If In Doubt

post a polemic...

I note that that there are now many urgent IT jobs in Belfast for native Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, German and Hebrew speakers. Now far be it for me to suggest that this "urgency" is inversely related to the numbers of said speakers in Belfast, but it is somewhat bewildering to consider the rationale behind locating these jobs in a place on the remote outskirts of western Europe which has a negligible history of immigration, much less a culture of multiple non-indigenous languages. You'd almost think some one was at their work "Another job creation grant? Er you'll need proof of actual employment? No? In that case I don't mind if I do" 

Recently I've become even more questioning of the point of "the news". Now it is not for me to judge which are the important news stories, even though I'm just about to do that - albeit in a roundabout way. So rather I'd ask why does it matter if (for example) a politician, in a country you don't live in, says something which will have no impact on you? But it's not just politicians, it's everything. I've come to the conclusion that most of what passes for news is just simple voyeurism. Like the old days of the travelling show with its bearded woman, much of what we see is little more than an excuse to gape. Whether this is in wonder, fear, incredulity or outrage makes no odds. A consequence of this are the attempts to make these stories, no matter how irrelevant they may be, strike a cord with the viewer. Or rather make the viewer believe these have a direct bearing on their lives. Now I'm not suggesting that such things don't happen, but I find it more difficult to square the implicit sense that they always do. Much of the vocabulary used in the news is more akin with the notion of chaos theory. A butterfly flaps its wings and, half a world away, it rains. Therefore a bus strike in London results in me not being able to get to work this morning in Belfast, whereas a bus strike in Belfast simply means I just can't get to work in Belfast. 

As for all those cropped disembodied fat torsos which have been photographed in such away so that individuals can't be recognised, or the blurred shots of school kids used to illustrate news stories (surprisingly never about Cropped Disembodied Fat Torsos UNCOVERED! or "School Kids In BLURRED video SHOCKER!) have become the visual short hand for shallow news coverage. Add the "inappropriate pop-up graphic superimposed over something" which they use (my favourite at the moment is the BBC's "The Sun" logo stuck over the top of the "New Scotland Yard" sign - gem!) and all I can think is that I'm being patronised by lazy simpletons who presume we need to be spooned information in a predigested mush, in much the same way one would feed an eviscerated toddler. 

And AS1967 is back

on Twitter. 


Just down there - to the right? See it? Yes? Read it?  Any the wiser? Nope. Me neither.

Yes. I am taking the piss about all the fucking inanity on twitter. Breaking news, gurning activists who can't be arsed getting off their fat holes and doing things - tweeting is not a substitute for action, celebrities tweeting their sincere condolences / outrage / or whatever the fuck it is they get their lackeys to do and the rest.

In administration?

Game managed to beat HMV to the "in administration" punch.  Reading the details of the rescue package it's hard not to be cynical. Okay some jobs have been saved, and Game live to fight another day. But this seems to be a way of closing branches which they probably should have closed when they went on their acquisition  spree a few years ago. In this context, and much like HMV, they aren't solely a victim of external factors beyond their control - despite how much they protest to the contrary. Over expansion, foolhardy acquisitions, and being fully paid up members of the "If it's like this now, it will always be like this" school of economics contributed. As did being entirely reliant on the whims of a narrow, finite market. Mix their foolish duplication, triplication (and whatever 4 times is) of shops in (seemingly) every single town, all of whom selling the same stuff at the same price and this outcome was unavoidable. Of course the poor saps in the shops, who had nothing to do with making the "big" decisions, are on the receiving end of the pain. 

Typical. 

Of course "Game" aren't alone. Others gaze Canute* like into the abyss. Dixons are another troubled retailer with an unsustainable number of identical branches. None of this is more obvious than in Northern Ireland where a population of 1.7 million have access to 15 outlets, many of whom are just across a retail park from each other. Now if you'd posted losses in the last complete financial year of £225m wouldn't you perhaps consider cutting costs? Perhaps merging one branch with another? Now obviously this isn't cost free.  But the alternatives aren't sustainable. Selling the odd £15 laptop bag or a £39 HDMI cable when a punter buys a laptop or a TV isn't going to help pay the rent.  No matter how many times you click your heels and wish very hard that it will. Again though, when the pain comes, you can be damn sure it won't be the culpable who suffer**. Currys are (along with HMV) the prime example of a retailer with a world view entrenched in the 1990s. Yeah they have a website you can buy things from but their entire "bricks and mortar" mortar model has been rendered irrelevant. Their approach - sell a warranty, sell an install, bung in a free bag if they take either, might have worked when (for example) a "cheap" Hotpoint washing machine was £400, but not now when the equivalent is only £220. But we'll talk more about Currys when they release their annual figures which, if I was a betting man, will be better than last years. Why do I think this? If they are much worse they will simply cease to exist in anything like their current form.    

*I'm using this metaphor in the popularly believed sense, rather than the more appealing (to my mind any way) truth - Canute didn't try to stop the tide, rather he did what he is famous for to prove he couldn't.

**Likely as not they'll be head hunted by some other organisation. It seems there are plenty of companies who want, in amongst their skill set, at least one executive who've led their previous employers to the brink of oblivion. 

Today's figure pulled from the "cost to the economy" hat is

£19 Billion