May 1, 2019 · 10:56

A little pain to Huawei

Yes, there is finally a moment where we need to ask Huawei questions. Bloomberg reported (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/vodafone-found-hidden-backdoors-in-huawei-equipment) that backdoors have been found. More accurately: “Vodafone asked Huawei to remove backdoors in home internet routers in 2011 and received assurances from the supplier that the issues were fixed, but further testing revealed that the security vulnerabilities remained, the documents show“, yet knowing the track record of Vodafone, that is not the whole story. Is there an issue? Seemingly not, as the headline gives us: ‘While the carrier says the issues found in 2011 and 2012 were resolved at the time‘, so an issue found 7 years ago was resolved at the time. Is that issue there now? Bloomberg does not really give us that do they? It gets to be a larger issue of what is seemingly called reporting when we see the ZDNet report from 2017 (5 years after the Bloomberg reported issue: “Thousands of routers, many of which belong to AT&T U-verse customers, can be easily and remotely hacked through several critical security vulnerabilities“. that as well as: “Among the vulnerabilities are hardcoded credentials, which can allow “root” remote access to an affected device, giving an attacker full control over the router. An attacker can connect to an affected router and log-in with a publicly-disclosed username and password, granting access to the modem’s menu-driven shell. An attacker can view and change the Wi-Fi router name and password, and alter the network’s setup, such as rerouting internet traffic to a malicious server“, these are much larger issues and were they resolved? We would think yes, but the article did not give us that. They did give us: “The report said Arris NVG589 and NVG599 modems with the latest 9.2.2 firmware are affected, but it’s not clear who’s responsible for the bugs“. The small fact that this constituted 5 flaws as well as a reported statement of: ‘the vulnerabilities are not limited to the hard-coded credentials flaw‘ give rise to a whole range of issues. So even as we might think that this one flaw is a stitch in the high regard for Huawei, the fact that an American solution has well over 500% the amount of vulnerabilities and as stated on several levels give rise to the reliability of Huawei. Moreover, the length of the issue is also a given at times as well as the need for better 5G equipment. Yet in all this, how much actual damage has either caused, Bloomberg was willing not to disclose that either. Yet Huawei is not out of the woods yet. The article gives us ‘further testing revealed that the security vulnerabilities remained, the documents show‘ and that is indeed a larger problem, yet these documents were from 2012, when was it actually resolved? The fact that we do not see that it was never ‘not resolved’ implies that it was, in addition, the 2012 issues in Italy were resolved that year. Then there is the quote ‘it couldn’t find evidence of historical vulnerabilities in routers or broadband network gateways beyond Italy‘ making it a localised temporary issue.

In all this Huawei has an issue to deal with and even as we see the lack of comparison flaws (I added the AT&T issue so you can be aware), the unbalanced reporting, as well as the clarity that there is to some extent an issue remains. The fact that the huge AT&T disaster was never called to answer questions might be equally a consideration to make. All computers and most software have bugs and security flaws. When I looked this morning, I found a list of 845 vulnerabilities in Windows 10, some of them critical. So when we compare these issues, we should consider that your Huawei router is not the largest problem and that is merely the beginning of the issue. Historically speaking, from 1999 we see that Windows have had 113,811 vulnerabilities; 4911 vulnerabilities regarding the ability to gain privileges, 10377 on getting information and 6001 on bypassing options. So in all we need to consider that your choice of Windows is a much bigger concern than your Router is, if the Chinese government wants to get access to your data they merely need to wait for you to switch on your windows machine, there are plenty of options to get to the stuff no matter which router you buy and if you got the Arris NVG589 or NVG599 modem it would have seemingly been easy as pie to just copy whatever you had, so in the end can you see that the entire Huawei mess is merely an American mess to project the notion that you should not buy Chinese, but consider the optionally more flawed American solutions?

And whilst I got to AT&T, the news (three days ago) was ‘AT&T claims title as first U.S. carrier to hit 2Gbps on 5G network‘, yet when we consider the quote by VentureBeat: “It’s great in the abstract that some businesses in Atlanta may be able to get 2Gbps speeds on a 5G device regular consumers can’t buy. But what really matters is the actual speed normal 5G users across multiple cities will see on actual consumer devices. Verizon has provided a sub-1Gbps sense of what to expect, but AT&T hasn’t.”

We see that what is regarded as reliable in America is a bit of a stretch at some point, for the most I was most disappointed with is the fact that the Bloomberg article should be regarded as an attack on Huawei whilst there is no comparison given as to how that flaw related to the flaws others had, more important the fact that there were larger flaws from others much more recent is a missed part. Still Bloomberg did raise a really valid point on a flaw that Huawei seemingly has, with the perception that the news could have been given in 450 words, the rest was a lot of smoke around an issue that dwarves against some of the other issues, issues where there is actual fire, not merely smoke.

But that is merely my $0.02 on the situation.

 

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May 1, 2019 · 10:41

Waking up 6,897 miles away

I admit that at times I do not understand the motive of those who embrace extreme actions. The LA Times gave us yesterday (at https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-los-angeles-terror-plot-20190429-story.html) the issue of continued action after an attack. In this case it is the attack on the Al Noor Mosque on the 15th of March 2019. There Brenton Tarrant decided to murder 50 innocent people, and almost succeeded in murdering 39 additional people. The event drove Mark Steven Domingo (26) to make an IED, and he had planned to detonate it at a rally scheduled to take place in Long Beach this past weekend. The man who only recently had converted to Islam seems to have converted with too much anger in his heart, or perhaps he was always too sociopathic and psychopathic to begin with and he hoped that Islam would give him more support in his violent needs. It is anybody’s guess; so this “U.S. Army veteran who wanted revenge for attacks on Muslims around the globe was planning to detonate a bomb at a Long Beach rally this past weekend before he was intercepted by law enforcement officials, authorities said Monday“. According to papers, he was planning “various attacks — including targeting Jews, churches and police officers“, in all this targeting the police makes even less sense, that is, unless you consider that his sociopathic nature came into play and he merely wanted to target people in uniform. And when I read: “Prosecutors said Domingo sought retribution for the March 15 attacks on New Zealand mosques and was willing to die a martyr“. I wonder if he actually wanted to do that at all. You see, it dawns on me (optionally a completely inaccurate view) that he is one of these people that fear taking their own life, and as the numbers of ‘suicide by cop‘ have dwindled, these people have sought out another path to get it done, because a clear ‘suicide by cop’ tends to become a conversation with the police being able to talk people like that away from such an edge pretty efficiently, yet a terrorist is a target that is to be killed on the spot to safeguard as many people as possible. The fact that he got arrested before his plan came together is merely a nice coincidence for all parties concerned (optionally with the exception of Mark Steven Domingo). In support there is the case of Suicide by Cop: A Psychiatric Phenomenon. It is a work from 2017 by Ralph H. de Similien and Adamma Okorafor. There is one part that came up to debate in light of this optional case. The paper gives us: “It is reported, for example, to be more common in those with previous encounters/experiences with law enforcement agencies. It is estimated that about 66% of victims have had criminal histories“, I am not debating that it is wrong, I wonder if the text needed to be altered to: ‘with previous encounters/experiences with law enforcement, or defence agencies‘, it would fit this bill, yet making a resolution fit is not academically correct and as such I am not stating that I am right, I am merely wondering whether I could be right.

