Posted on 10/03/2014 4:20:25 AM PDT by blam
Mike Bird
October 3, 2014
John Lewis, the retailer regularly voted the UK’s best by customers, has a pretty friendly brand. Its mutual business model is regularly praised as one for the entire country to copy.
So after being awarded the status of one of the world's best retailers in Paris this week, you might have expected managing director Andy Street to have some kind words to say about his French hosts.
Not quite. He says the country is "finished."
Speaking in London yesterday, the Times reports that John Lewis' most senior executive said: “I have never been to a country more ill at ease… nothing works, and worse, nobody cares about it”
“If you’ve got investments in French businesses, get them out quickly”
The Times is describing his comments as tongue in cheek, but the French embassy certainly wasn’t happy with the comments, saying that “obviously many foreign businesses do not seem to share Mr Street’s view.”
Street even slammed the quality of the plastic award he picked up in Paris as “frankly revolting.”
“If I needed any further evidence of a country in decline, here it is.”
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Wait...socialism doesn’t work?!? Whodathunk....
Wow. You know, Ian Flemming’s film, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is getting quite real nowadays . Depopulation, needing some inventor and entrepreneur to save the day, etc.
Well no...socialism works just fine. Its all the nasty narrow minded conservatives that didnt give it a chance thats the prob. Either that or theyll jusst change the defn of ‘successful’ to match the outcome. This is how itll get spun....youve heard it before right here in the US or A.
It’s all a matter of perspective. France is now the brightest light of the Arab world.
“The country is currently plagued by high unemployment that simply won’t fall, and there’s no sign of any significant growth or inflation.”
The solution is simple, redefine how you calculate the rates of inflation and unemployment like we have done in the US.
Argentina tried it!
"In an interview with Bloomberg's Tom Keene at the International Monetary Fund's Headquarters in Washington D.C., IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the world still faces serious clouds on the horizon., "We are facing serious clouds on the horizon; we have a lot of uncertainty...we are revising potential growth."
The UK is just the same. Its also a backwards smitehole stuck in the 19th century.
Yes, they must have Tea Party types in their parliament blocking all their president's initiatives....
/sarc
The US has more public employees than Germany per 1000 inhabitants.
When you add up the total budgets of the federal, state and local governments we are not far behind the Europeans in the percent of GDP eaten up by government, and (in my experience), we get far less in terms of public services than they do.
Two-pronged approach to fixing France:
Step #1, Kick out every leftist in power (note: do not replace them with a fake Euro-rightist, but someone on par with the UKIP, which France doesn’t seem to have - and that includes the National Front).
Step #2, Expel/deport all Mohammadans.
Mr. GG2’s daughter was here visiting from France last week. She is married to a French citizen. She made the comment that she was waiting to get some shoes on sale in Paris as they only let the shoe stores put shoes on sale twice a year. I was astounded. No wonder they are in such bad shape if the govt is micro managing business that badly.
That is fascinating and frightening all at once!
It doesnt look good for France to be sure, but then this guy is English, so it might all be wishful thinking :)
I've read that the EU has so closely defined what is a banana that some bananas don't qualify as bananas.
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