#corporate negligence

[eaglesnick]

“There is an increasing sense of what can be called legal pollution."   Thomas Ehrlich

Just a few weeks ago the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs issued a government paper claiming:

“Government cracks down on bonuses for water company bosse. Water bosses are set to be banned from receiving bonuses if a company has committed serious criminal breaches, the Environment Secretary has announced today.” (GOV.UK: 11/02/24)

Figures out today (27/03/24) confirm that 2023 was the worse year for sewage spills on record.

“Figures from the Environment Agency show that there were 477,972 discharges from England’s 14,000 storm overflows in 2023, a 59 per cent increase from the year prior. In total, over 3.5 million hours of sewage spills occurred in 2023, more than double the 1.7 million hours recorded in 2022.”  ( CITYA.M: 27/03/24)

It will be interesting to see how many, if any, water company bosses are actually denied their bonuses this year. I suspect that this DOUBLING of sewage discharges into our waterways and onto our beaches will be explained away as unavoidable and therefore perfectly legal.

As such we, the public, will be made to pay for the much needed investment to improve our sewage disposal systems.

“Water companies will invest a record 14.4 billion – the highest ever in a single year – to help ensure the security of our water supply in the future and significantly reduce the amount of sewage in rivers and seas...the funds raised by increased water bills are guaranteed only to fund improvements in our water and sewage systems." (Water UK: 02/02/24)

To add insult to injury, it will be we the consumer who will be charged extra to fix the problems caused by years of under-investment by the water companies.

Last year alone £1.4bn was paid out to shareholders in the form of dividends.

And since 1991:

“England's privatised water firms paid £57bn in dividends…nearly half the sum they spent on maintaining and improving the countries pipes and treatment plants.” (Guardian: 01/07/20)

In other words, if the greedy water companies had paid a little less in  dividends and a little more on upgrading the system we would have been spared the 3.5 million hours of raw sewage spillage last year and the  massive rise in water bills that is come.

[gabelish]

Once Again I Am Reminding People About The Real Story Of The McDonald’s Hot Coffee Case

In 1992, 79-year-old Stella Liebeck bought a cup of takeout coffee at a McDonald’s drive-thru in Albuquerque and spilled it on her lap. She sued McDonald’s and a jury awarded her nearly $3 million in punitive damages for the burns she suffered.

Typical reaction: Isn’t coffee supposed to be hot? And McDonald’s didn’t pour the coffee on her, she spilled it on herself! Besides, she was driving the car and wasn’t paying attention.

Now for the facts:

Mrs. Liebeck was not driving when her coffee spilled, nor was the car she was in moving. She was the passenger in a car that was stopped in the parking lot of the McDonald’s where she bought the coffee. She had the cup between her knees while removing the lid to add cream and sugar when the cup tipped over and spilled the entire contents on her lap.

The coffee was not just “hot,” but dangerously hot. McDonald’s corporate policy was to serve it at a temperature that could cause serious burns in seconds. Mrs. Liebeck’s injuries were far from frivolous. She was wearing sweatpants that absorbed the coffee and kept it against her skin. She suffered third-degree burns (the most serious kind) and required skin grafts on her inner thighs and elsewhere.

Liebeck’s case was far from an isolated event. McDonald’s had received more than 700 previous reports of injury from its coffee, including reports of third-degree burns, and had paid settlements in some cases.

Read the rest here.

[changeling6]

Ferris Wheel

Lyrics

Ferris Wheel is part of The Spiraling State Fair and the main theme of the song is corporate negligence and greed.

First Verse

The first verse alludes to the laissez faire restrictions that governments place on certain topics. In this instance, it refers to amusement park rides. The "rope of sand" idiom refers to unreliable bonds and how corporations constantly find loopholes to get away with selling dangerous products. Further along in the first verse, the POV shifts to a park guest taking in the amount of hazards in the park; stuff that can easily be fixed by a corporation with lots of money to provide safety. The last phrase of the verse refers to the hubris of man particularly negligent CEOs that gain lots of money and influence without care for the harm that cause.

