Kate Moss - nothing to do with Cabot Circus
Another day of media overkill to accompany the opening of Cabot Babylon Circus.
“So what’s it like then?” the Evening Cancer gormlessly asks on its front page.
It’s like any other fucking shopping centre you stupid dickheads. What do you expect? The Garden of Earthly Delights?
The Cancer’s increasingly ludicrous coverage of this non-event (surely you mean the most important thing to have happened in Bristol since Edward Colston cut his toenails for the last time? Ed.) has been covered in some detail over on the Evening Post Watch blog.
However the Blogger was particularly taken with today’s promotional story on page 6 – “Hooray for Harvey Nichols” – coincidentally accompanied by a full page ad for Harvey Nichols on page 7.
Here we find that the traditional style of news reporting that we have become accustomed to over the years – where we’re told about real things that have actually really happened – has been superceded by a new and innovative news reporting technique involving highly speculative, celebrity-studded guess work:
A [Harvey Nichols] spokesman said: “Within easy distance of the Cotswolds, Bath, Gloucestershire and Wales, Harvey Nichols Bristol is sure to become a destination shop for all those London fashionistas such as Kate Moss, Kate Winslet and Elizabeth Hurley, who are spending more and more time at their country retreats.”
Yeah and Carla Bruni is sure to turn up every other Friday and offer blow jobs for a tenner outside the Apple Store right?
Today’s big Cancer story then is basically a piece of nonsensical speculation about who might shop at a store in Bristol on the basis that they might own a property somewhere within an 80 mile radius of the city. Brilliant!
We also find our old pal, retail manager Sue Stones, getting in on the act again as yet more space is freely donated by the local media for her to deliver another lame Harvey Nichols’ sales pitch.
Today Sue generously shares her unique insights in to economic affairs with us:
“Credit crunches come and go but we are not here for now or for six months.
“We’ve got a 35-year lease so the people of Bristol will still come and shop with us for many years to come.”
Sue, we’re talking about a major international banking crisis here not the fucking gypsy look or the latest collection from Karl Lagerfeld.
Yes maybe these kind of crises tend to “come and go” as you put it. But about every 60 years according to the Chancellor of the Exchequer or every 79 years according to many economists who are comparing this current crisis to the Great Depression.
But what the hell would any of them know about anything compared to a glorified shop assistant in a Chloe jacket who urgently needs to sell a lot of expensive crap in her new store?
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I love reading this bitter and twisted ‘sad old leftie’ nonsense. It seems that anything that doesn’t fit your political stance should be ridiculed. You may not like Cabot Circus, but ‘non-event’? Tens of thousands of people said otherwise
“Tens of thousands of people said otherwise”
Gutted for them.
Why gutted for them? You’re the one who seems miserable. No one made them go
Exactly the problem. I’m not miserable, in fact, I’m laughing.
“No one made them go” – So what was the saturation publicity all about then? Just informing people of a forthcoming event or hyping the thing up out of all proportion to the reality?
Just after reading this I got a helpful e-mail from the kindly folks at First Great Western announcements:
“Great shopping at Bristol’s new Cabot Circus. Bargain train tickets available from just £3!”
If advertising didn’t influence and control many people’s thought and behaviour then businessmen and politicians wouldn’t spend so much time, energy and money on it.
For those who think critics of Carboot Circus are sad and miserable…
‘…Western consumer society has taken a wrong turning in promoting increased consumption as a path to happiness. Not only does this generate an unsustainable appetite for resources, the research suggests it may also be making us more miserable.’
http://www.chrisjohnstone.info/happiness_lectures.htm
Consumer capitalism couldn’t work if it actually made people happy and contented.
In practice, they have to do the opposite – create unhappiness, self doubt, dissatisfaction, and the illusion that you can buy your way out of it.
…Whereas communism made people desperately unhappy as well, but they didn’t even have a Widescreen LCD TV to show for it 🙂
Spot on Pete. It is satisfaction, security, stability and fulfillment that makes us happy but product advertisers and marketers (helped massively by the BBC, Bristol Evening Post and mainstream politicians…) have no interest in these things. It’s in their interest to see that needs become wants and that the wants are perpetuated. Thus mass consumerism favours selling products that wear out or break, instead of being made to last. Ever-changing fashion is similarly favoured because purchases in a nearly-new and good condition ‘must’ be replaced or you ‘wont be trendy’. This maintains sales and maximises profits, from which a small number of people gain. Fostering obsession with super-rich celebrities helps here (they feature in many ads, often dominate the media and are courted by politicians).