Tag Archives: Euronews

May 18, 2024 · 21:43

Thoughts

As I am turning towards Engonos and some of the embellishments that I should incorporate I also am reminded of something I wrote in March 2017 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/03/17/the-finality-of-french-freedom/), yes that long ago I made predictions, all based on common sense. And now we see in the first Deutsche Welle (at https://www.dw.com/en/germany-faces-challenge-as-2025-tax-forecast-sinks/a-69102992) where we are given ‘Germany faces challenge as 2025 tax forecast sinks’, this sounds like a trivial matter, but if the first economy will have issues with paying for its infrastructure, the entire mess becomes a problem. So we are all given “Finance Minister Christian Lindner said it was clear that the public sector would have to tighten its belt.” And it is followed and pretty much epilogued with “What I repeat almost like a mantra in view of the exorbitant political wishes is now available in black and white: There is no new financial room for manouver in the foreseeable future.”

There are a few sides to that. I the first Russia loses an enemy, a lame duck that is part of the EU. Germans has no moves left. The second one is ‘France faces four major economic challenges in 2024’ (the FT article was behind a paywall) and this one is found (at https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/01/23/france-faces-four-major-economic-challenges-in-2024) is is a little older but as the economic belt of France is tightened dark clouds are forming. They have one advantage, the 2024 Olympics will bring money. How much? Is anyones guess. France has problems with manufacturing, The Chinese markets are not dishing out dough for French items like wine. And behind this is “The extraordinary debt levels across the major economies in the world pose a risk to France, too, as it faces the threat of an austerity budget which directly impacts the financial health of households and consumers.” We get the ‘quote’ “The French manufacturing sector remained low throughout the year, sinking deeper at the end of 2023. If output remains at the same level, there is the possibility of a “technical recession” within the sector”, when the media starts adding ‘technical’ to the story, you know that there is a problem. To put it mildly blunt, there is for example not a technical pregnancy. My penis entered her vagina and I came. She turned out to be pregnant or not. Nothing technical about it. You can dwindle numbers around all you like, but in the end there is a recession or there is not. These two stories matter, especially when you consider the first one I wrote in 2017. There I set the EU like a pontoon, kept in place by 4 anchors, they stop the the pontoon being thrown around in the economic sea of uncertainty. 27 people on that pontoon, 4 of them were manning the anchors. These was the UK, France, Germany and Spain. Now, the UK left and both France and Germany are in a difficult position. So it come down to Spain who is not doing too well either. I saw this in 2017, but the media kept on playing its game on populism, so who looked out for the overall health of the EU economy?

As you can see (based on Q2 2023 data) That the EU debt is partially driven by France and Spain, the UK is no longer part of the equation. The EU is in a dire position. And whilst we get jolly news all over the fields the direct problem is will the US sell the EU down the river, or will the EU chisel its marks in new ventures? Overlapping the fields where the US was sole choice. That too I set out in the past. The simple consideration is that if the world is a cake and the cake is almost none growing, the population growth and the debt growth implies that there is less to be had and you know the issue with shortages? People go hungry, the population loses it humanity because it is the era of ‘me’. So whilst we consider that different choices needs to be made, the old setting under Wall Street and the US will soon become a field of Commonwealth, Brics, China, and the Middle East. In all honesty with all the messes the US is creating none of them have a use for them. It sounds harsh but that is the reality. In a land where we have 10 people and 7 meals the hungry will not care who is humane or who is woke. 7 will eat and three will not. It is not a nice setting, but the realistic one. There were options for energy and housing all by Elon Musk. Are they true, are they false? I cannot tell. It seems to be limited to Youtube and TikTok. The media as far as I can tell have not touched it. So where is the media? Are they now governmental tools? Consider the fact that nations have an issue with homelessness. So would this Musk solution help? Would this take pressure of the stress? France, the Netherlands, Australia, they all have issues but no one seems to tackle them. This matters because when the economic drivers come calling on the EU the other settings becomes huge. And the media is doing way too little about it. Why is that?

Just a few thoughts that came to mind on this Saturday.

