Maplins in Administration!

[Juliand]

Didn't hear this on the news, but apparently it was announced the same day as Toys R Us. Went to my local store in Bournemouth and was surprised to see the notices in the window. Still trading at the moment, with some minor discounting, which probably brings their prices down to what you can find elsewhere. Spent £50 on LED bulbs as I've been meaning to upgrade from halogens for a while.  Tried one out in the kitchen, and when I put the halogen light back in, it had blown - that's  halogen for you (wanted to do all 8 when I had more time, and just the one looked odd on its own, doh!)

I always found Maplins quite expensive, but it was an interesting place to look around, while wifey went clothes shopping (It's in the main shopping area in Bournemouth, but some are on industrial estates etc). Another one bites the dust! My kids loved Toys R Us, back in the day as well.

[Dan_FR]

Yeah I saw this the other day. Not surprising really, always massively overpriced.

Be surprised if there are many high street stores left in a few years time, other than clothes stores and similar where you need to see/buy in person. It's much more convenient to have it delivered for less than you would pay on the high street

[pudding]

Maplin currently do the genuine Apple USB C 29w chargers for £35 instead of the £50 you pay everywhere else, so that's a good bargain.   If you have an iPhone 8 or newer, or new gen ipad etc, it will charge them up a heck of a lot faster than the freebie chargers.

As for the decline of high street shops, it's quite sad if it's what you grew up with.  I remember when Radio Shack / Tandy stores disappeared almost over night!  Stores like that were great for building speaker projects, buying single LEDs or resistors, capacitors etc instead of packs of 50 minimum, and you can't beat tactile shopping, imo, clothes especially.  I also miss the days of going into Weigh and Save and paying for 5 cornflakes with a £50 note, just for sh1ts and giggs. 

I'm all for progress, but not if it's unsustainable. The roads are already clogged up with zero hour delivery people ferrying goods to and from the online mega warehouses, and it's going to get a lot worse. 

Still, everything goes round in circles.  People are so immersed in their own digital bubbles these days, they're forgetting what it's like to be human.  Can't maintain eye contact, can't string a cohesive sentence together etc etc.   All the excitement of 'the cloud' and 'AI' making 1000s of people redundant, the data up there will be hacked and or stolen, and then IT will come back 'in house' again, and people will miss fingering the apples in Tescos, so shops will come back.   FFS, humans never learn and it's all more predictable than taxes and death.

As a species, we're doomed to failure.  A mega virus is just around the corner to wipe half of us out to restore the balance again.  Nature always wins.  We're f'cked 

I am of course not entirely serious, t'was just a Ricky Gervais style rant...... but there is elements of truth in it 

[Pesky jones]

I think as long as there is a human in charge we will just continue to shoot ourselves in the foot. Is it not obvious that automating business’s to make more money is not sustainable? Do the people just not care as they won’t be around for the repercussions? It shows the extent of greed really.

I agree with Pudding anyway, something will happen and either wipe us out or at least initiate the cull we are overdue and it will become irrelevant. 

[doylebros]

Not sure what way I see that AI, meaning good or bad for Joe Public but Stephen Hawkins didn't see it's as a positive for humanity, anyway the buzz phrase is where currently a stage 4.0

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166361517301902

[pudding]

Historically that's what wars have been for.  Natures population control because humans had built up a resistance to viruses.  Humans are pretty arrogant in thinking we own this planet, but we are merely tenants.  Our day will be over soon enough. Not long after we've exhausted every natural resource. 

So yeah, if it's not a mega virus, Disputin + Slim Thong + Tree Stump will see to the planet's demise between them.    With global warming rapidly advancing, who knows what nasty diseases have been lying dormant in the frozen wastelands of Siberia and Antarctica, ready to warm up and kill us all off.

In terms of human history, the millions killed by Hitler and diseases like smallpox, cholera, ebola etc are all very recent.  The planet is actively trying to remove us all.  We're all f'cked

Anyway, yeah, Maplin......crying shame that 

[Roczen]

I read the VC's that bought toys 'r' us a few years ago somehow racked it up with $5 billion of debt, including $0.5 billion off-shore. I'm no economist but that sounds sightly dodgy - yet completely legal in this day and age. I'm sure the owners paid themselves a bucket load of cash during this time.

[Dave J]

Was that the American side of the company? I read the UK MD had his salary more than doubled when the company was making a loss. There was a letter from Frank Fields MP to Stephen Knights (MD of Toys R Us) in Dec 2017 asking why the MD's salary had been increased from £356k in 2014, to £1m in 2015, to £1.3m in 2016 at the time of significant losses (under the 'management' of MD Roger McLaughlan). 

The UK side was in trouble for many years too, and I've read of funds being transferred overseas. My first 'proper' job was in Inventory Control at Toys 'R Us HQ in the UK - it was ok at first, but I realised there was absolutely no opportunity for progression. Stale management, and aged Directors even back in 2000. I've never worked in a company since where staff have been shouted at in the way they were there. Very backwards, and they just didn't move with the times. I do feel sorry for the staff outside the HQ as they couldn't really see how rotten the place was.

Their own lax internal audit processes let this cretin steal £3.6m;

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1290821/Sex-mad-Toys-R-Us-boss-Paul-Hopes-stole-millions-pay-girls-sports-cars.html

I worked near him & his purchase ledger team on my temp job before going full time - the way he spoke to his (female) team was absolutely disgusting. Every other word was a curse word. Absolutely no respect, and just a horrible person. I was not surprised to read of his demise, and no surprise his true character was revealed. 

Still, as Pudding says - it is all greed & self importance. People need more humility. We are here for a short time and have no idea what is around the corner. The human race is too arrogant these days. Think we have conquered the world? Absolutely no chance! The world was here before us, and will be after us - the latest cold snap just shows how vulnerable we could be. Running out of gas in x number of days? Scary stuff....

[pudding]

Blimey, I didn't know the Toys R Us story was that bad.  Glad he's serving time. 

What amazes me is how he and other useless morons like him end up in positions of such power and wealth.   Clearly the interview process is flawed in weeding out incompetent fools.  I think candidates for very senior positions need much stricter vetting and 6 months probation to prove they are worth a £1M+ salary.  And then kick them out if they are the modern breed of over promising, under delivering all talk no action types I see on a daily basis. 

I learned the other day that GoPro have almost bankrupted themselves as well, and are currently 'open for sale'.  Again, useless management was the cause.  Wasting money on NFL TV adverts, trying to become a media company instead of sticking to their core product, and again, insufficient market research.  People want to snap, tag & post instantly these days, but with the GoPro you had to faff around downloading the pics to a computer first.  They could easily have evolved their cameras to do that, but no, instead they chose to let their operating costs balloon out of control.   Waterproof cases for smartphones was the death knell for them.  They just didn't see it coming, or were too arrogant to take the threat seriously.

But as ever with Bloomin' beings, the minority f'ck things up for the majority.   The animal and plant kingdoms will be over the moon when humans become extinct.

[kam760]

Even with their closing down sale they are still expensive