Hornby and global warming

Fratesci in Brazil isn't too bad, and if they were making models for a foreign market they could probably afford to make a much better quality model.

Reducing prices will tend to increase sales. So if manufacturing costs can be reduced, then there can be an incentive to reduce the end product price as well rather than simply pocketing the difference. It's all about what the market expects to pay for the product (perceived value) as well as quantity of sales and maximising profit margins. If you can sell more of a product at a lower margin, then you can make more money in the long run than selling fewer at a higher margin. And, given that manufacturing costs are often quantity-dependent (it costs less per unit to make 1,000 items than it does per unit to make 100), the value to the manufacturer of increasing sales is magnified.

It is, therefore, usually in the interests of manufacturers to allow customers to benefit from lower manufacturing costs, as it will benefit them financially to do so. The marketing-speak comes in pretending that the motivation for doing so is concern for the customers, when in fact it's all about increasing sales and hence incrasing profits :-)

Mark

Greg Procter said the following on 20/02/2007 21:07:

You beat me to it. Shrub shouts, Blair jumps!

simon said the following on 20/02/2007 23:32:

In geological timescales, we're still coming out of the last ice age - of course the global temperature is going up. What gets me is that the global warming scaremongers keep telling us that as the polar icecaps melt, the Gulf Stream will be pushed south so the UK will get colder. Well, the icecaps are melting, and winters seem to be getting warmer. So much for that theory!

John Turner said the following on 20/02/2007 23:59:

I thought all this "recycled" rubbish was just ending up in landfill sites in China.

Video conferencing seems to be a maturing technology

Mark Goodge said the following on 21/02/2007 07:46:

Exactly. At work under the previous MD sales were dropping. Therefore overall profits were dropping. The solution? Increase prices. Sales dropped further (you don't say!). Just before he retired the company was at a pretty low point. Since then, we've lowered prices, customers are returning and overall profits are increasing. All that seems bleedin' obvious to me, but it obviously wasn't to the old MD who was otherwise a very good businessman.

And, no doubt, free to restrict supply to artificially inflate prices and fleece the customer.

MBQ

You need to do a little basic research instead of believing what the media, the greens and flawed research had us believe. DDT, when used appropriately, still is a wonderful thing. That's why it is once again being used to fight malarial mosquitoes in Africa, potentially saving millions of lives. Now, how many people actually died as a result of DDT use?

MBQ

Simple, to gain a competitive advantage. Companies do it all the time. Why do you think PCs are so cheap nowadays?

MBQ

He probably learnt his trade in Kim's pre-1962 utopia.

MBQ

Is it true Hornby are relaesing a new starter set, "The Global Warming Gravy Train"? complete with vegetable oil powered class 60 pulling a train of containers to the recycling depot.

MBQ

In some cases these are the very same scaremongers who, 30 years ago, were telling us all that we'd never be able to feed the population of the planet, oil would run out by the year 2000 and that the next ice- age was coming.

What's the difference between researchers (who are always assumed to be biased) in the pay of, say, Exxon-Mobil who stand to make billions from selling oil products and researchers (who the media always assume to be unbiased) in the pay of the government who stand to gain billions from green taxes (ie the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change)?

Sorry, it's not a joke. I hope the ansewr is obvious.

Anyone interested in the way science is becoming seriously debased through political interference should read the archives and follow some of the links at

's not just climate change. Health, education, everything. The comment earlier in the thread about Britain slowly becoming a third world economy is not too wide of the mark.

MBQ

snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com said the following on 21/02/2007 09:18:

We always used to joke that one day he'll join the 20th Century. The

21st is one step too far :-)

Nobody was forced to buy the products of a particular manufacturer. If people didn't want to pay Hornby prices they could always buy Triang or Playcraft instead.

(kim)

That depends on whether the demand curve is "elastic" or "inelastic". Reducing prices beyond a certain point will not increase sales by any great amount but it will reduce profit, eventually to the point where it is no longer economic to manufacture at all.

(kim)

The quality of life in Britain in 1962 was considerably better for most people than it is today.

(kim)

Nor does it mean it's wrong. Even the glitterati get things right once in a while. :-)

True. It just has never happened this fast before. The kind of temperature rise recorded in the last half century or so was previously recorded as occurring over centuries and even millennia. Global warming in and of itself is not the problem. (In fact, we'd be dead without it.) But if climate change happens too fast, there will be rather unpleasant effects as ecosystems and weather patterns adapt (if that's the word) too quickly.

It's interesting that most Canadians are now worried about the environment whereas a few years ago they expressed the same comforting generalisatians as you and others in this thread have done. Why? Because the glaciers in the Rockies have shrunk by a quarter or more since the

1950s. Because the Arctic sea ice has shrunk - there are now places in the Arctic where there is no winter sea ice anymore. Because the permafrost is melting. Because there was a real possibility that the ice roads in N. Ontario couldn't be built this year (they have been, and with luck they'll be usable for a about 4 weeks, as compared to 10 weeks or more as late as the early 1980s.) Because the seasonal changes in critters and plants that respond to light are going out of sync with those that respond to temperature -- one side effect is poor pollination of berry plants, which means less food for the bears, which means more bears raiding rubbish dumps and back gardens. Because invading insects that used to die off over winter in Alberta and Northern Ontario are now surviving and breeding -- and eating trees they never had a chance to eat before. IOW, we are now seeing within a lifetime the kinds of changes that used to be seen over several generations or longer.

You people who live in more even-tempered climes aren't seeing the effects as quickly as we who live in more extreme climates. But you will.

(Canadians talk about the weather a lot, because by the time you've made an observation, it's changed, so you have still more to talk about. While having a coffee and a delicious albeit unhealthy concoction of fats and carbohydrates at Tim Horton's, bien sur. :-))

I don't mind taxation. I mind what some of it's spent on. But since my fellow taxpayers tend to approve spending that I disapprove of and vice versa, I guess we'll just have to live and let live. :-)

But this thread is OT enough already. Kindly read my question on BR Mark

1 carriages posted under another subject.

wrote

You're quite right, DDT is now sprayed internally onto the walls of buildings in areas where malaria is prevalent - apparantly the residue kills mosquitos instantly on impact.

I read somewhere that although DDT can collect inside the human body, it's presence is pretty much harmless. It does however have an impact on the bird population although whether that's because the insects on which they feed are eliminated or not is not clear. It's suggested that it can cause a thinning of egg shells, thus hampering reproduction.

John.