When perception is the brand

Yes, this sounds confusing, but it actually is not. It started with a simple article on the BBC, the article ‘Chloe Khan and Jodie Marsh rapped by watchdog’ caught me by surprise. The idea was given to me “The Advertising Standards Authority has named and shamed four influencers it said repeatedly failed to disclose when their Instagram posts were actually advertisements”, now I do not are about influencers, I tend to stay away from them and I do not use instagram. But the people that do follow these influencer tend to do so for very specific reasons. It comes to blows (to coin a phrase) when we compare this to Twitter. So when we see these two tweets, we do see the ‘promoted’ mention at the VERY bottom and these pages go towards photo’s and text surrounded by massive amounts of advertisement, some of these providers will try to get one photo per page with a next mention and the next page will show you even more advertisements. So is this not deceptive? What is the setting of the Advertising Standards Authority at that point? Is the creation of what I call ‘click bitches’ not deceptive? This has been going on for years, the in game advertisements on Android, and iOS devices have all kinds of deceptions, what have they achieved there?

And now we get to the first part, when is perception the brand. What is the perception? Are the tweets safe? Is the word ‘promoted’ enough? When we look at “Promoted Tweets are ideal when you want to increase your Twitter audience reach and engagement. When you have a big announcement, a new blog post, a marketing campaign, or an upcoming event you’d like to reach more people than you would organically, Promoted Tweets is the better strategy. This is because your Promoted Tweets will appear in users’ live feeds and search results” we see and accept that, yet when we see promotion emphasised by large breasts, is it advertisement, or deceptive conduct? Some people might not be able to tell the difference, and I believe that it becomes more and more about the ambiguity of perception. So, as such is the ‘shaming of people like Chloe Khan and Jodie Marsh warranted? As the Advertising Standards Authority is failing people, millions of people on Twitter, on iOS and Android games, is going after smaller players not merely hypocritical? As such, is the advertisement of 23 camping pictures deceptive? Perhaps the overload of advertisements is merely a side effect? As such, does the inability to act against Twitter, Facebook and Mobiles games not merely make the act against the influencers slightly overkill? And all this is before we take notice of “The ASA was responding to the #filterdrop campaign that called for it to be compulsory for influencers to state when they use a beauty filter to promote skincare or cosmetics”, this is what magazines have been doing for years, where was the Advertising Standards Authority then?

It all takes another turn when we take a look at the freedom of speech, this is shown in the last tweet.

First of all, the person gives the names and they are seemingly correct, but it is “Given that anti-rationality, anti civil rights (anti-woke) channel GB News is losing major advertisers already, due to the crap they are peddling, suggest some alternative advertisers” that makes me wonder. You see filtered information is handed to us by the bulk of the news channels. The evasion of news regarding Houthi missile and drone attacks against Saudi civilian targets is the most visible one, but not the only one. If the left filters to the left, is the right not allowed to filter to the right? And so far I saw three GB news articles on Youtube there was a view I might not agree with, but should they be attacked as such? So when we are given “I’m excited to tackle difficult subjects with voices you haven’t heard before”, so what is the problem here? And GB News matters, you see perception comes in two sizes, the perception we see and detect and the one that sneaks up unnoticed, but they are both filter forms that aid the perception that the transmitter wants to give us, so where these advertisers leaving through peer pressure, or is there a case of actual evidence? Consider that Andrew Neil has been working as a journalist since 1973, meaning he optionally has more experience than the sum of some news channel cast members. In addition, when we see “due to the crap they are peddling”, do you think that other breakfast TV shows are not peddling crap? Is one side better than the other? No, I do not think so, but there is a chance that if both exist I might get a decent balanced central view. In the end this is not merely about the news, you see if it was about the news, people would simply not watch it and if no one watches it the channel dies, but there is a larger need, the need for advertisers and there is the crux, saturation demands that advertisers choose where they are and they are wherever the masses are, the Express gives us “Despite the complaints from some viewers regarding the sound, the show pulled in thousands of viewers as according to BARB data, 164,500 people tuned in to watch between 7pm and 11pm on Sunday night”, which accompanies ‘Launch show beats BBC and Sky despite ‘technical difficulties’’ and that would scare any news channel, the fact that there might be a market for GB News and that is where these advertisers are soon to be, where do I get the best reach? It is a business decision and that decision is what other media fear, Fox grew to greatness and the news channels are scared of that, and whilst they TOO adhere to shareholders, stake holders and advertisers. The bulk of the advertisers can only afford one place, not all places and that is the fear of filtered information. The news is too much on shareholders and stake holders, all whilst the advertisers play (at times) a dubious role in this setup. Am I a fan of GB News? I do not know, I have not been able to make up my mind yet. I get it, a 24 hour channel needs it human interest stories, but when I see news of a cremated cat, I wonder who will cover the Yemen events. Consider that the BBC gave us on the 8th of March “The UN says the war has caused created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and caused an estimated 233,000 deaths”, yet the UN gave us on December 1st 2020 “UN humanitarian office puts Yemen war dead at 233,000”, so do you think that in 4 months in slaughterhouse Yemen ZERO deaths occurred over a period of 4 months, or is someone not doing their job? And when we realise the answer to that, do you really think I give a toss on the premise of a cremated cat from either GB News, Fox News, CNN, BBC, Channel 7, Channel 9, Sky News, ITV, CNN, Euronews, or CNBC? You have got to be joking. Does it make GB News bad, lousy or useless? No, but they are slightly to the right and the left does not tolerate any channel on that side of the aisle, they thought that Fox News was enough, but if Andrew Neil gets his way, the European channels will get nervous soon enough and no matter what the advertisers do, when someone bails ship others will try to get a slightly sweeter deal, when that comes out GB News will get its share of advertisers, I have no doubt, what remains is the perception created and it takes a little more time to see how GB News will fare and how the people will perceive it.