And there are other considerations to make, like how did he convert to Islam? Was he officially converted by an imam khatib? At what mosque did this happen? These questions are equally important for the reason that we need to ascertain how he became radicalised, was it an interior push or an exterior one. The facts as they are shown at present seem to imply that he was an angry person seeking another solution to whatever problem he thought he had, an extreme one and that makes it an internal change, but that is not a given. The data is important here as it casts a much larger shadow on several key elements and until they have been resolved there is no certainty that this will not happen again in the foreseeable future, a threat that Long beach (and other places) can do without.

Even now we see more questions rise. The BBC gave us only hours ago: ‘US Army veteran ‘planned to bomb Nazi rally’‘, we might all think that this is not the worst idea to have, but the extreme part of this is starting to form a pattern, he wanted to blow something up. We can argue that we have all had it at some point; some lash out at their high school, some do it in their high school. There is more in this case: “the former infantryman with combat experience in Afghanistan“, as such I have met plenty of people from that place who came out alright, to some extent I am unwilling to merely hand it over to the label called PTSD. There is a larger issue in play in the United States and this is merely the beginning. Never before in history has a nation been this polarised both politically and socially.

The political players have done everything to better their own lives and quality of life, but for the most they have been utterly unable to do that for the lowest 35% of that nation. The homeless, the unemployed and the minimum wage employees have been under increasing levels of pressure. Some need to work two jobs just to meet the cost of living; it gets even worse when we consider certain facts. For example in Kalamazoo, Michigan (expertly found) we see that well over 30% of the city population lives below the poverty line. That is well over twice the U.S. poverty rate, which stands at 12.3%. In a place that is seemingly affordable, a place where houses are on a median that is below $100K, we see a splurge of poverty. A place that is roughly 2.5 hours from Chicago , a city where the prices are non affordable for most these people. Did you not think that this inequality would come home to roost? If there are 15 places where these economic groups can live than it would be a lot, the issue is a lot less positive and the pressures keep on going up.

When we consider that a US veteran, a person that signed up to protect its civilians, is now on a course to kill them; we need to see that the issue is a lot larger than we think it is. Now as the expression goes ‘One Swallow does not make for a summer‘ we can see that one case does not mean it is so, but the pressures are visibly there, the deterioration of the lowest 30% of American incomes is there and when we start seeing the difference on what represents the quality of life in the US against what is regarded to be the standard of living, at that point do we see a first light on how much change is needed in the US. This has been known for the longest time, yet when we consider the simplest part in all this; when we consider that up to 21 million Americans are getting water from systems that violate health standards. When we consider that this is 8% of all Americans and when we realise that this group is more likely than not represented in 95% of the lowest 35% incomes, people who more often than not cannot afford to buy bottled water, how serious do you think that the pressure issue is and how worse could it get soon enough?

I believe that Mark Steven Domingo is the beginning of a much larger problem, it was not founded in religion, it is founded in social desperation and when that hits the least balanced people are the first to totally lose it.

 

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April 30, 2019 · 17:50

Merely the beginning

Yes, the news is full of the overwhelming success that Avengers: Endgame is and rightfully so, yet the Washington Post looks further. The article (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/avengers-endgamemakes-disney-invincible-in-2019-then-what/2019/04/29/b5e35016-6aaf-11e9-bbe7-1c798fb80536_story.html) gives light to the strategy that is surrounding Disney plus as owners of the Marvel franchise. We get part of it with: “Disney’s films will no longer get licensed to partners such as Netflix during what’s known as the “pay one window;” instead, they’ll go exclusively on Disney+. That’s a big selling point for the streaming app, but it’s a costly decision that reduces the amount of licensing revenue Disney can earn from its films after they leave theaters.” this is a point of view that is true and the strategy is valid, yet having the stage where we see a time exclusivity (like in gaming) where the others get the option after 6 months is not to be ignored as an alternative. In addition, the mention of the ‘real’ editions of the time honoured animations like Aladdin and the Lion King are now on screws, especially after Dumbo has become a miserable flop. That is the puzzle that comes next, as I personally see it, the cast was golden, the director is phenomenal and the story is sound, so why did it flop and is that the premise for the other movies? We know that Robin Williams made Aladdin the success it was; this puts a megastar like Will Smith in an awkward position. To willingly step into the shadow of a giant takes monumentally sized balls to begin with and even as we know that Will Smith is no coward, willing to step into the fringe of movie making, I cannot stop being worried on how Aladdin will fare. As such the other Disney productions will be under pressure as well and that is just the beginning.

Disney has had the longest issue with being too sweet for most adults and even as we saw Pretty Woman in 1990 as a new view on what Disney could do, there was a distinct feeling that the Disney people were so far out of their comfort zone that they needed guides to find their way back. This is particularly important as Marvel has its own dark parts (more than just a few) and without that defining dark there is a larger concern down the road. I believe that so far they handled it fine, yet the worry remains: “will the wrong Disney executive demand the Marvel TV version to be lighter, sweeter and less dark“, so far what we have seen from X-Men: Dark Phoenix, The New Mutants imply that we should not be worried, yet waiting with worries for too long is not good either. What I saw from Cloak and Dagger season 1 is a clear warning, yet perhaps it is also important to consider that the movies will be less in danger of becoming laced with Disney Sweetness than the TV series. Their Metascore of 68 could be considered as supporting evidence in all this. Some gave the following views: “a horribly sentimental soundtrack“, as well as “If you want a show chock full of “edgy” liberal issues thrown into the plot regardless of if it fits with the story, then look no further” (which was the most negative review) we see the initial issue. Even the more positive ones give us “Through its initial four episodes, the real star of Cloak & Dagger is the structure and editing and overall environment more than any individual actor“. I believe it that some of the changes took away the dark side that would have made Cloak a lot more appealing, it was his dark side that appealed to me in the original comics; the TV parts I saw were too emotional, I am not stating that this is a bad thing, merely that . The comic books decently graphic about his devouring hunger, I missed seeing that in the few episodes I saw. Yet it is not all bad, Mayhem is showing to be the direct confrontational angry type she was in the comic book.

