Labour’s taxes are driving jobs offshore, says AO World boss
John Roberts, the company's founder and chief executive, also accused ministers of living in an "economic fantasy land" and failing to understand the impact of higher taxes and wage costs on employers.
The online electricals retailer said it had offshored around 150 sales and call-centre jobs to South Africa, generating savings of about £2m, and that it expects annual savings to reach £4m.
Mr Roberts, who founded the fridge and washing machine retailer in 2000, said: "The brutal truth is that of course these roles could have been in the UK.
"When you make these staff ever more expensive and ever more inflexible, that's what businesses are going to do.
"We've got a political class that doesn't understand business. They live in an economic fantasy land."
Our political class does live in an economic fantasy land, we know that, but it's also the land far too many voters vote for decade after decade. Apparently it's where they think they can live without bad things happening.
Bad things are happening.
6 comments:
It is said that we get the government we vote for... but essentially for the last 70 years or so the choice was either 'poached egg on toast' or 'poached egg with toast'.
Brave choices like Brexit or (even) Jeremy Corbyn were soon managed away from achieving any significant difference. But perhaps times are changing? The Conservatives are on the sidelines and Labour is tearing itself to bits (hopefully). Perhaps the next General Election will actually offer true choices - and then we will truly get the Government we deserve. Unless the election is corrupted by a rainbow alliance; they can't help themselves.
The question of course is ... just utter incompetence ... or designed incompetence where they could have been advised well but whoever controls them is revelling in the Cabinet's role in the managed decline?
DJ - it should at least be interesting because of all the self-serving games and incompetence which are being exposed as such.
The power to persuade, divert and misinform seems to be the problem in that it attracts charlatans and chancers. It isn't obvious how new parties intend to filter them out and attract decent candidates with the ability to enforce worthwhile change.
James - both I'd say, utter incompetence mixed with the adaptable chancer who understands and uses the mechanics of power and persuasion. Usually aspects of the same person.
"...decent candidates with the ability to enforce worthwhile change."
That pipe dream is a large part of the problem. If they do exist, why would they ruin their own lives by putting themselves up as targets for the insane?
"Apparently it's where they think they can live without bad things happening. "
Was it Bastiat who said that "the state is great fiction by which everyone tries to live at everyone else's expense"?
Whoever it was, they weren't wrong, were they.
Mike - that's the problem in a nutshell - who would want to join that club?
Peter - yes it was Bastiat and he was spot on. Labour has been selling that same fiction ever since its inception and Makerfield voters seem likely to vote for it yet again.
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