their own pockets with as much money as possible before their respective bubbles burst, or as is more likely these days that their factories are destroyed by an earthquake or some other natural disaster.

There are some areas of technology that I find quite interesting and Radio is one of them. I have always liked my radio and in some ways regard it as a sort of friend. There is always something on to suit the mood of the moment, and unlike the television in this country it isn't full of repeats and syndicated American trash TV (American Idol, Supernatural, etc). I would really like a DAB radio but I cannot justify spending over 100 pounds on something that in DAB terms would be pretty basic. To buy a good one is an absolute fortune and for the outlay required it just isn't "WORTH" it.