If it walks like a duck quacks like a duck, it is a duck.
Maplins?
- Thread starter pokerking
- Start date
If it walks like a duck quacks like a duck, it is a duck.
So you can't then.
Quite. Textbook pigeonholing off a single post. Much like the lefty at work actually. I've worked with this guy for 3 years solid in most cases 7 days a week. In that time I've had people from every nationality under the sun working with me, and working well. We are always a fantastic team regardless of who or what is on the team. But once, about 2 years ago, I made a comment in jest which if you twisted your ears, faced a certain direction and said it at a very specific time of day could have been construed as racist. No person of sane mind would've actually made anything of it other than a humorous comment but because of that one single comment, I'm a racist. Idiots gonna idiot.
It unfortunately seems to be a lot of people who do this. They can't argue against what you've actually said, so instead change what you said then argue against that. I call it "The Adam Savage" but without Adam's satire (based on him saying "I reject your reality and substitute my own") during an episode of Mythbusters.
Rather comical that earlier in the thread you quoted spoffle's response to a single post of mine implicitly suggesting that I was a low IQ 'lefty' Corbyn supporter like your former work colleague.
Perhaps you should review some of my other posts in GD......
I think you may find I'm far from the 'lefty' and or socialist/ Corbynite end of the spectrum
I'm still rather amused that you felt the need to jump to the support of spoffle's rather bizarre, in my opinion, view that:-
1) Amazon are great for the UK (taxpayer) as their customers pay a lot in VAT (which would be at the same percentage rate regardless of where the items were bought) and given that high street goods generally cost more before its added then the VAT take would be higher for high street sales of the same goods...
And 2) they are also great because they offer some limited employment opportunities (at least for now) where they have located one of their mega warehouses whilst ignoring the labour they displace elsewhere by their business model.
Now to be clear in don't consider myself a progress opponent and believe the days of a lot of physical retail outlets are numbered due to the advantages of online shopping...
I however just can't help but notice that it's not really anything approaching the idea of a free market (that's in the best interests of the public in my view) when you have a small selection of global companies that can play with completely different rules to any new startups or indeed companies like ocuk that are not quite so international in their reach.
With business practices that I suggest are undesirable if not illegal under the current law
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Soldato
- Joined
- 16 Aug 2009
- Posts
- 7,750
Me too. When I was a kid I used to pay a lot of pocket money for their catalogue and spend hours pouring over lists of electronic components for whatever project I was working on. Used to be a decent company back then.
As for prices, thats what you get for paying business rates on shop premises. Incase anyone was wondering why the high streets are devoid of anything but charity shops these days.
think i got my thrustmaster t-150 in there, kinda wanted it straight away 
also my old pc's psu went pop one night so i bought a psu there the next day as my pc is my main entertainment center and really needed it straight away, psu is in current rig i built about a year later
so they do have their uses for people that need stuff in a rush or are impatient
also my old pc's psu went pop one night so i bought a psu there the next day as my pc is my main entertainment center and really needed it straight away, psu is in current rig i built about a year later
so they do have their uses for people that need stuff in a rush or are impatient
think i got my thrustmaster t-150 in there, kinda wanted it straight away
also my old pc's psu went pop one night so i bought a psu there the next day as my pc is my main entertainment center and really needed it straight away, psu is in current rig i built about a year later
so they do have their uses for people that need stuff in a rush or are impatient
I got my T150 wheel from there too, but on Black Friday after my old DFGT gave up on me.
Maplin's sure have they use when it comes to convenience and time saving, that must be said.
Show me exactly where I said any of this. Tag me to make sure I see it.
What's Maplin's?
We'll never know.
Man of Honour
Is there a name for somebody who knows a bit about you but then gets everything wrong or just make it up?
Well there's strawman logical fallacies, but I'd be really surprised if there wasn't a psychological definition and acknowledgement of people persistently doing it.
"Internet user"
Soldato
Good to have a look at stuff in person before buying online for cheaper. But even for "must have today" situations the nearest shop is a 40 mile round trip which I usually can't be bothered to do.
In the above post you suggest that Amazon are fine because I ‘have no idea’ how much ‘tax’ companies like Amazon generate in the ‘local’ economies they work in……..
