The Unsuitablog

I honestly don’t like it when a website writes a good article and I see an advert right next to it advertising something which contradicts the article. In a previous post, I suggested that The Independent needed to keep an eye on their automated adverts, but in the case of this week’s Guardian, the advert was actually being run by The Guardian themselves.

Here’s an extract from the article that the advert ran alongside:

“Sadly, not all consumer goods manufacturers are suddenly going to roll out proactive leasing schemes, given they have a vested interest in selling more and faster, as in the case of the global $23.4bn power-tool industry. But given that the average power drill is used for just four minutes every year – a slothful work rate matched by many other garden and DIY tools – it makes sense as a consumer to join a tool-sharing scheme, or even to start one.”

So, I wonder how often the average family uses the ice cream maker that they bought one hot August afternoon when the kids were pining for something cold and tasty? Patio washers, fence painters, leaf blowers — all things guaranteed to make me fume, even when they aren’t bought new. But when someone does buy something new, like the aforementioned ice cream maker, rather than buy an ice cream from a shop, or from an ice cream van — yes, that’s an example of shared use — I have a little moment of dispair.

Which makes it ever so galling that The Guardian proudly sell such items on the same page that is warning against exactly that kind of thing.