The Throwaway Society

News this week that Sweden are to offer tax breaks and other incentives for people to repair items rather than replace them is welcome news in this increasingly throwaway society - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37425107

I was, for 15 years, the repairer of computers. I kept all sorts of machines running far beyond their normal life. I've been commissioned to repair IT for all sorts of companies, private individuals, and public sector bodies. One day I would be knee deep in shit on a farm rebuilding a milk monitoring system, the next at a secure power generation site.

Probably my biggest 'achievement' in that time was for a coal fired power station in the East Midlands. I was asked, in 2011, to upgrade their Windows 95 1996 model Compaq Deskpro to be internet capable and remote control accessible to turn on the power station as demand increased and make the site basically unmanned.

The first thing I had to do was to find another 15 year old machine to act as donor as their computer, complete with the only known copy of the station control software, was dead. A donor machine was sourced, the hard drive cloned to give them a backup, and the machine made ready to meet their needs.

In the end, after 20+ hours of work to do the job - and the parts -  I never got paid. The commissioning company went bust, got bought out by its commissioner, and promptly resumed trading from the same office under the same name paying out precisely zero of my bill in full and final settlement.

That, sometimes, is the nature of the game. I think I probably encountered £10,000 of bad debt in 15 years. I probably paid out a similar sum in bank charges over the years, and I've got a lower opinion of the banks than I do of the people that owe me money!

I closed the business just over a year ago to concentrate on other interests. It was going to become an inevitable outcome sooner rather than later, due to the increasingly throwaway nature of society, so I chose to depart on my terms while there was still a functional business and I had the ability to go and do something else with relative ease.

Back in 2000, the average laptop price was £1500 and few had a mobile phone in their pocket. Some of the mobiles back then didn't even do text messaging. Today, a laptop is on sale in PC World for a tenth of the price back then, and the average mobile phone has more than enough computing power for the average consumer to do everything they need to do online without resorting to something with a keyboard on it.

When I started, the computer boom was just taking off. Broadband was 'coming' and just about every home was just starting to buy their first personal computer. I timed it right, almost by accident.

Now, computer use is at saturation point and the computers themselves are as disposable as nappies. Once, it was common for someone to be happy to pay £50 to clear their PC of viruses. Thesedays if they're full of shit, like nappies, they have to go in the bin.

Whether the rest of the world wants to follow Sweden is debatable. In a society where everything is increasingly 'me' and 'now', it seems that to make do and mend is a cult religion but the Swedes have got a fair few things right over the years.