Has "politically correct" killed the used audio market?

@tobor 007,

’If it’s old and damaged, you pay less. If it’s old, damaged, and vintage you pay more.’

Old and vintage (>20 years) mean the same thing but one carries more value and distinction.

Antique (>100years old) usually carries even more, but maybe not yet in audio.

Retro just seems to mean cheap. Maybe you could call it paying homage...

https://www.retrokids.com/blogs/news/what-s-the-difference-between-vintage-and-retro#:~:text=An%20it....


@lewkor,

’At each step of the journey toward socialism freedoms are lost so that we can "help those less fortunate".’


Yes, it’s all about shuffling freedoms around. Some will gain, some will lose.

Here in the UK we spend a quarter of our GDP upon welfare, yet many still complain it’s not enough. They seem to be blithely unaware of how the vast majority of the world lives.

Just who is setting this agenda, and why, are important questions we should be asking. Especially right now.


When it comes to selling language is important, but what’s wrong with honesty?

Before I sell anything I try to recall all defects and issues and highlight them in the wording.

That usually gives me peace of mind knowing then that the buyer is unlikely to be disappointed.

Whether it’s political correctness, marketing speak, or euphemism, blatant deception through words that attempt to to deflect or mislead are unlikely to deceive the experienced buyer.

It’s far better to work on presentation I feel. That reflects well upon the seller and also enhances the perceived value of the item for sale.

I particularly like those ads on eBay where someone goes to a lot of trouble to highlight a barely perceptible blemish.

Good for them. I like to think that enthusiasts of used audio have a higher than average sense of integrity.

@jjss49,

’i tend to agree on all the above... especially the last sentence -- mostly but not always... and we all have the scars from being burnt those few, memorable times’

Me too. I remember buying a portable Minidisc player whose built in rechargeable battery was doa, and a micro system that was ’lost’ in the post, but I think that’s about it. The micro system seller did offer a full refund with no issues.

Now when it comes to buying a car, or a house etc you’re in a whole different game of communication.

With private car sales I’d say look at the seller just as closely as you look at the vehicle.

With houses it’s best to look at written measurements rather than the photographs which seem to be taken with wide angled zoom lenses (as opposed to a more honest 50mm) in order to give an impression of greater size.

It’s strange how the concept of honesty has changed as our ability to manufacture image has increased exponentially.

With the cosmetics industry individuals are now able to transform their image to almost unrecognisable degrees.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with it but it’s probably better to acknowledge it rather than deny it.

As John Wayne, or was it Sean Connery, once said when questioned whether it was their real hair, "Yes, I paid for it myself."

@audio2design,

"In my yearly or every other year call with my cell phone company where I "negotiate" my rate, I tell them at the start of the call, this is my offer based on competition and their public offerings."


I tried to haggle last Feb with my car insurance renewal. Unfortunately, the guy on the other end wouldn’t budge and I hadn’t done the research to check whether the other quotes were like for like eg excess, courtesy car, breakdown cover etc.

It’s definitely a skill worth having, but you’ve got to also put the preliminary work in and tone down any sentiment.

One of my colleagues is particularly good at the business of haggling. She claims she saves hundreds of pounds with all of her various renewals.

Although she’s reasonably polite and friendly on the surface, if pushed she can also get pretty ferocious.

Me, I would start to worry whether the person on the other end of the phone, usually some kid, is having a good day or not. It takes a lot to get me mad, but unfortunately when I do, it also can take a lot to get me calmed down again.

The life and times of a passive-aggressive control freak audio enthusiast?

Well, as they say, life is a lesson. And there’s always the music.

As we know (and politicians and sales people seem to know even better) words can be very slippery indeed.

It’s can also be a long and circuitous route from one person’s original thought and desire to communicate, all the way to another’s understanding.

And that’s when they’re presumably being honest.

Perhaps it’s even more important to determine the real meaning in these days of our ever increasing reliance upon just the written word.

There’s quite a difference between written and spoken reviews. And again when we can see the reviewer.

Yet still no easy way to measure honesty.

--------

Doublespeak, how to lie without lying.

https://youtu.be/qP07oyFTRXc

Unfortunately the completely unnecessary lockdowns are going to do far, far more damage than the wu-flu alone ever could have.

