Although not overtly monarchist – the Brick Lane Robot Shop has nevertheless bowed to public pressure and issued its own unique Will and Kate souvenir wedding memorabilia. In line with our recent policy of shameless product placement, our Will and Kate wedding statuette has also been inducted to the rapidly-expanding Thus Quality Hall of Fame. [...]
Category Archives: consumerism
Sindhi truck art tin trunks win Thus Quality Award
March 21, 2011 – 10:06 am
With feeble and insincere apologies for the interruption in the awards process, I am delighted to announce that The Robot Shop’s Sindhi truckers’ tin trunks have passed all the tests and blasted into the Thus Quality Hall of Fame. Only a loony or a Hounyhym (Thus passim) could find any fault with these life-affirming and unique [...]
Great Frog skull ring wins prestigious inaugural ThusMagazine Quality Award
January 12, 2011 – 12:49 pm
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to shape up, smarten up, put on a serious face and get back into the corporate world. But then I woke up. The benchmark test involved redeeming my daughter’s credit note from The Great Frog and buying a suit in the sales. I am now the owner of [...]
Sex and Terror in the Robot Shop
January 8, 2011 – 6:38 pm
If my previous post gave the impression that any fool with an unhealthy knowledge of vintage robots and space toys, brightly coloured tin, Mexican death symbolism, a penchant for loud, obscure, smoking rhythm and blues, religious kitsch and clockwork automata could become a retail czar, then I apologise. Robot shopkeeping is no sinecure. I recall [...]
Methadrone IS dangerous. Knock it on the head right now
March 29, 2010 – 12:12 pm
Shilly-shallying about what to do about Chinese designer ‘plant food’ drug Methadrone/Mephedrone/MCat is another unwelcome example of how New Labour’s passive/aggressive approach towards protecting citizens’ rights does the reverse. It’s enough to drive a man to spliff. Last October, former NL drug czar, the (perhaps) aptly named Professor David Nutt resigned/was sacked from the Advisory Council [...]
The problem with world fisheries is nobody sticks up for the fish
April 16, 2009 – 8:18 pm
“The problem with world fisheries is nobody sticks up for the fish.” Charles Clover, The End of the Line. While Somali pirates are taking hostages, killing and getting killed by the French navy, French trawlermen are blockading Calais, Boulogne and Dunkirk. The Somalis claim they have taken to robbery and kidnapping because their traditional fishing livelihoods have [...]
Random facts about funhouse Britain from Thus
April 14, 2009 – 12:30 pm
In no particular order, and with no special weighting, here are a few facts gleaned from the media with help from friends of Thus at Ten. Please feel free to send in your own facts. We need them in this era of spin and errant fantasy: 68% of Britons believe that MP’s salaries are ‘too [...]
The big money is at the end of the rainbow, same as it ever was
March 3, 2009 – 4:58 pm
Writing in Wilmott, Rudi Bogni argues that banker-bashing may be a convenient way to mask the inconvenient truth that the demands on our financial systems are unsustainable. Western productivity was not up to the task of generating sufficient wealth to fuel perpetual growth, nor is it likely to be. It required a collective suspension of [...]