Yep - in principle, it's exactly the same. It's just populist pandering shite, and it'll never make the statute book so who cares.Originally Posted by Lewis
Yep - in principle, it's exactly the same. It's just populist pandering shite, and it'll never make the statute book so who cares.
A Korean explained to me the other day how Apple does business with us (i.e. buying chips for its iPhones). We are one of three players in the chip market, and one of the others is Samsung, which makes its own chips and also of course makes competitor phones to the iPhone, so Apple doesn't buy from them (it does, actually, but not very much). So Apple has two chip makers to choose from.
There used to be six or seven players in the market, but three or four have died. The reason they have died is that Apple does its business like this. They come along to the chip maker and say 'Make us a million chips. We might not buy them all, or any of them, but if they're not available in case we want them, we'll bill you cost of the entire iPhone.' So if Apple only take 200k of the million you had to make, you're left with 800k chips sitting there which you contractually had to make but which now can't be sold and the technology moves on so quickly that they will be obsolete within a year. It's known as a 'slave contract'.
Hence the chip makers had the choice of dying because Apple raped them dry with slave contracts, or dying because they rejected the slave contracts and so couldn't get any Apple business. You'd think this would work against Apple in that suppliers dying would make the remaining ones more able to resist, but it isn't, because the iPhone market share is so ginormous that there's no real competition for the actual phones either. So it's all a big anti-competitive fix.
If one assumes that most megacompanies act like this in their respective industries, then it's not hard to imagine a time when suppliers of everything just get eaten to bits, the supply chain becomes completely anti-competitive and prescribed, and the megacompanies become so powerful that they are effectively also the government.
The level of smug sanctimony on Question Time right now. Fucking. Hell.
I've seen the same in food manufacturing. A big company will buy a load of food from a smaller company. The smaller company will bill them with 90 days credit. After 89 and a half days, the big company will get in touch with the small company to dispute the invoice. This will be changed to the tune of about 4p. A new invoice will be issued. The big company will then take another 89 and a half days before returning again to dispute the changes.
The next thing you know, it's over a year after the initial sale and the smaller company has no cash because it's all sitting in the big company's bank account as they basically bully their suppliers to manage their own working capital.
It's shite, but there's not much the smaller company can do given that the loss of the big company's business would basically ruin them.
I think I might give up Question Time if it doesn't turn the corner sharpish - it's absolutely fucking shite.
I don't know if it's the audience or the panels. Or both.
My (now dead) great uncle used to scam the big regional food company on printing. And he was disabled. Have that, liberals.
Question Time has been shite for years.
It seems to have got even worse. I don't know if it's the whole BREXIT thing simply highlighting two distinct sides, and the horrible sanctimonious shite from the lefties on the panel.
The state of "Chuka" in his reaction to Neil Hamilton suggesting we probably shouldn't blunder into the Middle East.
Who are these mugs suggesting we put boots on the ground? Fucking hell, lads. Get a grip.
Doesn't Apple only make up something like 15% of the market though?
edit:
Thought so, will the generics just not pay for proper chips?
"Chuka" advocating the west engage in REGIME CHANGE because he doesn't like dictators.
Great. The Lord Blair will be delighted to know he still has disciples in the Labour party.
You can take Samsung out of that because they make their own parts (Samsung is like the Death Star), and then if you're looking at surviving in markets other than China then you're dead if you're not doing plenty of business with Apple. The Chinese mobile market has almost no resemblance to the rest of the world so fuck knows what goes on there.
I think in China there's this trend towards low-cost smartphones that don't really do anything compared to the phones we all use.
In China it's basically Apple stuff for the new money people and knock-off Android stuff with government spyware for everyone else
Tony Blair considering a return to politics. Batten down the hatches.
New Labour people coming out of the woodwork to cry about a 'one party state' would be lol if they weren't so shameless.
I realise that this is obvious, but that would be a terrible, terrible plan.
EDIT: Six years younger than Clinton and Trump. How bizarre.
I want the Paddy Ashdown / Blairite liberal coalition party to happen more than I want the sun to rise tomorrow. 24 seats and the moral high ground. Come at me.
It's hard to think of anyone with less political credibility than Lord Tony, someone must be making money out of suggesting this.
He's probably actually that delusional.
What am I thinking, it'll be his awful grasping wife.
Given that the money tree bore great fruit during his time in office, it's some achievement on his part that there doesn't seem to be any nostalgia whatsoever for the Blair years.
That's what a catastrophically stupid war do to ya.
What party would have him? He'd have to be an independant. But then, what constituency would have him? You're dead in the political water Tone. Let it be.