This is in part my issue; Disney is seemingly trying to skate away from the darkness is what will have a larger non positive impact on series that were pretty phenomenal in comic book form. So far the silver screen Marvel productions have exceeded expectations swimmingly; it is what I saw in Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and the defenders that felt off, not bad, but off.

It is not the cast or the work done, no matter what, Mike Colter makes Luke Cage totally believable and real. I believe that the scripts fell short (from my personal point of view). Perhaps it is my non-US view, the fact that there had to be complications and conspiracy plots from day one in these series is why it is falling short. Even as we hear noise like ‘creative differences’, I believe that the entire conspiracy twinkle has ran its course to the largest degree, to be honest, that is why I stopped watching Kiefer Sutherland in Designated Survivor. The series started great and then when we suddenly see an FBI director compromised around episode 6 that was it for me. Oh, and before I forget this is a series that is all about conspiracy, but the way it is done was too far out there, it lost flavour. I believe that Marvel series have been pushed into that field too much as well (as well as several other comic book based series). I believe that the effort to go too deep too fast to please an audience is exactly why appeal is lost to some degree and Luke Cage gets to pay for it (as well as Iron Fist). With over a dozen movies coming in the next 2-3 years as well as optional TV series, this critical look early on will be more essential than most realise. You see, a Marvel overdose is pretty much similar to a Star Trek overdose, at some point we lose the interest to watch it, which is actually opposite to the feelings we had with the comic books and as such we have to consider our point of view. Now, like the comic books there is a filtering, most of us do not care for all the franchises. I was a die-hard Batman and X-men fan and I never got into Spiderman that much. I still loved the movies and I read the comics at times, but it was not my number one, neither were the Fantastic Four. That’s fine because Marvel (and DC) had a flavour for everyone, so much choice, as such we would be more protective of the comics we were nuts about and that is fine too.

Yet there is still Disney to consider and their long term need to make everything too sweet and too ‘pink’. Even as we realise that most cancelations might be linked to IP and the fact that Netflix will be a direct competitor of Disney+, yet the idea that Disney is a little too uncomfortable with these dark tainted series on Disney remains a concern for many fans and as such it is a concern for some fans of these series that they are now part of Disney. The factual reasons are not out there, or perhaps better stated, there is no source I trust to give me the actual truth (except a joint statement from Marvel and Disney and that is unlikely to happen).

Even as Forbes gives us: “Marvel meanwhile plans live-action series for characters including Loki, Scarlet Witch, Winter Soldier, and several other characters“, the die-hard fans will now wonder whether we will get the Asgardian Wars on TV or silver screen, not only as it was an awesome story, but that also puts Asgard, the X-men and the Canadian Alpha Flight team on the range implying the coming of a few more series, or movie franchises. All of them have a large following, so Disney would be nuts to walk away from an optional few billion more. Yet that does require Disney to allow for very dark streaks in their acquired paintings and that is where the problem is likely to rise, or at least that is what I think is likely to happen.

Even as Disney can ignore everything this year, the year that Avengers: Endgame broke every record, the long term view is less of a given, with view n 2020-2023, there will be more issues and other issues to deal with, not all of them revenue driven, but revenue will be the mainstream in any discussion that surrounds whatever ‘creative differences’ we will see make the headlines on all kinds of media channels and to ignore this so early in the year is not a healthy thing to do, especially as most of the upcoming movies will be staged to bring in a billion plus each. As stated, I do not think we need to worry about the movies too much, but the Marvel TV series that will be another matter, they will be the bread and butter of Disney+ and those people like their shows a little too sugary to my taste.

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April 29, 2019 · 11:09

Remembering events

There is an issue in Palestine and Israel, I am not stating that Israel is innocent in events, but when I see the Guardian giving us (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/25/uk-cinemas-should-boycott-the-israeli-film-festival-seret) the headline ‘UK cinemas should boycott the Israeli film festival Seret‘, this was a letter and an opinion. I am not attacking the person, because everyone is entitled to an opinion. As such, I have no issue with: “We’re shocked and dismayed to see how many mainstream cinemas – among them Picturehouse and Everyman – are hosting this year’s Israeli film festival, Seret, whose funders and supporters include the Israeli government and a clutch of pro-Israel advocacy organisations“.

When we see that do these people remember the Sbarro event on August 9th 2001? You might think it was a long time ago, but it was merely the start of a lot of events by Palestinian terrorists. And the girl on the stretcher was wearing a white shirt, that is, until the explosion got to her, it is overwhelmingly red now. I don’t even know if she survived any of it. From my point of view, when you start bombing buses and civilian restaurants you have lost the plot and whatever case you try to bring, from that point onward the Palestinians were merely to be regarded as terrorists.

They even send rockets into Beer Sheva where it hit a kindergarten classroom (By Avi Ohayon GPO – https://www.flickr.com/photos/36313307@N06/3349461091/sizes/l/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6222905), yet in that case I will admit that there is absolutely no telling what they were actually aiming for, their material is unreliable at best.

So in all this, it is still an anti-Israel rally through an attack on culture. Now, I have stated that Israel is not entirely innocent, there are issues on both sides of the border but the only way to ever make any progress is not to ban cultural events, but to have more of them. So when we see “This UN report is the latest in 70 years of reports of mass expulsions, killings, house demolitions, detention without trial, torture, military occupation and military onslaught against the indigenous population, the Palestinians” we can clearly see that this is a pro-Palestinian article, leaving the Palestinian acts out of it. OK, I get that the writer is heavily pro-Palestinian and people are allowed to be that, freedom of expression and so on. We can also agree with part of the statement that gives us: “We cannot understand why cultural institutions continue to behave as if Israel is an ordinary democracy. It is not“, yet the part that is missing is that the State of Israel has been under non-stop terrorist attack since 1948; that part is ignored almost everywhere. Perhaps someone can explain to me how this will stop when Israel has been under unrelenting attack since it was founded? Now we can optionally disband the State of Israel, but only when Europe gives up 25% of Europe. Or did you forget that the extermination of 6 million Jews came with the disowning of millions of real estate locations? You see those 6 million owned some of the richest parts of Europe in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and a few more places. So if you can get those areas all to be re-annexed as original Jewish properties come back to talk, if not find another solution. By the way before you think of adding a number to that, it will depreciate Europe by well close to a trillion euros.

