General News Discussion

[zero000]

The real question is how long before HMV goes under. I know everyone's thinking "Good riddance remember when they screwed the independent retailers out of business and charged us £13 a CD etc..." but it will be sad to lose the only place you can buy physical music on the high street, other than the top 20 at Tesco that is.

[thetime]

The real question is how long before HMV goes under. I know everyone's thinking "Good riddance remember when they screwed the independent retailers out of business and charged us £13 a CD etc..." but it will be sad to lose the only place you can buy physical music on the high street, other than the top 20 at Tesco that is.

[Kowalski]

play used to be great, back in the day when you could buy R1 dvds from the usa, since then its just amazon lite. and amazon dont take 8 days to get a cd to you.

Edited January 10, 2013 by Kowalski

[lost]

from watching my friends kids they do seem to consume media in a completely different way. They will hear a song they like, find it on youtube, watch it quite a few times over a few weeks, then get bored and forget about it. Suppose they may move onto portable media but they wouldn't have a clue what album a song comes from. I can see albums being dead in 10 years.

[abdoujaparov]

You raise a good point. I get quite annoyed when people berate the loss of many shops due to the opening of a big supermarket. But usually it is due to them choosing the apparently cheaper option and convenience.

[benc]

High street will need to start using the imagination as gwnerally people will go for the cheaper option.

[eFestivals]

Amazon seem to sell stuff cheaper than what retailers can buy it wholesale

A guy I knew self-published a book, which included an ISBN number. Next thing he knew it was listed on amazon at a price cheaper than he was selling the book for to anyone (and less than the price printed on the book).

He was asking my advice about it, so I suggested to him that he order his book from Amazon and see what happened with his order. Unfortunately I don't know what happened with that as it was 5+ years before I saw him again and his book didn't come up in the convo.

But what I suspect happens is that Amazon takes the order and then tries to source the book at a price that's cheaper than they're advertising it for. So I'm guessing that Amazon would have contacted him as the publisher and 'told' him the price they would pay (it's a pretty standard buyer's trick). In most cases the seller is likely to go with it, because a sale a reduced profit is better than no sale at all, unless there's no profit in it at all ... but even then many sellers would sell at the loss, in the hope of future orders at a profit.

Many years ago I used to work for a medium sized retailer, and at the beginning of each year all of the companies they bought from were invited to come and see them, and then they were given a list of prices that that retailer would now pay for their goods - and each year the prices were always reduced, shaving ever-more profit off what the supplier made. A small number of those suppliers would stop supplying, but most were by-then already too tied-in to the business that that retailer gave them, and had to go along with those reduced prices else their business was fucked anyway.

That buyer's trick was one that was nicked from Tesco. It's why Tesco have been fucking over their suppliers and why others just can't compete.

Edited January 10, 2013 by eFestivals

[kaosmark2]

The real question is how long before HMV goes under. I know everyone's thinking "Good riddance remember when they screwed the independent retailers out of business and charged us £13 a CD etc..." but it will be sad to lose the only place you can buy physical music on the high street, other than the top 20 at Tesco that is.

[zero000]

This is true, most of their effort at the moment seems to be selling beats headphones to people with more money than sense. They're also desperately trying to get into the expanding vinyl market, which is a bit of a joke given their huge prices.

I believe they've also sold the profitable live music aspects of their business as well, so all in all it's not looking good for them!

[5co77ie]

Osborne tells us all how to beat paying inheritance tax:

He should have his own show - how to beat the system, so we can all pay his government nothing.

[eFestivals]

Osborne tells us all how to beat paying inheritance tax:

Gideon Osbore says how it is - only the little people need to pay taxes.

c**t.

[5co77ie]

one of my personal aims is to stop using supermarkets completely...we buy all our veg from a local farm, or grow it ourselves. The two nearest towns to us still have proper independent high street shops and one of them has a large twice weekly market.

and I buy all my music (now mostly on vinyl) from the independent record shop in town

[TalkShow Bob]

Or the consumers choice was to blame... We have chosen to shop at Supermarkets and on the net at the expense of local traders.

I don't deny tax loop holes have an impact, they do, but solely to blame ? Not even nearly... We value the base price of a product over the other things you can get from independent traders.

EDIT: Saying this modern independent traders can be more hassle than they are worth on factors which they used to be good at. Returning something to Amazon is pretty easy... Returning something to a local small trader can be more than problematic....

[TalkShow Bob]

A guy I knew self-published a book, which included an ISBN number. Next thing he knew it was listed on amazon at a price cheaper than he was selling the book for to anyone (and less than the price printed on the book).

