Noatso Simple

Our two year old has just provided us with an absolutely concrete demonstration of the malign power of advertising (well, marketing anyway).

Yesterday we had a promotional sample of Oatso Simple posted through our door. It was in the form of a flatish box with a picture of Windy Miller on it, containing a sachet of golden syrup flavour Oatso Simple.


My wife and I have laughed at this product in the past, not least when on some baby related forum we saw a plea for a recommendation for something "like porridge" that "only takes a few minutes to make" which got the response "try Oatso Simple" - why not, we thought, "try porridge".

Anyway, In order to make your nutricious bowl of Oatso Simple the packet suggests adding the contents of the packet (36g) along with 180ml of semi-skimmed milk, to a bowl, microwaving for 2 and a half minutes then allowing to stand for 1 minute. Compare this with the way we make porridge - put some porridge oats in a bowl, add water, microwave for 1 minute, add more water if necessary and/or stir, microwave a further 30 seconds, add some of these: mashed banana, cream, sugar, milk, syrup as you see fit. Where, I ask you, is the difficulty in that that required Quaker to come up with their over-packaged, hugely expensive (around £2 for 7 sachets = 250gm V around 50p a kilo for oats ) and SLOWER(!!!) to prepare Oatso Simple?

As you can probably see, I'm totally unimpressed by Oatso Simple and consider it, not just a rip off, but one which actually does real harm, in that it probably, to some degree will put people (who may not have a lot of money) off an extremely nutricious and cheap food by making them think it is hard to prepare. But, we did have a packet posted through our door for nothing...

So, after a request from Agnes, I prepared it and served it up for her breakfast.

Later, as she fiddled around with the packet she asked if we might have more Oatso Simple in the future. Not wanting to wade in with a flat-out refusal I asked her if she thought it was like porridge and she answered in the affirmative. I pointed out that we already had porridge in the cupboard (lately overlooked in favour of an own brand version of Weetabix (30% cheaper and indistinguishable from the original - except for the box)) and that she could have that whenever she wanted. She said that she would prefer Oatso Simple. Did she agree, I asked, that Oatso Simple and porridge were, to all intents and purposes, identical in the bowl. She did...

But she still wanted more Oatso Simple. I asked why, given that they appeared the same and she replied "Because it's got a little man on the box".

Anyway, now that she's in bed and I've thrown away the box, I'm hoping that Oatso Simple won't be mentioned in our house again, but no doubt there will be some other bit of appalling consumer marketing to contend with tomorrow.

Less is more

I've just had another of those "is it just me?" moments - or rather "is it just us?" as I was with my wife and she felt the same way. Actually, what I want to talk about is possibly, for many people, bordering on inconsequential, but to me it is the perfect illustration of how the forces of commercialism have subtely degraded what I remember as a treasured childhood event.

We took the kids to a bonfire and fireworks, put on by the local school where Agnes's nursery is based. So far so good, nice idea, small scale, profits to the school, but...

It just wasn't the sort of experience I was hoping for, for me or the kids.

First of all the flyer for the event mentioned that the gates were open from 6 pm. We were a little late setting off walking (what's new) so rushed a bit as not to miss the start. entry was £5 per family (reasonable), but when we asked what time the display started we were told "around 7.30" - Aaargh! We now had almost one and a half hours to entertain one and two year olds, just as they were starting to tire at the end of the day - how fortunate then that there were some small commercial fairground attractions there too! Maybe I'm being over cynical but I have a horrible suspicion that the one and a half hour wait was imposed so that people would spend money on the sideshows, rather than the sideshows being there because of the wait. I'm not suggesting by the way that the organisers, who I assume are all voluntary, had anything but good intentions, I just think that this kind of insidious thinking has become almost endemic. Surely the point of bonfire night is that the fire and fireworks are the attraction?

Actually I guess that around here organisers might plead a special case for their excesses, in that we live by the seaside and the local authorities put on firework displays every week during the summer for the tourists - hence the local kids are probably rather blase about fireworks. Also, these days, come Nov 5th (or 3rd in this case) they are still probably a little hung-over from the sugar-rush of Halloween. So of course the obvious solution is to up the ante. Not just fireworks, but trampolines, a ball pit and the chance to throw a few darts and win a cuddly toy!

Worst of all, even when the firework display started, while half the kids obliviously continued to chase each other around the school playing field (at least some of them still take simple pleasures, despite our best adult intentions) and their parents stood looking at their watches, the side shows kept their lights on and their music blaring! It was awful.

I could also go on about the lack of a Guy on the bonfire. In short, maybe it is a little un-PC these days to burn effigies of Catholics. But if we are too squeemish to do that, and to really rememeber why we are doing it, then maybe we should forget the whole thing. Obvioulsy this would upset a few retailers, who must make fantastic margins on their £49.99 packs of garishly packaged ordnance (surely only matched in rip-off value by Christmas crackers, Easter eggs and sun cream), but I have a horrible feeling that what was once a much looked forward to event, preceeded by days and weeks of firewood collecting, penny for the Guy and the careful selection of individual catherine wheels, jumping-jacks, rockets and bangers, is gone for ever. But each year, the arrival by post of a small packet of "plot toffee" lovingly made by my mother rekindles a flame.

Ostritches thinking about flying

I'm afraid I've not posted for a while as I've had more pressing things to attend to lately than the end of the world as we know it.

Sometimes life just gets in the way - right? - and we lose sight of the bigger picture.

But how come so many people out there seem to have simply no sense whatsoever of impending danger and have apparently never seen the bigger picture, despite the fact that our media is flooded with the verified and corroborated accounts of scientists warning us every day of new environmental disasters on the horizon? How come this stuff just washes over so many (allegedly smart) people?

We've just had the publication of the Stern report into the economic effects of climate change, which apparently says that after reviewing all of the avaiable evidence there is no doubt that the only way to save society is to take strong and urgent action to reduce emissions. (Today, just as an aside, we also have a report that global fish stocks will be wiped out within 40 years if we don't change our ways.) But at the same time we have a programme on the BBC about the growing market for private jets including interviews with a whole bunch of people who obviously take no account of these warnings and base their multi-billion pound business models entirely on an extrapolation of the data on air travel over the last few years.

Even I have heard of the concept of "the tipping point", so how come so many of these thrusting corporate types haven't? What management guides are they actually reading as they fly upstate for their power breakfasts?