Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis

As the American-led sub-prime mortgage fiasco continues to impact on the global economy, many continue to ask how this could have happened. The following video, of popular British comedians John Fortune and John Bird, seeks to provide some answers.

Product warning and safety labels – necessary to state the obvious?

The use of product warning and safety labels appears to be on the increase. How effective are they and why is it felt necessary to state the obvious?

Cigarette packets have long warned that “smoking can seriously damage your health”. Hot drinks purchased from the likes of Starbucks and McDonald’s caution that “contents are hot”. Now television advertisements in the UK, for alcohol products, carry a message “enjoy [insert product name] responsibly” or “please drink responsibly”.

According to recent headlines, an American non-profit organisation, the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council (AODC) is calling on the Australian authorities to “consider labelling alcoholic drinks with warnings about the dangers of excessive drinking”.

You have to wonder about the state of our education that there are people out there who are not aware that smoking or excessive consumption of alcohol can have adverse effects on health, or that a container of hot tea or coffee will actually be hot.

Are product warnings being made from a genuine desire to protect, inform and educate the consumer, or perhaps to avoid liability from an increasingly litigious, and ignorant, society?

It can only be a matter of time before we see cars with warnings “please drive carefully. Driving can kill? Or perhaps food products urging us to “please eat responsibly. Obesity kills”. Unless of course these already exist…

Shoppers sink to new depths to grab a Christmas bargain

Not satisfied with extended opening hours, and in some cases, 24-hour opening, 4.4 million British consumers spent a total of £84 million online, on Christmas Day 2007. They spent 269% more than 2006.

Commenting on this, the Director of Sales and Marketing at independent payment services provider SecureTrading said “People shop for pleasure at Christmas, and the online experience is now so good it really can be fun for all the family”. Oh really; so how exactly is internet shopping “fun for all the family” then? Father switches on the computer, and mother shops whilst one child holds the credit card, and anther reads out the card number???

Things deteriorated after Christmas Day. The Telegraph newspaper reported that “… shoppers fought over men’s V-neck jumpers, which had been cut from £28 to £10, and women’s jeans that were reduced from £35 to £15″.

What a sad indictment upon society today.