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Amazon sells dog training book with forward from Nazi Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring wrote the forward to a puppy training manual you can buy on Amazon. Sections are not dedicated to knowing Jews by their scent, teaching your dog to raise a front right leg and going vegetarian. There is, however, lots about obeying orders. The JC reports that shopper Lorraine Phipps bought the Puppy Training manual from Amazon unaware that it contains a eulogy on Adolf Hitler printed inside, namely Adolf Hitler, 1931-1935: Pictures from the Life of the Führer with a forward by Hermann Göring.
“I bought a purported puppy training book from Amazon on March 2,” says Lorraine. “When my husband and I went to read it, despite the cover being as expected, it was actually a reprinting of a 1936 pro-Nazi propaganda book.” She wants Amazon to remove the “awful and misleading item from their listings”. Amazon says they are “investigating”.
Elsewhere you can buy Pictures from the Life of the Führer – without the Puppy Training cover. It is “one of the crowning popular propaganda achievements which helped consolidate Hitler’s hold on power, this book had sold millions of copies by 1940 and was one of those specifically ordered destroyed by the Allied occupation forces after 1945”.
Meanwhile… Somewhere in a German bunker a Nazi is teaching other recreational Herrenvolk to ‘Stay’, ‘Beg’ and ‘Play Dead’.
Amazon is now the world’s largest investor in research and development
One of the more amusing things that we’re told about the tax dodging by the internet giants is that the government needs all that money in order to be able to invest. We’ve got low productivity rises, this means that wages will rise slowly into the future – and it’s true that if productivity rises are slow then so will wage rises be. Thus the Treasury should get a goodly slice of the moolah so that those wise people in the House of Commons can invest it.
This rather fails with Amazon:
Amazon passed Volkswagen AG in late 2016 to become the world’s biggest corporate R&D spender, and its hold on the No. 1 spot has only grown more secure since.
Amazon doesn’t pay a dividend, the only share repurchases it does are to buy the stock that is then awarded to employees as part of their pay. It also doesn’t make much of a profit. Sure, the number can be large, but as a percentage of anything it has always been tiny. The reason being that any money they do make on one line of business is then sent off to be invested in some other line.
They’re actually doing what people claim they want companies to be doing, sending their profits back into investment so as to create more growth and more jobs with higher wages in the future. So this claim that they should pay more taxes so that government can invest the money is more than a little odd.
Of course, the claim that companies should pay more tax so that government can invest is ridiculous anyway. The company can invest it itself, or it can give it all to shareholders. Who then make the decision to either spend it – raising demand and thus wages- or invest it – raising future growth and future wages. There’s nothing else that can be done with money, you either spend it or invest it, that’s all that’s possible.
The real complaint here is that the politicians can see a pot of money and they’re pissed off that they don’t get to spend it. But then we knew that, right?
Posted: 12th, April 2018 | In: Money, News, Technology Comment
Tax the brains: BBC should pay less to stop Amazon and Netflix
About those BBC salaries – and overlooking the bit about you needing a bellend to get top whack at dear old Auntie – the Telegraph tells readers:
The BBC is under pressure to cut the salaries of “untouchable” male stars including Chris Evans and Gary Lineker, ahead of a report into the on-screen gender pay gap.
Only male stars? What about female big earners? We won’t know what everyone’s on because the very well-paid bureaucrats running the BBC – spending your money – operate what former BBC China editor Carrie Gracie called a “secretive and illegal pay culture”.
Women at the corporation questioned why the the pair are maintained on such exorbitant salaries – £1.75m for Lineker and at least £2.2 million for Evans.
Evans is seen as a versatile crowd pleaser. Lineker fronts the BBC’s Premier League football highlights show, Match of the Day – the only show terrestrial TV show broadcasting Premier League highlights. It could be presented by a masturbating gibbon and fans would still tune in. Any number of good journalists could do it for much less.
The BBC claims that it cannot cut the pay of entertainment and sports personalities as it has done for news presenters, because there is too much competition from Netflix, Amazon and BT.
So why not make a commitment to producing stuff the BBC’s rivals can’t or won’t? Netflix, Amazon and BT don’t do broadcast news. Let’s have more of that, then. And would you follow Lineker to an Amazon PL show? The BBC shuold give new blood a chance – investing in experimental and daring telly. If you can’t compete with private outfits, use the vast sums raked in through tax to play a new game.
