down on skid row
I love half-price musical theatre. Apart from the odd shitty seat (I missed half of Little Shop of Horrors. The top half. Never get the cheap seats at the New Ambassador’s Theatre) it always works out pretty well. They fill empty seats, you get your musical theatre fix.
I have two friends who’ve seen Les Mis literally hundreds of times, half price all the way.
mmm, swanky
Lastminute.com is giving £10 gourmet meals away to celebrate 10 years of… whatever it is they do when you book online.
You can also finegle a free birthday meal for two. Yes they do want proof. And you have to go all the fuck way to Battersea. Also it’s in a butcher shop-themed restaurant.
damn straight
So at least now we know the highest form of capitalism isn’t imperialism any more. It’s blind panic.
life changing
Asda and Morrisons are pulling the old 99p trick, except in a stingier way. A litre of petrol will now cost you 99.9p.
It’s an effective publicity stunt: que vaguely homoerotic pictures of burly truck driver types sticking nozzles into petrol holes.
syphon here
So you know how your gas and lecky bills got obscenely high because oil went up to, like, a gazillion dollars (well, $150) a barrel? Well, now oil is only $70 a barrel and here PovertyPorn we’re still selling ourselves to pay for 1 hour of central heating in the morning (otherwise it’s too cold to get out of bed).
they want your cheques
An entire website dedicated to the art of living on buy-one-get-one free offers. Inspired.
How else would you find out that Tesco’ll sell you 2 Cadbury’s Halloween Ghost Biscuits for £1.39 (perfect if you need to stop trick-or-treating hoodies egging your front door) or that Co-op has giant packs of Kleenex on sale (infected yet?): 2 for £2.80. You can buy everything you never wanted. In bulk.
sugarshock
yeah, right
“I’M in debt too, I fucked up too, I keep the economy afloat, and bailing ME, and every taxpayer out is a safer bet than bailing out the banks.”
Although this campaign’s already failed (like ordinary taxpayers have lobbyists – or clout with politicians) it’s still a deeply comforting idea.
Glaswegian Anarchists make all the damn sense.
aww, shit
Well, no.
But you, British taxpayer, are now the proud owner of 37 billion-pounds-worth of bank. £37 billion! Frankly, you could have done better. But, now you own the banks, you can attempt to guarantee
The greasy smell of popcorn, the sticky floors, the sense that you’ve completely wasted hours of your life, hours you’ll never see again. The cinema is a tough habit to break: nothing makes a sucky summer blockbuster look better than complete darkness and a 20-foot screen.
PovertyPorn has frugal friends (you know who you are) who insist on getting a weekly film fix, in an incredibly cheap way. Read the rest of this entry »
slutty fairtrade discounts
Slutty fairtrade clothes store American Apparel will give you whores 10%-off online buys if you sign up to their newsletter, and 15% if you sell yourself a little more. Can you spell unsubscribe?
Great if you need a new pair of gold lame hot pants. Winter’s coming!
damn straight
Once again, This American Life explains how giving mortgages to people with no money turned into the end of Western capitalism.
The show explores how the commercial credit market froze up, essentially crippling every major business in the Western world; how toxic financial instruments infected the entire system. Also: why the $700billion was mostly a reaming.
cheap overpriced sushi
Deeply inauthentic but cool-looking Japanese conveyor-belt based restaurant chain Yo Sushi! is offering more recession-based bogof action.
See how cheap overpriced sushi can be, especially when you have to buy a total of 10 plates for it to kick in. Thanks, Mr Woodroffe.
they know
I still have no fucking idea. But US radio programme This American Life has an incredibly colourful, in-depth explanation about just how it started. It’s pretty much identical to what happened with buy-to-let mortgages here.
They interview people at the epicentre of the shit storm, including a young barman-turned-mortgage salesman who, at the height of the cheap mortgage boom, was making, $70, 000 a week in commissions.
shitty, but cheap
So PovertyPorn’s been to Strada maybe, three times and its never been anything short of god-awful. The first time, there was sand in the mussels (I know, authentic), then the pasta was cold, then the final time, the food was okay, but it took us 5 tries and 30 minuites to pay the bill. In the end, we just got up and made like we were leaving…
But cheap(ish) food is cheap(ish) food, and Strada, like every other credit crunched restaurant with an increasingly desperate parant company (we’re looking at you, Pasta Hut) is offering 2-for-1 mains.
If you like your pizza overpriced, and your Italian restaurants all faux cosmopolitan (and we do), Pizza Express is luring punters in with 2-for-1 main courses. PovertyPorn went with a party of 8, and our overfriendly waitress didn’t blink when we offered up four vouchers.
Of course, she had just hammed up a veggie order with actual ham, but the point remains: cheap(ish), tony pizza.
