I was amused by this in the Telegraph this morning:
Michael Gove has warned Theresa May that Britain risks becoming an outdated "VHS economy" if it accepts calls by big business for the UK to be closely aligned with the EU after Brexit.
The Environment Secretary told Cabinet that the big companies of today may be eclipsed by businesses that don't even exist yet as he made the case for a clean Brexit.
It comes after the CBI, Britain's biggest lobby group, called for Britain to remain in a Customs Union with the European Union after Brexit.
Good to see Gove is sticking to his mantra that the only expert with an opinion that matters is him.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Michael Gove is a blueprint for a certain type of politician who needs to be avulsed from our political system for ever.
Wow: a word I had to look up
Thank you!
I must remember it
I am not questioning your use of English. But I initially thought ‘avulsion is that the opposite of revulsion?’ Of course it isn’t but it seems to me it ought to be. English is a truly awkward langage.
Errrm………..why don’t you look it up Alan? You’ve shared your ‘thoughts’ – why not look at something factual now. And then share some knowledge.
You know……..’read’. A dictionary?
And then tell us what you think? I mean – I could be wrong?
I came across the term in a documentary about killer whales in captivity.
Betamax anybody?
🙂
Leigh Bowden says:
January 23 2018 at 9:21 am
“Betamax anybody?”
Gove Sharewatch Recommends;
BUY Shellac futures. be placed ready for the growth market in sustainable, portable, eco friendly personal media entertainment. The wind-up gramophone.
The only thing that interests me about Gove is; who is pulling his strings?
“The Environment Secretary told Cabinet that the big companies of today may be eclipsed by businesses that don’t even exist yet ….”
I think he well be right about that, but are we going to sit and twiddle our thumbs and wait for them to spring into life fuelled by fairy dust?
Do you have the last years figures for Fairy Dust Inc. to hand, Richard. I don’t, but I’d like to bet their share price is overvalued.
Surely Murdoch
According to fake history Michael Gove spoke this sentence “the people of this country have had enough of experts”.
Isn’t revisionism great.
What happened was Faisal Islam interrupted the sentence, Gove carried on talking, and the mockers only took in the bits what they wanted.
What are you trying to prove?
Other than that you’re a distributor of falsehoods?
That is an absurd lie Mike Pendant as this clip shows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGgiGtJk7MA
Gove was interrupted but he continued and that was exactly what he said. There’s only one revisionist here and that is you.
If you ignore the Faisal Islam interruptions you hear this:
“I think that the people of this country have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong,”
And you think that changes anything?
He just didn’t like experts who have an employer is all that says
Yes, we could find ourselves forced to live like they do in Norway. How terrible that would be. All those patterned jumpers and fjords. Ugh.
Avulse, my new word of the day. I shall use it where ever possible.
I seemed to remember the argument back in the day that betamax was the better quality recorder and would win the recording war, so I looked it up. It did have better recording qualities but, it was bigger and heavyier than VHS. VHS won. Here’s an engineers take on it.
http://www.engineerguy.com/failure/betamax.htm
With Murdoch as his puppet master, Gove will say whatever he’s told to say.
Claire says:
January 24 2018 at 7:05 am
“Avulse, my new word of the day. I shall use it wherever possible.” Good luck with that Claire. I’ve managed without it so far, and am inclined to continue without it pro tem 🙂
“… betamax was the better quality recorder and would win the recording war, ….” I think it was a marketing triumph that put VHS into the lead. Customers bought what was most readily available and had most material available to view.
It was reckoned by some that the Philips technology was even better, but that never made it to mass market. I don’t think I’ve seen one let alone known anybody who had one.
Microsoft won the home computer market for similar reasons of mass market penetration. They maintained that position by some rather dodgy restrictive practices and now infect the entire global marketplace. Universally known as Micros**t amongst the open source community. The real cost of Micros**t is incalculable, but the profits were fabulous. And still are.
Qwerty keyboards are often cited as an example of the quirks of marketing. The story goes, that in a competition (against other keyboard layouts) it worked better because it was SLOWER to use and that meant that the old fashioned mechanical keys on sticks didn’t keep getting jammed together in the throat of the machine. The story may be apocryphal but it makes an interesting point nonetheless.
The mass market doesn’t supply what’s best it supplies what sells best. That invariably means the price has to be right and price takes precedence over quality. Usually the cheapest, but not invariably.