Posted: 29th, January 2018 | In: Broadsheets, Money, News Comment
Amazon delivers 65 pounds of marijuana to couple who ordered a bin
Sometimes life just gives you a break. And so it was for one couple who instead of the four storage bins they ordered from Amazon, received 65 pounds of marijuana.
Can you imagine?
Amazon customers in Orlando got unexpected marijuana delivery 📦-65-pounds! #WFTV at 6pm pic.twitter.com/yYywuKYpnU— Jeff Deal (@JDealWFTV) October 20, 2017
“They were extremely heavy, heavier than you would think from ordering four empty bins,” the woman tells ABC.
She called the police, who impounded the contraband, and around a month later Amazon sent them a $150 gift card.
There really is no helping some people.
Spotter: WFTV
Posted: 25th, October 2017 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer Comment
Richard Hammond is not dead (he’s on Amazon Prime)
“I thought Richard Hammond had died.” says Jeremy Clarkson on the Daily Star’s cover. No, Clarkson, he’s just not on the telly as much, having moved from the BBC to Amazon Prime.
For those of you not in the know. Hammond was in a car crash. No, it wasn’t the car crash that put him in a coma a few years ago. And it wasn’t the Top Gear car crash – that was Chris Evans. This car crash was when Hammond destroyed a “£2million electric car” while filming The Grand Tour show.
He’s alive.
But how much was that car worth? The Sun, Mail and Mirror all agree that the car was worth £2m. But was it? The Times says it was worth $1m, which a lot of money for a customised milk float, but a lot less than £2m.
The car was a Rimac Concept One, an electric car. You can buy one for $980,000. You can buy the one Hammond was riding in for less.
Posted: 13th, June 2017 | In: Celebrities, Tabloids Comment
Amazon ‘thieves’ found with list of tasks: ‘shop lift’ and ‘kiss mom’
San Diego County Sheriff’s deputies allegedly found a few items on Kristina Green, 19, and Gary Withers, 38 – most of which had been dropped off by the Amazon delivery truck driver they were following in Encinitas, Southern California.
Police arrested the two men. They found:
Amazon packages the driven they were tailing had dropped off on his rounds.
One loaded firearm
13 pieces of stolen mail
Methamphetamine and heroin
A notebook in which thy had compiled a to-do list. One do “Kiss mom n tell her she’s loved.” Another said: “Shoplift.”
The pair are facing charges of mail theft, possession of meth, possession of heroin, felon in possession of a handgun and possession of stolen property.
The only thing not stolen, allegedly, was that kiss.
Posted: 18th, December 2015 | In: Reviews, Strange But True Comment
Amazon gives free buzzing dildo with children’s sandals
In the box
Anyone still too shy to buy a dildo should know that Amazon offers shoppers a free vibrator with pairs of children’s sandals. You just have to select the right brand, which is not all that subtly called PRIMIGI.
Sophie Grantham, 36, didn’t know of the special offer until she took delivery of a pair of said sandals and spotted the five-inch purple Durex vibrator in the box.
Sophie, of Whiteley, Hampshire, explains:
“The parcel was vibrating so the postman made a comment about it maybe being a toothbrush. I was absolutely horrified to find there was this purple vibrator, loose and buzzing about in the shoebox. I don’t know what happened, but it’s not on.”
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Posted: 16th, July 2015 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, Strange But True, The Consumer Comment
Amazon shoot a massive penis into space
This is the unmanned Blue Origin suborbital spacecraft, New Shepard, which has soared 307,000 feet into the skies. Blue Origin is part-owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who, to the best of our knowledge, never has been pictured naked.
For more phallic pocket rockets, see Flashbak.
Posted: 1st, May 2015 | In: Reviews, Technology Comment
Amazon Loses $500 Million: Now, About That Tax Bill
One of the amusements of recent times has been watching the tax campaigners like Margaret, Lady Hodge, huffing and puffing about how terrible it is that Amazon doesn’t pay much tax here in the UK. And it’s true, it doesn’t. But there is actually a good reason for this: Amazon doesn’t make much in the way of profits either:
Amazon, the US retail giant, has revealed its lost nearly $500m in the past three months, the largest amount in its history.
