Boycotting Amazon

Apologies if someone has already mentioned this but Love Film is part of Amazon as well, I believe.

I have nothing against big businesses, if they treat their workers right, if they do not exploit slave labour, and if they pay fair taxes.

Why support them if they do not?

They won't be treating their workers right if loads of them get made redundant due to a fall in business.

YankeeGran, would this growing movement be the same people who decided to boycott Children In Need so their donations would fall this year?

As said before, Merlotgran, the boycott would not have to last very long if it was significant - long enough and hard enough for them to get the message- but not sufficient to have to cut staff. It is not an either/or situation,

Why is the greed of the Blairs any more odious than the greed of Amazon? (ok not talking about the war here) - at least they do pay taxes? (although I'm sure they've found ways to keep this as low as poss).

Is not Amazon American ?

Which is presumably what Amazon have been doing

TEflon and ghastly Cherie are English , Amazon is American , there is no comparison.

OK Amazon are hiding their profits , what excuse do Blairs have ???

Why are we talking about the Blairs? What have they got to do with Amazon?

Over to you Granjura .

Quite, merlot. This thread's about boycotting Amazon. Nothing to do with the Blairs.

We are talking about the Blairs because Bags asked me if I thought the govts. were immoral, and yes I do.
It's a thread, which means it can weave in and out.
Some of us can think laterally. If you've followed any other of my comments, you may think that's all I can do!
Oh, and I have boycotted Amazon as well, and told them why, although it was difficult to do.

I don't wish to sound insulting, Jendurham but the reason I haven't realised you can think laterally is because I usually speed read your comments.

Good job I do not speedread yours, Merlot.
"I don't wish to.... comments" is not gramatically correct.

[shrug emoticon]

I thought it was bad forum etiquette to comment on other posters' grammar!

Quite.

But there again...some of us don't stick strictly to Forum etiquette ourselves!

jingle and Ana

I think the Blairs have been mentioned because people (including me) feel cynical about a lot of the rich politicians who could make changes to tax laws if they wanted to, but they don't because the current tax loopholes benefit them as well as Starbucks and Amazon (and, no doubt, other businesses). I don't think the issue is a simple black and white one though; I suppose they do have to consider driving businesses out of Britain by 'adverse' tax laws.

I've never been in a position to evade taxes (legally or illegally), but if I found myself in a situation where legally evading paying some tax substantially increased my income, I'm not sure I could resist the temptation to take advantage of a law that was an ass! I speak as one who has always had to be careful with money. I would accept a change in the law that made it impossible to evade paying the tax, of course. However, that's just a hypothetical situation.

As it happens, I don't use Amazon much, though I have bought the occasional book using it, and I also don't use Starbucks much though again, I have drunk their coffee when in dire need of a caffeine fix on a long drive! I'm not going to go into guilt overdrive about it!!

It would be good if a boycott such as this had the desired effect but I won't hold my breath about that.

I did say I was cynical on this issue!

No doubt this fuming will die down soon, and all the online rhetoric of boycotts and sabre rattling will fade away. As has already been mentioned, look at the effect the 'boycott' of Children in Need had! If you feel you have to voice your dismay then contact your MP. Of course, yours might be as useless as mine, but you would be doing something positive and might even get a response!

Two concurrent threads - one in which many state that Amazon and Starbucks are doing nothing wrong despite showing enormous greed- and another where many (and without checking, possibly the same) saying that the greed of the Blairs is odious. And yet the Blairs do pay tax and a lot of it- so the comparison did come to mind. Why is one greed 'odious' and the other 'fair'?

Ceesnan Some of us have been boycotting particular companies and countries for decades. Clearly the only effect this has had is to leave us with a clear conscience; the "boycotees" have remained relatively or completely unaffected. Nevertheless, I would point out that not all of what is said here is rhetoric and sabre rattling – that is quite rude generalisation. Writing to one's MP is not an alternative but an additional line of action.

Quite, absent, except that my brain tells me it's silly to continue doing something ineffective. For this reason, I don't carefully check the small print to see if Nestlé is involved, and so forth. I boycotted their products for years because they were promoting baby bottle-feeding in countries where people didn't have access to clean water. Fat lot of good it did. So I decided to support WaterAid instead.

Besides, the multinational companies are SO complex nowadays that I'm not sure it's possible to know who owns what any more. I still don't buy Nestlé products knowingly, but I'm not going to sweat about it any more.

I know what you mean Bags. These huge companies are hydra-like. One cannot constantly check Company's House before writing a shopping a list. However, as before, I would point out that boycotting obvious Nestlé products and supporting WaterAid are not mutually exclusive.