Argy Strike Is On: My Thoughts
Argy farmers have begun a four day strike ahead of talks with the government scheduled for Feb 24th. Just as in last year's dispute farmers will halt the movement of grains and livestock.
The hastily arranged talks are a "ploy" thrown together at the last minute in a transparent attempt to hold them off striking for as long as possible, they say.
So they've finally woken up then?
Last year's four month long dispute sparked demonstrations, roadblocks and widespread food hoarding. I get a feeling that the dispute will be far more serious this time round.
With inflation unofficially running at 30% and reports of up to a million head of cattle lost to drought in the last few months, how much food is there left to hoard in Argentina, and can the public afford it?
The chances of anything being resolved anytime soon are probably rather slim as the government need the money they get from export taxes, whether they are fair or not is a different matter. It's a huge source of revenue that they can't afford to let go.
It reminds me somewhat of one of those useless management courses you get sent on sometimes. What the hell are you talking about Nogger?
Well I got sent on one once, about ten of us went, and we were split into two teams and set a "task" (Wikipedia: task - completely pointless exercise dreamed up to waste time by a "consultant" on a fat hourly rate).
The gist of this task was that team one were told that they had a manufacturing company making widgets at a unit cost of say £100/widget. The business was going down the tubes and they needed an order fast. But there was no point in selling below £100/each or they were just losing more money.
Team two had a business manufacturing a product that used widgets as a component part. They had a large order on the table for their head product. They too were losing money fast and needed to take this large order to keep going. The only trouble was they'd end up losing money on the deal if they paid us more than £50/widget.
We were then put into a room together and told to thrash out a deal.
That's pretty much the same brief that the two sides of the Argy dispute have in front of them next week.
The hastily arranged talks are a "ploy" thrown together at the last minute in a transparent attempt to hold them off striking for as long as possible, they say.
So they've finally woken up then?
Last year's four month long dispute sparked demonstrations, roadblocks and widespread food hoarding. I get a feeling that the dispute will be far more serious this time round.
With inflation unofficially running at 30% and reports of up to a million head of cattle lost to drought in the last few months, how much food is there left to hoard in Argentina, and can the public afford it?
The chances of anything being resolved anytime soon are probably rather slim as the government need the money they get from export taxes, whether they are fair or not is a different matter. It's a huge source of revenue that they can't afford to let go.
It reminds me somewhat of one of those useless management courses you get sent on sometimes. What the hell are you talking about Nogger?
Well I got sent on one once, about ten of us went, and we were split into two teams and set a "task" (Wikipedia: task - completely pointless exercise dreamed up to waste time by a "consultant" on a fat hourly rate).
The gist of this task was that team one were told that they had a manufacturing company making widgets at a unit cost of say £100/widget. The business was going down the tubes and they needed an order fast. But there was no point in selling below £100/each or they were just losing more money.
Team two had a business manufacturing a product that used widgets as a component part. They had a large order on the table for their head product. They too were losing money fast and needed to take this large order to keep going. The only trouble was they'd end up losing money on the deal if they paid us more than £50/widget.
We were then put into a room together and told to thrash out a deal.
That's pretty much the same brief that the two sides of the Argy dispute have in front of them next week.