A choice was made in 1945 because of what lied ahead, it was perhaps the best solution for Europe and when we consider that the Jewish state was stolen from the Jews by the Italians between 1BC and the 5 centuries that followed, we see a larger issue. In that time part of Syria was also part of the 12 tribes of Israel, so in the end the discussion could go on for a lot longer than now. All elements that people tend to forget (because they ignore history). What should be remembered that any nation that has been under attack for three quarters of a century will at some point stop being polite, so perhaps lowering tension and embracing culture as an opening to commence a dialogue will be a lot more useful to set the steps towards an actual agreement based towards long lasting peace. And If I can see that with my lack of diplomacy and articulate cultural speech then all those artistic people, those directors, writers and others should know a lot better than putting their autograph under some short sighted narrow minded call to boycott any cultural event.

That is merely my limited view on the matter, yet I might be wrong too.

 

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April 29, 2019 · 10:56

Removing the floor

OK, I have made predictions in the past and most were close to spot on, some were just a little off, yet I had not ever for the life of me gotten it wrong by half a billion before. In ‘First the Soft‘ at (https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/04/27/first-the-soft/), I made the prediction: “we now see that Avengers: Endgame is heading towards a 700 million opening weekend (globally) is no stretch, it would make it the largest opening weekend in history“. Some claimed I was being too optimistic, perhaps I was at that a little; I now see from several sources that the estimate was off by a lot. The sources mostly re-quote Variety and when we realise that the reality of “According to Variety, ‘Avengers: Endgame’ pulled in $350 million in the US and an incredible $1.2 billion worldwide in its first weekend. This smashes the ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ take by over $500 million“, we can agree that my thoughts on it being the best Marvel movie ever is not even close to the mark. The movie is now listed on 18th position of the best money making movies ever on a global scale, from naught to 18 in one weekend. This now implies that the movie could shoot to 3rd position in a week, optionally replacing Titanic in 2nd place, it is a record that James Cameron held for 21 years, and he also held the number one spot for 10 years which is now in equal danger of getting surpassed by Avengers: Endgame soon thereafter. I believe that will happen, yet the speed at which this could be happening at has never been seen before.

This news is actually more important than you might think. You see Hollywood is nothing if not revenue driven, so there is every chance that my beloved comic books form the 70’s and 80’s will find themselves to the big screen or some Netflix streaming channel. This is both awesome and optionally sad. When the money makers see the amount of money Marvel just grossed, it will make them step into the fairway and claim their own billions. The sad part is that there is every chance that people will concentrate on their dollar shaped pupils and forget that Avengers: Endgame is the result of 11 years and 22 movies, so whatever they do they need to be careful not to squander the option they would acquire.

One of the front runners in this would be the work of Don Lawrence. He became famous with the works of the Trigan Empire as well as Storm. The Trigan Empire has everything to become stellar, it is placed in what would be a ‘Nova Roma’ A roman empire but in the 21st century, so we get decadence, martial impact (for references see the Spartacus series), direct encounters (read: sex, combat and confrontational resolutions) as well as other elements making it highly desirable to the watchful eyes of millions. Getting it right would be an essential part in all this. Remember, that I Claudius failed in the first attempt until it was done right in the 70’s.

In second place there is the Spanish artist Segrelles who gave us ‘El Mercenario‘, a little more fantasy, but most pleasing to the eye in more than one way. It is utterly lacking realism (the dragons are a dead giveaway) but the stories have been intriguing since the beginning and the art has a certain flair that does go with the need for excellent story telling.

I am not giving you a top three. There are so many considerations. There is the Flash Gordon from the 70’s, there is Diabolik, although in this case it seems that Murdoch’s European pay-tv operation are already on that case, so I reckon that if they make that one dark enough, they might have an instant hit. This all has one additional benefit for me, there is every chance that someone will consider reprinting the comics by Angela and Luciana Giussani, a win-win for all. I believe that technology was the greatest push here. Now that special effects can set the stage more closely to what the comic book makers envisioned and gave to their audience, the sky has become the limit and as we see more and more revenue towards streaming, there is every chance that the biggest delays will be finding the actors committing to a series and finding the right actors, manpower will become the largest obstacle for moviemakers in the foreseeable future. I will happily volunteer there, but I know I am no Inspector Ginko (or inspector Gadget for that matter).

Yet we can also look into the other direction, for that we merely need to seek out André Franquin and his office boy Gaston, every company seemingly has one and therefor would bring instant joy, laughter and entertainment on a global scale, all mostly untapped ideas as American Netflix has been too localised in their searches (as well as the method of finding new stuff). Yet with Disney Plus on the horizon and other players like Stan making more and more waves, we might see a bidding war for the IP rights of these works soon enough.

 

 

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April 28, 2019 · 14:07

When a dream is too delusional

We all have those dreams we know will never pass into reality, they are too delusional for comfort, but they are dreams, so we go with the flow. One example is winning the €135,000,000 lottery, the other could be one including Wallis Day (main character in the DC series Krypton) to spend a weekend to remember at her place (with all the extra options). Yes, all options that are delusional and never ever a setting that could ever be true. So in all this we get to yesterday’s article in the Guardian where we (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/27/very-disappointing-ashford-laments-loss-of-debenhams-branch) are treated to ‘‘Very disappointing’: Ashford laments loss of Debenhams branch‘, yes it might be very disappointing, yet consider a few items. First there is the building that they are in, then consider that Ashford has a population of 62,787, so we need to look at another side of it all, or in this case the 2016 Annual report (at http://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/d/LSE_DEB_2016.pdf).

They had a staff count of around 28,000 supporting 182 stores in the UK and Europe as well as their domestic and international websites. Now consider their premise of Gross transaction value (52 weeks) of £2.9bn. In that regard, how does a shop in a village of 62K people add up to anything? When we look deeper and consider that Debenhams had a total of 165 stores in the UK alone and the amount of cities in the UK from 100,000 people up to 1 million added up to 96 locations, in the remaining places how did Ashford got to be one of those 69 positions? Now, we can see that in Kent, the average income is set to £29,095, which is above the UK average, still, when we do the numbers, the entire validation of having Debenhams in Ashford does not add up. Not in such a posh place, making me wonder why the building was placed there to begin with.

