I was told that I came under extra scrutiny at the podium because
I was flying from the UK to the US on a Canadian passport; that
is, a passport that doesn't come from either the origin or
destination of my flight. I fly a lot to the USA, and other
airlines don't seem to have this policy. Should I take this to
mean that if I continue to fly AA on this customary UK-US voyage
of mine, I can expect to be given a hassle every time I fly?
I fly from Heathrow to San Francisco a few times a year on an Irish passport and nobody says Boo to me. But then I do fly Virgin Atlantic. I'd be very interested in AA's response if they ever give one.
He spots a stodgy, old-line industry, rolls out the Virgin logo, sprinkles some camera-catching glitter, and poof - another moneymaker. While that formula has kept him in champagne and headlines, no Virgin business has ever changed the world.
This is incorrect. Branson has always succeeded by taking a different approach to business from his fellow Brits, usually involving giving customers something they want.
With his record business it was an eclectic mix of music that young people wanted to listen to as opposed to what the big companies were pushing. With the record retail business it was a relaxed and cool atmosphere in which to come and enjoy browsing through music rather than squeezing into the forgotten basement of a crowded bookstore, which was the only way to buy music before he came along. With the airline it was the concept of entertaining the passengers in economy class with seat-back entertainment - something British Airways were forced to follow. Oh, and he added some much needed competition to the transatlantic route, something that BA fought tooth and nail by fair means and foul.
Sure he's a renowned self publicist, but that doesn't mean he trades only in gimmicks. The guy has his business head screwed on.
Personally I think we should cut all their funding since they run advertisements just like any other station.
Semi-state broadcasting is not unique to Canada. RTE, Ireland's state broadcaster, is partly funded by advertising and a TV license fee. This is because the TV license revenue from such a small population would not be adequate to cover the cost of providing a decent quality service.
If that was really the case, Palistine would be nuked into the ground
All that fallout would be a tad inconvenient for all the Israeli settlers queueing up to take the place of the natives, wouldn't you say?
[Israel] being the more educated and sophisticated civalization
Just because the Israelis have whiter skin than the Arabs does not make them a superior race.
They perhaps have a "right" to the disputed land
Damn straight! And what's with the 'perhaps' and inverted commas? Israel have no right to the West Bank or Gaza strip and there are a tonne of UN resolutions that say so, period. In fact Israel are in breach of more UN resolutions and have been getting away with it for far longer than Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
excercising that right it causing a lot of problems in the world. Let the thief take the goddam TV set and move on. The TV ain't worth the life of your family and neighbors even if you rightfully own it. Be pig-headed martyrs over something more important than mere strips of deseart.
American presidents have had a word for that since 1939. "Appeasement." Sound familiar?
"Yeehaa!" is not a foreign policy
on
Business Under Fire
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Maybe we should let those sleazeballs on the Continent deal with the Balkans and the Middle East and Russia and China on their own dime, and just take care of ourselves for a while? I bet we'd be laughing a lot longer than they would
Most of those "sleazeballs on the Continent" aren't in the habit of making enemies all over the world by 'projecting power' with their military ego trips or pulling the rug out from democratically elected governments like the US did in Iran, Chile, Venezuala (almost), Haiti, etc. The Swedes aren't exactly at the top of Al Queda's hit list, are they?
Re:Americans have brought much of this on ourselve
on
Business Under Fire
·
· Score: 1
Want roads? Pay the market rate
You mean close down all roads that lead to rural areas? Or just put a tollbooth on every highway and byway so that we can abolish taxes? Perhaps you mean pay for them through taxation on petrol. If so, fine. I agree 100% with you there. For all their complaining about the price of gas, people in the US currently pay 30% of the cost of road maintenance through taxes on petrol, the rest comes from federal income tax. I say reduce the income tax burden and let the motorist pay through the nozzle like they do in Europe where the full cost of motoring is covered by taxes on fuels that causes petrol to cost $7/gallon. I would also like to see more toll roads on busy routes so that road space is rationed by price rather than by queueing. Rationing by queue as opposed to rationing by price should have disappeared with the Soviet era.
Same for schools, hospitals, malls, sports stadiums and all the other things that are built with stolen money for "the good of the public"
Taxes are not "stolen money." They are a perfectly valid way of paying for public services and in the case of roads and schools they are the only way of doing so in a fair, equitable and effective way. Malls and sports stadiums is one point where I'm going to agree with you though. There's no way the taxpayer should fund privately owned businesses be they quality-of-life-busting supermarket chains like Wal Mart or leeches like professional sports 'franchises.'
Re:A more interesting question
on
Business Under Fire
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
How well can an economy survive on stolen territory?
Well Berlin seems to be doing pretty well. It was around 25% Jewish (more by most accounts). Hmm.. And Vienna's prospering too. Actually Moscow is prospering too. So's Warsaw... and Milan. And hey, this week things are looking up in Kiev.
Is there an army of displaced people living in refugee camps outside Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw or Milan?
Re:Americans have brought much of this on ourselve
on
Business Under Fire
·
· Score: 1
You know what I'm amazed by? The people who whinge and moan about lack of quality in their roads, schools, infrastructure, and public services but then go out and vote for whoever will cut taxes the most.
why doesn't Israel just give the fucking land back?
Thank you! I'm glad there's at least one other person that sees what the real problem is. To answer your question, Israel feels no obligation to hand the land back because they are an oppressive regime armed to the teeth by the USA and can literally get away with murder. As long as US backing for Israel and their ethnic cleansing of Palestinians exists, the problem exists.
Carrison wondered how any company, let alone an entire economy, could survive in an environment ravaged by terrorism and a recession.
I wonder how an economy can survive when it's built on stolen territory taken from displaced people. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the root of the problems in Palestine.
