The managing director of a plant wholesaler said his firm has lost more than £2.5million-worth of business in the last three months after garden centres were forced to close as part of the coronavirus lockdown. Adrian Marskell, who runs The Bransford Webbs Plant Company in Worcester, in the West Midlands, has had to begin throwing away around 100,000 flowering plants which cannot be sold. Shocking photos show mountains of de-potted plants waiting to be composted, with others sitting in colourful rows, all destined to be thrown away.
I would have done something a little different.
Why not load up the plants in the back of a truck, then drive around all the residential streets in Worcester, depositing two or three plants at a time in front of houses, with a note attached:
“Rather than toss all these lovely plants in the skip, we’d rather they found a good home in your garden instead. Please accept them with our compliments, and we hope to see you all when the lockdown comes to an end.”
— Bransford Webbs Plant Company
And come tax filing time, I’d write off the cost of the plants as an advertising expense.
No doubt, this being Britishland, there’s some law against doing all that.
Over at Knuckledraggin’, Kenny posted this interesting gif:
…and it got me thinking.
I’ve never bought into the whole jewellery thing. It’s not just my long-time hatred of the loathsome De Beers diamond cartel and their criminal business practices (although that certainly plays a part), but there’s a part of me which just applies commonsense and cynicism to the whole ethos of “precious” metals and stones.
The “metals” part I can sort of understand because they at least have useful properties for some applications, and ditto diamonds when used industrially (cutting, grinding and what have you).
But as decoration? What a load of old bollocks. Wearing diamonds as decoration, in necklaces, pendants, bracelets and (ugh) engagement rings is really just a way to say, “I’m rich and can afford to spend money on these useless baubles as a way to show off my wealth”.
In the old days, jewellery was used by royalty to show their social superiority over their subjects. Nowadays, when some illiterate oaf who is able to string a series of mumbled rhymes into a “song” can load up his neck, chest and teeth(!) with gold and diamonds — well, that kinda devalues the whole thing, doesn’t it? Except that’s precisely the point of expensive jewellery.
I don’t care much for most modern terminology / slang, but I love the word “bling” because it describes perfectly the inherent emptiness and worthlessness [sic] of slapping shiny rocks onto everything in sight.
Don’t even get me started on those tasteless morons who load up their (already-expensive) wristwatches with jewels, driving the price into the stratosphere for absolutely zero added utility*. Here’s one example:
And when I said “stratosphere”, I wasn’t kidding. I don’t know the cost of the above — Graff is remarkably (and understandably) coy about publishing prices for their watches — but one of their other timepieces (which is too ugly for me to picture here) went on sale for $55 million. Small wonder that these and their ilk are the preferred watches of drug kingpins, Arab oil sheikhs and Russian oligarchs — breeds not known for their exquisite taste — because that is the target market of all jewellery: people with newly-acquired wealth who have to show it off.
In a way, though, I’m glad that these parvenus pricks buy into this nonsense, because it enables us to label them, correctly, as “suckers”.
So when somebody looks at a diamond pendant and sniffs, “Glass”, I’m the guy who replies, “Who cares? It looks just as pretty.”
And if it gets lost or stolen, you can simply shrug and buy another one, more or less with the loose change in your pocket, while the owner of the identical-looking “genuine” diamond item has to open negotiations with the insurance company.
Next week: art.
*Longtime Readers, by the way, know that I love expensive watches — my “lottery” watch is a Vacheron Constantin Royal 1907 (retail: ~$50,000) — but that’s (much) less than the sales tax one would pay for Graff’s foul “Hallucination”.
This is one of those annoying little ads which pops up in the middle of an online article (we used to call them “speed bump” ads, back in the day):
I have to say that when I first saw the pic, neither “back pain” nor “sciatica” were the first things that popped to mind… which is no doubt its intent.
“So what did pop to mind, Kim?” you may ask facetiously.
Given how the Corona virus thing has completely knocked the pleasure-cruise industry off the shelf, one would think that this is a bad time to launch a new one, yes?
Step forward Sir Richard of Branson:
On the bright side, every dollar this Left tool drops into nonsense like this is one less dollar for the dozens of Lefty causes his company supports.
Even before the emergence of passenger liners as floating pox-palaces, you wouldn’t have got me on one of them at gunpoint. Now… uh huh. Hot needles, meet scrotum.
Okay, Sir Winston may have had more weighty matters on his mind when he said that, but I know how he felt, after reading this:
Britain’s BEST chippies: Top 15 seafood eateries are revealed in National Fish and Chip Awards 2020
As any fule kno, one of my favorite meals in Britishland is the venerable F&C (proof below).
So when I read articles like the above, all it makes me want to do is hop on a plane across The Pond and embark on a tour of the top 15…
However. The list shortens quite a bit as some of the chippies’ locations are on Kim’s List Of Places Never To Visit (based on the recommendations of Stout Bulldogs like Mr. Free Market, The Englishman and the Sorensons) — places such as Belfast, the whole of Wales and anywhere in County Durham.
Still, this one (in Kent) looks promising:
…especially as Kent is home to one of the best beer brands anywhere:
And if they haven’t got Spitfire, there is an alternative:
