The UK is a global leader in dodgy companies
Plus lots of other examples of corporate dodginess.
Hello.
What do dodgy IT systems, dodgy planes and dodgy mines all have in common? They’re all a result of organisations with too much market power. Whether you’re talking about the Horizon scandal at the Post Office, Boeing’s planes struggling to get from A to B in one piece or Vale’s mines collapsing, effective monopolies are not having a good time.
Until 2006, the Royal Mail (from which the Post Office split in 2012) had monopoly status which meant it didn’t really have to worry about competition. Sub-postmasters (still sounds like something from a Terry Pratchett novel to me) only had one choice of postal service to work with. This means that when the IT system they’ve given you starts saying you are stealing money, you’re a bit stuck.
In airline manufacturing, 99% of large planes are made by Airbus or Boeing. Boeing had two 737s fall out of the sky in 2018 and 2019, killing a combined 346 people, and more recently there was the whole debacle with bits of fuselage falling off. That’s not to mention the 747 cargo plane that burst into flames over Miami. Can you imagine a car manufacturer staying in business after this sequence of events? No, everyone would just buy something else instead.
Vale, who dominates iron ore extraction in Brazil has just been ordered (along with their partners) to pay $9.7 billion in compensation for a damn collapse that killed 19 people and spewed toxic mud all over the countryside in 2015. Just over three years later a similar but even more catastrophic incident happened, killing 270 people. In both the Boeing and Vale examples, the companies were able to use their lobbying power to weaken regulations, resulting in fundamentally unsafe designs.
It’s one of the funny things about ideologies that when pushed to the extreme they start to eat their tail. Communism ends with some people being more equal than others and capitalism ends in the consolidation of power and no market at all. In this late stage of capitalism we find ourselves in, we are going to need to come up with some better systems. Otherwise, everything will just be ‘fulfilled by Amazon’ but no one will be able to buy anything because all the jobs will have been automated.
Whatever next,
Hugo
The People’s Lobbyist
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
Apple has to allow other app stores in the EU - they’ve always taken 10-30% share of any revenues made through the App Store. That’s why you can’t purchase things directly from the Kindle App, for example. Amazon doesn’t want to hand over the 30%. This has been deemed uncompetitive, however, so Apple now has to allow other App stores (who may charge less).
Tesla shares drop 12% after sales warning - the company told investors that demand will soften after the initial wave of excitement around electric cars. There is also increasing competition in the market as other manufacturers have got their act together. Tesla is about to start the development of a cheaper car that they hope will drive their next phase of growth.
Jersey uniform shop going out of business due to new regulations - the Jersey government has restricted the number of compulsory uniform items required by students to five. The UK Government should follow suit really, the stuff we had to buy was absurd. No one wants budgie smugglers embossed with their school crest, I can tell you that for free.
Moody’s has discovered 21 million corporate governance red flags, including 2,200 companies with a director over the age of 123 and 22,000 registered at the Egyptian pyramids. There are thousands with directors under the age of five and one company has over $2billion in revenues, despite only having one employee. Ever the world leader, the UK had the highest number of red flags at almost five million.
Heisler beer is the world's most popular beer that doesn’t exist 🍺 - it is a prop developed to be used on film sets as brands often don’t want themselves associated with scenes in films where everyone’s getting turnt. It can be spotted in sitcoms like New Girls, Parks and Recreation and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Toy manufacturers look to infantilised grown-ups 🧸 - unsurprisingly the number of ‘kidults’ who can’t face the brutal realities of the modern world is a growing market. The number of adults in the UK buying toys for themselves grew by 6% in 2023 despite a broader downturn in sales of 5%. I must admit the Lego display at Sainsbury's caught my eye the other day.
Cruises continue to surprise people who don’t go on cruises ⛴️ - most of us thought that after the pandemic, when people were locked on these floating COVID factories, there would be a decline in popularity. Not so. The Icon of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship set sail yesterday from Miami (where else?) on a wave of positive consumer sentiment. The global cruise market grew 13.8% since last year to an estimated $66.2 billion.
WWE is coming to Netflix 🤼 - from January 2025, Netflix will become the home of a whole host of wrestling content. I’m not sure if nine-year-olds still watch it anymore or it's just the grown-ups that were those nine-year-olds about twenty years ago. Either way, if I was nine, I’d be bloody excited. Naturally, Dwayne Johnson has gotten in on the $5billion dollar deal, joining the board of directors at TKO (who owns WWE).
Adding salt to a cup of tea causes a diplomatic row ☕ - an American scientist has suggested that putting a small amount of salt in a cup of tea improves the flavour profile. The American embassy in London had to move quickly to distance themselves from the suggestion, assuring Westminster and the British people more widely that this was not official policy.
Avon is in trouble for maintaining links with Russia 💄 - one of the problems with multi-level marketing is that once you’ve built the pyramid, it’s pretty hard to unbuild. Avon is still recruiting sales agents in Russia because they believe that stopping would have an outsized impact on women and children there or something. Russians go mad for a bit of Avon.
Quote of the Week
“Yer Da sells Avon” - Anon