Bridge

The bridge refers once again to hubris by pointing out that people don't need amusement parks and thus the companies involved should take as much time as necessary to make sure the rides are safe. But however the companies care more about money and the result is people going to an amusement park for a good time and becoming critically injured or duing from a preventable accident.

Chorus (particularly the extended chorus)

The chorus discusses the trauma that victims and their families suffer when a preventable accident occurs. The trauma follows you, you lose your loved ones, you receive a life-changing injury or physical trauma. The chorus also describes the reliance on accuracy and safety from corporations. When you go somewhere like an airport or an amusement park, you rely on the safety of the employees and the companies involved, but a preventable accident causes immense trauma and destroys your trust. The line "someone won't be coming home to me" is supposed to put the focus on the victims, to shove their grief right into your face.

Second Verse

The second verse refers to the safety measures around today such as the E-Stop button but still emphasizes the impact of human error. You have to ignore a lot of signs that an emergency is happening in order for someone to die on a rollercoaster.

[romancescams]

Zelle Payment Scams

[lighthouse-system]

Look at that, Oceangate is trying to scrub themselves off the internet and pretend that what they did never happened.

[twotriickhoofbea2t]

I think being a CEO is bad for you mentally, actually. I think that level of removal from the common man warps your brain into something terrible and alien. I think it actively makes people worse.

[depressedraisin]

watching this miniseries abt the bhopal gas tragedy rn. and wow. usamerican capitalism is the one indisputable villain in all of this who could've guessed right

[buniyaad]

had to stop myself from sending an email earlier bc i was not happy. gonna have to have a convo in-person to give the feedback, but like, if shit don’t improve, it’s going in writing.

[immawraffle]

Reactions to Hawke Specializing as a Blood Mage

Wait, wait, wait, I’ve figured out why nobody reacts to Hawke using Blood Magic in DA2!

DA2 is told in the context of Varric being interrogated by Cassandra, a Seeker of Truth — essentially a Templar in all but name.

Nobody mentions or reacts to it bc Varric, notorious unreliable narrator and Hawke’s best friend, isn’t about to throw Hawke under the bus by outing them as a Maleficar to Chantry authorities.

[muninnhuginn]

Mixed feelings about accidentally figuring out mysteries or plot points in media through sheer pattern recognition + law of conservation of detail. Feels somehow like I'm cheating rather than figuring things out myself but at the same time I guess story points and tropes are all part of the story structure so if you happen to read it correctly then all you're doing is using the surrounding framework to narrow things down?

[kingdom-dance]

When people in education complain about the difficulties in their job and some 22 year old corporate ding-dong who works for some massive tech company sending emails and taking naps mid workday and gets paid 6 figures tells them “well you knew what you were getting into!”like if I knew I could get paid to be a useless twat in an office I would have chosen that career path dipshit

[panicinthestudio]

How forests flood rivers, An investigative documentary on slash by John Campbell, March 4, 2023

We drove in the long way - via State Highway 35, through Te Araroa, Ruatoria, Tokomaru Bay and Tolaga Bay.

Everywhere we went, there was wood. 

It's called slash - the waste wood left behind by the forestry industry after pine trees have been harvested. 

In rivers. On farms. On the coastline. Piled up outside people's homes. Everywhere. 

In total, we spent 19 days in the region, talking to people, filming, covering the damage of two cyclones for 1 News, and observing the impacts of this debris. The more we saw, the more damage we realised it was doing. 

People are exhausted by it. 

It’s a big and complex issue, not only in Gisborne.

1News

[ocdhuacheng]

Idk like the despair i feel whenever im reminded of the pathetic covid prevention measures everywhere is astronomical

[vampiiric]

new legal eagle... yeesh

[ask-tiberius-cadell]

I am having a time right now. Goodnight, I hope.

[serialunaliver]

comment on a video about boeing saying something more people should be aware of: corporations do a cost-benefit analysis on human life regularly. lack of serious consequence for corporate negligence will always result in that analysis determining the deaths are worth the profit.