meet nick and anthony ..
They started off Afterpay and earned many thousands of millions after it took off .. now you see its annoying little logo on nearly all the shop windows in nearly all the towns in nearly all of the country, and in case you weren’t born in the 40’s, Afterpay is the child of early Laybuy where the store looked after your purchase until you paid for it, now you can take it home straightaway and the hurt only comes when it’s not paid off by the due date. Plus you can’t take it back because now it’s second-hand.
But that’s not what this is about. You see, Nick and Anthony believe cash is on the way out, lucre is filthy, each coin or note an ark of germs, filth and highly communicable diseases. They, like all of the other credit, debit and whatever card companies want all the world’s money burnt to ash without really explaining why, but we know because dumb we ain’t. We know that data is the new money and the best thing about data-money is that Nick and Anthony, or whoever owns a similar enterprise these days gets to accumulate nearly all of it. And what is excruciatingly painful is that they don’t have to pay for it, we all do at the checkout.
As in …..
When you pay for your supermarket trolly load of food etc in cash you’re not contributing to Nick and Anthony’s cause, when you pay using a card you are because their cause, as is the supermarket’s, is to amass a gigantic motherload of data that can can be sold on to a heaving pack of hungry data-money buyers and supermarket suppliers … they are knocking down doors to get to this stuff, like for instance.
WHO YOU ARE ..
What’s your credit limit.
How much do you owe on your credit card.
How are you paying it off.
Are you in serious debt.
How many cards do you use.
How much you spent last time you used one.
What day you spent it.
What hour you spent it.
Where you spent it.
What you spent it on.
Did you take advantage of any bargains.
Do you always take advantage of bargains.
Or never.
What aisle contributed most to your shopping.
What aisle the least.
Do you buy top of the shelf, middle of the shelf or way down the bottom where you have to get onto your hands and knees to root out what you want.
Is your buying habit repetitious.
Or not.
Are you spending less than last month, last year.
Or more.
Are you buying for children as well as yourself.
Do you spend more in summer.
Or less.
Is pension day your shopping day.
Do you use the same supermarket every time.
If not where else.
And do you spend more or less there.
Do you use a regular butcher, fruit shop, baker or use the supermarket for everything.
Do you like chicken rather than meat.
What booze do you buy.
And how often
What medicines do you buy at the pharmacy.
What medicines in summer.
And in winter.
Are you constipated.
Do you wear dentures.
Are headaches an ongoing problem.
What toothpaste, what toothbrush, what aftershave, what toilet paper, what tissues, what deodorants.
By now you must be getting the picture … these blokes know your life’s habits and are able to sell them to the highest bidder. That being so you’d think they might stop trying to look like two cool dudes and put on a suit and tie like a real estate agent or second hand car dealer because they’re not fooling us.
petebowes.com 
Bastards they are! I am in the dog house because I have fallen to Afterpays charms quite badly. Though Afterpay did once pay for our dear dog Portia being fixed (at the age of fifteeen no less after her having women problems) when I was broke, so I have to cut them some slack.
Champagne tastes on a beer budget (homebrew beer at that), they would see on my profile of buying stuff, just like my mother (her weakness was thousand dollar plus dresses).
I will set it straight when I get my bonus from finishing a clinical trial and being a pin (needle)cushion for seven months. I might have to write some short stories and try and sell them (apparently T H White would think up stuff when he had bills to pay).
Apollo (the software) has landed!
With you in the saddle.
Videocart redux!
Videocart redux! John Brunton would be spinning! Funnily enough, in later years I worked for IBM, where we were selling data mining software for just this purpose!
I remember meeting Ron and the others when they arrived at Mascot after a surprise visit to that anal Videocart bastard running the show in the US, then there was the febrile Mr Russell Holmes .. what a bloody learning curve that was to handsome young accountant. Then when you came back from Taiwan I left you off the payroll ..