Does Ryanair's CEO actually insult his customers?

Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair recently went on-air for a live Q&A chat on Twitter. Irate Ryanair fliers made known their dissatisfaction - and true to form, Mr O'Leary offended and insulted a large number of them!

So how does he manage to run an airline without having any respect or consideration for air-passengers?

You may have a point if you think that people are psychologically prepared to endure hardship and insults as long as they can fly cheap. But I think the real answer is simpler still. After reading the many smart and well meaning comments on a related Linkedin article gives me the feeling that people misunderstand the meaning of "customer" in this case.

MICHAEL O'LEARY KNOWS THAT THE PASSENGERS ON RYANAIR ARE NOT HIS "CUSTOMERS"!

Allow me to explain... The Ryanair business model is almost entirely based on financial engineering.

According to this unoffical September 2013 analysis, "Ryanair flies on (government) subsidies and tax discounts." The brand's belligerant stance hides a highly complex financial structure that is designed to handle legal battles and maximise tax benefits.

In fact Ryanair, based in Ireland, paid zero net tax in 2009.

Ryanair's real revenue, and the multi-millions that Michael O'Leary rakes-in annually, come from Europe's political and bureaucratic setup. The air tickets, in-flight sales and on-ground charges paid by fliers are simply a means to reduce operating costs.

Now it's easy to see why O'Leary can insult passengers (end user) with impunity, isn't it? The passenger is not the real "customer" - and he does not matter in the grand scheme of profit-making. Ryanair's real benefactors are the ones that make the civil aviation laws and the giant tax-funded loopholes that O'Leary and his accountants fly their airplanes through.

This is the exact same thing with people who think they are "customers" of social networking sites. Sorry, you are only the end user. And in a way, you are the product being sold to actual paying customers - the advertisers.

The Biggest Scam In The History of Mankind

"Currency" or what we term "money" is a fake construct.

IT DOES NOT EXIST!

Our financial system is actually a giant mechanism that is designed to channellise the wealth created by human effort to the ruling class and their cronies.

This 30-minute video explains the truth (and lies) behind the scam of currency creation in any nation with a central bank.

See it. Share it.

Sailing across the world's largest sewer: The Pacific Ocean

"The Ocean is broken" is a must-read article in the Newcastle Herald. (Just make sure it's not during mealtime.)

The article recounts the experiences of Ivan Macfadyen, a yachtsman from Newcastle, Australia. Ten years ago, in 2003, Ivan had sailed from Melbourne to Osaka. Earlier this year, he set sail on exactly the same course - sailing the Pacific Ocean from Melbourne to Osaka - and then on to San Francisco.

The following is what he said about what he saw in the Pacific Ocean.

"I've done a lot of miles on the ocean in my life and I'm used to seeing turtles, dolphins, sharks and big flurries of feeding birds. But this time, for 3000 nautical miles there was nothing alive to be seen.

"We hardly saw any living things. We saw one whale, sort of rolling helplessly on the surface with what looked like a big tumour on its head. It was pretty sickening.

"[...] it felt as if the ocean itself was dead."

More than 2 years ago, I had posted about the giant floating continents of festering garbage in the Pacific Ocean...

Giant "plastic soups" of garbage stretch over hundreds, if not thousands, of square kilometres of open ocean. The largest of these is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Estimates on size range from 700,000 square kilometres to more than 15,000,000 square kilometres, i.e. ranging from 0.41% to 8.1% of the size of the Pacific Ocean - a body of water that makes up nearly 50% of the 'blue' in the 'blue planet'.

There is a floating 'plastic continent' in the Indian Ocean and another one in the North Atlantic too.

From the very beginning, human civilization has thrived on the banks of rivers and the shores of oceans - which are presently bubbling with chemicals, carcinogens and worse. Well, at least, we have the land...

Oh, wait! We've f-ed that up as well.

I hope Sir Richard Branson will spare me a one-way second-class ticket to one of the moons of Jupiter.