4×4 PSYCHOLOGY

One positive of rising oil prices this week is that sales of gas-guzzling 4×4s and SUVs are plummeting across Europe and in the USA. General Motors are “strategically reviewing” the Hummer. In other words, they’re looking to sell it off.

Oliver Burkeman in today’s Guardian considers the demise of the SUV. Oil prices and environmental considerations apart, the psychology of the 4×4 driver is very interesting. Burkeman writes,

“Critics of the SUV tend to assume that those who drive them would be constitutionally incapable of such selflessness, which would be an annoyingly smug point of view if it weren’t for the fact that market research conducted for the automakers themselves backs it up. The average SUV owner, according to studies cited in (Keith) Bradsher’s book, is “apt to be self-centred and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbours or communities.” In addition, they are “insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills … they tend to like fine restaurants a lot more than off-road driving, seldom go to church, and have limited interest in doing volunteer work to help others.”"

In Edinburgh, red cycle lanes and advanced stop areas have appeared across the city over the last few years, the city’s attempt to encourage people on two wheels back onto the road (instead of the pavement). However, the challenges for cyclists on our roads are still fearsome, and car driver attitude is the key factor. And the bigger the vehicle, the bigger the attitude.

INSINCERITY IS JUST AN ADJECTIVE AWAY

“Websites are now the front door to all businesses”. I don’t think so.

For instance. I was in a great deli in Leith last week, the kind where you spend ages just reading the exotic labels. The bread was tempting enough, craftily positioned by the door. My basket was soon filled with Italian deliciousness.

I got talking with the owner, exalting him to move to Musselburgh.

His shop is doing well. Yet this isn’t a guy sitting on his laurels. He has plans to expand, online retailing isn’t part of those plans. So he doesn’t need a website. And why should he?

No, the statement about the front door was contrived by consultants “for targeted digital direction”. They’re a marketing company, specialising in strategic planning for online. Sounds great, but as their own website images are misaligned, I’m not impressed.

I’ve never written over-eagerly, but I have believed the rhetoric of executives who talked up the product. Off the top of my head, I remember that crystal clear digital sound simply wasn’t crystal at all. Despite top-notch alliteration, the regulators scolded us.

Even all those years ago, the utopia promised by interactive television felt unrealistic. The words tumbled off my pen nonetheless.

But I’ve learned. For every job, you can find the right voice. One that sounds like your client, and speaks honestly to their customers. I keep it simple and don’t try too hard. I know that insincerity is only an adjective away.

You know, it’s a pity about that deli in Leith. I’d relish writing some delicious words for his website.

MY SCARY ORGANIC BOX

I just saw Jamie at Christmas. A curious sense of calm has entered my kitchen.

We have an organic box delivered. Locally grown (except bananas, kiwi fruit, pomegranates, sharon fruit and the little pink spiky round things) and deliciously muddy, it’s a veg fiesta.

Or it should be. I’ve often cast my eye over it with a sense of disbelief.

This box contains challenges. Not the cooking, I can find recipes. I just need to know what some of it is.

Photo : The Guardian

So I trawl the internet for visual clues to identify, for example, the round, orange thing. I phone the farm. The orange thing … well, they weren’t sure what they’d sent, it was probably a small squash.

To get back to Jamie Oliver … chef and campaigner for healthy eating and chickens. I am a fan. I appreciate his style. In short, a glug of this, a pinch of that. Throw it all in, get your hands stuck in there and slam it in the oven. Easy … sometimes.

As I discovered at Christmas, Jamie also gets down and dirty in his organic vegetable patch, which is the size of our house.

What was interesting about his Christmas show, and Jamie at Home (the book of the series which just had to be bought) is how it was all written for me.

I’m at the stage where the quixotic preferences of our three children are quietly driving me insane. One daughter is a vegetarian yet the list of vegetables she won’t eat is, shall we say, lengthy. Her appetite for pasta neopolitana is healthy, however.

Another daughter won’t eat anything green. And the little one likes it, hates it, likes it, hates it, likes it, hates it …

Anything with eyes is obviously taboo. A little spice is fine, but one extra dried chilli flake, and the meal is a goner. I need counselling.

Today, the first organic box since Jamie has been delivered and I’m devastated. There’s no celeriac.

No fennel. No kale. Not even a tiny beet.

We have parsnips, however. Hmm, what would Jamie do. I could chop ‘em and glug on the olive oil (extra virgin), rub it all in, then slam them in the oven. Of course.

A BLOGGER CALLED ME A THIEF

I’m feeling wounded today. Someone called me a thief on their blog. I don’t particularly mind. Or indeed care. But it was in print, and it niggles.

We used a small photo on Chechu Rubiera’s website, copied without permission from another site. We’d given the photographer a name check, as we always do, but he was unhappy. We’ve apologised publicly (twice), and removed his photo from our page.

Perhaps I’m too relaxed about sharing on the web. People borrow from my sites. It’s no big deal. It’s the internet.

This made me think about relationships on the web. I write marketing communications for publication, and so the reader (client, customer, journalist) is never far away from me.

Our photographer used his blog to voice his frustration. That’s fine. It’s just that … if he’d read our website, he’d know we invite photographers to get in touch to see how we can repay them in kind. There was no need to bad mouth us.

I’d have linked to his site, we might even have done a feature on his cycling activities, which look quite interesting.

And because he had taken a nice photo of Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, his blog could have been seen by thousands of cycling fans. But he chose a different path, and who knows? Maybe he missed a great opportunity.

RECYCLING CHRISTMAS

As well as the inevitable snuffles and sneezes, Santa brought an abundance of presents to our house, wrapped creatively by family and friends. The packaging inside was obscene and I resigned myself to sorting through the debris before it headed out the door.

Into the bin went the plastic and wires. The cardboard was straight into the boot of the car, destined for the local recycling centre, just ten minutes away.

And so, I gathered up all the wrapping paper, removing tags and ribbons and yes, all the sellotape.

The print on the side of our recycling bins says I can recycle “all kinds of paper”. But that’s not true, they don’t take Christmas wrapping paper.

Because despite my selfless efforts, which included getting up at 6.45am on a holiday to put the bins out, the collectors on Monday morning dumped my PAPER bin full of recycled Christmas PAPER back on the doorstep.

So I emailed my local “let’s not waste” department, not back at their desks until 3rd January, according to their voicemail. I called first. Obviously.

And as I wait with anticipation for their reply, I note on the council website that wrapping paper can’t be recycled. It’s all beyond me. I can’t see how the masses will ever embrace recycling unless it’s logical.