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News is a quirky beast, and shaping it can be a bit like building a sand castle with quicksand.

Like everything in today’s instant information world, news is not always what it’s supposed to be, and often it doesn’t finish the way it started.

News is man bites dog – the unusual, the quirky, the rare and the wonderful. Today, however, news is also a commodity, a manufactured oddity assembled on the production lines of political and celebrity marketing ambition, polished by media industry reporters and packaged by editors.

By the time it reaches you, the consumer, it can have the same relationship with the original story that beer has with hops; that the sun has with a telescope.

The line between news and entertainment is fading. Even the serious, and seriously ethical, presenters of news, such as the British Broadcasting Corporation, have reporters and readers who speak with exaggerated tonal stresses, a journalistic equivalent of canned laughter.

Did we mention journalism? It’s a dying art, slowly suffocating under a growing need to help people not to think.

image: www.mediaaccess.org.au

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Consumer opinion

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Who wants to be a solitaire?

January 4th 2010 00:11

Technology is marvellous with so many amazing things achievable nowadays. For example, just how deprived were our grandparents who lived in a time when, if a loved one died, it was not possible to turn their remains into a diamond?

Today it is. Just go to www.lifegem.com and see.

The American company says, "Your LifeGem memorial will offer comfort and support when and where you need it, and provide a lasting memory that endures just as a diamond does. Forever."

Just in case you have found the opening paragraphs of this article surreal, or find yourself blinking rapidly and repeatedly saying "Huh?", let us put this plainly: LifeGem takes the corpse of your loved one, and burns it, and gathers the carbon, and turns it into a diamond and, after you hand over a lot of money, gives you the gem.

Is this morbid or perhaps tacky? Heck, no!

"If you desire an everlasting connection to the one you have lost, the LifeGem is right for you. Each LifeGem, as a celebration of life, tells a unique story and represents a new beginning," says the company blurb.

The process, LifeGem says, involves six months during which the ashes are heated to produce graphite which is then placed into a diamond press and subjected to high pressure. What comes out is a raw crystal that is then polished and shaped. You can even choose your own colour — blue, red, green, yellow and "now even colorless" are available.

"Like a sunset captured in time or a wave upon the ocean, each LifeGem will have its own individual hue within the color family you choose."

The managing director of LifeGem in the UK, David Hampson, told the BBC, "Some people may think that it's not for them and we expect a lot of people will feel like that. But it really is a 21st Century version of Victorian mourning jewellery, of chopping off a piece of hair and putting it in a locket."

Nice try David, but we'll stick with the hair in a locket option.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Consumer opinion, Odd Spot, Technology

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Blood suckers

September 14th 2009 06:15

The Australian Bankers’ Association has updated and republished a consumer booklet called "Smarter Banking: Make the Most of your Money". The booklet can be viewed online here but I wouldn't bother. I had a look and nowhere in the booklet does the ABA call retail banks sharks, piranhas or soulless, heartless money grubbers.

I have a friend who recently achieved something about which she had been dreaming for years: she paid off everything owing on her credit card. Hallelujah. Light of heart and jaunty of step, she danced into her nearest bank branch and threw that odious piece of plastic on the counter.

"I am credit card debt free," she announced. "Please cancel this account!"

No, they told my friend. We can't. A credit card account can not be closed at a bank branch. You have to ring one of the bank's card centre consultants and do it through them.

Just to show how much they cared for their customers, they provided a phone number. Free of charge.

Why does the bank refuse to allow customers to close a credit card account at a branch, and force them to ring a "consultant"? And what is it, do you think, that the consultant says when contacted?

The answer is simple: the bank will try to talk you out of cancelling your credit card account.

They will couch it in positive sentiments, such as, "Congratulations on being debt-free and financially unrestrained, but have you considered that you may need the card again one day in the event of an emergency or the sudden desire to get away on a holiday or buy something irresistible?"

Retail banks do not share the joy of consumers who fight their way out of debt. Retail banks, indeed, are the implacable enemy in this fight, charging obscene interest rates for a product which they market mercilessly under the guise of consumer convenience. Retail banks ruthlessly target stretched income earners and push, shove, cajole, entice and lure them into a black pit of high-cost debt.

Wage earners around the world are struggling with the highest rate of personal debt in history and debt continues to grow. It has been created almost entirely by the heartless, soulless, blood-sucking sharks which are the retail banking industry.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Consumer opinion

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Do you buy Australian, or do you buy cheap?

August 16th 2009 03:19

Hannah Kovacs in her $18 wedding dress

In 1991, just before moving overseas to live, I decided to consolidate all my addresses and phone numbers in a new contact book. This item, basically a few blank sheets of paper stuck together with glue, cost me just under A$10. A similar item in an Australian newsagent today will cost a fraction of the price.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: China, Australia, Consumer fights back, Consumer opinion, Economics

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Opinions can not be trusted

August 14th 2009 04:28

Richard Smith, a British doctor and director of the Ovations program which fights chronic disease in the developing world, recently had breakfast in Bangladesh with an unnamed economics professor from Harvard University.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Consumer opinion, Economics, Human nature

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First NAB off the rank in scrapping bank fees

July 30th 2009 01:40

I watched the television news last night and learned that National Australia Bank is to scrap overdue account fees. The decision will cost the bank an estimated A$100 million a year in revenue, but it had decided getting rid of the charge was "a good business decision that will retain customers and attract new ones".

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Australia, Consumer fights back, Consumer opinion

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Rachael Finch: beauty in the spotlight

April 22nd 2009 19:11

Rachael Finch

It was all glamour and glitter at the Sydney Hilton last night as a host of beautiful young women paraded before the Miss Universe Australia judges, and a host of less beautiful, less young people asked the perennial question — are beauty pageants outdated?

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Australia/NZ/Pacific, Consumer opinion, Sex

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