Shares in the company dropped 11pc in after-hours trading, wiping more than $15bn off the value of the company. The company increased sales by a fifth to $20.58bn in the three months to October, but it plunged $437m into the red as it spent heavily on new projects. That figure is more than 10 times the $41m loss Amazon reported in the same period a year earlier.
We’re generally told that the solution to the way that Amazon dodges UK tax is to adopt something called “unitary taxation”. This means that we entirely ignore all the various dodges and loopholes they use internally. We simply look at their sales around the world, the profit they make around the world, and say that if 10% of sales are in one country then so are 10% of profits. A reasonable enough system you might think.
But look at what happens here when we talk about Amazon: exactly the company that the tax campaigners have been saying this rule should be applied to.
The UK is about 10% of Amazon’s sales. So, therefore, 10% of Amazon’s profits (or losses) must be applied to the UK. So, in the last 3 months Amazon has, under this system, lost $50 million in the UK. And companies that lose money in the UK do not pay profit tax in the UK.
So, Hodge and those campaigners, all of whom are screaming for Amazon to pay more tax, are really arguing that amazon shouldn’t be paying any tax at all. Rather sweet of them really, isn’t it?
It’s EU, Stupid: Apple And Amazon Get Stung By Osborne In The Budget
THAT’S what the newspapers are reporting this morning, that Osborne has stung the big internet companies like Amazon and Apple by changing the rules on VAT rates. Although it’s not actually Osborne who has done this, it’s the EU:
Multinational companies such as Amazon and Apple will be forced to add VAT to all UK downloads including music, film, smartphone games and e-books from January 2015 in a move that may drive up the cost of music tracks from 99p to £1.19.
The move forms part of the Government’s “international efforts to develop tough, new global tax rules,” George Osborne said in his Budget address last week. From next year, download services will be subject to VAT in the country where the consumer is located.
According to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the change will attract an extra £300m in VAT revenues in the first year.
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Posted: 24th, March 2014 | In: Money, Politicians Comment
You Don’t Own Your Amazon And iTunes Stuff
You might think that you own the stuff you’ve bought from Amazon and iTunes. After all, you’ve coughed up the cash for it, all that music, those electronics books, they’re all on your devices. But sad to say you don’t in fact own it: you’re only renting it.
More than £30 billion of films, music and books bought through iTunes and Amazon could vanish when their owners die.
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Posted: 31st, January 2014 | In: Money Comment (1)
Google, Amazon And Facebook Will Just Get Away With It
WE’VE been having all sorts of lovely fun the last couple of years as people uncover the stories about how little the various internet companies pay in tax. Google sells everything in from Ireland, as does Facebook, meaning that they pay tax on their UK profits over there. Well, with a cure deal that lets them send all their profits to Bermuda without tax. Amazon does much the same from Luxembourg: meaning that the poor old British taxman never sees a penny in tax on the profits being made in the UK.
All of this is, of course, entirely legal. So, the call has been that the law must be changed so that these companies are paying more tax. And everyone went off to the OECD (the club for rich countries) and they said OK, we’ll have a look at it.
Proposals for a tax crackdown on digital companies such as Google and Amazon are to be dropped, as governments push ahead with measures affecting the global economy.
Designing special tax rules for internet companies would not be viable, given the growing digital presence in large parts of the economy, an international task force has concluded.
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Posted: 22nd, January 2014 | In: Money, Technology Comment
Kleenex For Sale On Amazon: Mum Of Three Teenage Boys Almost Cuts Her Hand On A Sock
ON Amazon, some Kleenex are for sale. A mum of three adolescents reviews their worth:
I want to start this off by thanking Kleenex for selling these in 36-packs. I’ve put it on subscription, and if they want to start selling a 72-pack, sign me up. I have three reasons for needing this much Kleenex, and their names are Liam, Samuel and Hank.
