This is a bit painful: I’d usually steer a million miles from linking the Daily Fail, bu there’s local content.<\/p>\n
If you drive along the Rugeley bypass (the A51\/A513 multiplex<\/a>), as I did last Sunday from the Stafford\/Milford direction, you can’t really miss two things: Rugeley Power Station<\/a>, and the huge Amazon “fulfilment centre” (i.e. a big shed).<\/p>\n This article I’m reluctantly linking is written in fairly typical Fail<\/a> style:<\/p>\n \nBetween a sooty power station and a brown canal on the edge of a small Midlands town, there is a long blue building that looks like a smear of summer sky on the damp industrial landscape.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n *[retch]* Where do they get these journos from?<\/p>\n but still has a bit of interest, and makes an interesting read just to hear about some of the organisation<\/a>. The way the staff are employed leaves something to be desired though: it being the all-too-common scene these days of temporary contracts and hire-and-fire. <\/p>\n This is letting light in on the magic a bit of course: to me it still is<\/em> magic that I can sit at home (or at work, or, well, within reason anywhere), and order stuff, and a few days later the magic pixies deliver it to me. Of course, the pixies are HGVs or Transits, ships, containers, railways and all the other infrastructure we barely think about (like this huge warehouse in Rugeley), and all the people, too- people on minimum wage, on short term contracts, and at risk of losing their job for going off sick, if the story is to be believed.<\/p>\n There’s a couple of further, better written articles I’ve found on this, but they’re US-based: The Price of Amazon’s Free Shipping<\/a>, and I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is all a good indicator of the way things are these days of course. Lots of hidden layers we don’t see, outsourcing, but (on a more positive note) some great use of tech. Tech that’s useful, rather than flashy. I’m still loving the idea that, in effect, stock gets dumped anywhere that it will fit, rather than a designated place, and just gets scanned as being there.<\/p>\n Amazon, like any big, successful business, has some practices you’d rather they didn’t have, but by god, the system works…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a bit painful: I’d usually steer a million miles from linking the Daily Fail, bu there’s local content. If you drive along the Rugeley bypass (the A51\/A513 multiplex), as I did last Sunday from the Stafford\/Milford direction, you can’t really miss two things: Rugeley Power Station, and the huge Amazon “fulfilment centre” (i.e. … Continue reading Urban Jungle<\/span>