I'm rooting for Bezos. He transformed retail in America by offering free and quick returns on everything not satisfactory. I saw him on TV when Amazon was just beginning to expand from selling books. He said we encourage everyone to buy two pair of the same style of shoes from us instead of one, and then send us back the one that doesn't fit. And we will arrange the pick up for you and no charge for return shipping.

I don't give a fig what he's worth or how much taxes he pays. As long as the wonder store remains online offering me convenience and lots of customer reviews.

50 minutes ago, Matthew Kane said:

To be honest, anyone that had anything to do with the UK Recording Industry at that time was evading the excessive taxation, reason for artists like Bowie, Queen, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin etc setting up recording studios on Lake Montreux. For a while there the only ones making records in the UK where artists from the USA and Canada, anyone else from the UK got out.

That wasn't when Virgin was part of the recording industry, it was when they were a retail outlet selling records which they illegally bought off the freeport when they were products that had not had the import duty paid on them, which since Branson paid a lot less for, he was able to undercut other retail outlets such as Woolworths and other stores like that, since they all did pay the duty on stuff they sold. The fact that the products were LP records and cassettes which were the object of the import fraud is just really a coincidence given Virgin later got into being a record label; at the time they could just as easily have been chocolate biscuits or teapots. 

So that's not really the same as rock stars buggering off to a tax haven. And even if it was the same, the fact that other people are doing something illegal does not make it right for others to do so, and it is not a suitable defence for it. He was breaking the law and he got a very lenient fine for it owing to some family connections, which he readily agreed to pay because he knew the real figure for what he owed was far greater and he wanted to snuff it out before the matter was properly investigated.

6 minutes ago, Chock said:

That wasn't when Virgin was part of the recording industry, it was when they were a retail outlet selling records which they illegally bought off the freeport when they were products that had not had the import duty paid on them, which since Branson paid a lot less for, he was able to undercut other retail outlets such as Woolworths and other stores like that, since they all did pay the duty on stuff they sold. The fact that the products were LP records and cassettes which were the object of the import fraud is just really a coincidence given Virgin later got into being a record label; at the time they could just as easily have been chocolate biscuits or teapots. 

Savvy on his part, Oh well I think those guys at Apple got their start ripping off AT&T Long Distance, so not the first or the last with a shady start 🤣

Although Richie B's promotional stunt was not without some risks, it should be really good for his new space tourist business.

BTW, I think to actually earn your astronaut wings, you should be required to do at least one orbit around the Earth...   

I wish Europe including France had  these crazy (in the best sense of the word) entrepreneurs investing their money in the space race. Branson (he's a Brit but does his space business in the US), Musk, Bezos, Milner.  And I add the Israeli entrepreneurs behind the Beresheet moon lander.

I will not comment further as I would be entering political waters, just that we need to wake up. A new space age has begun. 

 

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

5 hours ago, Fielder said:

I'm rooting for Bezos. He transformed retail in America by offering free and quick returns on everything not satisfactory. I saw him on TV when Amazon was just beginning to expand from selling books. He said we encourage everyone to buy two pair of the same style of shoes from us instead of one, and then send us back the one that doesn't fit. And we will arrange the pick up for you and no charge for return shipping.

I don't give a fig what he's worth or how much taxes he pays. As long as the wonder store remains online offering me convenience and lots of customer reviews.

 

I admire you for stating that. Not a popular opinion. But yes, billionaires should pay their fair share of tax, and yes, some Amazon workers are apparently mistreated in some parts of the world. But we fail to mention enough what an incredible service it is, its always just the negatives. If you live where I do, Amazon are a godsend, and if you live on one of the smaller islands like Sark, Amazon is pretty much a vital service. 

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by martin-w

6 hours ago, Chock said:

based on illegally selling records, evading tax revenue due on them in order to undercut other high street shops.

 

I'm wondering how many other big companies got started that way. Probably the majority. Doesn't make it right, but what has he done since that's admirable? 37 Charites supported by Branson at last count. Plus an additional 40 causes supported. Non-profit "Unite" to encourage entrepreneurial ideas. He has pledged ten years of his companies profits to fight climate change, worth $3 billion. 40,000 blankest to refugees from Jordan and Kuwait, and much more. In fact his philanthropic deeds have been a thing since the age 17. So maybe we should balance his alleged wrongdoing with the stuff we know he has done that's good. He spends most of his time these days setting up "not for profit ventures" and raising millions for charity. So maybe we shouldn't be too critical. 

 

Quote

he actually asked his Virgin Airline staff to take an eight week unpaid holiday as a result of the shutdown of aviation operations in the UK, when he could have quite easily covered this with the furlough scheme

 

Maybe there are factors at work in a business sense that you and me are unware of? Just a suggestion. Like the fact he is only a 51% owner of Virgin Atlantic and the decisions on staffing are made by the board. 

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by martin-w

7 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

I take it a lot of people here don’t like Branson. What’s the beef people have with him?

He launched Mike Oldfield. That's enough for me to declare him a saint...

