Tendring Topics....on Line
Paying
for Daytime Television
For the two years
following the accident in 2004 that resulted in my wife becoming increasingly
disabled, she and I watched a good deal of both daytime and evening television.
After her life came to an end in 2006 I watched ‘the box’ much less. I was
desperately seeking busyness to help fill the gaping, and aching, space that
her death had left in my life.
Since then the years have taken their toll. I have moved from my mid-eighties to my
early-nineties! My physical activities
have become increasingly limited and I again find myself watching tv both in
daytime and in the evening. The digital
revolution, and the freeview box with
integral recorder, have widened my choice.
On daytime commercial tv there is very little new to watch. However, old
age has one unexpected, if somewhat mixed, blessing. Although I may recall a great deal of one of
the Midsomer Murders or Murder
She Wrote episodes when I see
either of them again for the second, or possibly the third, time – I rarely
remember who-dun-it, and how and why!
I do remember from the past the adverts filling the commercial breaks
that irritatingly punctuate commercial tv programmes. Some are entertaining and are regularly
updated by the advertisers (I have in mind some of the Specsavers adverts and
the always-entertaining Meercat adverts by
Comparethemarket.com). Others,
repeated ad nauseum, are infuriating. In
particular I can’t bear that character who strides across the tv screen
shouting maniacally that with his products, if you buy one, you get one free. BOGOF
indeed!
Over the years these adverts have
changed, reflecting the national mood. In the early years of the new millennium
they seemed to be dominated by two themes.
One of them was all about ‘ambulance chasing’ lawyers eager to inform
viewers that if they had an accident that wasn’t their fault, they could be
entitled to generous compensation. These
public spirited and altruistic professionals would ensure that those accident victims
received every penny of it if only their
help were sought. The ‘other side’ would
have to pay the legal expenses. It was
surely unfortunate that the presenter of one of these adverts was an actor best
known to most of us as a bent copper in
The Bill.
The other theme, and this was surely
the more noxious, was the offer by
money-lenders to give financial ‘help’ to people who, in their own
interest, should never be allowed to borrow.
It doesn’t matter, these warm-hearted philanthropists insisted, if you’re old, unemployed, on benefit, and
have a disastrous credit record. Get in touch with us. We may be able to help’
Others aimed at a slightly different
class of viewer. We were shown a lower
middle-class householder (unquestionably a Daily
Mail reader!) who had everything; a
nice home, a good job, a beautiful wife and marvellous kids, but there was just
one tiny little flaw in this earthly paradise.
He and his wife were, well ‘a bit
messy with money’. There were two or
three credit card debts to service, one or two HP agreements, the mortgage on
their lovely home, and so on. It could
be something of a nightmare – especially to one whose mind was focussed on
higher things; like for instance, whether or not the local football team would keep its place in the First
Division at the end of this season.
The tangle of family debts needed no
longer be a problem. Those warm-hearted money-lenders would gather
all of them together and take them over, so the instalments could be paid
tidily, month after month. Who knows,
they added, it might even be possible to lend that delightful family more money
to provide some of the other essentials of modern suburban life – a second car
for the wife? Perhaps a family holiday
in the Bahamas ?
The benevolent money lenders are no
longer quite so blatant. A few months
ago they were pushing their latest idea. Everyone, they said, at sometime or
other faced a domestic crisis that needed a relatively small sum of money (perhaps
£200 or £300) to settle. Unfortunately
these crises had a habit of occurring just a week or two before payday. The answer was a payday loan. Give them a ring and within minutes the two
or three hundred pounds would be in your bank account. It could be repaid on payday with what seemed
a very small amount of interest. Easy – but the snag was that what was left of
the borrower’s pay wouldn’t then be enough to last the next month. The answer to that? Perhaps another payday loan, and another
after that – with the interest beginning to become anything but a ‘small
amount’. Following adverse publicity in
the news media payday loan adverts are now becoming rarer
Ambulance chasing lawyers still make
their appearance on commercial tv offering ‘no win ….no fee’ services to
accident victims. They do seem to be a
little less brash, a bit more grave and professional, than they once were.