Dimensionality

There is growing unrest and growing movement. People are changing and relocating. It is all about Brexit. We see the news; we see the blips and the funny quotes. This week the funny moment was a Scottish girl who would not accept the outcome of the Brexit referendum, because this was a democracy. OK, we all have moments and that was a golden one, no doubt about it. I am pro Brexit, not because it is a great idea, but because the ECB did not leave us an option. The irresponsible spending by Mario Draghi with his stimulus got the EU €3,000,000,000,000 in additional debt with no hope of resolving it within several decades. Now with another recession on the horizon, the EU member states will learn the hard way what a recession does when there are no checks, balances or reserves available so this time around it will strong to the largest degree.

Yet, that is not what this is about. We see part of the issue (at https://www.euronews.com/2019/08/26/nearly-100-companies-move-to-netherlands-ahead-of-brexit-dutch-agency) where “Nearly 100 companies have relocated from Britain to the Netherlands or set up offices there to be within the European Union due to the United Kingdom’s planned departure from the bloc, a Dutch government agency said on Monday” It is a move that might seem nice, but there is a hidden trap in all this. These players are shifting to a nation (whichever nation), and whilst they think that setting up shop in the EU with its 513 million people was a good idea, that number still includes the UK and after the switch they are vying with other competitors for 444 million customers, whilst they left the 69 million people they already had. Germany has 82 million, France, Spain and Italy have less than the UK as population, implying that they are a smaller pond to fish in. The issue is not that they are all part of one EU, they are well over 20 member states, all with their own little local laws and that is what these people forgot. They walked away from 69 million UK consumers and now others can grow in their place.

This is not always the case, but yes, to the largest extent, these 100 companies have moved house leaving opportunity to others. Would you remain a customer of (example) Lloyds insurance when you have to connect to the Netherlands for your insurance? When the ‘main office’ gets involved all little quirks come out. We saw it in the past and we will see it in the future. A large block of people will vacate and seek local representation that is how people work. And it all sounds nice to have the new office in Amsterdam, but that market is pretty saturated and even if it was not, The Dutch have their own language, things will take a beating and those vacating British shores will face impact and reduced clientele, as well as diminished exposure and opportunity.

Feel free to remain in denial, just remember, you yourself are your own best example. For the bulk a lot will seem the same, you get your Netflix, you get your amazon and you get from Google what you need. These are true global players. Your services will alter, your goods will be localised and your financial needs will be locally catered. That was the path everyone ignored, it was the path that would always impact. Listening to European politicians was never a good idea and these players will face that certainty soon enough.

