Author: Kim du Toit

Fracture Lines

Gummint, Mocking Furriners

Looks like the Euros are having a problem or two:

The French blame the Germans and the Germans blame the French.  The Eastern Europeans blame the Western Europeans.  The Southern Europeans blame the North.  And everyone blames the officials in Belgium.

As Douglas Murray adds:  “In other words, business as usual.”

Once again, we see proof (if any were needed) that massive bureaucracies don’t respond well to a crisis.  In this case, the Euros thought that they could get both research and supplies of Chinkvirus vaccines from the UK, but when the Brits told them to shove it — all hail Brexit! — the Euros were left holding the short end of the stick, and squabbling ensued.

The lesson is well learned Over Here, for all those who think that Big Gummint is the answer to our woes.  In a crisis, it seldom is.

 

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

From Peter Hitchens, brother of the late Christopher:

“Officials and politicians dare not relax the measures they took in a panic, in case they are blamed if anything ever goes wrong afterwards. And millions genuinely believe they are safer as a result.”

What that means is that a series of panics will inevitably cause our freedoms to be ratcheted into oppression via the “concern for security”.  And the ratcheting goes one way, irreversibly.

Monday Funnies

Funny Stuff

Please excuse the theme for today’s post.

…which means:

My feelings about it:

Others feel about the same:

And the last word:

So to warm us all up, a little look at more salubrious climes:

Now climb down off that roof and get to work.

Letters, I Get Letters

Bad News

From our apartment complex management:

Needless to say, my building is neither 4, 10 nor 13.  And forget water.

On a related note:  we had movers come and shift all our possessions into the (one-car) garage on Saturday.  It took a depressingly short time, and there’s still plenty of space.  Now building management can dry the place out and replace carpets etc. , which they assured me [eyecross]  would take place soon.

But as I paid the movers with some of the money y’all sent to me, I said a quiet thank-you.  (And yes, I will eventually get it back from the insurance, but I needed it right then, and you guys made it possible.)

Best news of all:  my books were in perfect shape, untouched by the water and the resulting humidity.

And in other news:  normal blogging service should resume tomorrow with the usual mixture of guns,  rants, booze, invective and boobs.  Try to contain your excitement.

Screwing Up The Brand

Marketing / Advertising

One of the things that drives historians (well, this historian anyway) crazy is that people just refuse to learn from history — no matter how much precedent there is for a situation where doing X results in Unpleasant Consequence Y, we just go ahead and do X anyway, expecting that the outcome won’t be total shit and that anyway, Times Are Different.

Example:  when Coca-Cola tried to change Coke into New Coke back in the mid-1980s — because The Market Has Changed, And We Need To Move With The Times — a storm of furious resistance from their loyal consumers forced them to recant and relaunch Coke as Classic Coke, going back to the same old formulation of super-sweet battery acid that the world had come to know and love.  (New Coke, eventually, went the way of its erstwhile spokesman Bill Cosby.)

The Coca-Cola fiasco should be taught in business schools everywhere, and should be an integral part of any company’s training in marketing.  It’s not the first time it happened, of course;  but it was one of the more illuminating examples of leaving your established brand alone, and all the more notable because it involved a mere carbonated soft drink, surely one of the most irrelevant and disposable products ever invented.

Clearly, the Coke fiasco has either been forgotten or willfully ignored, because:

Stella Artois owners Budweiser Brewing Group UK&I say they’ve lowered the alcohol content in its canned, draft and gluten-free versions to capitalise on the popularity of “wellness trends”.
It last cut ABV from 5% to 4.8% in 2012 citing “evolving” drinking trends in the UK.

Let’s not forget the role of the bean-counters:

But the move is said to have saved previous brewers AB inBev up to £8.6million a year in duty, according to alcoholpolicy.net.

And the result?

The latest reduction has left beer lovers fuming and sparked a surge in one star reviews across supermarket websites from customers.
…
In a scathing review on Tesco’s website, the person wrote: “Today I cracked open a can of Stella 4.6% and thought I had Covid, since I could not taste anything.”

I have no dog in this fight:  Stella Artois has always been my supporting argument when I state that contrary to popular belief, the Belgians know fuck-all about making a decent beer*.

It appears that they know fuck-all about marketing the foul stuff, either.

*As I recall, the Belgies were the first to start adding fruit flavors to their beer, which just proves my point.