Free Stuff and Consequences

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Why is that when stuff is free, it always feels tastes or works a lot nicer? Well, most of the time anyway. Occasionally there’s a sting in the tale. Luckily this one is merely a pet peeve in comparison to the payout. I’ve been too busy to write anything for a while, but a couple of weeks ago the Daily Mail was giving away free LEGO. Just grab a paper at between 60p and £1.50 (depending on the day), rip out the LEGO token and exchange it for ‘free’ LEGO at a WH Smith store.

It was a good week for stocking up with elements for my LEGO business, and genuinely good fun building the little mini-sets (or as the Adult Fans of LEGO call then, Polybags). And while the price tag of the newspapers was totally worth the polybags I got in return – there was one major consequence to it: a week’s worth of newspapers sitting in my house…

After flicking through the first day’s paper, then the second I quickly became aware that they only half-decent thing in the hundred-or-so page tabloid (other than the ripped-out LEGO token) was the puzzle page in the centre. I read about two or three articles in the paper before realising how incredibly biased and (potentially) inaccurate accounts of the stories they were portraying – often at the expense of at least one person.

Look, I realise that some people really like newspapers and will have their preference of one over another, but I’m honestly taken back by the sheer ridiculousness of the articles. I won’t quote them as I don’t want to offer any further publicity to them.