When we look at the quote: “The businesses are in finance, information technology, media, advertising, life sciences and health, the NFIA said” you think you have a good deal, but do you? Finance? Banks are local, mortgage tends to remain local and a whole host of options was always available globally, that never changed and those trying to skim more lucrative deals will soon learn that others will vie for the 69 million Brits needing services and they will adhere to local markets. IT, that will not change, it is an import market and moving out of the UK was never going to be a larger issue, yet losing a 13.5% market to other players is never a good idea. Those who relocated against those who opened another office for the time being are going to see things very differently soon enough and once these 100 companies see that the shift out of the EU will start to pay off much better in years 3 and 4 for the UK. At that point the momentum in the plus will start stronger and that results in better investments and stronger needs for these 69 million consumers. The problem is that once out of the UK these players will find it much harder to get deals done as there is no local representation. It will be a lot more expensive to get and retain British customers. The lessons learned the hard way 35 years earlier will rear its ugly head once more.

More important, the additional Stimulus cannot be pushed onto the UK so the other member states will have to pays for that, taking the UK out of the decision stream allowed for that change and now a large chunk of that €3,000,000,000,000 is now all on the other players (mostly Germany, France and Italy) and they will not like that one bit.

Yes, I acknowledge that there are some situations that have an optional advantage, but the larger extend falls away as those people are truly global and moving out of the UK merely implies that 13.5% of the total EU customer base is now not on their income path, it needs to be an alternative path with jumps, kicks, levels and springs. It lowers their revenue margin giving them additional worry down the road to please their shareholders and that is beside the point that they lost out on 13.5% of the entire EU market.

Now that the Queen has accepted the plan to suspend parliament, we see outrage, at this point a lot of 11^th hour plans for people to make some Bremain move are no longer an option, now the panic sets in and those who have not made a clear investigation on the opportunity that Brexit offers will run and jump the ship, only to learn that they forgot they needed swimming lessons to make it to another shore. So as we consider UK’s largest Joke (Jeremy Corbyn) with “Suspending Parliament is not acceptable, it is not on. What the prime minister is doing is a smash and grab on our democracy to force through a no deal“, to him the message is simple and rather clear: “You had three years to find a solution as the people had elected to Brexit. The childish games, long winded speeches and inconsiderate choices will now cost you dearly” , my personal response is even more apt when we consider the Sun with “Jeremy Corbyn ‘plots coalition of chaos’ as he softens terms for Remainer pact to block No Deal Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn is leading pro-Remain talks with opposition parties to block a No Deal Brexit” only two days ago. As I personally see it, it was a childish attempt to stop Brexit from happening. The math is actually simple. The got nowhere in three years, that means that they are incapable of getting anything done, or they merely wanted to stare Brexit to death, neither option was acceptable and it is time for everyone to accept the stupidity of UK Labour. In all this the EU has acted like a petulant child for the longest time and now that Brexit, optional no-deal Brexit becomes a fact the larger players will have figured out that 69 million consumers are important. The people who vacated the UK whilst nothing was a given have given up their jobs to others, others who will now feel the caress of having some decent money. It is not a great place, but a better place and as the economy takes off as unemployment levels drops with a larger skip, the math of deficit also changes to the favour of the UK coffers. there are more impacts, not all positive, but to a larger extent the UK will have a stronger position in year two and it only reinforces the options for years three and four, making larger waves in decimating debts whilst the EU will get a truckload of additional debts soon thereafter.

It was always about dimensionality and those who could see past the simple top line that he media was hiding behind. The status for the UK will not change overnight, but it will change for the better soon enough and once those running rats (a ships reference) figure that out that they changed a passenger liner for a sinking barge, at that point will we see an interesting demonstration in entertainment and long winded speech wankers (for lack of a better term).

In my view, there is one small additional truth, Jeremy Corbyn might become the Caretaker PM, but merely a ‘Catetaker Pro Mortuarium’, a cemetery where he left the cadavers of his own short sighted stupidity and good luck to him weeding out those graves, it will be a full time task. I wonder how many large corporations are willing to stand behind Jeremy Corbyn whilst we know that those players are only in it to extent the status quo of their required greed. Who could ever support that stage when they can clearly see all the players and what they really care for?

Tag Archives: Euronews

Thoughts

When perception is the brand

Dimensionality

Recent Posts

Archives