Imagine a long sandy beach 100 per cent devoid of muff bars, deckchairs or seafront shopping arcades. Devoid, if you will, of Being, save the sweaty latex-clad automatons that run up and down like headless 'chooks'. Picture, if you must, a blue sky transcending a pink lobster floating unconsciously on a… - er, sorry, yesterday's menu. Anyhow, you get the picture already. Ladies and gentlemen, Sheilas and Shanes, I give you - Australia, the toast of London's catering industry!

Or, as the overwrought coda of the Australian Tourist Board's TV anthem has it: 'Australia: I wanna sleep for a while and speak no words', hence perfectly encapsulating the general mood on disembarking at Sydney airport. Change that to: 'I wanna see an osteopath, NOW!' In the car park the heat hits you like a runaway drinks' trolley. Not to worry, it's only a short hop to… another sweltering car park. But luckily from there it's only a quick ride to the legendary Bondi (pronounced 'Bond die') Beach, where pasty British tourists sleep off their jet-lag in blissful ignorance of that yellow disk in the sky that common sense tells us is only 100 metres away. The real mystery, Spinoza once mused, is not the mind but the body. We really don't know what a body is capable of. Difficult not to believe that the thought first occurred to him at the sight of Dave from Preston crawling up the beach like 'collateral damage' from a Baghdad marketplace.

Sydney's not just a beach. At least not all of the time. The harbour boasts an intoxicating array of overpriced real estate, liners like the QE2 and 'up-market' brothels. Unlike, say, Huddersfield, Sydney has an endless queue of camera-snapping Japanese tourists to entertain. Hence the incongruous spectacle of life on the game in Surrey Street, I'll wager. Such a change to see porn that you can take the wife and kids to! But what's this? You want us to PAY to enter this here strip club? My good man, that really is a novelty.

Never let it be said that Sydney is 'cheap'. If you order a plain sarnie ('sanger' in local pleb parlance) expect to pay $10 (a little over 4 squid), only save yourself the hassle in the suburbs as they'll bring you back a dead cockroach in between two slices of bread. Beers include the notorious 'VB' (Victoria Bitter) and Crown lager (should rename it 'Clown lager'). It's not so much the cost of grub on holiday but the misapprehension that we're getting a good deal (while in reality being shafted) that us tourists yearn for. The bookshops around King's Cross, it has to be said, are a welcome distraction, bursting with out-of-print gems, and the nearby cafes and bars offer an oblique insight into that nominal, somewhat indefinable haecceity that is Ozzie 'culture': subtract the invisible plight of inner city Aborigines and the white suburban tradesman from the equation and what you end up with is, crudely put, a kind of subtropical burlesque: a cross between Brecht and It Ain't 'Alf Hot, Mum (the Gay Mardi Gras, 'Prisoner Cell Block H', INXS, Aussie Rules football, etc.) In a word, then: an invisible line between macho and camp.

The women: truly one would need the lyricism of Ovid to capture their fairness in words, especially the broad-shouldered lifeguards. Best take a leaf out of Spinoza's book: buy a Hawaiian shirt and get jiggy with your surfboard.

Other entries in the ever-growing WhoreCull geographical bitchin's almanac:

SURREY
HUDDERSFIELD
er.... that's it.

WHORECULL'S RULES OF CONSUMPTION

Yes, we know it's tricky deciding where to put your hard-earned dollar, but here are some cut-out-and-keep rules to refer to next time you find yourself thinking "well, should I?"

·        Shop and invest ethically or not at all. You know it fucking matters.

·        Fuck all vacuous brand loyalty - buy stuff cos it's useful/comfortable/tasty and wasn't produced in a sweatshop.

·        Fuck 'convenience' (yeah, if you drive) and 'value' - pay fair prices for high-quality goods ("but how will I afford it?" Stop spunking so much on beer, you cunt!)

·        Fuck Tesco and that lot and get your sorry ass down the market.

Recommended Reading
·        ENOUGH
·        CorporateWatch
·        No Sweat
·        Make Trade Fair

People had to get their plates in them as surely as they had to buy that expensive ticket to a football match, that 'budget' airline ticket (even though it's over £100) to Rome and that last drink which is comfortably over £3. The hefty tax if anything acting as an inspiration. Why? As mature capitalism maintains its vice-like grip on the masses' minds, we are foundering in a cornucopic morass of constant acquisition, where consumption is always insufficient and there's always something else "you've taken a fancy to". Somewhere along the line the more honest, indulgent, havin' it culture shifted to mean simply have it all, do it all, buy, take, consume like fuckery - as kind of predicted in Renton's final soliloquy in Trainspotting. The questions for these sad fuckers, when will you stop? Can you really get no satisfaction? Is it just me or is 'retail therapy' a grotesque term for such a mindless activity?

