Patron Saint of Mid-Life: Part 17: Nihil durare potest tempore perpetuo

Just published, over there.

Something I wrote in it made me think about globalisation, a subject you can't help but be aware of, obviously, what with all the protests and stuff. I was thinking about the odd brands of cigarettes Ronnie once bought in Holland, and how it was less likely to happen these days. You tend to see the same brands everywhere you go.

And just like the gone-but-not-forgotten "local" naming like Marathon, Opal Fruits, and even Jif, that sense of difference, of foreigness, is increasingly hard to come by. Which is a shame, obviously, and there's the puzzle. Most of us just hate it when some global marketing campaign gets imposed locally. I've personally got a real hatred of campaigns like the Apple iPod ones, and Coke adverts, and (going back to the footie) silliness like Canon's "finger football". But still it happens that some robot in a marketing department insists it's going to be a good thing, and the steamroller rolls on.

And the flipside of all this is that, in selling brands globally, people around the globe are encouraged to look away from their locality, and yearn to live in the land(s) of pokey pola, cheap electronic goods, and Marlboro. So they pay their local gangster their life savings, sit in an airless container for a few weeks, and if they survive that, get to pick cockles on the Lancashire coast for their troubles.

And it's all down to the fact that I bet you can't buy those cigarettes with a polar bear on the packet in Holland any more.