to think that Littlewoods advert should be banned?

[CherylWillBounceBack]

Shameful for all the reasons below:

a) Ruins Christmas by exposing the truth about Santa's existence.
b) Encourages debt fuelled consumerism (easy payments)
c) could pressurise people out of guilt to spend more than they can afford
d) Attempts to make presents which are ridiculously look like the norm
e) Suggests that we should pass our hard earned up a generation by putting laptops on the knees of grandparents. Rich old people can buy their own electronic tat if they so choose.
f) annoying tune that gets stuck in the head.

I bloody hate that ad.

does everyone on here pay cash for their Christmas gifts then.Does no-one use a credit card? isn't that erm, credit?

dementedma, I use a credit card.

'Thrift need not be an underground option, it should be the norm.'

If thrift were the norm, then businesses would fail and jobs would be lost and we would all get poorer. The cuts and austerity are imposing thrift and leading to a stagnant economy together with the misery of unemployment.

Good on Littlewoods and their thousands of employees. They are trying to make a success of their business.

Using a credit card is ok as long as you pay it off monthly or maintain just a small balance. This involves knowing what your means are and living within them. Your first duty is to your own financial health and the security of your children imo. To say consumers have any sort of duty to spend the economy out of the rough is ridiculous when banks are sitting on the real money, the sort that grows real jobs and real prosperity at home and not jobs and prosperity overseas.

I don't know why it wrenches anyone's heart to tell a small child that their whim is not going to happen or that the expensive thing they have set their heart on (for now) will not materialise under the tree. Yes, it is upsetting to realise you can't have everything you want, but it is an important lesson to wrap your head around. You are only going to feel as guilty as you allow yourself to feel about all sorts of aspects of being a parent.

At the end of the day this is an ad on the tv and surely you can turn it off, take the DCs out for a nice walk or pull out a board game or deck of cards for the family instead?

Santa puts presents in stockings, not under the tree. It's a hideous, hideous advert though.

At Christmas of all times, we should hail Santa and not that mean old miser, the titan of thrift - Scrooge.

I'm for business and Littlewoods is a business, unscroogelike spending its money on advertising, trying to make a profit. That's enterprise, the great thing that employs people. I am not a fan of communist thrift.

The great economist, John Maynard Keynes, said
"The engine which drives enterprise is not thrift, but profit"

I detect a slight mean, green streak in the attacks on a good business like Littlewoods. The sort of thing mentioned by this green in an article on "Was Scrooge mean or kinda green?"

"Perhaps the best argument that Scrooge was not just mean, but also rather green, was his strict no gift policy, a trend that is catching on as a rising number of celebrants choose to pass on amassing more junk they simply don?t need.

Some, like my friend?s 8-year-old son, Samuel, need more prompting than others. His mom, Susanne, convinced him to throw an ?eco birthday party? last week (below) with paperless invites, no presents and a fun craft project of constructing a solar car. In the end, she says, he got the message that sustaining is better than receiving."

ecosalon.com/revisiting-dickens-scrooge-was-he-mean-or-kinda-green/

Let Littlewoods be and let's not promote the policies of teh greens and Scrooge McDuck.

www.thecarlbarksfanclub.com/moneymagazine.htm

Let's celebrate growth, not decline. Let's celebrate capitalism, not green socialism.

Let's remember the words of a great Prime Minister to a number of Scrooge's on the opposition benches. (The best bit is around the 1.27 mark - pure masterclass)

Scrooges not Scrooge's

Communist thrift?

You have lost the plot.

a) Ruins Christmas by exposing the truth about Santa's existence.

i taught my children from an early age that i paid for xmas.

b) Encourages debt fuelled consumerism (easy payments)

everything does, store cards credit cards etc. catalogues are actually sometimes the only way the poor can get any kind of credit rating and plan and budget to buy their kids stuff
c) could pressurise people out of guilt to spend more than they can afford

you cant plan for stupid fuckers

d) Attempts to make presents which are ridiculously look like the norm

see c
e) Suggests that we should pass our hard earned up a generation by putting laptops on the knees of grandparents. Rich old people can buy their own electronic tat if they so choose.

are old people rich?

f) annoying tune that gets stuck in the head.
true dat

I bloody hate that ad.

its a shit ad

'You have lost the plot'

No, the (communist) plot lost.

lets look at capitalism shall we - the capitalism we have to keep bailing out becuase it works so fucking well

yep, that capitalism.

That's not capitalism, that is crony capitalism.

And what Vince Cable, Coalition Minister, said is "casino capitalism".

if your argument is that capitalism is a good theory i can counter with

so is communism

My argument is that capitalism is a good theory and a good practice, unlike communism.

The bank bailouts were state socialism. Some of the banks should have been allowed to fail.

i am failing to see how keeping rich people rich in any context is state socialism

But that is how Stalin and the entire communist nomenklatura were kept rich, in their well-appointed dachas, while people were toiling in gulags.

I will watch the great Thatcher clip at the 1.27 mark one more time, and then I will retire. I bid you goodnight.

what utter nonsense. now russia was capitalist?

No it was socialist - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

But I agree that the Russian system was utter nonsense. We have no disagreement there.

ah the deliberate misleading word twisting capitalist.