A radio play about pyramid selling

thanks for the link Brendan - I listened today on the "Listen Again" facility http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/friday_play.shtml I felt the play handled the complexity of "pyramid passion" very well. Recruits were created from the interplay of desperation, greed, aspiration for a better life and ignorance about the nature of the pyramid system. The play disappointed in its weak liberalism at the end. It would have been really innovative to introduce some suggestion of alternatives.
 
HI Marie

I listed to the first ten minutes of it and it did illustrate why financially desperate people might go for such a scheme. It seemed based on the Women empowering Women scheme, where the participants were told not to tell their partners about it.

For me, all the shouting and roaring and fighting early on was too much, so I had to switch it off. I get enough of that on Askaboutmoney.

Brendan
 
Brendan - I agree with you there was a lot of stereotyping but perhaps that's the limitation of a short radio play. The men were either idolised or vilified, the women were either shrews or pushovers. However for me its merit was that it packaged the realities of pyramid schemes in a popularising format imbedded in other issues to attract folk who would not - for example - listen to more focussed slots like "MoneyBox Live" or the recent documentary on private equity. In the play the working-class Liverpool-Irish (?) community trying to get out of the poverty trap didn't make any distinction between 'investment with a bit of risk' and the comic-tragic siphoning of hard-earned savings from one family to another and from friend to friend with which the play ended and which I felt demonstrated the principle in a lively way. My appreciation of this kind of offering (flawed though it was - we agree on that!) comes from my personal childhood experiences of growing up in a working-class Dublin corporation estate where debt, desperation and lack of knowledge of prudent management of what little there was led to crime, violence, family breakup and - ultimately - 'the boat to England' to beat the bailiff coming to repossess. Whilst sites like "AAM" are recently filling in the gaps in knowledge and understanding of financial management perhaps there is another - populist - role for t.v. 'soaps' and vehicles like this play which get people thinking and questioning (there - and I didn't mention Karl Marx even once!! ;) )
 
This must be a sign of the times - here's another radio-play going out tonight about debt:-
Love and Money

Sunday 25 February 2007 8:45-10:15 (Radio 3) duration 1.5 hours


By Dennis Kelly.

A radio adaptation of the Young Vic/Royal Exchange co-production of Kelly's funny and heart-wrenching exploration of the devastating impact of debt and desire in the modern world.

Jess, who is in love with David, believes that happiness can be bought - but in a world of easy credit, it doesn't come cheap.
 
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