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Why Eddie, are you selling?
Not if it was naff ... but I'd be tempted to find out more,
Sure, why not? If it's not very good it's not as if I've lost much...
Nine quid?
You must be joking!
Bloke in my local does 'em for a fiver - [they can even be supplied with a postcode on; but it won't be yours!]
John
Oh now come on Eric, give it back to the nice container company people!
I've already got one thanks. Why don't you try ebay?
Has it got sand in it?
Not if I thought it had been ''salvaged'' off a beach.
Nine pounds of what?
No. You get what you pay for, and at that price it swould have to be rubbish.
no - you get what you pay for - although I can see some shops (eg Tesco, Sainsbury's etc) using them as 'loss leaders' as the real money to be made will be in selling you the dvds to watch when you go in for your groceries
Hi Eddie (an the rest of the PM team):
If it's that cheap, it's virtually a use-and-throw-away item (into the nearest recycling depot, of course). How can it be any good? You couldn't MAKE it for that price. Must be a marketing ploy of some sort.
(Of course, it it is any good, I'll have three...)
I'm a PM blog virgin; I hope the PM blog family forgives me any faux pax.
Regards
Big Bill
(PS - is there a Pelican Crossing fan club - or have you ever thought of bringing it back?)
Oh Appy, you are 'appy now, aren't you? But, do be nice to Eddie. He's been VERY nice to you today!
Oh dear! I'm listening to the accompanying item on the programme, and the Free Market supporter is really just coming across as someone who thinks that if it's cheap, it must be good for everyone, and forget the environment. Very sad...
Hee, hee, Appy!
But, no, I wouldn't. Not for myself. I'd want a DVD recorder
Oh my god, is this guy for real?
It's not the same individual who was on last year celebrating cheap flights and dismissing global warming because 'well they are nice aren't they?
Does he have no thought at all about implecations of his selfish 'Me' generation?
Please someone give him a slap and take his toys away.
Alright I said earlier that I would...
However, having listened to the utter nonsense spoken by Julian Morris who seemed to be wetting himself with excitement at the temple of consumerism I have to come clean and admit that it was a bit tongue in cheek.
If saying I'd buy a £9 DVD player associates myself with someone as naive and misguided as him I have to make it clear I'll be giving such equipment a very wide berth.
It frightens me that he seemed to be serious. Surely not.
Ah, the replacement of politics with consumerism, wonderful...
I bought a DVD player at Sainsbury's just over a year or so ago and it cost just £25. I bought it knowing that if it went wrong I would fling it and buy another one. Touch wood, it has behaved much better than the combined VHS/DVD player I bought for around £200 four years or so ago and that collapsed just after, you've guessed it, the guarantee ran out!
Duncan
I couldn't believe the comments on your programme from the Green party dinosaur. What century is he living in? All he could do was spout rhetoric which no socialist party even believes anymore - trade unions and the NHS making people's lives better, free markets making them worse. Please send him back in the time machine he came in. All of this throwback diatribe ruined any serious point he may have had about the carbon output required to build and ship these products around the world. If this is a serious representative of the Green party they really need to re-think their PR policy.
Hello Big Bill, I regret to say I'm very familiar with several of you.
Couldn't see any faux pas - but I couldn't get across the road to look closely enough to be sure
xx
Where, where????
Big Bill - welcome to the blog.
I would buy a DVD player at that price provided it came with a 1 year warrantee.
It is, though, another sign of our disposable society. One day we will have history programmes which goggle with amazement at our frittering away resources. That is if there is anyone left to make documentaries...
Eddie I'll buy it just wrap it up and put it on the beach. I collect it later. There's a drink in it for you!
Mary
madmary (24): my experience of mixing electrical equipment with drinks is not good. Especially on Burns Night you may wish to re-think.
I worked in a bank on leaving school and we had a superb vending machine for drinks that did delicious hot chocolate. My job at the time was to put the value of a cheque on the bottom right (in the where the numbers have run out) using a great big "encoding machine" the size of a school upright piano.
Sadly my sharp elbows managed to perform a test of gravity with the contents of on paper cup of hot choc and dispensed the contents into the mechanism. The machine went phut, a small amount of smoke poured out and I swiftly jettisoned the evidential cup out of the office window.
I denied all knowledge of why the machine had died but had my come-uppance the next day when the engineer extracted chocolate encrusted circuit boards. Brief analysis showed this to be the same chocolate as I had a passion for and radio carbon dating showed it had happened the previous day... My cards were marked, sadly not with chocolate.
I think the denial was the last such lie that I ever told in the workplace.
Surely the green angle is the environmental devastation in China, where the DVD player was doubtless made. Yes I'm sure those in the sweat shops are making more money, but their quality of life? But guess there's no point denying the wage slaves a living while agrobusiness is occupying the farmland. Better stay out of the supermarkets altogether.
Welcome Big Bill!
Just how big exactly? Platypuss-sized? Or bought-dinner-and-drinks-for-ten-people-at-a-decent-restaurant sized?
Dip in and enjoy.
A, x.
Would you buy a mobile telephone for five pounds?
I didn't, because I just couldn't believe it was any good. Reviews read on the Web seemed to confirm my suspicions.
It seemed to me the guy from the Green Party
started well enough, but when he came back
for a second time he let the other guy off the
environmental hook. Sure, he did mention the carbon costs of encouraging a throwaway
attitude, but in the rest of his reply he let
himself get steered towards economic, rather than
ecological, arguments, missing the
point that every item, regardless of price,
requires raw materials and disposal. Much
as I'd like to believe that 100% of electronic
goods are made from recycled materials,
and recycled at end-of-life,
via environmentally friendly processes, in reality
most raw materials will have been extracted
from a big hole in the ground in someone's backyard, processed wherever and by whatever process is cheapest, and end up in a boneyard or another hole in
the ground in someone else's backyard. As electronic goods are full of
heavy metals and plastics, the extraction,
processing and disposal of which is not easy to
do cleanly, I can't believe that the overall
cost, taking environmental damage into
account, is anything like nine pounds.