And why such rampant materialism? Salient points are legion. For a start we have a Bush administration and a Blair government/Brown chancellorship desperate to keep us spending (preferably on plastic) as well as buying property at ridiculous values because they know that this is keeping the economy afloat - and these short-term methadonic fixes are far easier to implement than prevention and cure of a smacked-out 'globalisation' system, which is actually nothing of the sort. Then there's the fact that the world's biggest manufacturers of stuff such as Disney, GM, Nike are all powerful lobbyists exercising far more leverage with politicians than we could ever muster. They will get their tax breaks, their offshore registrations and their Asian sweatshops and that will make it financially far easier to promote their product. Make this stuff in the West (and help to cure the economy)? No way, I have chief financial officers and audit houses obsessively analysing every financial quarter and I simply can't allow the extra costs to impact on my 'bottom line'. So it all gets moved overseas. Slavery by another name, really.

Selective cornucopia
These are top-down issues but more blame lies in the unfettered, all-encompassing, post-war deregulated development of the capitalist, consumer society, with its evil twin bruv marketing. Ideology has become irrelevant as we are made to recognise the supremacy of the product and its must-have status in our lives. Whichever sector you look at - white goods, technical equipment, leisurewear, supermarkets - you see ruthless in-house marketing teams coalescing with equally shithead PR agencies. Terms have now sprung up like 'ambient' or 'viral' marketing which are just terms for shoving this stuff in our faces any which way and via any medium possible. Deny the punter any downtime whatsoever and he'll surely get the mantra of procurement. This even extends to the enthusiastic students out on the streets doing market research for well-meaning charitable orgs: your opinion might very well be 'valued' but your time is being invaded for a direct debit donation to service your extreme guilt. Of course you still feel bad in speeding straight past, but those 'chuggers' want a piece of your arse as much as the next bourgeois cog (this is not to say that if you look in the back of Big Issue or New International that there aren't some good outlets for conscious/green/fair trade, etc investment. But like the Prius electric car or the sop of 'Corporate Social Responsibility' these are developing slowly and need much more coverage. Let's see all non-fair-trade products labelled with a big Unfair Trade logo to remind you that someone else is paying for your cheap products).

Such omniinvasion doesn't always work. Sony has been running billboard/magazine 'campaigns' recently promoting the creative values of their PCs, Mp3 players, digi-cams, etc, wherein individuals repose smugly after having just, say, downloaded some tracks onto MD. As with mobile operator O2's trance mantra 'see what you can do', there is supposedly some next-level techno empowerment in getting the basic functionality out of your kit, but the overall effect is: fuck off smug prick and fuck off Sony.

The upgrade culture is another aspect whereby marketeers make damn sure we will be returning to shops periodically to get the latest versions, like a dealer saying he's just got the better shit in. The minute variations in Nike trainers that somehow make us 'individual' are a facet of this. Indeed, those Berks-in-stocks would have had as their inspiration the chance to be 'the first' and 'unique' with the new designs, ignoring the fact that others in the queue were buying exactly the same thing. (And the slightly more retro DIY fashion of the mo lacks the free spirit of the original: indeed retro is a post-modern way of giving you more choice, more stuff to buy; no longer is it just an alternative option propagated by small units in rundown parts of town).

Of course retro and NOSTALGIA are vital ties into the cap culture. Another lovely sight is estate agent Foxton's fleet of souped-up Minis, itself acting on kitsch notions of the Brit swinging '60s for infantilist effect, daubed in graffiti, supposedly pleasing the 30-somethings who remember their tentative dabbles with the new street 20 years ago. "This double-edged reverie is making me feel so good about myself: I'm going to have me a look in the estate agents". And so onto a massive loan (I believe they're called mortgages) for a box in Islington. This is to say nothing of an actual branch of Foxton's I went past the other day - all decked out to look like a fucking flash bar with its chrome fittings, drinks-laden fridges and modern chairs. Again, it's all about creating synergies in easy minds, all to facilitate the 'experience' so that they damn well buy that property.