Something smells fishy. Even with the vaccine rollout here in the UK, the authorities still want to elevate the restrictions in London. Some, especially those on the left even want to introduce another lockdown!

Even when it's clear that they didn't work!
Can't work and can't even be enforced.
When nothing was wrong with observing social distancing and good hygiene.

Something that has a death rate of less than 0.01%, and whose victims average age is 82.4?

Something that is needlessly preventing the treatment of other illnesses? I've heard of way more people dying from catching Covid in hospital than outside.

All of this needless destruction of businesses for what? 2021 will reveal just how much this scandemic scaremongering has affected the audio industry.

Meanwhile in other news, we're glad to report that no one has died of flu in 2020.

@schubert ,

Please try to understand real world economics. If you are able, try to see what these lockdowns have done to the future livelihoods of possibly billions of people worldwide.

Millions die every year and now millions more will die due to frenzied media fuelled covid over reaction.

Satan would definitely be on the side of the lockdown advocates. He wouldn’t even need to be a mathematician.


At least the British government have got their vaccine priorities right.


This priority list is as follows:

1 residents in a care home for older adults and their carers
2 all those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers
3 all those 75 years of age and over
4 all those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals [footnote 1]
5 all those 65 years of age and over
6 all individuals aged 16 years to 64 years with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious disease and mortality
7 all those 60 years of age and over
8 all those 55 years of age and over
9 all those 50 years of age and over

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-for-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-advi...

@nonoise,

You need to distinguish between infections and death rates. There is quite a difference. Billions catch colds each year, but billions don’t die from it, do they?

Billions do die from old age, cancer, heart disease and diabetes and starvation, but they aren’t so easy to use as political weapons are they?

And what’s the point of mentioning the plague? Do you think this is on the same scale? Really?

As I said the average age of Covid death is 82.4. Is it not clear that Covid is not the sole killer in these unfortunate cases?

Various co-morbidities brought on by age and declining health are the main contributing factors - not Covid 19.

Besides, testing and recording death rates are far from accurate. Remember when Elon Musk tested positive and negative 4 times in just one day.

Not saying Covid should be ignored but distancing and hygiene should be just as effective as the economic disaster of the lockdowns. The economic disaster that will affect billions worldwide and not just 0.01% of the population.

Billions who may not have the economic comfort and safety net that you might enjoy.

@dadork,

@cd318 +1
@millercarbon +1

This pandemic will kill more people with the attempted restraints than the actual virus. Just wait.


It already is doing.

Patients suffering with various long term life threatening conditions are unable to get the treatment they sorely need.

Patients with cancer, with heart disease, with dangerous levels of diabetes vastly outnumber those with life threatening Covid.

In fact, I doubt whether has Covid alone has killed anyone in previously good health. 

It's nearly always those unfortunates who have underlying health conditions, isn't it?

There's a reason why the average age of a Covid death is over 80 years of age.


Families are being pushed into increasingly terrible poverty worldwide. Millions of them. How are poor people in India and Africa being helped by the lockdowns? 

Businesses have been hit hard by the totally unecessary and ineffective lockdowns. A huge number have closed and many more will not survive. 

The rising levels of stress caused by unecessary medua fuelled fear and worry will no doubt have further unfortunate effects upon the physical and mental well-being of millions of people worldwide.

Meanwhile the rich and wealthy can continue to preach and pay lip service to the rest, whilst happily and hypocritically ignoring their own words themselves.

Sweden (China and Russia too) with its unwillingness to lockdown is doing far better than many countries which did.

That alone should convince that the lockdowns were not necessary.

Covid and the lockdowns may well be the greatest fraud in history. A fraud used for nothing more than political gain by unscrupulous politicians.

Covid was declassified as a high consequence infectious disease way back in March 2020 by the British government themselves!

So why did Boris Johnson immediately put the entire country into a lockdown a few days later? 

A lockdown that is now generally accepted to have served no purpose than to send the UK into further debt.

Meanwhile over in America President Trump was saying that Covid is no worse than influenza and that masks were largely a waste of time...

The scaredemic is ending as more and more people have begun to realise that it was little more than a case of smoke and mirrors.

For what ultimate ends has the western world been shooting itself in the foot for the past 10 months?