Now consider the additional information that the Kent Online gives us (at https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent-business/county-news/debenhams-to-close-four-kent-stores-203461/). So, Ashford, Canterbury, Chatham and Folkestone are all shutting down, in all this, I wonder why Ashford, Canterbury and Folkestone were placed in the first place. Kent with its 1.5 million people (in the entire county) has a case for one Debenhams but not 4. The numbers do not make sense. Now we need to remember that Debenhams has been around for two centuries and as such they do not all have new places, but when I see Debenhams Ashford, I see a story that seems to think it is in a multi-millionaire district with 20,000 shoppers, whilst 2,000 active buying shoppers at best would be an achievement in Ashford, the entire article by the Guardian left me with way too many questions. The shop is clearly set out to call in the higher spender; the Dior setting dominating the floor gives that impression. Now, it is not merely about the prices, because Debenhams has always shown to have value for money and their stuff is affordable, yet that also creates the need for a much higher volume of purchases and let’s face it, Ashford is not a place where people buy clothes at a non-stop speed, the cost of living is not supporting that, and the optional coffee machine at £282.00 is not one that most people would buy, the one off perhaps, but most will resort to the luxury Russel Hobbs at £35.00. Now we get the image clearing up, you see as margins are lower, the units need to be sold at much higher frequency and there we see that Ashford never had the stage, moreover it is at least two Kent stores that could be seen as a drain on the Debenhams fortune and that took less than 2 minutes to figure out, so how the continued expansion (read: building upgrade) was seen by those in charge is beyond me.

So when I see: “For other young people, the department store had little to offer. “I just go in there to use the spray on the beauty counters,” said Faith Figaro, 17. “I think it’s expensive, to be fair.”” we see a 17 year old making the case for me and I wonder what possessed the Debenhams top to go in this direction in the first place. It gets to be even worse when the Guardian prints the pragmatic “It’s all hairdressers and coffee shops and nail bars. People won’t come here to shop – they’ll go to a bigger town like Canterbury instead“, which in itself is a truth, making me wonder what is getting into some of these delusional big brands. The entire setting of the larger players has been under fire for the longest of time and the essential need to revisit locations is becoming an essential need for all of them, as such the statement: “Conservative MP Damian Green described the news as “very disappointing”. On Twitter, he wrote: “We need to redouble efforts to strengthen the town centre.”” becomes one of worry. Even as a conservative I wonder how Damian got elected, merely as I saw the writing on the wall within three minutes, so he should have been on the ball for a much longer time, as such the Debenhams situation should have been to be expected, not ‘disappointing‘. For me the entire issue that is started by “Ashford borough council said they would work with the owners of the shopping centre to try to find new occupiers” becomes an issue soon enough. It is the duty of the owner to seek shops and to seek occupancy. When you put an expensive Rolls Royce in an old meadow, you cannot expect your return on investment, you do that by slashing rental prices and by seeking long term solutions that can afford to be long term solutions. Staging ‘elite placement’ in a place where ‘elite placement’ is not realistic is the stage where we see the Australian Westfield issue explode on several stages, places that are intent to fall over within a year, it attracts the wrong facilitator and that is where things go from bad to worse.

It is not the end, it is the Kent Online that also gives us the words from Executive chairman Terry Duddy: “Debenhams has a clear strategy and a bright future, but in order for the business to prosper, we need to restructure the group’s store portfolio and its balance sheet, which are not appropriate for today’s much changed retail environment“. The words sound nice in theory, yet from my point of view; the stage we see in the 2016 annual report contradicts the actions of having most Debenhams in Kent. And when we look at the annual report making the: Profit before tax* (52 weeks) £114.1m claim. I get to the stage thinking that their clear strategy was anything but clear.

In that version of a report we see the strategy: “To be a leading international, multi-channel brand by delivering a compelling customer proposition and increasing availability and choice through our flagship digital platform and well-invested, well-located stores around the world.” I honestly think that they got that wrong by a fair bit. You see, from my personal point of view the setting of ‘well-invested, well-located stores‘ we see the stage where it should have been ‘well-invested, and viable well-located stores‘ it is that part where viable needs to matter and in 50 of the 166 cases it was not to be and that is not something from the last year, the action should have started no later than 2015 as I see it.

It gets to be slightly entertaining when I look at their risk management in light of their e strategic and operational goals, but let’s not make too much fun of the situation, shall we? Even as there is a lot to be said on their KPI’s, the clear message of net debt reduction is important and a good thing, if that £40 million net debt reduction had not been met, the entire matter would have been critically fatal for Debenhams no later than 2018, so good steps had been made, yet larger were essential two years ago, that is as I personally see it and without the raw data my findings are open to critical debate (as my view might be wrong). Yet at page 29 we see the largest flaw. When we see: “New UK stores 12%” we see the largest mistake, in a place where there were 166 stores whilst the population did not support further growth that should have been staged for modernisation for now. I get it, some stores are too old and new stores replace the old ones, yet the 5 year option to rely on upgrades until the economy is much stronger was an essential step to make, even if some of the lucrative old shops would shut down, the long term growth in this economy is just not there. This is why I got the 2016 annual report (the 2017 would have been better, yet I could not find that puppy). Aspects of 2016 and 2017 are seen now, its impact is now direct, like a good ship you adjust course and wait for the numbers to be clear so any adjustment in 2018 would not be a valid impact until 2020 (unless it is immediate navigation) and there is where we see some of the flaws of Debenhams. Even now I noticed that internationally they are not in Germany, it might be because Hennes & Mauritz AB is too great a threat, it might be for another reason, but the one nations where the economy is still in a much better place, is the one place they do not show up. Can they honestly claim that Debenhams Bonn, Berlin and/or Munich would not make it? In the Netherlands they would have a cat fight with C&A and a few others, in Sweden there is Hennes & Mauritz AB, Åhléns and a few others, so that makes sense, France is a dimension all on itself, so no way to tell, yet Germany? If I had to bank on Debenhams Munich or Debenhams Ashford, Ashford would never have been a consideration, yet with no timeline on Ashford I have to make the blind choice and it would not be Ashford, due to no fault of anything Kent related.

It is on page 138 we get the final part. Here we see the minimum lease payments under non-cancellable operating leases. Now some have been there for a long time, it was a choice made and that is fair, yet in the entire matter we see that for up to 5 years we see £96.7 million in play and I have some serious questions on those marks, in light of certain facts seen now, I wonder which of those should never have been made, but that is merely my view on the matter and with up to 50 stores up for closure I personally reckon I might have a case on that.

LSE_DEB_2016

 

 

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April 27, 2019 · 11:56

Then the hard

As we all are looking at the accusations towards Saudi Arabia, the political presented power plays (not real ones) against Iran on ‘no more sanctions waivers‘, all issues we knew were coming upfront of all the other issues, most people forgot to look at France. Or perhaps others were able to pull attention away from France.

