Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... tions.html

BP only just squeeked out a £10bn profit in the first quarter of this year. It must be a terrible time for them at the moment, with the cost of oil rising so high and taxes at the pumps taking their toll on their profit margin. It's a wonder how they manage to survive by only increasing the costs at the pump by 5p a litre so far this year.

I completely disagree with the fact that profit should be capped for any company, no matter what it is they provide. They made lots of money - well, good on them. If you don't like the 5p price increase, shop somewhere else.

If your complaint is that they set the prices for everywhere else or that there's no-one else to shop from then that (in my head) is a price-fixing / monopoly issue, and should be dealt with as such.

Telling companies that making a profit is "immoral" just because a large percentage of the population buy their products seems all manner of wrong to me.

Indeed. Nobody comes to BEEX for a lecture on communism!

I'd argue that cutting jobs because your profits are down (yet still perfectly healthy) is immoral, though.

Bullshit. You cut jobs that are no longer required or relevant to your operation. If you don't, you find yourself with no profits, and you go bust. More people then lose their jobs.

Perhaps I should be criticised for cutting my mobile phone tariff last month despite getting a payrise.

I'd argue that you can cut jobs for whatever reason you feel like.

I'd go further, and argue that you can just criticise APOD for whatever reason you feel like.

£879m is still plenty of profit though, and a 7% decrease (which is also the first decrease in profits they've recorded, as far as I'm aware) could just be a blip, just seems a bit off to put nearly 700 people out of work, and they'll most likely be staff that are paid the lowest amounts so more than likely won't make *that* much of a difference to their bottom line.

If they'd got off their arses years ago and jumped on the "online shopping" bandwagon that ASDA and Tesco did, their profits may not have slumped.

I'm just not cut-throat enough to be a business man, I suppose

Your problem is that you think the word 'plenty' exists within the concept of capitalism.

Those sort of cuts tend to be back office, and re-imagining roles. For example, removing one role, and slpitting that work over 5 others. it won't affect the shelf stackers so much as you know that it takes one person 8 hous to stack 15 shelves, whjereas office workers are sending each other pictures of cats for £10kpa more.

I love the idea of a Gazchap run morrisons where they retain staff even if the role they perform is no longer relevant because they already make enough money. You wouldn't be able to move for men opening the automatic doors, porters carrying your shopping, people with priceguns and men lifting the items off the shelf to place on a counter for you. Still, there'd be a Milliners, which is nice, as I've never managed to find a decent hat in Petts Wood.

To be fair, I'd pay an additional fee on my weekly bill for that service. At the moment, I have to persuade MissChap to do it.

This was more my point, but the main issue I have is the "woe is us" stance the oil companies take and the complaint that it isn't their fault the prices are high.

It's a price fixing industry for something that isn't a luxury item.

Basically, I'm annoyed because I want cheaper petrol

I'm pretty sure one of the big supermarkets will take your stuff to your car for you.

Come to Australia then. It's a little bit less than £1 a litre.

Going up in price quite quickly though, especially in the rural areas (I understand the transport across a big country like this is probably pretty expensive, but even so ).

On yer bike!

How much are puncture repair kits?

Mrs Zardoz deflated again?

Yeah the cheapest we found driving the east coast was $1.29 in sydney, and the most expensive was $1.59 somwhere in northern QLD. I think it's more expensive in more remote places as there's no-where else to fill up. Cost us $120 in fuel from brisbane to cairns I think, which wasn't too bad for 1700km.