Well, that we shall see. No doubt when or even if they manage to get creepy, sinister Joe finally wheeled up into the White House.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid

We can discuss this all we want to but even going by the official data the average age of the Covid victim is, wait for it, a mere 82.4 years old.

London has just had it’s lockdown elevated to tier 3 - almost a week AFTER the vaccine rollout.

The UK vaccine target groups are primarily those over 70 years of age.
Currently most politicians are exempt but there’s no word about the Queen (94) or Prince Philip (99) getting the jab. You might assume that due to their advanced ages they would be near the front of the queue.

UK hospitals receive a monetary bonus for every death that they mark down as being due to Covid. If that’s not an incentive to massage the figures then what is?

Thousands of doctors are being censored worldwide from speaking out against Covid or the vaccine.

Why is that?

Influenza strangely enough seems to have stopped existing in 2020. Without any need for a vaccine!

And this with all fear and scaremongering that goes along with this scamdemic and all of its economic and social hardships.

None of which are likely to help promote anyone’s immune system.


On a personal note, some
10 months later, out of my social circle I only know of 2 people who contacted Covid. One is in her early 60s and took a few weeks to recover. She said it was nasty, just like a bad case of flu.

The other is in her late 40s and said it was more like a cold. She can’t wait to return to work.

My father is in his 80s and my mum is in her 70s. Both, like most people of their age, have serious health issues.
I have suggested to them both that they should consider the vaccine, but so far neither of them have shown any interest.

Like many other people they would prefer to wait and see how it plays out.

------

I have no wish to offend.

So if anyone is bothered by strong language then PLEASE DO NOT WATCH THIS.


Nurse with masters degree unloads on the Idiots in the world!

https://brandnewtube.com/v/V8C9YP

@ml8764ag,

“...Political Correctness is fascism pretending to be manners...” GC

Indeed.

UK tier 3 lockdowns extended at the same time as administered vaccine totals approach 150,000.

It looks like we’re not getting back our previous freedoms anytime soon, are we?

They’re now talking about Covid mutating. If it actually existed in the first place that is.

How handy. Might mean even more different regular vaccine jabs.
More jabs = more profits.

Just when are these ’vital’ lockdowns going to end?

Let me guess. How about sometime after Wednesday 20 January 2021?

Or maybe Jan 2022, given it might take a year to quell the rioting once the coup is exposed.

Or maybe they never will be lifted.

What do you think?

In the meantime the UK economy begins to grind into dust as 1000s more start to lose their jobs. Merry Christmas to all.

Then there’s those poor souls frightened of the untested vaccine on the one hand and scared witless of Covid on the other.

Sweden meanwhile still has less than 8,000 Covid deaths WITH NO LOCKDOWN.

This kind of whipped up public hysteria has not been seen since the 1930s.

Many of its future victims back then were also contributing towards it back then. 

A bit like paying for your own noose?

Let’s see if we can guess when the following was written.

"Currently there are 105,000 ventilators in the United States. During a regular flu season approximately 100,000 are in use.

If, as some experts predict, we see an avian flu pandemic—a virulent human flu that causes a global outbreak of serious illness2—the country would need as many as 742,000.

Such a shortage underscores the country’s lack of preparedness for a pandemic."


CAUGHT SHORT

Posted by RT Staff | Feb 7, 2007 | Influenza

YES, 2007! Does it sound at all familiar?
Ring any bells? Respiratory infections that might need respirators?

https://rtmagazine.com/disorders-diseases/infectious-diseases/influenza/caught-short/


Surely by now the increasing number of of first hand testimonies by worldwide medical professionals should be giving some of us cause to think. Not so much the homeopaths and chiropractors maybe, but some of these professionals are extraordinarily well experienced and qualified.

We should be grateful that these brave doctors are willing to stand up and speak their minds. They have little to gain and plenty to lose.

In another time and place we might even call them freedom fighters.

-------
Ask The Experts (Covid-19 Vaccine) - Now Banned on YouTube and Facebook

https://brandnewtube.com/v/75grLS


As for the various no doubt politically motivated Covid scaremongers, is it not obvious by now  that lockdowns and a climate of fear will have serious psychological, physical and economic effects for all those affected?  All those who live in the real world that is.

In any case why do you wish to perpetuate this fear when a vaccine is now readily available?

Go ahead and take it. Be my guest.