“Throw it away and buy another”, was what the British Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) shown as a dowdy school ma’m, says in a cartoon in the 1960
s by Sir Da
vid Low, considered one of the greatest cartoonists of the world, conveying to the students in the classroom her assessment of the British economy then. The economy needed not saving or austerity but increased spending to remedy the stagnation it had reached.
“Send yourself a five bob telegram,” she added, if my memory of the cartoon in Manchester Gaurdian is right. In the age of E-mails and SMS, you cannot send telegrams anymore, but the idea of throwing away anything at the first sign of its failure and buying another seems to have caught on.
When a mixer-juicer stopped functioning due to a broken washer or some such reason I, not being a follower of the throw-it-away culture, thought of getting it repaired. With thousands of apartments around the one were I live, I expected several service centres in the vicinity. Hours of search revealed there was none.
So I walked into a kitchen appliance dealer of a reputed brand to ask about the nearest such centre. He did not know, and said if the appliance was of the brand he sold I could leave it there are collect it next week, but an appliance of another brand would not be repaired. Buy a new one, he advised. Continue reading Throw it Away, Buy Another