Boycotting Amazon - could you do it?

[Nick Armstrong]

Apologies, Caliban. I obviously mistook Margaret Shostakovich for Dmitri Rutherford, or something. Perhaps I need new glasses...

Just set my mind racing, thinking of DSCH living in St Mary Mead wearing tweed, solving murders with his bumbling partner Mr Prokofiev, and being leered at by Robert Morley...

[teamsaint]

Just set my mind racing, thinking of DSCH living in St Mary Mead wearing tweed, solving murders with his bumbling partner Mr Prokofiev, and being leered at by Robert Morley...

for some reason, I have the picture of a well filled cake stand in my mind.

[Nick Armstrong]

for some reason, I have the picture of a well filled cake stand in my mind.

Kinky bar-steward!

[Nick Armstrong]

Interestingly, Margaret Hodge MP is a shareholder in Stemcor, a steel trading company set up by her father and now run by her brother. Stemcor generated revenues of more than £2.1bn in the UK in 2011, but paid just £163,000 in corporation tax. That's 0.01 percent tax on business generated in the UK, which is less than the tax paid by Amazon or Google.

Has this been widely published? If not, you should. It redoubles my distaste for that particular member of Parliament, having always found her pretty insufferable.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I thought you were Spartacus

No! I'm Spartacus!

[teamsaint]

Has this been widely published? If not, you should. It redoubles my distaste for that particular member of Parliament, having always found her pretty insufferable.

Its all over the web and press. Quite spectacular case of double standards.

I can't abide her. Nasty.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I'll think seriously about using Amazon in future. I already do the opposite of what many people by using Amazon to check availability, then order via a local shop. With CDs there is less choice but I like to use other on-line dealers.


P.S. "I'm Spartacus..." This is the least historically accurate part of the film. He is thought to have been killed in the final battle, and if so was fortunate not to be one of the 6000 who were crucified along the Appian Way.

[vinteuil]

I certainly shall not boycott amazon.

I shall on the other hand continue to boycott Starbucks because their 'coffee' tastes of nothing.

... that's my boy!

I don't go to starbucks 'cos the coffee is rubbish.

In the few years I have left on this earth I am not going to deprive myself of the pleasure to be derived from using amazon. My 'individual 'boycott' is not a bean in a hill of beans. And of course the pleasure (knowing what baddies they are) is now doubled when they mis-price things so I can get the NIFC complete Chopin for £11 rather than £111...

[LHC]

Its all over the web and press. Quite spectacular case of double standards.

I can't abide her. Nasty.

Indeed, when she was leader of Islington Council in the 80s, her own party nicknamed her Enver Hodge, because of the similarity of her management style to that of the late, unlamented Albanian dictator, Enver Hoxha.

[Stanfordian]

I save too much money to boycot amazon. I do 95% of my non-food shopping at amazon. I believe it's the Governments job to sort out the corporation tax situation.

[IRF]

[COLOR="#0000FF"]I can't get my head around why the criticism isn't directed towards the law-makers rather than the companies. If the laws are as they are, can companies really be vilified for complying with them? Trying to impale them on the spike of 'immorality' seems to me beside the point. If they are so outraged, why don't Hodge MP and her harrumphing side-kicks do something about it?

[Pianorak]

Ok - so it's not a Gretchen but a Dhodge Question?

[umslopogaas]

I save too much money to boycot amazon. I do 95% of my non-food shopping at amazon. I believe it's the Governments job to sort out the corporation tax situation.

I never knowingly use Amazon, though I suspect my local hifi dealer may use it to get the CDs I order from him. I prefer dealing with real people and I hate credit cards, especially when you have to give out details on line. For books I use Waterstones, though I now have a twenty mile train journey to Exeter to find them, because the local branch in Tiverton was closed down ... probably because of on-line competition from Amazon and the like.

I also never buy and sell on ebay, though I use it regularly to check the prices other people are paying for the things I collect (notably classical music LPs). But when I buy LPs I do it from dealers I know: not alas, that any of them seem to have had anything for months. Still, that's probably just as well, given the state of my bank balance.

[PJPJ]

I save too much money to boycot amazon. I do 95% of my non-food shopping at amazon. I believe it's the Governments job to sort out the corporation tax situation.

Indeed - and they ought to get on with it.

Were I to boycott Amazon, I'd feel obliged to find the other on- and off-line vendors who function similarly minimising their tax burden. And that would have to include those who post from the Channel Islands so that I avoid VAT.......

[Serial_Apologist]

I never knowingly use Amazon, though I suspect my local hifi dealer may use it to get the CDs I order from him. I prefer dealing with real people and I hate credit cards, especially when you have to give out details on line. For books I use Waterstones, though I now have a twenty mile train journey to Exeter to find them, because the local branch in Tiverton was closed down ... probably because of on-line competition from Amazon and the like.

I also never buy and sell on ebay, though I use it regularly to check the prices other people are paying for the things I collect (notably classical music LPs). But when I buy LPs I do it from dealers I know: not alas, that any of them seem to have had anything for months. Still, that's probably just as well, given the state of my bank balance.

All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, eh?

(I'm of the same mind, btw )