Now of course if a particular council has an Amazon warehouse in it then the ‘local’ economy will receive some money from business rates paid for the warehouse…but not a great amount as Amazon locate their warehouses in areas with cheap land values so they don’t end up paying a lot compared to say high street shops which by virtue of their location end up paying a lot more. The ‘local’ economy will also receive some benefit from the employment opportunities offered by the warehouse. But given that these jobs will mostly be minimum wage style low skilled jobs and given that Amazon will be part of the reason that high street stores are closing with loss of other similar jobs but with far greater numbers of posts lost overall (because shops need more staff to sell the same amount of stuff as Amazon) then even on a ‘local’ level then the benefit from having Amazon ‘operating’ doesn’t seem exactly all that great
And then we move on to your truly bizarre comment about VAT…..
Which....
1) Isn’t paid by Amazon – its paid by its consumers!
and.....
2) Is paid at the same rate regardless of where the item is bought in the UK (If VAT rated)
and......
3) Isn't paid to the 'local' economy either which makes it really bizarre that you thought you needed to mention it when I questioned your claim that
‘You have no idea just how much tax companies as large as Amazon generate for the local economy they operate in.’
To which you replied
So lets examine you claims that I ‘have no idea’ how much ‘tax’ companies like Amazon generate in the ‘local’ economies they work in.....
Amazon had something like 24,000 workers in the UK... now sure Amazon are keen to stress that some of these jobs would be (the better paid and more skilled) R +D Jobs in places like Cambridge but lets not fool ourselves the vast majority of these jobs are for low wage warehouse operatives or as Amazon in a rather 1984 esque manner likes to refer to them as 'Fulfilment associates'
'All of our permanent employees start on £7.65 an hour or above. This increases over their first two years of employment when all employees earn £8.15 an hour and above.'
So at Amazon you'll start of a whole 15p above minimum wage per hour and progress to a whole 65p over minimum wage after two years....
In just 2016 alone the ONS states that around 62,000 retail jobs were lost in the UK......
Amazon alone accounted for not far of 5 billion pounds worth of online sales in the 2015/2016 tax year with there being about 60 billion pounds worth of total sales in 2016 (online) so Amazon were accounting for around 1/12 or about 8% of all online sales around that time period
With Amazon only having 15 'Fulfilment centres' in the UK there's hardly a lot of Amazon love to go around to ensure that more than just a few local economies can reap any benefit from Amazons UK retail sales activities
Maplin on the other hand employs 3270 people across 218 sites in the UK with sales of 235m in the 2015/16 tax year
So for Maplin every employee accounted for an average of about £72,000 worth in sales in the 2015/16 tax year with the Amazon figure being around £208,000 worth of sales per employee.....
So Maplin employed nearly three times the amount of staff to generate its sales figures for that tax year compared to the same amount of sales from Amazon.... and this employment was far more widely spread over the UK then Amazons few mega warehouses. **
Are you still going to claim that I have 'no idea' how much tax companies like Amazon generate in the local economies they work in?
(** it should be noted that the 'employed' figures don't take account for whether the employees are full time, part time or seasonal - A finer analysis would account for this but its not particularly unreasonable in my opinion to assume that both companies would have somewhat similar profiles when considering the break down of full time/ part time and seasonal workers - for example from the Maplin accounts for the tax year up to March 2016 say they employed 2,599 people with a 'full time equivalent figure of 1,766 if anyone can find figures for Amazons UK operations in the same year then a more accurate comparison can be made)
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Maplin Maplins, Tesco, Tescos 
Places like Gearbest Bang good are hurting us, people hoping goods pass through customs and not pay tax.
Maplin is a massive rip off. Amazon offer same day delivery on a lot of items, they would only have to stock most used items bet they would massively undercut Maplin by a huge amount.
Look buy this HDMI cable for 14.99 bargain.
Places like Gearbest Bang good are hurting us, people hoping goods pass through customs and not pay tax.
Maplin is a massive rip off. Amazon offer same day delivery on a lot of items, they would only have to stock most used items bet they would massively undercut Maplin by a huge amount.
Look buy this HDMI cable for 14.99 bargain.