THE THING IS . . .
There is no longer anything worth buying, says Eric Bailey
SUDDENLY Michael Buerk has a head the shape of a pumpkin. Carol Smillie has put on an awful lot of weight and become a foot or so shorter, and soccer is now played with a rugby lozenge. What's hap- pening? I have bought a widescreen televi- sion; and I am wondering why.
Naturally the salesman told me that many programmes were now transmitted in widescreen and soon they all would be, guaranteeing a cinema-style experience from even the dullest of dumbed-down dross. But the fact is that hardly any are, because what was transmitted to be square but moderately realistic is now rectangular and like watching in a hall of mirrors.
The television is so big that I can hardly get into the room and, when I am in, I'm so close that I can see each pixel of Des Lynam's tache; I need to back off 20 or 30 feet for a proper view, but then I'd be out- side. Morosely I flick through the picture styles I now can have — zoom, super- zoom, 4:3 ratio — really understanding only one thing: my life as a dedicated con- sumer of Things, a connoisseur of stuff, a willing partner in the compact of com- merce, is at an end. There's nothing in the shops worth buying.
It's a bad feeling because for us middle classes out in the burbs wanting and getting have always been noble callings. But I know that I am not alone in thinking that buying Things has lost its petillance. Like me, my neighbours have garages full of gizmos they have carried home in triumph — but barely used — garden vacs, jet-washers, car-wax- ers, strimmers, hedgers, edgers.
• Indoors, the armchair boasts a brace of remotes the size of New York nightsticks, on which only three of the 60 buttons are ever pressed. In the kitchen the faux-Aga cookers have three ovens and eight rings, though they only ever heat up ready-meals. Something fundamental is happening: retailers offer interest-free credit for a thou- sand years, or the previously reliable Bogof (buy one get one free), but still we hesitate. The great engine of acquisition, as powerful an economic force as anything the Industri- al Revolution could offer, is sputtering.
This critical mass of consumption is a new phenomenon and it's one that the guardians of our national wealth need to take seriously. It has happened to the first generation ever to grow up in consumer heaven: born in the Fifties when we never had it so good, and nurtured in subsequent decades when we had it better. But now the great revolutionary objects of desire which changed our lives have largely been acquired. Every paid-up member of the middle classes has a car or two, a house, a phone, a television, video and hi-fi. What remains? Nothing that you really want, only refinements of what you already have. It's the same with just about any of the big-ticket items which used to walk out of the shops. New hi-fl? Manufacturers keep punting out new ways of playing music, but CDs are already so good that the pleasure per pound in trading up is negligible. Mini- disc and recordable CDs will soon be con- signed to the bin which holds Betamax and eight-track stereos. New television? A recent BBC survey showed that most peo- ple don't actually want digital television because they are perfectly satisfied with the current system. The only way to sign you up is to give you the kit for nothing. According to the recent Salvation Army report, 'The Paradox of Prosperity', we are already three times as well off as we were in 1958, 70 per cent better off than in 1978, and living standards are predicted to almost double in the quarter-century to 2025. The country is going to boom, we are told. In the words of Arthur Daley, we are going to be 'holding the folding'. So if we don't blow it on Things, just what sort of boom will this be? It is not the Eighties when the tsunami of wealth coincided with a culture of individualism and the answer was simple: you got money and you spent it on yourself. William Hague's suggestion has been simply that the Nineties should be the new Eighties: cut taxes, give us more money, expect it to barely touch the sides of our wallets before we recycle it back into the economy.
To those of us who have tired of buying stuff, it is no surprise that the idea has elicited only weary acclaim; even in the leafy lanes there is a vague sense that there must be a better way. This is very far from saying we don't want the money — oh, we do, we do — but our mechanisms of spend- ing must surely change. By contrast — admit it — Gordon Brown's flint-hearted reluctance to part with a single groat unnec- essarily is in tune with the times. Somehow, though we know that the £12 billion of fold- ing he is holding is actually ours, we don't really mind. Unbelievable really, but true.
Spending on services is one answer. Per- haps you have tried to get a decent garden- er, nanny or cleaner recently; even Mrs Portillo couldn't mount a successful head- hunt for these positions. These days you give them references. But this is better for the economy than buying Things, which are almost always imported. Employing whole regiments of tradesmen enriches the local economy. And, unlike mooning around in the stacked aisles of B&Q looking for something worthwhile to buy, it remains a long-term benefit. Nor is it sullied by the old class tensions which used to be inher- ent in the relationship between the middle classes and 'tradesmen': now your gardener is as likely to be a redundant stockbroker as a horny-handed son of the soil.
A corollary of the shrivelling urge to accumulate is that the idea of status shrivels with it. So does the idea that bigger is bet- ter. The big success is not the giant Tesco, now trying to ape the old high street with its in-store bakery and down-home chicken counter, but the monthly farmers' market in the town square, where trade is untram- melled by loyalty cards or special offers, but enriched by the ideas of helping local busi- nesses and paying a little more for some- thing genuinely good. In this boom, perhaps, the brilliant little hardware shop staffed by men in brown coats will reopen, and the estate agents and pizza parlours of the modem high street will melt away.
The psychologist Oliver James has argued that we should be looking at the kind of 'co-operative capitalism' the Scandi- navians go for, in which 'state intervention and a regulated economy work to avoid inequality'. That sounds a bit too Ikea, but perhaps he is right that we have to find a way in which greed and altruism, which co- exist happily in middle-class hearts, can be properly expressed. Oh, and Sven, take back that blasted television.
Eric Bailey is associate editor of the Mail on Sunday.
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