Wine retailer Oddbins has kicked off the New Year with a "Love January" campaign offering 10 per cent off for mothers, bankers, journalists, Germans and ginger-haired people.
Announced on the Oddbins blog, every week in January one of these five groups will be eligible for the discount, with anyone who is covered in all five groups in line for a “mystery bonus”.
This weekend Oddbins are “standing up for mums”, who have been hit by the government’s cap on maternity pay and cuts to child benefit.
Between January 11 and January 13 bankers and journalists will be able to cash in on the 10 per cent off offer. In its blog post Oddbins suggests we need to focus on the "good things that banks do”, saying that the word "banker" has "become a derogatory term used to refer to only a select group of rogue investment bankers". While journalists, who have been in the firing line this year, are not all “listening in on our telephone conversations or stalking the celebrities that sell their newspapers".
The following weekend, January 18-20, the Germans are being rewarded for “pre-empting the recession” whilst everyone else was “spending wantonly”.
The company goes on to say: "But it seems that, no matter what the Germans do, the rest of us just love to cast them as the panto villains. And we’re sorry to go all Basil Fawlty on you and mention the war, but isn’t it time to put that behind us? Does China bring up opium whenever David Cameron visits?"
In the last weekend of January redheads will be up for the discount as Oddbins is aims to break "the final taboo". The company blog reads: "We love your hair and think 2013 should be the year we all put this nonsense behind us.”
"Sterling performances from Greg Rutherford, Damien Lewis, Christina Hendricks and Prince Harry... were cancelled out by Lindsay Lohan’s downward spiral... and Rebekah Brooks, who continued the work she started in 2011: Operation Convince the World Gingers are Not to be Trusted."