DeAgostini, I’d like to thank you for your generosity in endlessly offering to supply me with almost everything I could (n)ever want, the only apparent selection criteria being that it may be broken down into component pieces small enough to be affixed to a weekly/fortnightly/monthly magazine.

As if this magnificent opportunity wasn’t enough, I apparently have the opportunity to purchase the first issue at a special low price, knocking a full 4 quid off the 800 clams I could expect to pay to amass a thoroughly doleful collection of this weeks turgid offering, over a mere 2 year period.

Is this not just a rather twisted hire purchase agreement? The only difference seems to be that the goods are released to the consumer piece by piece with each payment rather than up front as with a traditional finance deal – well, that and the fact that you can only get what these fuckers choose to make available. It’s like catalogue shopping from a really restrictively shit catalogue. It’s pretty much the same approach as that of a drug dealer – I’ll give/sell you this first hit cheap to get you hooked and then the price goes up…

I would dearly love to see the ideas that don’t make it onto newsagents shelves just so I can see where they draw the line. I’m assuming there is a line – it may be that every half-arsed idea they come up with does actually make it to production.

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