Would You Still Buy It? | Conspicuous consumption, Burnham's headphone crackdown and prepping

The Concept of the Week is conspicuous consumption: buying things to show other people you have the means to buy them. It is an economics idea that has bled into psychology, and Peter confesses to owning quite a nice watch, which he is now too nervous to wear. Hilary opens the show in a Claudia Winkleman wig after last week's talk about The Traitors. Peter rates it a semi Winkleman. The first headline: the government's crackdown on people playing music and videos out loud on buses and trains, launched by Andy Burnham as Prime Minister. Hilary's own bugbear is the loud phone call. Peter's view is that the story is really about councils being given powers over their own networks, and that he is in favour, because the common thread is people imposing themselves on other people's space. It is, he says, why Europeans find American tourists so irritating. Hilary adds the serious side of noise: road noise is linked to heart disease, diabetes and depression. Peter explains from his own brain imaging research why closing your eyes, or putting on noise cancelling headphones, really does bring stress down. The second headline is personalised number plates, after a Bentley that once carried Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's DOY plate was sold this month. Sales have more than doubled in a decade, to about 1.2 million in 2024. Peter is a no, on balance. He admires the business idea of selling something that costs nothing, and understands the wish to make a mass produced object your own. Both of them would quite like to sit on the DVLA committee that decides which plates are too rude. The third headline is prepping. Last week the head of MI5 set out the threats facing Britain, and hackers turned supermarket fridges into ovens across France. Hilary has the window tape, the water purifying tablets and the wind up radio, and is keeping her CDs for the world after Wi-Fi. Peter is a prepper intellectually and not practically: he keeps the everyday basics in order, but what he wants is to read the warning signs early, because history is full of people who waited too long. The Triple T: if you are about to buy something that falls into conspicuous consumption, ask yourself whether you would still buy it if nobody, for the rest of human history, ever knew you owned it. A note before you listen. This episode discusses the Nazi persecution of Jewish people, historical massacres and pogroms, and the threat of war and nuclear attack. Mentioned in this episode The DVLA's banned 76 number plates: Auto Express The government's emergency preparedness campaign: Prepare Practical guides for everyday emergencies: UK Preppers Music without headphones on buses and trains: ITV News The French supermarket fridge attack: Al Jazeera Conspicuous consumption, from Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899): Wikipedia