Keeping Our Masters Honest

[poliphilo]

I'm not happy about being ruled by corporations, but there's this to be said for it- that if they piss us off it's very easy to hit back at them- all we have to do is stop buying the product. Look at what happened to Tesco, for instance: they spread their stores all over our green and pleasant land, took our loyalty for granted, and now they're in crisis, shutting down stores and desperately trying to rebrand. And look what's just happened with Thomas Cook: they handled the deaths of two children with meat-headed insensitivity and now their share price has dropped and- without anyone having to organise it- people are boycotting their business.  The corporations may have governments in their pockets, but they don't have us- not if we choose otherwise. 

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Every time Thomas Cook opened its mouth it seemed to be to insert a size-13 foot. I kept thinking, "In years to come, this will be used as a case study in how not to handle public relations."

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

They thought they were protecting themselves with all that legalese and corporate-speak. Turns out they weren't.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

I know I just keep singing the same note like a jeremiad, but that works if you're in a society where people are actually accountable to the public, as opposed to only their own kin. Let's say if a certain powerful media magnate owned Tesco and got negative coverage, he would threaten to sue, and in this country which loves the guilty and craps on the innocent through generations, the threat of suing would be enough, everything would be dropped and apologies made. It would not be enough in yours.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Tesco is suffering not because of bad publicity (though it gets that as well) but because people are no longer satisfied with what it has to offer. They've been outflanked by companies like Lidl and Aldi which have a different- and more consumer-friendly business philosophy. -

Is it really that bad in Ireland? Surely you don't get sued for reporting facts- for example the way Thomas Cook has handled itself vis a vis the two dead children.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

In answer to your question, Yes.

http://www.thejournal.ie/denis-o-brien-rte-day-two-2099936-May2015/

That is about the Siteserv deal. Mr O'Brien does not like his corrupt behaviour being questioned, so he simply shuts down the media by means of lawsuits. He harried a Daily Mail journalist to his grave for a comic column (please, no daily mail comments, not appropriate here)

And then of course, there is the Kate Fitzgerald affair, where the guilty parties shut everything down I've never forgotten or will forgive that even though my own (Irish) publisher warned me to shut up about it and I've probably suffered professionally by getting a very poor review with the offending newspaper

http://www.conorfarrell.com/wordpress/uncategorized/kate-fitzgerald-and-the-irish-times-a-timeline

And then there is the Tuam Babies scandal, involving the same offenders. Again it was the daily mail journalists who were mocked. Of course the DM being a British paper, it's more inclined to tell the truth, not knowing people who know people. The gaslighting involved by apologists for the RCC has been absolutely appalling.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/05/horror-tuam-missing-babies-not-diminished

https://kettleontherange.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/an-international-publicity-frenzy-and-my-mother/

http://www.thejournal.ie/terry-prone-email-tuam-babies-site-1721252-Oct2014/

I have campaigned for KF for a long time and the amount of mockery and emotional violence I have received is some thing else.

Thank God or whoever you prefer that you do not live in this place of seething cruelty and hatred. It IS that bad.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the documentation.

I do try to be fair to the Mail. Its politics often disgust me, but I value some of its journalism- and pay it the compliment of reading it most days.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Yes perhaps their focus on the trivial deserves criticism, but in Ireland they often point things out that nobody else dares to. We still live in omerta culture.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

This sordid Thomas Cook business is a real example of the power of teh intarwebz.

They have proceeded to shoot themselves in the other foot this morning..................

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We may sometimes feel as though we're powerless to deal with the corporations, but we're not.

[matrixmann]

This is correctly.
The only thing I figure when it becomes diffucult if one enterprise produces a good which you are daily very inevitably in need of.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Monopolies are almost always a bad thing.

[artkouros.livejournal.com]

This is why Amazon is taking over the world of retail.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Amazon are tremendously good at what they do- but their dominance does bother me.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

As I was reading in a blog post just this morning, it's more effective to attack institutions, rather than politicians, even when the governing party isn't shamelessly corporatist. Politics is about power and one way or another politicians go where power compels them. To take an example over here, it's been nearly impossible to get politicians seriously interested in higher wages, but boycotts, picketing, and other actions aimed at corporate offenders in recent years have started to get political attention. Now, even a staid centrist like Ms Clinton says there should be a higher minimum wage.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We're used to talking as if the politicians were the masters- when they're not- and attacking them when we should be attacking the ones who are pulling their strings.