Lots not to celebrate regarding Apple’s wealth

I AM not celebrating the news that Apple has become the first trillion dollar company. That is an obscene amount of money when oneinnine people do not have enough to eat.

Companies like Apple contribute to the massive global inequality that results from profit above all else.

Apple has taken advantage of taxpayerfunded research in the United States and then outsourced production to countries with minimum pay and conditions. It uses creative accounting to avoid taxes.

Many of its products are difficult to repair or update, and Apple’s frequent updates encourage people to throw away stillfunctioning devices, participating in wasteful consumerism and adding to the growing mountain of ewaste.

Apple might produce the latest technology, but its business practices are rooted in the past. The 21st century demands businesses that take responsibility for paying their taxes, look after the workers that make their goods and reduce unnecessary waste.

I’ll celebrate when Apple is a responsible global citizen.

Jenny Olsen

Broad Bay

Restructure phrasing

WITH regard to your editorial (ODT, 4.8.18), I am rather bemused by the following conclusion: ‘‘University leadership and staff themselves face the challenge of making the most of the current predicament.’’

To me, this reads as if the current situation (low morale and disenchantment) is a desirable outcome that needs to be built upon. Ergo, create even lower morale and even more disenchantment.

I would have thought that any of the following — ‘‘rising above’’, ‘‘recovering from’’, ‘‘extricating themselves from’’ — would have been better phrasing and would clarify the enormous task facing the university if, indeed, it seeks to win back the loyalty and selfsacrifice it has enjoyed from staff in the past. Pat Duffy

Opoho ...................................

BIBLE READING: All we like sheep have gone astray: we have all turned to our own way. — Isaiah 53:6.