The only way he could come back and have any effect would be going into the Lords (where he should be anyway, frankly) and whipping it into a Stop Brexit frenzy, but even doing that would make a mockery of his entire time as Prime Minister.
What else could he do, host a talk show on Sky News?
'Dubya' seems to be the model for fucking off and slowly working to turn it around.
Dubya was always a beast, though, whereas Tony's a twat.
Not sure there should be quite this much lolling about Tony Blair. I struggle to see how he'd do any worse than Corbyn will at the next election for a kick off.
Gordon Brown would do better than Corbyn at this point.
Well quite and given there's seemingly no-one capable or with the balls to even try and dislodge Corbyn why is the idea of Blair giving it a crack so lol?
The most lol thing about the story is that it was from an article in Esquire, ffs.
I don't know how you sell Tony to a 2016 Britain.
Simon Heffer wrote this, and Twitter is livid. Who that knew Simon Heffer, official biographer and close friend of Enoch Powell, was so pro-Enoch Powell? Wow. Just wow. Not in my name. #citizenoftheworld
Mike Hookem sounds like all of Hull at once. "Mano Eh Aye Mano"
The Lord Blair is discredited across the spectrum. He'd have no chance. You could carry any debate against him with "but Iraq, mate" and set him off on a three hour lecture where he defends himself.
Wait, what? The entire reason for Blair's present unpopularity is the association between the two.
That isn't the entire reason. He kind of comes as a shit-eating package of which Iraq is only one part.
I've come to agree with Floyd's view that 1997 marks the end of Britain. We handed over Hong Kong, we started the whole public grief thing with Diana and then there's Blair breaking the country.
There's a reason GS went there straightaway in the post above mine.
Iraq is (for worse, I'd say) the dominant aspect of his political legacy, and certainly the reason why his popularity nose-dived.
Surely handing over Hong Kong had very little practical effect on Britain. I mean, it meant a lot to Hong Kong, but you guys?I've come to agree with Floyd's view that 1997 marks the end of Britain. We handed over Hong Kong, we started the whole public grief thing with Diana and then there's Blair breaking the country.
But it was the end of the Empire!
He's responsible for far more shite, like banning new grammar schools, running deficits from 2002, immigration, multiculturalism etc. etc., but ultimately Iraq is the one thing which pierces the national 'debate' on him. Nothing else of his legacy, toxic as it is, would matter because you need only mention 'Iraq' and you'd set him off. Our subservience, such as it was, with Dubya isn't really relevant with regards to the wider perception of Iraq here - that being that Blair lied and it was the most significant foreign policy disaster since Suez.
Little practical effect, but I'd suggest that it helps add weight to the idea of the 'old Britain' - imperial, conservative etc. - finally ending as we were swept away in the rising tide of toxic scum that was, and is, Blairism.
I don't agree with half those reasons above but that's the beauty of Tonyism, he's managed to completely alienate every group. Left, right, centre, women, men, north, south, Scotland, they all hate him.
What did he do to aggrieve you specifically?
They say a picture speaks a thousand words, so:
Toggle Spoiler
Note that it isn't plugged in.
Floyd has made important and influential contributions to the field, but 1997 as Year Zero was actually my idea.
The footage of him moving into Number 10, with his guitar case in one hand and his red briefcase in the other. I say footage because there are no pictures of it, and the Andrew Marr documentary I remember seeing it in is blocked by the BBC in Britain, so they obviously know how cretinous it was.They say a picture speaks a thousand words, so:
Toggle Spoiler
Note that it isn't plugged in.
Ellesse and stonewashed Levi's are in Urban Outfitters so I reckon he'll be alright. The kids are into their 20 year cycles innit.
Things Can Only Get Better is much missed too.
Tony basically invented the cult of celebrity in a political context too with his pre-election tour of everyone Cool Britannia in 96-97, which would look even more at home now. I can see him farting about on guitar with Ed Sheeran whilst schmoozing with Idris Elba and James Corden.
Jack knew.
I always liked how transparent is was that he was pictured with about 70% of t'North's upper tax bracket in the first couple of years in a desperate attempt to be legit Labour.
The first thing you need to understand about Tony is that he is driven by Cherie, and she is in turn driven by a chippy scouse obsession with money and status. Once you understand that, everything about Tony begins to make more sense.
It's an interesting philosophical defence that. Am I really a hypocrite if I embrace it? Well... Hmm. Floyd, does everyone (not least New Labour Twitter) realising what a shameless, over-promoted dickhead she is make you feel like one of those vindicated Jimmy Savile truthers?
I'm pretty sure Liberty almost exclusive functions on the unpaid work of students having to do the pro bono element of their professional qualitifactions as well. Fucking Liberty Letters. She's a monster.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
