Former Amazon exec appointed as boss of UK's competition watchdog The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has a new chair after the sudden departure of the previous incumbent. ... this is not about succession planning and far more a reaction to current events. His background is also unashamedly commercial... Former Amazon boss Doug Gurr has become interim chair of the watchdog …
There are so many things you could answer to that, I have trouble which one to choose....
- Well yeah, that's his job
- "Guard dog too aggressive with burglars"
- "Politician too honest"
- "Driver not sufficiently focused on drinking alcohol"
- Clock reminds people of the passing time
What would you suggest? Let's find the best ones
Also see:
The "the new boss of XXX department worked in big tech so they must know what to do!" mantra, which the equates to shockingly high levels of remuneration and a "hope" they can fix the problem we haven't actually defined!
All at the expense of the public purse and more shenanigans and no doubt a personality change in XXX months or years.
You do have to wonder WTF Starmer was thinking: Hmm, we need growth. Let's appoint a corporate lackey who headed up the UK division of tax dodging business with huge emissions, poor employment practices, and that's been instrumental in the destruction of the high street.
"Growth" is an interesting phenomenon. It comes in two kinds. The first is natural growth born of fulfilling a demand in a market that is not yet saturated, and that kind of growth is conducive to the common wealth. However once the market approaches saturation, further growth must become predatory -- squeezing out competitors to take their share of the market (and indeed in many cases squeezing every last possible dollar out of the customer, as in the widely adopted move to subscription models for services that do not essentially need to change)-- and that is, sadly, only conducive to enriching the most ruthless, but detrimental to the common wealth. The tech oligarchs that have clustered around Trump exemplify that end. So I suggest that "growth" is not the best general indicator of economic health, particularly given that the Gx economies are largely in the second (predatory) phase.
The appointment of someone from Amazon to regulate competition is thus highly ironic, given Amazon's history of anti-competitive practices. But I guess our govt. has fallen yet again for the old but fallacious assumption that because someone is financially successful they must have a generally applicable "secret of success", whereas it's commonly to a great extent just down to a combination of luck and greed.
To aid growth …. I could propose UKGovt not needlessly piss the GBP£millions this pointless consult will cost. USB C is already the dominant standard - esp. after Apple capitulated- and just replicate the EU standard. I don’t think any volume UK manufacturer will be impacted other than Sony for Raspberry Pi in Wales.
For a value £25K I will do a report advocating USB C (ChatGPT. Probably adequately summarise this to add some AI Govt credentials).
https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2024/10/14/uk_usbc_charging_standard/
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