Hello, I'm Mary Portis, and this is The Kindness Economy, a podcast that looks at the new values

driving the businesses of tomorrow, people, planet, and profit. In that order, it's the future.

Are you ready for better? I'm going to start with a story from my childhood. Oh, my kids would go,

yeah, yeah, mum, we've heard this one before.

And maybe many of you have heard this before, but I want to explain about value.

You see, I didn't come from a middle class background. My parents arrived in Watford in the

late 50s as Irish immigrants and soon had a family of five to raise, five children, two year one year gap,

two year one year get my poor mother. My dad worked in sales and my mother in the home and money

wasn't exactly growing on trees, but I never felt that we had less. My mother budgeted tightly

and I absorbed from her the concept of good value.

Well, for me at the time, some of it was stuff I didn't want,

like a woolen jumper that she could darn or knit,

but it also meant a less expensive cut of meat that she could put into a stew.

It was also about more than just cost.

It was about longevity and usefulness.

And somehow, though, in the years since then,

and this, believe me, is not me being nostalgic.

Listen up carefully to this.

The critical word good has been erased from our concept of value.

Today, we've been taught to believe that value means cheap, or to use the marketing speak, affordable.

This is noble, according to the marketers.

They say it's about democratising access to a whole range

...