Exploiting our need to care?

An email arrives in my inbox, subject titled ‘Help out our mates Down Under’. It’s from Virgin Wines.

Thinking that it’s a charity appeal and that andrewb@virginwines.com has got together with his contacts in the wine industry in Australia to do something to help the victims of the wildfires I open the email, as presumably the company expected I would.

So I’m disgusted to report that it was just a springboard for what amounted to any other wine offer.

Just a horrible exploitative headline that reminds me of those rubbish classified ads that begin SEXSEXSEX Ironing Board for sale …

But in this case the base human instinct Virgin Wines appears to have sought to exploit is our – my – need to care for somebody else.

So I’ll be giving my Virgin WineBank balance of £60 to The Salvation Army in Australia – whose members practise temperance by the way – which is what Virgin Wines should have asked me to do in the first place.

Shame on them.

Let it snow

Although not a rant along the usual lines about the lack of preparedness for the current weather – and nobody can say we didn’t see it coming – I couldn’t let the opportunity pass to note the advantages of life outside the English capital.

Of a team of 21 due in today, only the four dependent on the rail network didn’t make it in to the office in central Brighton … the rest just walked. Admittedly it took one of them – Diane bless her – over an hour but she’s here …

Mind you, so few of our charity partners are about that most of the team are watching out of the window as hugely irresponsible ‘drivers’ skate the ungritted roads. Did nobody tell them ‘high gear, low revs’ when they learnt to drive?

And we poor pedestrians have to dice with death alongside them … really, what's so important that they have to put our lives at risk?

Anyhow, it’s hot pies all round and early closing so everybody gets home safely again before dark … traffic allowing :)