It's a common practice among discerning shoppers (i.e. cheapskates) to wait until after Christmas to splurge on consumer goods. These clever cost-cutters have found a loophole in the consumer holiday industrial complex. After the holidays, retailers want to unload their leftover items so they discount them. Or do they? The Guardian's Tanya Gold raises a skeptical eye toward post-holiday sale seekers in her Wednesday column. She says they're in fact chasing a lie--"the wickedest, and naffest, of lies."

The first lie is that sales shoppers are getting a bargain. I know wholesale outlets of old, and the mark-up on one pair of shoes I saw was 400%. Even in the sales you do not pay for quality, but instead to stare at advertising hoardings starring illiterate anorexics with bad skin, whom we are supposed to want to look like. But that is another lie, to be debunked on another day.

The second lie is best expressed by one of the rancid slogans that hang from the glassy ceilings in [high end department stores]. In joyous sunshine yellow, they are a whisper from the devil, a promise of a transformation that will never happen: Buy me, I'll change you're life. I have always wondered why department stores have no windows and now I know. Lies flourish in the darkness. You will not be rich and carefree, shopper; you will just slink further into poverty. A hobo indeed.

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John Hudson