He was asking my advice about it, so I suggested to him that he order his book from Amazon and see what happened with his order. Unfortunately I don't know what happened with that as it was 5+ years before I saw him again and his book didn't come up in the convo.

But what I suspect happens is that Amazon takes the order and then tries to source the book at a price that's cheaper than they're advertising it for. So I'm guessing that Amazon would have contacted him as the publisher and 'told' him the price they would pay (it's a pretty standard buyer's trick). In most cases the seller is likely to go with it, because a sale a reduced profit is better than no sale at all, unless there's no profit in it at all ... but even then many sellers would sell at the loss, in the hope of future orders at a profit.

Many years ago I used to work for a medium sized retailer, and at the beginning of each year all of the companies they bought from were invited to come and see them, and then they were given a list of prices that that retailer would now pay for their goods - and each year the prices were always reduced, shaving ever-more profit off what the supplier made. A small number of those suppliers would stop supplying, but most were by-then already too tied-in to the business that that retailer gave them, and had to go along with those reduced prices else their business was fucked anyway.

That buyer's trick was one that was nicked from Tesco. It's why Tesco have been fucking over their suppliers and why others just can't compete.

[abdoujaparov]

very commendable, we try to do the same. We had a farm delivery this morning, and I was chatting to the bloke delivering it about this "next year's UK's crops are going to be bad" line. He's of the opinion it's a paid for study trying to get folks buying cheap imported supermarket stock instead of local stock. Paid for by the supermarkets themselves.

[lost]

I paid £1.65 for a bag of baking potatoes at Morrisons on Saturday. I got 5 potatoes and 1 was only big enough to be called a baking potato

[Kowalski]

I paid £1.65 for a bag of baking potatoes at Morrisons on Saturday. I got 5 potatoes and 1 was only big enough to be called a baking potato

[lost]

Did you not inspect them before buying them?

[zero000]

Another school shooting in America: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/01/10/uk-usa-shooting-california-idUKBRE90910T20130110

Seems to be breaking news at the moment.

Edited January 10, 2013 by zero000

[t8yman]

very commendable, we try to do the same. We had a farm delivery this morning, and I was chatting to the bloke delivering it about this "next year's UK's crops are going to be bad" line. He's of the opinion it's a paid for study trying to get folks buying cheap imported supermarket stock instead of local stock. Paid for by the supermarkets themselves.

[lharris92]

Another school shooting in America: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/01/10/uk-usa-shooting-california-idUKBRE90910T20130110

Seems to be breaking news at the moment.

[eFestivals]

So, the average increase in wages that our wonderful MPs think they deserve is a 32% increase.

And a special award goes to the tory MPs who on average think they deserve a 47% increase in their wages, and believe that if they don't get it that only people with an independent income will be able to afford to be MPs.

They don't live on a different planet, oh no.

[TheGayTent]

They need the rise to cover their loss of child benefit

[eFestivals]

They need the rise to cover their loss of child benefit

nah, they'll be fine, after all Gideon Oldbore has been telling them all how to avoid inheritance taxes and the costs of care when old.

----------------

Meanwhile, the same govt who shut down the Central Office of Information because it said that the govt shouldn't be spending a large part of its £168m budget on informing the people of things which are to their benefit, has suddenly found a marketing budget of £285m to be spent in the year before the next election - to tell us all how wonderful this govt has been for us.

----------------

For those who hate 'benefit scroungers', did you know that only 20% of the welfare bill is spent on the unemployed?

It roughly breaks down like this...

50% - pensioners.

30% - welfare support to working people because their employers are stealing the wages that could and should be paid to them.

20% - welfare payments to the unemployed.

Only a tiny fraction of those unemployed could possibly be 'scoungers', cos only 3% of those who claim who are unemployed have been unemployed for 2 or more years.

Which means that of all the welfare money, at the very very most (if all of that 3% of unemployed were 'scroungers') it means that only 0.6% of the total welfare budget could possibly be going to scroungers (which equates to £1.35Bn) ... but because not all of those are scroungers it's actually much much MUCH less.

[eFestivals]

What I say to that is there are too many wealthy pensioners getting state hand outs

Yep. There was a good discussion on Newsnight last night that said as it's today pensioners who have underpaid for their pensions because they're now living much longer tr5han was anticipated, the rises in retirement age should come in immediately so that people who might retire tomorrow are not adding to costs that younger generatioons are having to pick up on their behalf.

(in case you don't know, the rise is due to come in in 2028).