Amazon.
The
BBC’s Panorama programme sent an undercover reporter into an Amazon
warehouse in Swansea to investigate the company’s treatment of its staff. The
programme discovered conditions a stress expert said could cause mental and
physical illness. Secret filming found that a night workers shift involved on
average 11 miles of walking and a worker has 33 seconds to collect an order.
Even is that order is at the other end of the 800,000 square foot premises.
This probably explains why Amazon pump
their staff full of steroids and amphetamine sulphate because it’s the only way
they could possibly fulfil their 33 seconds per parcel contract. That or be
Usain Bolt, on steroids and amphetamine sulphate.
One every 33 seconds is coincidentally is
the exact same rate Welsh soldiers at Rourkes Drift had to shoot a Zulu to
ensure they weren’t overrun.
Perhaps that’s why Amazon picked the 33
seconds time span.
Amazon will be employing 15,000 extra staff
in the run up to Xmas and Amazon say that the safety of its employees is its
number one priority. But how save can the 1000’s of regular staff and the 15,000 extra staff scattering at high speed in
all directions carrying books, CD’s an fridges possibly be. There are bound to be collisions, pile ups.
On the upside for the Welsh staff the
Amazon Swansea warehouse must have one hell of an enormous male voice choir, or
thousands of small ones, because whenever Welshmen gather together in groups of
more than three they form a choir. Despite being under fire by the Zulu the
Welsh regiment holding Rourke’s Drift still managed to form a choir in-between
attacks to sing Men of Harlech at the Zulus.
But is walking 11 miles and handling
hundreds of packages per shift all that unusual. Not really, postmen do, as do
drug dealers at the Nottinghill Carnival.
In a statement Amazon said “the night shift
is lawful”. They also said they sought advice to ensure that they “comply with
all the legal requirements”.
That’s almost exactly what they said about
not really paying very much tax all. It was just that the legal requirements
thanks to loopholes left them managing to comply by just paying £10.
RBS
The Royal Bank of Scotland stand accused of
lending businesses money, then waiting until the money was spent and
immediately demanding it back. And when the company can’t pay it back
immediately RBS immediately seize the company’s assets immediately. That’s the
kind of behaviour you’d expect from a loan shark who goes by the name Vinnie,
but not from a so called reputable financial institution. This latest
accusation means that RBS have now been accused of everything except murder,
but it’ll probably be just a matter of time before the City Regulators find
themselves looking into the mysterious disappearances of borrowers who got on
the wrong of the bank by not having any assets to seize.
Talking of Vinnies, the Business Secretary
Vinnie Cable said that the evidence compiled by government adviser Lawrence
Tomlinson looks solid, but RBS claims that it is already committed to an
investigation into the treatment of customers. RBS refused to be drawn on
whether or the investigation will include digging up Fred Goodwin’s basement in
a hunt for hundreds of missing customers. Having bodies buried in your basement
seems to be a Fred thing, as evidenced by Goodwin’s fellow Fred who went by the
name of West. What happened to him? Rumour has it that he owed RBS money.
If the allegations that the bank conspired
to close down companies to steal their assets are proven to true the RBS won’t
just be responsible for lost business,
they’ll also be responsible for the ex business owners losing their homes too
as a direct result of owing RBS money.
Homes they were paying a fiddled Libor rate of interest for on their mortgages.
At least the Mafia is upfront about their dodgy activities.
The story will continue………….
£1
Airport.
Prestwick Airport has passed into public
ownership for the princely sum of £1. Such a bargain price that the Sultan of
Brunei could have afforded to buy at least three Prestwick Airports. Seems the
airport hasn’t been that busy of late. In fact it’s so quiet that they reported
a near miss last week to the Civil Aviation Authority because two planes came
within three days of each other. In Prestwick terms that’s almost a mid air
collision.
So what went wrong? Bad marketing probably
because the airport is in Prestwick in Ayrshire, slap bang right in the middle
of Burns country. Rabbie Burns who is Scotland’s national poet and whose fame
is worldwide lived in Ayrshire all his life. And did the airport capitalise on
that fact by erecting a statue to Burns in the check in hall. No, they erected
a statue of Elvis Presley, a man who didn’t live in Ayrshire for any of his
life. His only connection with the airport is that he stopped off for two
minutes at the airport to use their urinals on his way back from Germany to the
US. That was one bad marketing decision; the other was to give the airport the
slogan Pure Dead Brilliant. It never seemed to occur to the airports management
that in the event of plane crash TV reporters would be reporting on the tragedy
with Pure Dead Brilliant in shot in the background. Perhaps then it might have
occurred to that “You know, in hindsight maybe Pure Dead Brilliant wasn’t the
best idea for a slogan”.
You think?
The slogan came from the catchphrase of a
character in the 80’s BBC Scotland sit com City Lights. I wonder if they had an 80’s catchphrase
short list and could have gone with:
This time next year Prestwick Airport -
Rodney we’ll be millionaires, or
Prestwick Airport -Mrs Slocums Pussy, or
Prestwick Airport - Listen I will say this
only once, or
Prestwick Airport – Hi De Hi Campers.
Another reason the airport is so quiet is
that the routes it serves. After all how many people want to fly from Prestwick
to Baffin Island or from Prestwick to whatever the capital of Greenland is or
from Prestwick to……
No that’s it. It only has two routes.
The question is, how will the Scottish
Government who now own the airport make it a viable business prospect, or will
it end up costing the taxpayer millions?. The First Minister of Scotland Alex
Salmond said “People are worried about a government wasting taxpayer’s money,
that’s just adorable”.
Having said that the Scottish Government
could use the aircraft hangers for storage place to house all the billions and
billions and billions of a new Scottish currency featuring Alex Salmonds face
on. The currency Mr Salmond was planning to introduce if Scotland voted “Yes”
in the independence referendum.
Something the Scots won’t do.
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