Spotter: b3ta
Posted: 2nd, January 2014 | In: The Consumer Comment
Amazon Is Banning Sales Of Virginia Wade’s Monster Smut e-Books
MY Little Pony filth has nothing on this kind of cryptozoological smut. E’ve shown you dinoraur erotica before. Now Business Insider says Amazon is looking to ban “monster p*rn” e-books. Anyone read Cum for Bigfoot? Some of you have because author and mum-of-two Virginia Wade* says that 12,000-word tome earns her $30,000 a month.
For those of you versed in Wade’s works:
An idea to write a campy, teen horror-fest, with a Sasquatch protagonist, led to the creation of Cum For Bigfoot, which is essentially a series of stories spanning several years in the lives of a tribe of Bigfoots and their human lovers. The silliness, the romance, and the sex struck a chord with readers, who enjoyed the adventures of Porsche, Shelly, and Leslie, while the kidnapped teens came to love their hairy abductors. The series is now on its fourteenth installment, with more to follow.
…
How can Porsche leave all of this behind and return to civilization? When she’s in the arms of her Sasquatch, warm and snuggly in his matted fur, the only thoughts going through her mind are of utter bliss. But challenges abound for the star-crossed lovers, including Leonard’s head injury, a devastating wildfire, and a sexy forest ranger named Mike. Will these obstacles shatter the growing love between an ape and its mate or will true love triumph?
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Posted: 29th, December 2013 | In: Books, Strange But True, The Consumer Comments (2)
The EU’s investigating those Google, Vodafone, Amazon and Apple tax deals
I’M not sure how far they’ll get though, based on what it is that they seem to be investigating.
This is all about the Starbucks n’ Google n’ Vodafone n’ Apple stuff. How can they be doing so much business and paying so little in tax?
According to a US Senate report earlier this year Apple has a ‘special deal’ with Dublin and pays no more than two per cent tax on profits, at least 10 per cent below what some other businesses have to in Ireland.
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How can we tax Amazon’s Profits if Amazon doesn’t make any profits?
YOU’LL have seen all the furore about how Amazon are such bastards for not paying any taxes on their vast profits made by selling us stuff for cheap. You know, there’s shouts from the supermarkets that there should be a special, extra, tax on those who sell online. About how appalling it is that Amazon has all these warehouses here and yet sells to us from Luxembourg: thus paying no UK tax.
They’re even talking about completely changing the international tax system just to make sure that amazon does indeed pay taxes in the UK. And Germany, France…..there’s only really one basic problem with this idea:
The company reported a net loss of $7m (£4.5m) in the quarter to June 30, compared with a profit of $7m a year earlier, as revenues grew to $15.7bn. The world’s largest online retailer has been spending heavily on order fulfilment and digital content rights, which continue to weigh on margins.
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Posted: 7th, August 2013 | In: Money Comments (2)
So this has been Amazon’s plan all along, eh? France gets it wrong, as ever
WHAT is Amazon’s big plan? We know now:
France’s culture minister has attacked Amazon, the online retailer, for deliberately undercutting traditional rivals to create a “quasi-monopoly”, in the latest assault by the socialist government on internet companies.
“Today, everyone has had enough of Amazon which, through dumping practices, smashes prices to penetrate markets to then raise prices again once they are in a situation of quasi-monopoly,” said Aurélie Filippetti, the culture minister.
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Those tax dodging swine at Amazon!
GRRR! Amazon! Coming over here, making vast sales, and not a penny of tax do we see out of them. Or something like that. You know, all they’re doing is providing people with what they want, cheap, and where’s the public value in that?
Unfortunately the Guardian seems to be running their corporate tax pieces on boilerplate language these days. For they tell us that Amazon doesn’t pay tax because:
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Amazon’s about to get more expensive
THE EU has finally woken up to that despicable little bit of tax dodging:
Amazon is to be stripped of its huge tax advantage on the sales of electronic books after the European commission ordered Luxembourg to close a VAT loophole.
Amazon is registered as a Luxembourg company and pays that country’s VAT charge of 3% when it sells an ebook to a British reader, rather than the 20% it would have to charge if it were UK-based.
….
The European commission – which oversees European Union law as the EU’s executive arm – on Wednesday gave Luxembourg 30 days to increase its VAT rate on digital services from 3% to 15%. This will close a tax loophole that has encouraged companies such as Amazon, Skype and Netflix to be based in Luxembourg to benefit from the 3% rate when selling throughout the EU.