Some give us ‘France’s Macron Promises Tax Cuts, Reforms in Response to Yellow Vests‘, others give us ‘Unsatisfied in France: Muted response to Macron sales pitch‘, the short and sweet of the matter is that tax cuts are almost out of the question. The French national debt has risen to over €2,446,051,000,000, France is approaching the €2.5 trillion mark and France is presently dangerously close to the next recession, they only passed it last quarter by nothing short of a miracle, it had nothing to do with President Macron or anyone else, for the most it was merely sheer luck that they avoided the recession stamp, Q2 might not be that lucky a moment. At that point, all the claims of ‘tax cuts via less spending‘ will fall flat soon thereafter, less spending will be the massive agenda point of Q3, and France will have no other way of dealing with it. It is even less good when we consider yesterday’s Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/f9920a26-6750-11e9-9adc-98bf1d35a056) where we are treated to ‘French employees face challenge to short-hours culture‘. When the French system starts applauding the casual work staff solution, France will be heading to a much deeper pit than they imagine, President Macron played the game wrong and even as most would applaud a mental change to the workers environment and how things were done, the system is too rigid to accept changes and as that system went into shutdown mode for too often, the larger impact was ignored, President Macron was too stubborn and now there is a much large impact to be seen.

The FT opens up with the best statement ever: “French workers pride themselves on being more productive than their peers in other countries, despite the fact that they work fewer hours — but that advantage is waning“, it is the ‘waning‘ part that matters. The world had adjusted for the longest of times and their advantage is no longer there, so we have a protective system (which is fair enough) and whilst it was an advantage no change was going to happen, but now that the advantage is gone change is still not an option and now these labour laws become a noose, new investors and new companies are trying to find ulterior solutions (apart from growing outside of France), now we see that the need for longer hours is essential, or we see that these people are in a stage of becoming casual workers and being complemented (read: replaced) with other casual workers and the hours will go to the best performing people, making this solution more than a slippery slope. The Financial Times is giving us numbers where we see that French production is already surpassed by the Netherlands and Germany and that is also where we see that a growth system of part timers made that happen. You see in the end two people working 20 hours part time will perform better and get more done than one doing 40 hours and that is the shift that some France exploiters seem to be looking at, it partially improves tax revenue, but it also does something else. In the stage of cost of living these people will often work two jobs, so doing 2 times 20 hours and merely ending up working 20% harder for the same pay. When France gets there it will hit the French workforce really hard.

Now we get to the part where the €2.5 trillion mark matters, as the ECB is trying to find new ways to convince others that the continued provision of stimulus to the economy matters, that against all the odds and against all the previous parts, we see that the ECB policies will hit France harder, the debt makes it so and whilst the ECB is not an elected official, it is draining the options away from the European nations, all whilst so far it has been proven that there was no actual benefit to the economy twice over. So after three trillion in unacceptable spending the ECB still believed it can work, all whilst we see the data different.

It comes down to the old premise from Albert Einstein no less: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results” and this now gives us the optional premise whether ECB rate-setter Olli Rehn should be committed under section 20 of the Mental Health Act (the involuntary committing of a patient).

It hits several nations, yet in all what is happening these issues will hit France and Italy the hardest I reckon. That part is seen when we consider “In France only 71 per cent of the population was in employment last year, compared with 79 per cent of the UK and 80 per cent in Germany“, in this the case for casual workers is often easily made, yet in France the impact gives a larger rise, lets consider that it reduces 10% of the unemployed force, which would be great, if not for the fact that these 10% now employed imply that the same amount of employed people will see a 30% reduction to their quality of life as they now share the one job with another person. It will not increase tax revenue ad that is easily shown.

At present in France the first two tax brackets are: €9,964–€27,519: 14% & €27,519–€73,779: 30%

Example one: A person makes a full income of €35,000. This gets the treasury €4702, we now get two part-timers, giving each €19,000, giving the treasury two times €1265, making it €2530, a treasury loss of €2172.

Why? The zero bracket will now apply to both employees, and even they will not see it in their second job, we see a larger shift that will occur, so in their time of great debt the treasury will fail itself twice over and even in more ways than one thinks. When you consider that the average income in France is €26,700, the part timers will dent the treasury a lot further than you think, and consider that the second job is fully taxed, how long until the French will not go that way? How much will the treasury miss out on, that is beside the next wave of badly designed stimulus ideas, a game that only sees banks and members of the ECB winners, the rest gets an added debt, how was that ever fair, just or even beneficial to any economy? Yes, France too will face their endgame, yet whether this Endgame involves President Macron (Thanos) and the Avengers (the yellow coats) to come to blows is not a given, it is an expected must soon enough.

 

 

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April 27, 2019 · 11:51

First the soft

There is a wave of anticipation, having seen Avengers Endgame on opening night two days ago, we see the anticipation rush through. There will be no spoilers here, but I can give advance warning of the dangerous side shows in the cinema. You see, the final part is a three hour movie and worth watching, yet watching the parents with younger sidekicks watch the movie whilst the parent realising that after two hours the bladder of junior is under pressure is a sight to see. I saw at least two fathers rushing themselves (as well as junior) to the bathroom hooping not to miss too much is a sight to take momentary notice of.

Taking a large/jumbo drink into a three hour movie is a really bad idea!

The second one is sweet. In at least two points in the movie, something huge happens and it is a sight to behold, I was not ready for large crowds to stand up and cheer and clap, it was a little unexpected, the movie gets you that deep into the story, it is an amazing one and we get volley after volley of amazing moments for almost three hours.

So when we now see that Avengers: Endgame is heading towards a 700 million opening weekend (globally) is no stretch, it would make it the largest opening weekend in history. The three most successful movies never pulled that off, so Avatar, Titanic and Star Wars: the force awakens will not be the contenders. The question becomes, can Endgame surpass the opening weekend of Avengers: Infinity War, which had an opening weekend of $630 million. There is however one side that hold endgame back, as a few nations open a week later, and as at present the overseas record has not been surpassed, the end result is not a given, I believe that the movie has what it takes to surpass Infinity War in every way, in the end, it becomes a roll of the dice (to some extent). I believe that this movie has the goods to surpass the amazing results that Avengers: Infinity War brought, I believe to be proven right in the next week. I hope to be able to see the 3D version at that point.

So we end the soft part of the day with a detailed view on Bradley Cooper, who is going to be in the movie and that is not a spoiler at all.

