Is it naked exploitation? Bringing out a Beatles compilation album of old numbers, after all these years, when we know all the songs, already have compilations groaning on our shelves, can hum every tune in our sleep - it's diabolical, innit?
The EMI, what a greedy capitalist pig it is, trying to make even more money out of us poor Beatles fans. Disgusting. And so cynical. Bringing it out in time for Christmas when it knows we are at our weakest and soppiest.
And manipulative, spending £1.5 million in promotion just to make sure we suckers will buy eight million and get it to number one ahead of... er, well actually I can't think of who the rivals might be. That's the thing about the Beatles. They are out on their own. In 30 years, no one has even got near them. That's probably why EMI will get away with it.
Personally, I'm not bothered. EMI's baser motives do not worry me. It exists to make money. It's our function to be taken advantage of. That's how it operates, chum, when you're a fan.
I've been taken advantage of for years. You should see the Tottenham Hotspur tat I have bought, stuff I don't need, will never use, or not in public, such as my underpants with the Spurs cockerel on the front.
I'm also a member of the Eddie Stobart Fan Club. In fact I'm wearing my club badge at this moment. On my desk I have one of the model trucks. It makes me smile, just to look at it. Have I been exploited? I don't see it like that. I became a follower by my own free will. As with the Beatles. No one pushed me.
What's strange about the Beatles is that they are a dead group. They gave up the ghost 30 years ago, yet the further we get from them the bigger they become.
You can see this in three ways. Their music is now more highly rated than it has ever been. Just look at all those polls that are held across the planet. Second, the price of the memorabilia gets bigger all the time. Take a look at any Sotheby's catalogue. And third, the Beatles industry grows larger every year. There are now far more people making a full-time living out of them today then in the sixties. I estimate at least 2,000 dealers, writers, researchers, academics, musicians all round the world are doing nothing except Beatles stuff.
I went to Beatles Week in Liverpool this summer and was astonished to find there were 220 lookalike groups there - from Argentinia to Japan, full-time musicians, dressed as Beatles, playing Beatles music, all year round. Mad, amazing, or what? Why are they still so popular? The answer is that they wrote 150 songs which will be sung as long as we all have the breath to hum the tunes.
How the present generation is just as passionate as the last one is harder to explain. Most of those 2,000 living off the Beatles are under 40 - too young to have seen or heard the Beatles live.
The Beatles somehow seep into our consciousness. People, who would not call themselves Beatles fans pick up the tunes like nursery rhymes, have the lyrics lodged in their minds. I suppose it's parents who do it. They hum along, still remembering their faves. Children pick it up, then start to want more. And so it will go on.
Will they want this new EMI thing? It is a first, of sorts, in that it has compiled 27 Beatles numbers which got to number one in the UK or US. Brit fans will be surprised to see "Love Me Do" included which got to only no. 17 in the UK. But, ah ha, it got to number one in the US - for just one week - two years later.
I'll but it, as I buy anything about the Beatles. It will be interesting to listen to, in sequence, to hear the Beatles developing, trying to spot the common denominators which got them to number one.
But I wouldn't recommend it to an absolute beginner wanting to know what the Beatles were all about. Much better to buy an original album, such as Revolver or Sgt. Pepper, which was made and created to be listened to as a whole by four artists at the height of their powers. This new compilation is more of a random dip, chapters without a plot.
Perhaps the smartest thing EMI has done is produce it now, before it's too late. Very soon we'll be able to create our own compilation CDs. We'll be able to walk into a record shop, hand over a list of our all time faves, by different artists, from different albums and in minutes it will be ready for us, our own CD. Beatles anoraks, who have all the gear, can already do this. Dave, a Beatles freak - sorry, friend of mine - did it for me last week, making a CD of selected Beatles bootleg tapes which he numbered HDCD 001, just for me.
One problem with this new EMI compilation is that a lot of their best, most beautiful, most innovative songs never got to number one. Either they didn't make it, were not released at the time as singles or they were the B-sides, not reckoned to be chart topping material.
So what would I have, on my greatest all time Beatles compilation? Tough. As far as I'm concerned, there are no bad Beatles records, just some I like more than others. Well, there is one I don't like - "Why Don't We Do It In The Road". Apart from that, they're all brillo.
You will have your own choice and feel free to send them in, but after a lot of pencil chewing, scratching, moving my Eddie Stobart truck around, here is my top 10, not in any order, which I would like on my very own bestest Beatles compilation album - none of which made it to number one.
Strawberry Fields Forever
Here, There And Everywhere
For No One
A Day In The Life
I'm Loooking Through You
And I Love Her
Blackbird
I Will
Julia
Nowhere Man