Which leads me onto the development of personal financial services. More and more of us are spunking ('investing') more and more and more of our dough on an array of ISAs, Tessas (lovely girls), endowments, gilt-linked bonds, stocks and shares, etc. Much of which doesn't seem to deliver the promised returns anyway. All the serious papers and their Sunday counterparts now come with weighty 'Cash' or 'Money' sections that help you invest your money, give you advice, provide a forum for complaints (see Consumer Democracy, below) and crucially, because they are not stand-alone isolated, philanthropic publications, carry pages and pages of ads for the Standard Lifes and Eggs of this world. Likewise on TV. Jonathan Franzen's Corrections paints in its earlier pages a Clinton-era picture of anyone savvy and with a few quid becoming DIY brokers, moving their money around like they really know what they're talking about with the same facility as sending an email. Since dotcom bust and 9/11 slump there has been far less proliferation of this trend.

The top-down reasons for the exponential rise in financial services are roughly the same as above - the financial and real estate sectors must convince us of the virtue and vitality of their stuff - but obviously apart from property there is less fetishisation of these nebulous 'products' (there is nothing physical about them). Yet these myriad financial instruments are there to provide a level of infantilist comfort and an escape from harsh realities and the possibility that it could go tits-up at any moment. We may be cutting the world's nose off with our policies but I am not going to spite my face at the same time. Selfish politics, selfish person. Accumulation of wealth as well as accumulation of stuff... that's the way to go out.

So, am I saying: fuck it all off and spend, spend, spend on destructive products like fags and booze and drugs and cheap fried breakfasts? Well no not really. In the end the other products are just like these drugs nowadays; they have the same appetitive/addictive function - even spiritual crutches for some - but are ultimately meaningless. And so much is made about the rebellious nature of booze and drugs (only because they are harmful it seems) but the reality is that they are manufactured by either big business or illegal cartels with precisely the same lack of scruples about their cause and effect.

No, I am saying that if we lived in a more globally equitable world we sick western fucks wouldn't have so much money and the relentless parade and purchasing of all these products would be relegated somewhat down the priority list. Chances of that happening without much more material of this ilk are minimal.
Brand hegemony breeds loyalty. Brand-loyal is a mantra for any FMCG (fast moving consumer good, dearie) marketer of any pile of shite and how they go about convincing us of the necessity of their stuff over somebody else's is achieved in myriad ways slightly alluded to above. Don't like Adidas, choose Nike. Vodafone's shite, I like Orange. Nokia is everywhere, I'm going for an Ericsson, etc, etc. That's what this culture of choice leads to - expenditure going to select 'trusted' firms - like you really have an intimate relationship with them. Listen, the one with 50% market share is going to buy out the one with 30% so they'll be the same. There was never that much difference between them anyway.

Everything is so fucking integrated innit? The music that accompanied the ad for the phone you bought is available on a TV ad compilation CD (there's a site informing you too); the film tie-ins will take you down the Showcase, and I like the logo on the front of my favourite team.

Moreover, the majority do not seem to have cottoned onto the fact that most magazines/publications are simply there to make you buy stuff. Without the thriving advertising industry they represent, these 'consumer-facing' publications wouldn't exist - so get out there and buy goddamit. There's no escape. Except of course there is, with a little thought and a conscious displacing of yourself from this market in perpetual motion. Me, I am happy with my 1G phone, I buy one pair of trainers a year and I am always looking in the discount section of the supermarket. Ooh, you pikey! Oh yeah, this in/exclusive nature of the brand-led market is great too.

Material escapism
Of course the supremacy of such rampant consumption isn't working in a vacuum. For the many with their multi-channel digital TV package and DVD players they are feeding themselves heady opiates that will anaesthetise or divert them from the fucked-up world and keep them firmly on the consumer merry-go round. It is all tuned into the evasive 'easier option'. And this is the chief reason why I'm driven to write this because such concentration abrogates any change in political, social or cultural consciousness. That camera phone is a product not a lifestyle. It cannot improve you as a person. You're the same ignorant cakehole you always were.

So the only rights that now seem to matter (in terms of what Joe Public gets worked up about) are to do with this materialism. We may have had more people up in arms about the hikes in petrol prices than the unjust Iraq war. We live in Lynne Foulds Wood's Consumer Democracy, a material world where the creed is absolutely greed is good.

Don't read a book or teach yourself an 'ology, get in the car and drive to the retail park. Treat yourself, Cheat yourself. Switch off not on. Buy a broadsheet, but only for the 'lifestyle' stuff. Dare not feed your head, stuff it all full of comforting irrelevancies instead.