 

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April 17, 2019 · 10:46

Lifting the veil

Keith Stuart (the Guardian) gave the first reliable light less than 8 hours ago when he treats us to: ‘PlayStation 5: Sony gives the first details of its next generation console‘. We see a lot of digital techno babble (for the non-technical readers), what is important in first light is a positive and a negative. The positive is seen with “a custom graphics processor based on the forthcoming AMD Navi family, which will be capable of real-time ray tracing“, implying that the new PS5 is only inches behind today’s top graphics cards and on part what the PC could maximise in 2020, that is indeed a graphical leap that has not been seen before. Then we see “an eight-core CPU based on the third generation of AMD’s Ryzen processors“. This is good in a number of ways but let’s not blindly focus on the 8 cores. In the end gaming is about good games. What does seem to be implied is that Ubisoft has a unique option at present, it could get ahead of the crowd with a massive leap if they do their homework and if they focus on the result and not listen to whatever idiot is the voice of the shareholders and/or marketing, because that will end them right quick.

They have the option for a truly new Watchdog and optionally a few more of their franchises, but only if they focus, the next AAA rated at 65% could end them if they lose focus; the fans have become weary of Ubisoft and what they market and subsequently not produce. A similar stage is there for Bethesda, even as they have a lot more credibility. They have the products, but they need to have a much better QA team. They will not survive a second Fallout 76 that much is showing to be the gospel of gaming. When we see the specs of the PS5 we cannot even imagine what FromSoftware will be able to pull off, but we cannot wait to see. There are more players, especially with the implied God of War 5, even if they merely get an equal to god of War 4, people will sleep in front of gaming shops to get the game at first light, and so far we know that these makers always surpassed the previous versions, so we cannot wait.

Yet this gets us to the other place, the one negative one. You see, we might hype behind “a solid state drive“, yet the ugly truth is that space is expensive in solid state mode. Even as the current price of $975 for a 4TB drive is a lot and that price will be 30% down in 2020, the truth remains that 2TB will not cut it and we do hope that Sony is not stupid enough to follow the short-sighted path that Microsoft is on, they are now merely console number three and optionally before 2021 a number 4 out of 5. We get that we might start at 1-2TB, yet as long as the space is there to upgrade to 4TB the fans will be OK with it, selling that item short is the most dangerous path one could be on and 3mm makes all the difference. Even as Microsoft Marketing is trying to launch hypes around Xbox Two, they have already lost the faith of so many gamers that the stage now is set to them trying to repair damage in the first year of console release; this is totally difference form both Nintendo and Sony who are now steaming ahead at full throttle. Even as we get the Sci-Fi versions of what the Xbox Two might be, too many people are no longer willing to trust Microsoft at present and that is hurting them at the starting bell for a lot more than they are willing to admit to. I only they had actually listened to the gamers, we are not willing to trust them with their words: ‘We listened to gamer and this is what we came up with‘, they will bully always online, they will bully their Microsoft Azure needs. This is the consequence of doing what shareholders tell you and disregard the customer, it is a failed model and I have seen the fallout of that for well over two decades in the field.

So whilst others need to worry about the market share they lose against Nintendo and Google Stadia (optionally against Apple too), Sony has decided on the path that gamers desire and with one optional flaw they are on track to surpass themselves. It gets to be even larger if initial social media plans come to fruition, yet there is no evidence that this is in any way happening. what is interesting is that the winning path of Sony is pushed to a much higher level whilst Microsoft is still clinging to “Securely store player data, dynamically scale your gaming experiences to more than 50 regions, and save money as your game grows with Azure” and even as some give us: “Google may have stolen the show at this year’s Game Developer Conference with its Stadia cloud gaming reveal, but Microsoft is hard at work on its own service, xCloud, that it’s already testing now. At a GDC developer session yesterday, Microsoft representatives from the xCloud team gave us a little more detail into how games designed for Xbox consoles will translate over to mobile devices, where players might be used to either a Bluetooth controller or on-screen touch controls“, some need to see a reality, not only are they outgunned against Google (Stadia), the fact that the fact that I do not accept any Xbox game to be played on a mere 6” mobile, we now see that the entire concept of ‘gaming’ is seemingly slightly alien to Microsoft. This is all about stored player data; this is about data and facilitating for the capture of it.

Do you really think that I could ever enjoy Forza Horizons IV on a 6″ screen? That game is the reason why people buy a 75″ 4K TV in the first place. So not only is Microsoft failing its gamers, their own marketing department is failing both. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of games that play nicely on a Mobile, some games can be played at any place and screen (Fallout Shelter, Gems of War), but the premise to make it all go to a mobile display is almost insulting to the people who went all out and created Forza Horizons IV for the big 4K screens.

This matters!

This matters as it shows the people that both Sony and Nintendo have been on the right track all along, the Nintendo sales figures show that, the head start of Sony shows it and now the top two will vie for their audience and even as Sony is ahead, it cannot relax one moment, Nintendo is too good at what they do and it is what the gamers want, Sony knows that too.

for now we see the PS5 for what it is, an optional beauty to replace our PS4 with, the fact that it is still a year away (optionally 17 months) is not something we are sorry about. The PS4 gives loads of entertainment to all its users and is highly likely to do so until the PS4 hands over the baton to the PS5, that is how it works and even then the PS4 will keep gamers happy for the longest of times, just like the Nintendo GameCube did whilst people were buying the Nintendo Wii in force. For that too is gaming, it is like our favourite pair of shoes or wallet, we hang onto it a little longer than we should, we grew attached to the device that brought so much joy, something Nintendo accepted and Sony forgot just a little too easy.

 

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April 16, 2019 · 12:02

The pope’s mobile is on the clock

 

Hickory Dickory dock, the pope ran up the clock,

The clock struck one, and hit his bum, Hickory Dickory dock.

An old rhyme slightly adjusted and gives light to a joke that mattered, it is old and it goes like:

Q: Why does the pope kiss the ground when he arrives?
A: You’ve never flown with Alitalia have you?