5 hours ago, overspeed3 said:

BTW, I think to actually earn your astronaut wings, you should be required to do at least one orbit around the Earth...

 

Don't think so, you just need to pass the Karman line set at 100 kilometres or 54 nautical miles. In the US its lower at 80 kilometres. Its a made up altitude though, there is obviously no hard line between atmosphere and space. In fact the Earths atmosphere can be defined as stretching all the way to the Moon. 😯

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by martin-w

8 hours ago, Chock said:

 Fédération Aéronautique Internationale defines the boundary of space as the Karman Line, which is actually 62 miles above the surface of the Earth

 

 

The US defines space as 80 kilometres, not the Karmen line at 100 kilometres. As he took of from the US, its defined as space in that nation. 👍 282,000 feet he reached. So  85.9 kilometres.

There's no real international agreement on the boundary of space. 

 

🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

 

 

Edited July 12, 20214 yr by martin-w

This discussion about whether they went to space or not, reminds me of a very vulgar expression we have in French, something about sodomizing lepidopters, but nastier. 

Come on ! They went 86 km up, 282 000 feet, they enjoyed weightlessness ! 

 

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

 

I'm wondering how many other big companies got started that way. Probably the majority. Doesn't make it right, but what has he done since that's admirable? 37 Charites supported by Branson at last count. Plus an additional 40 causes supported. Non-profit "Unite" to encourage entrepreneurial ideas. He has pledged ten years of his companies profits to fight climate change, worth $3 billion. 40,000 blankest to refugees from Jordan and Kuwait, and much more. In fact his philanthropic deeds have been a thing since the age 17. So maybe we should balance his alleged wrongdoing with the stuff we know he has done that's good. He spends most of his time these days setting up "not for profit ventures" and raising millions for charity. So maybe we shouldn't be too critical. 

I'm not the arbiter of whether anyone should forgive anyone. I merely answered a query about why some people don't like the guy which was asked on this thread.

Bezos is incredibly interesting guy.  Total Star Trek nerd and Space Geek.  My buddy and I always split an RV rental together at the race track.  We have someone send over a nice Class A Bus, we use it for the week then they come and get it.  It's a brilliant model!!  The point was my friend is also in charge of the equity fund Bezos is using for his airline.  They meet together regularly.  Jeff has flat out said Amazon was a means to an end.  He always wanted to go to space but couldn't make it as an astronaut so had to find another way to get there.  Hence Amazon.  Then entire company and all his worth is truly for him to be a space pioneer.  That was always the end goal.  

Incredible to think about and ultimately he will achieve his end goal.  I'm in awe and admiration of that focus and drive... 

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

 

 

The US defines space as 80 kilometres, not the Karmen line at 100 kilometres. As he took of from the US, its defined as space in that nation. 👍 282,000 feet he reached. So  85.9 kilometres.

 

That's only true since 2005, and NASA only really changed their designation to suit the US military. Prior to this, NASA used the FAI's 100 km designation for the start of space, which is why some of their X-15 pilots from the 1960s were posthumously given the status of Astronaut when at the time they had not been so regarded. Specifically, NASA changed its designation to remove the possibility that a mix of military and civilian personnel flying in the same NASA craft would potentially be inconsistently referred to as both having been, and not having been to space because the USAF uses the lower 80 km figure, which they tend to do because it means one or two of their atmospheric test aircraft can be touted as having 'been to space'.

Since the atmosphere is a gradient, it's not really possible to say exactly where it actually turns into 'space', although it's worth noting that most orbital objects have to be up at around 150 km altitude to be clear enough of atmospheric drag in order to be able to continue orbiting, and this is roughly the average altitude Sputnik 1 orbited at. Since most people regard Sputnik 1 as the first real spacecraft, this figure might be a more appropriate one. However, on the other side of the coin, objects coming down to Earth from space such as meteorites tend to start burning up at about 85 km altitude when they hit an appreciable amount of friction from the atmosphere, so maybe that could be a figure to use, although by the time they are burning up, they will of course have already been heated by the friction of contacting stuff above that altitude.

Whilst some people might suggest it doesn't really matter, it kind of does in legal terms, since if you're not in space in legal/agreed terms, then you are making an overflight of any country you pass overhead of, i.e. there's quite a difference between a Sputnik 1 passing over the US at 150 km altitude and a Tu-34 flying over the US at 20,000 feet snapping photographs of anything it likes. Where this sort of thing is concerned, Russia, USA , China, India etc (i.e. the nations which put up a fair bit of space junk) tend to use the FAI's 100 km designation as the limit, since most of their stuff in an elliptical orbit will never get to a perigee below that. 

Since the US now has a 'space force', this is one of the reason why its military is somewhat resistant to changing their own designation in this regard, but there have been several suggestions from other organisations, including the FAI, that they should make this an official internationally agreed thing (a meeting to discuss this was something which the FAI tried to promote a couple of years ago), but the US probably will have to do this at some point because of the potential for international incidents if they don't.

Hey, you could also be weightless in the Vomit Comet - but are you an astronaut?😝