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Posted: 25th, October 2012 | In: Money, The Consumer Comment (1)
Outlawed by Amazon DRM: those Kindle books aren’t yours
WHO own your Kindle book? Martin Bekkelund has news:
A couple of days a go, my friend Linn sent me an e-mail, being very frustrated: Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation. This is DRM at it’s worst.
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Posted: 22nd, October 2012 | In: Technology, The Consumer Comments (4)
Amazon reviews for the Avery Durable View Binder with 2 Inch EZ-Turn Ring, White, 1 Binder
THESE reviews for the Avery Durable View Binder with 2 Inch EZ-Turn Ring, White, 1 Binder (17032) are informative. They are in response to Mitt Romney saying he has “binders full of women”, received while Governor of Massachusetts.
As a woman, I’m not adept at making decisions that concern me. So when I need the right choice, I turn to the presidential candidate that KNOWS. One with prideful experience in this department. I don’t want to be filed away in an inferior & confusing electronic doohickey that I couldn’t possibly understand. Or heaven forbid, have a man ask for & listen to my ideas! I’d much rather rely on this top of the line, 1980s style, Avery Durable binder. It’s the choice America can trust. My education, my ideas, my opinions, my choices, please PLEASE keep them safely stored away here and far away from the men that might fear them (I mean, want to use them to hire me somedaynever). I’d write more about this most useful product, but it’s time I hurry home to make dinner.
Posted: 18th, October 2012 | In: The Consumer Comment
The Amazon car seat desk is the ideal way to kill cyclists
AMAZON product of the day: Car Seat Desk – Auto Exec mDesk Mobile Office Work Station. The pictures should have someone in Richmond ordering at least one:
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Posted: 12th, September 2012 | In: The Consumer Comment
For sale on Amazon: unhappy customer reviews Uranium Ore
FOR Sale on Amazon: Uranium Ore:
Radioactive sample of uranium ore. Useful for testing Geiger Counters. License exempt. Uranium ore sample sizes vary. Shipped in labeled metal container as shown. Shipping Information: We are always in compliance with Section 13 from part 40 of the NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules and regulations and Postal Service regulations specified in 49 CFR 173.421 for activity limits of low level radioactive materials. Item will be shipped in accordance with Postal Service activity limits specified in Publication 52. Radioactive minerals are for educational and scientific use only.
Posted: 16th, August 2012 | In: The Consumer Comment
Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, eBay: are all tax dodging scumbags
FACEBOOK, Google, Apple, Amazon and eBay are all tax dodging scumbags. At least this is what the Daily Mail would have you believe, that the big five internet firms, Facebook, Google, Amazon, eBay and Apple are all tax dodging bastards:
Figures from the companies’ American filings suggest that the five made revenue of £12.2billion in Britain in 2010 from British consumers and advertisers.
On the basis of their global profit margins for the year, that would mean profits for the five from sales to British customers would have amounted to almost £2.5billion. Corporation tax at 28 per cent would have seen them pay £685million.Instead, subsidiaries established by the five in Britain paid just over £19million in 2010, or 0.8 per cent.
The problem with this is that it’s all entirely bollocks: because we’re in the European Union.
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Posted: 16th, April 2012 | In: Money Comment (1)
Amazon doesn’t pay any tax schocker!
THE usual suspects have got all outraged at the fact that Amazon doesn’t seem to pay very much tax in the UK:
Amazon.co.uk, Britain’s biggest online retailer, generated sales of more than £3.3bn in the country last year but paid no corporation tax on any of the profits from that income – and is under investigation by the UK tax authorities.
Regulatory filings by parent company Amazon.com with the US securities and exchange commission (SEC) show the tax inquiry into the UK operation, which sells nearly one in four books sold in Britain, focuses on a period when ownership of the British business was transferred to a Luxembourg company.
Well, yes, the clue is in tat last part there, it’sd not a UK company so of course it doesn’t pay corporation tax in the UK. It’s a Luxembourg company and so it pays tax in Luxembourg. This is all part of the great EU project. You pays your corporation tax where your company is, where the head office is, and then you can sell anywahere in the EU. To change that you’d have to change the basic design of the EU.
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