That is where we are, the clock is counting down; Alitalia is on its last legs and merely has two weeks left. As sources report that EasyJet pulled out of the race and even as Delta is still on board, someone needs to be found for the remaining 40% and that is the hard ball, consider on how much of an issue Alitalia is when people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates will not take a shine to it, it might be too harsh to call Alitalia a money pit, but that is what is amounts too. The flight market is close to saturated, even as we all needed to fly (quite literally) 20 years ago, the companies started to figure out not to give their profits to the airlines. On a global scale close to 9750 planes were in the air last year at any given time, transporting up to 1.3 million people. The operative part is ‘at any given time‘, so how much travel is required nowadays? In 1998 I was flying close to 21 weeks that year, giving trainings and doing consultancy round the clock, at times living from a suitcase with added support from my laptop giving IT trainings and software training. I circled the planet twice that year, from Amsterdam, New York, Atlanta, Sydney, Singapore, Istanbul, via Munich and back to Amsterdam. I thought it was great and as long as the profits were outshining the costs, my bosses kept on sending me to more locations, it was all fine by me. These days are over, even as we see more and more airports expanding to ‘facilitate’ for more passengers, we see a dangerous curve, Stockholm Arlanda is expanding to facilitate for 40 million visitors a year. The numbers give us that the top 25 carriers facilitated for 13,718,655 passengers and if they are all tourists, that would be fine, yet the business side is not adding up. You see 15 out of the 25 had a decrease the went up to 27.3%, the lowest 10 were below 4.5%, still they were all still decreases and the largest increase came from Riga, Latvia.

Now consider that on the other side, on the airline side, apart from the element where we see that Alitalia had no operating profit between 2009 and 2015 with added low points of well over minus a quarter of a billion, the setup of airlines seems to be too odd.

I do get it, a nations having a national airline is a matter of pride, we get it, but at what cost? The airline has about 100 planes as part of the mainline fleet and the cost of doing business is just too high, there is no decent chance that whomever owns the airline might do so, so that they can say that they own an airline, it seems the weirdest of reasons, but from the financial view that is as much as we are going to get and the bad news is not done at this point.

You see, the work I used to do can be done remotely more and more, when 5G is totally here, we can see the shift where the classes can be given remotely with a phantom screen and with the presentations running in the background, the speed will enable us to give individual service to all the participants in up to three locations at the same time, almost like remotely run classroom software with camera’s in all locations. At that point we will see even less traffic required implying that the business classes on these flights will be close to a thing of the past.

The more immediate and difficult part is that none of this is the fault of Alitalia. Yes, we can look at the scandals and the past sting operations, yet the foundation is not that, it is the need of people to travel. In that light the traveller will be the one using their local airline (like many would), some will select airlines for their service and there we see groups of people seeking flights by Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways and Emirates. So these airlines are also poaching local travellers as they have shown and proven themselves to be a cut above the others. When it comes to business and tourist Italy, we see decline of both and falling harder, yet Italy is still the destination to several countries, namely Germany, France, UK and US as the largest four. These four add up to 23%; the rest is from all over. So, what makes me the specialist? I am not; I am merely using common sense. 100 planes, in an age where their power is tourism and we are going into the summer season, but that setting is a stage that represents merely 18 weeks out of 52, the numbers and the economy do not support the fleet, or so it seems.

when we consider that Rome Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino supported 42,995,119 passengers last year, there is a decent case that I am seeing it wrong, but that is from all airlines, beside Alitalia, we see Air India, Emirates, Turkish Airlines, United, Etihad Airways, Thai Airways, Asiana Airlines, Qatar Airways, Cathay Pacific, Air China, Lufthansa, Ethiopian Airlines, Finnair, British Airways, SWISS, EL AL Israel Airlines, Air France, Saudia, Ukraine International, Jet Airways, Air Canada, Egypt Air, KLM, Kuwait Airways, Brussels Airlines, Aeroflot, Korean Air, China Airlines, Singapore Airlines, China Southern, Iran Air, all flying to Rome, now we see a different picture, even as the airport needs the space and growth, we see no decent numbers on how the Alitalia flights are doing, some sources were giving me ‘No Data‘ and that is fair enough, but it makes a much stronger case that unless there is someone with deep pockets that Alitalia is on its last legs and in its final stage of a mere two week notice until it shuts down. Planes would be auctioned off and the lot to be repackaged for other management styles. And I do believe that the end is not in sight, Alitalia is not the only one in such a sordid state of affairs. I believe that the business case of airlines should have changed a long time ago, and it will get worse soon enough, as the oil price goes up, so do the prices of flights. You see the one element we seem to ignore is not the drop in non-tourist passengers. It is the fact that one barrel of crude oil only facilitates for up to 4 gallons of jet fuel, the turnaround is that high, 42 gallons can only make 4 gallons of jet fuel, after that it boils down to gasoline, diesel and other items, so when the barrel goes up in price, the impact is seen quite fast. Consider that a flight from Rome to New York takes 9 hours and 40 minutes (or 2,088,000 seconds), now consider that a 747 needs 1 gallon a second, so if the oil goes up by $1, the maximum cost of a flight would go up by 2 million times the price increase and we can only get 4 gallons bet crude oil barrel making it an optional increase of $500K per flight (which is not completely true as diesel and gasoline would need to bear part of those costs too, but with only 4 gallons to the barrel, jet fuel would take the hardest hit).

That part counts too and as such tourist numbers would go down to some degree, especially from America. These are all still mere elements in the hardship calculations, but the elements are starting to add up, more optional other choices, more localised incentives and less options for Alitalia, that is the sad reality for Alitalia. As far as I was able to see, the press (the non-Italian press) did not take a look at these elements. Even as the BBC did look at one element “At the time the Irish airline was struggling to contain the fallout from a pilot shortage, which led to the cancellation of flights for about 700,000 passengers“, the abundance of competition, as well as the dangers of fuel changes were not looked at. Yet there are other sources, Bloomberg (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-18/easyjet-drops-from-alitalia-bidding-in-setback-to-government) gave us a month ago that Delta is “exploring ways to work with Ferrovie dello Stato and maintain our partnership with Alitalia in the future“, yet I am not convince that they are in it with their heart and soul. Merely a stage where their accountants can optionally see plans for the Alitalia infrastructure and options to give Delta a streamline boost and let Delta grow in other ways accepting Alitalia to some degree for some time, yet how that ‘for some time‘ develops will remain an unknown. Part of it is seen with “Delta would take a 10 percent stake, which would double within four years if certain business goals are met“, yet these business goals are not really heralded by any party. In that regard Lufthansa was open and clear by stating that Alitalia needs to shed 40% of the workforce and that is where the cost of the Delta business goals are likely to be seen as well and that 40% will remain part of the problem. The Italian government would had to euthanise 40% of the workforce in a time when it could not afford to do so and that is the issue to the larger extent. If that knife is thrust hard and deep Alitalia might be around on April 30th, yet at present that is not a given, the pressured parties are not willing to get to that point until the 11th hour and at that point it might just be too late, because in the end the airline is not the only player, the airports will try to make sure that their part of the equation remains safe and there are plenty of airlines offering to ferry people to these locations making the equation unbalanced and unrealistic for the bookkeepers of Alitalia, a sad story for an airline that only recently made it to its 10th year.

 

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