Young Min Jo's Blog

This article (click here to view) is a very straightforward article where it talks about how Britain’s attempts to close the gender pay gap has hit a stone wall or “grinding to a halt” the article calls it. It states that girls in general outperform boys in any/every ethic backgrounds, however girls earn a significant amount less than the male do (as shown in the graph above). So why is this? Well here are some reasons:
1) Difference in Productivity: the Marginal Revenue Product (MRP) theory states that it is the workers productivity that determines the wage. In heavy manufacturing industries, though its only a small percentage of jobs that are applied, male productivity is likely to be higher.
2) Discrimination: Employers could be less willing to promote female workers and/or pay lower due to discrimination
3) Women might take career breaks for children: Many laws state that women can be secured of her job, whilst having a child. However, taking a break from work means women are less likely to get promoted. Also, women of childbearing age, may be viewed as a liability.

How important is social networking sites to business’? Here’s an example. In the year 2008 Canadian folk singer, Dave Carroll was travelling with United Airlines when the baggage handlers damaged his $3,500 guitar. The airline refusing to compensate for the damage and the customer service not being helpful at all led him to create a song about it (released on the 9^th July), “United Breaks Guitars”. In just 3 days, it had been watched half a million times; today, 9.3million views. If you read the comments under the video, there is more criticism against United Airlines that people post. This video caused United to have a massive public relations crisis. Thousands of unhappy customers are bombarding them with frustration and anger.
With this in mind, now how important is social networking sites to businesses? Well the answer is simple, VERY. Nowadays every tweet, every video, every blog post can cause immense amounts of damage to a company or its product. Through new technologies, one click away is the forward button to hundreds of friends. It’s a dramatic shift in consumer power. To survive the world of social media, companies have to throw away their old marketing playbook and have to develop ways to turn social media to their side in order to be successful.

The article (click here to view article) is very biased towards BP. This article only talks about the negative externalities BP has created through its course; it does not provide all the positive things that BP has provided for us. Working in an oil rig is a life threatening job; therefore people do die in their jobs and its part of the job. “In 2006… BP now has a total wind generation capacity of nearly 15,000 megawatts… sufficient to provide power to approximately 15,000,000 typical American households…”BP may have caused the Gulf’s worst oil spills in history but it also is the largest generators of wind power in the world. In addition, the oil spill this great was not expected, it could have happened to any other oil companies out in the World. BP was just unlucky. At depths of 4,593 feet down the sea, divers were unable to dive and scientists had to rely heavily on technology. Therefore this cost them more time and more money before fully putting the cap on. A chain of unlucky events have caused BP a great toll.

Ryanair is Europe’s largest low cost carrier. Would you pay more for comfort or fly in crammed seats for a very cheap price? Well, Ryanair is considering implementing the new “saddle” seat named the “SkyRider“. The new SkyRider basically allows less legroom (7 inches shorter than the already crammed 30inch seats) hence increasing the number of passengers Ryanair could take up into the air. The seat allows passengers to sit at an angle making their weight taken on by their legs.
Though the Italian design firm, Aviointeriors Group, justify that the seat is comfortable for journeys up to 3 hours, I disagree with this notion. The picture is very deceiving in the sense that they only show passengers in the front seat. Examined closely, the seats on the second row are very close to the seats infront. Furthermore, as the seats are more “vertical” reinforced seat belts have to be used to withstand high Gs in the air; in addition firmly stuck to the ground so that it doesn’t fall on each other when the plane crashes. Perhaps it isn’t such a good idea for Ryanair to change their seats as the plane will have to be expensively refurnished.

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