You also paid for the construction of the aircraft-carrier USS John F Kennedy. Doesn't give you the right to take the thing out for a cruise on the bay at the weekend.
I entirely agree. Remember the episode where Sheridan nukes the city on Za'Hadum? Every time I watch it it still makes my hair stand on end. Such a masterful piece of drama, ratcheting up the tension, putting Sheridan in a seemingly impossibly bad situation, pulling the greatest climactic moment in TV Sci-Fi history, and then leaving the ending hanging on a limb as you try to figure out if Sheridan is dead or alive.
God I've got to borrow the season 4 DVDs from my mate again!
Advocating free trade leads to this automatically.
Huh? Advocating free trade leads to us "giving up our manufacturing and all of us getting degrees in high tech?"
They should have known different- the end result of 50 years of subsidized education in one of the two most populous countries on earth is obvious in hindsight- and that information was never shown in foresight.
Huh? I'm sure you have an interesting point to make here. Please make it.
Cheap labor and the destruction of the middle class- a maserful stroke from those who believe that society should only have two classes.
Garbage. The Economist has always argued for measures which it believes will lead to a better distribution of wealth.
Kerry, Bush, makes no difference, they're both free traitors.
I'm not familiar with your personal jargon. If you mean that Bush and Kerry are both in favour of free trade, then maybe you'd care to explain Kerry's call for protectionist measures to prevent outsourcing, and Bush's tarriffs on steel imports.
hen explain why they still support the WTO, when free trade has proven to be disasterous to both developing and developed nations.
Proven by whom? The Economist has spelled out many times how free trade has been a relative success for developing and developed nations. When I say 'relative,' I mean compared to any alternative system that has ever been devised. The system endorsed by your namesake was hardly a roaring success for all concerned.
Aren't these the same people who tried to tell us that "comparative advantage" meant we should give up our manufacturing and all get degrees in high tech? Why should we believe ANYTHING they have to say after they've lied to us for so long?
Actually, I don't seem to remember that paper ever advocating any such thing. Nevertheless, a great many people fell for that one. A great many people still cling to it. And to say that they "lied" implies that they knew different but told us this anyway. Perhaps you can tell us what they hoped to gain from this grand deception. Or perhaps you'll just admit that you had an aversion to their endorsement of John Kerry.
Economics is a religion- and a failed mythology at that.
Nonsense. Economists, and the Economist newspaper, seldom have a problem admitting mistakes. Show me a religion that is willing to change its belief in a supernatural being after centuries of mounting evidence to explain away the mysteries that underpinned such superstition.
That's how the trains work in the UK, they're diesel-electric. Local trains don't have locomotives, there's just an engine and electric generators in each coach under the floor. Makes it a lot easier to piece together trainsets. It strikes me as a bit inefficient though, converting chemical energy to kinetic energy to electrical energy and finally back to kinetic energy to get the train moving. But that does seem to be the way the trains work, so the savings that you mention must more than make up for it.
I could see a quiet revolution taking place when sulphur gets kicked out out of Diesel in the US. For all the talk about hybrids, it'll be Diesel that becomes the fuel of choice. Once people start to hear about people filling their tank once a month word will soon spread like it has back at home. My mates back in Ireland all drive diesel cars, and they've developed now to the point where you can barely hear the difference between a diesel and a petrol engine. It's not as noisy as it used to be. They all drive down to the border once a month to fill up because of the exchange rate. I posted an article about this a long time ago but the philistines at/. rejected it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hrrmph! Some sense-of-humour-deprived mod didn't mod you offtopic. I'm jealous!
Winchester Rifles sues Vestgard, manufacturer of bullet-proof vests and body armour.
..because I'm on the case. I'm Denny Crane.
Huh?
I was just about to say the same thing, and also to say Lisa! In this house we obay the laws of thermodynamics!
With his record business it was an eclectic mix of music that young people wanted to listen to as opposed to what the big companies were pushing. With the record retail business it was a relaxed and cool atmosphere in which to come and enjoy browsing through music rather than squeezing into the forgotten basement of a crowded bookstore, which was the only way to buy music before he came along. With the airline it was the concept of entertaining the passengers in economy class with seat-back entertainment - something British Airways were forced to follow. Oh, and he added some much needed competition to the transatlantic route, something that BA fought tooth and nail by fair means and foul.
Sure he's a renowned self publicist, but that doesn't mean he trades only in gimmicks. The guy has his business head screwed on.
Imagine the reaction if senior Chinese officials started calling for the internal laws of the US to be altered to suit Chinese business interests.
You know what I'm amazed by? The people who whinge and moan about lack of quality in their roads, schools, infrastructure, and public services but then go out and vote for whoever will cut taxes the most.
You're a real tough guy, aren't you? Guess you must have missed the reports about Israeli settlers being armed to the teeth.
You also paid for the construction of the aircraft-carrier USS John F Kennedy. Doesn't give you the right to take the thing out for a cruise on the bay at the weekend.
I entirely agree. Remember the episode where Sheridan nukes the city on Za'Hadum? Every time I watch it it still makes my hair stand on end. Such a masterful piece of drama, ratcheting up the tension, putting Sheridan in a seemingly impossibly bad situation, pulling the greatest climactic moment in TV Sci-Fi history, and then leaving the ending hanging on a limb as you try to figure out if Sheridan is dead or alive. God I've got to borrow the season 4 DVDs from my mate again!
That's how the trains work in the UK, they're diesel-electric. Local trains don't have locomotives, there's just an engine and electric generators in each coach under the floor. Makes it a lot easier to piece together trainsets. It strikes me as a bit inefficient though, converting chemical energy to kinetic energy to electrical energy and finally back to kinetic energy to get the train moving. But that does seem to be the way the trains work, so the savings that you mention must more than make up for it.