The news of HMV going into administration has brought up all kinds of memories as a former employee. The main one being the tradition at my local store of placing pubic hair in leaving cards. I worked in a local HMV in a leafy north west London suburb. One of the traditions of this store that we started was trimming our pubic hair and taping them into the leaving cards of fallen comrads. It was classy, we were young and we had the world at our feet, we were the coolest kids in the highstreet, the men in suits working above us made some bad decisions and it had to end.
But does it? In 2008, RBS, an ailing bank, recieved a bailout of 850 billion. It was failing and had made a massive loss, in much the same way that HMV were. Leaving it to fail would have left 140,000 out of work and lots of people with savings effectively buggered: not only would there have been a massive shortage of pubes in over 100,000 leaving cards, as well as a massive dip into recession.
That is where RBS would have gone (Note the pubes on the seat, we would have taken them and popped them in a card as well as shaving off our own.)
If banks like Barclays and RBS can be bailed out to the tune of billions, then why can't the government bail out HMV? Nationalise it, it is already a British institution. It dedicated vast resources into the war effort while it was part of EMI diverting its factories into making parts for the bombs that we dropped on Dresden, while it could have been simply making a profit. Surely that counts for something. For the whole of the war, workers placed their pubes into bombs that were dropped on Germany.
Where were you during the war?
One of the reasons that HMV has failed was because of internet piracy, streaming , and competitors like Amazon. Now this is all well and good, companies should be able to fail if they are not as good as their competitors, but Amazon have had an unfair advantage inasmuch as the fact that they have not paid 234 million in corporation tax. Surely this isn't fair. If the government was to force Amazon to pay their tax, they could use the proceeds to pay off the 176 million in debt that HMV have accumilated, while playing by the rules. Alternatively they could completely write off any corporation tax for the previous 5 years like they have done with Starbucks, Topshop or Amazon, this would make up 50 million.
Green: "I don't pay any corporation tax!"
If the British taxpayer owned HMV then it would shut up the seeming millions of customers who have suddenly started piping up lamenting its loss on social networking sites. They would effectively own a record shop and what would be cooler than that?
Bonzer!
If a back catalogue CD costs £15 but was brought at £7.09 then the economy would be sorted in no time, and David Cameron would be able to take credit for not only saving Nipper but saving the livelihood of an honest company that although has overcharged for its product in the past, has been essentially honest and not diverted millions in profits into offshore accounts.
We could talk about the gap that HMV will leave in the highstreet, or the human cost, or even the cunt customers who are moaning about the giftcard situation and failing to empathise with the staff they are shouting at who are at no fault and are probably going to lose their jobs. No, the real tragedy is that 4000 leaving cards have to be filled with the pubic hair of at least 40,000 people, which will create a shortage of hairs being left on toilet seats, and surely, that is what makes Britain great?!
Good luck HMV.
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