ever expanding consumer bliss

As always busy at work getting back to my usual day-to-day work which is a bit of a shocker. Drooling over new bikes but was (not unexpectedly) told in no uncertain terms not now. Also looked into what to do now that the street lights cease to extend into our close. It's funny the council needs to save some money so they cut a service (stair lighting) and we need to sort it out ourselves. So we have the hassle and need to spend the money. Surely, just raising council tax would have done this particular trick. I suspect I am too old fashioned. In fact I was listening to a rather interesting program where consumers are tricked into doing quite a lot of work themselves thus saving lots of money: from filling the petrol tank yourself, via scanning bar codes at the super market checkout and advertising (please spend 5 minutes to leave a review for this product) to beta testing new products. The race to the bottom is well on the way...