The latest trend in daytime tv
advertising is possibly a response to a realisation by members of the public
that there’s little hope of becoming rich by diligence and hard work these
days. It is publishing opportunities for
gambling – ‘Someone has got to win – it
could be you!’ There are a surprising number of on-line
Bingo games available to hopeful fortune seekers. There’s Sun
Bingo. There’s Foxy Bingo, and
there’s Tombola. There may well be others. There’s an occasional advert for the
National Lottery and for on-line roulette. There are also what I think of as
disguised lotteries within the fabric of tv programmes.. ‘Secret Dealers’ and ‘Dickinson’s
Real Deal’ for instance, always feature a ‘competition’ with a single prize of several thousand pounds for
phoning in, or texting, the correct answer to an easy (much too easy) question.
A typical question might be. Brussels is the capital city of (A) Bulgaria Switzerland
It seems sad that so many of us
appear to be hoping, by means of one or other forms of gambling, to win a
life-changing sum of money to escape from the ordinariness of our every day
lives. ‘Someone has got to win – it could be you!’ It’s not very likely
though that it will be. The only certain regular winners are the
organisers of the gambling game or the Lottery.
They have to make a profit and
pay their very considerable advertising or sponsorship costs.
A report in last
Friday’s (17th Aug.) local daily Gazette
reinforced my confidence in the value of true localism – the devolution of the powers of central government
to elected local authorities and the freedom of those local authorities to use
those powers wisely.
Last July Colchester Council hired the Breyer Group to install photo-voltaic panels on the roofs of 563
houses managed by Colchester Borough
Homes. They had intended to provide
the same service for 2,000 of those homes but central government (‘Nanny knows best dear) had cut their
financial support.
The fruits of the council’s decision
are now being harvested and a very bountiful harvest it is proving to be. Mrs Iliffe-Weston, one of the tenants
involved, told the Gazette that for
the six months from February to August 2011 her electricity bill had been
£331.96 but that for the equivalent six months this year (most of which were
not noted for their periods of warm sunshine!) it was just £96.33!
The good lady heeded the sage advice
that if something seems too good to be
true – it probably is! She thought
that there may have been a mistake and, as she definitely did not want a
surprise bill of £1000 later, she phoned the Electricity supplier. They assured her that the bill was correct
and that the reduction was due to the photo-voltaic panels on her roof.
I am not a bit surprised. The installation on my roof is much smaller
and less ambitious. I have just two
small photo-voltaic (I have always called them photo-electric) cells, servicing
my solar water heating system. When the fluid in the solar water-heating panel
on my roof is a few degrees warmer than the water in my hot water storage
cylinder, those photo-electric cells activate the pump to circulate that fluid
through the heat exchanger in the storage cylinder. The system is thus
self-contained, needing no electricity from the grid.
.
In weather such as we are having as I write (18th Aug.) I
don’t need to switch on my gas boiler o at all. In the winter, and on overcast summer days,
the solar panel doesn’t produce all the hot water I need but, in summer and winter
alike, it preheats the water in the storage cylinder before it circulates
through the boiler, which therefore needs to burn less gas to bring it to the
required temperature.
I pay my combined gas and
electricity bill monthly by direct debit. My solar heating system has reduced
those payments by £30 a month. My saving
is therefore in the region of £360 a year – not quite in the same league as
that of Mrs Iliffe-Weston but then mine doesn’t take up so much of my roof
surface and, I imagine, cost less to install.
Congratulations to Colchester
Council. As well as doing their bit for the environment, their initiative means
that nearly 600 Colchester householders have a
few extra pounds in their pockets to spend, and thus to help the country out of
the recession. Pity the Council didn’t
get the central government support for which they had hoped – but there,
central government has probably got other urgent concerns like nuclear
submarines to service and multi-millionaires to keep on-side!
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