Amazon vs. the high street

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

When buying your presents for Christmas this year consider carefully and think ethics before you think price. I know that in an age of austerity this is not always easy but thinking we must that way nevertheless.

While Amazon may be cheaper than high street stores and even other mail order companies it comes at a price for the workers and the environment.

In addition to that Amazon is playing the tax avoidance game big time and pays little to no taxes in the UK or the US because they are, basically, with their head offices, based in what can only be described as “tax havens”. Furthermore they pay the lowest wages that they can possibly get away with and hate trade unions and the way they deal with their workers is exploitation bordering on slavery that is a risk to the health of those workers. They also are wreckers of bricks-and-mortar bookshops, especially of the small, independent ones but even the large chains are far from immune to their influence.

Yep, "all the bad stuff at once" but you can make a change here, every single one of us, and that is by refusing to make use of Amazon.

Personally, for reasons of ethics, I refuse to buy from Amazon and also will not accept, even when free, as it would be in that case, to take an Amazon published e-book for review. And for the same reason I refuse to publish in the Kindle format and only offer PDF.

It is for the same reasons of ethics, because of workers' rights and treatment and of exploitation of labor and environment, that I will not buy at Walmart or its subsidiaries, such as ASDA in the UK. The old ASDA once was a favorite place to shop for me when they were ASDA, as in Associated Dairies, but that is long past.

As shoppers we can make a difference to the way companies and stores do business and how they operate. Voting with our wallets and our feet is the best message that we can send to them.

So, let's send them the proper message, a message that will hurt them in their profits for it is the only one that they will ever understand. Let's buy our books and other things from local stores and local makers and if it comes to e-books let's insist that they are in PDF and not in Kindle or other format designed to work with but one device type often and being tied to one store.

Help bring life back to the high street – or main street as our American cousins call it – by shopping there as much as possible. And while not all goods may be local, the shops are and best choice is to give our custom to the independents wherever possible.

We can all bring about the change that we wish by even small steps and one of those small steps is to support the High Street and its shops wherever and whenever possible, and give our custom especially to the small and independent stores and the co-ops.

© 2013

Npower and its shenanigans

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Is Npower the new Starbucks? At the same time as hiking our energy bills, Npower are using accounting tricks to dodge paying their fair share of tax in the UK. On April 16, 2013 it was revealed that they have not paid a single penny in corporation tax for the last three years!

But now that this is out in the open, Npower are vulnerable and just like the PR disaster this issue was for Starbucks when their tax affairs were exposed in later 2012 so it could be for Npower. And just like with Starbucks it could cost them their customers and should.

But this is just one of the shenanigans this company engages in. it also cons the public with their sales pitch where the company claimed to be an wholly British company and one that is green.

As I personally pointed out, in front of many potential customers on a consumer fair to one of the salesmen, the claim is false as the company of wholly owned by RWE AG, formerly Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk AG, as German company and one that had, at that time, the greatest number of German nuclear power stations. I asked the sales rep since when RWE, their parent company, was British and he was totally lost and tried to continue with his spiel.

RWE also owned Thames Water and many other utilities worldwide. RWE produced in 2007 electricity from the following sources: 32.9% hard coal, 35.2% lignite, 1.1% pumped storage, 2.4% renewables, 13.6% gas and 14.9% Nuclear power, with lignite, which is referred to in German as Braunkohle, being one of the dirtiest fossil fuels on the market.

As far as the tax scam is concerned NPower’s accounting scam works like this: they are turning UK operating profits into accounting and tax losses by making large "interest payments" to other parts of their own business, based overseas. This is currently legal, unfortunately and the people must push the government to close this blatant loophole.

They make those "interest payments" in the main, more than likely though this would require further investigation, to their parent company in Germany, and thus they are not liable for tax in the UK.

But not only their tax and accounting scams need to be stopped. Also the miss-selling of their services to unsuspecting punters needs to be nipped in the bud and they need to have the knuckles wrapped over this.

In fact, it is time that the utilities, electricity generation, gas, water, etc., be brought back into British hands, and best the way it was; back into the hands of the country itself. Such vital services should never ever be allowed to be owned by foreign companies and investors.

Powergen, now E-on, also makes false sales claims stating to be a British-owned company, which it is neither. Powergen, which took the name of its parent, E-on, is a wholly-German owned company and it would appear that most of the utility companies in the UK which are owned by foreigners, bar EDF (Électricité de France S.A.) who are open about being French, claim that they are British. Time the people spoke up and told them to come clean, and that in more than one aspect.

We have the power to change the system...

© 2013