Too much kit?

A proliferation of kit

As I set off to walk the dogs this morning (armed with…er…the dogs and an iPod) a guy had just got back to his car with his Labrador. He opened his bottle of water, poured the dog a drink into a special plastic portable dog-water thingy, took off his hiking boots, you get the picture.

Is it that there’s just more kit involved in everything these days (and I like a bit of kit myself, I can be the kit-sales persons best customer, me) or is it a symptom of the increasing material, corporate, cumsumer…(consumer-what? Consumerist? Consume-phillic? Aquisitional, lets settle for acquisitional) aquisitional modern mindset?

I admit to being unable to set off on a train journey without a book (avoid eye-contact, dodge the loonies) and an iPod (shut out the announcements and the babble) but that is as much about needing to insulate myself in a commute-bubble as anything else. Without those screens I’d have my hands around someone’s throat before pulling away from the platform. But there’s people who get on with bottles of water and emergency rations. I know it may be a bit daft setting off up Ben Nevis wearing flip-flops and without any Kendal Mint Cake, but the 07:25 to Charing Cross isn’t exactly polar exploration, is it?

Honestly, we would go for a walk in the clothes we stood up in. Perhaps it was only the after-sport school showers that saved us from terminal lack of hygiene, perhaps our mothers never learnt to drive let alone had their own cars (with CD players and special air fresheners and state of the art drivers’ sunglasses and…) but perhaps those simpler times were actually…er…simpler, and maybe just a bit better for that.

Time for a balanced point of view

Party conference season, and our public service broadcaster is bigging them up. Now, the attendance at these things is pitiful compared to the numbers of people who, say, go to the rugby every weekend (that’s any given weekend). I can understand the political correspondents playing the big deal cards, because it’s their thing and their livelihood, but where’s the public interest checks and balances putting forward the:

“Actually, d’you know what, hardly anyone gives a toss, really.”

Here’s my predictions:

Closing the tory conference, Cam-moron will get a rapturous standing ovation from a hall full of sycophants. Closing the tory new labour (almost tory) conference, the elephant man will get a standing ovation from a hall full of sycophants. Closing the tory lib dem conference, whoever it is (okay, okay, Cam-morons glove puppet Clegg) will get a standing ovation…

With the narrowing of the political spectrum to the only game in town approach that we now have (funny how they all bang on about ‘choice’, how about we have some, guys?) why not just have the one New Libtory conference and get it over and done with in the one sitting?