The whole issue showed up Alan Sugar to be anti-intellectual.

Which shouldn't come as a surprise - but it was very clearly demonstrated that he has a prejudice against people with an academic background and who aren't afraid to use it.

It was a badly worded description and the paper item was a perfectly valid purchase based on the information provided.

I suspect the descriptions are left with enough wiggle room to allow the producers to manipulate things for maximum effect. To FIX things.

Sugar's childish behaviour shows him to be a very bitter little man who is jealous of those with an academic background. Not nice at all.

Of course it should have counted

Only a fool would think a drawing of a skeleton would suffice .

One of the stupidest decisions ever taken by an Apprentice candidate and both Felipe and Daniel should have been fired .

Well, I was comparing the bed example to the takeaway example, my point being that there is a reasonable assumption when buying something that it will be in a completed state, unless otherwise stated. If I bought a bed I'd expect it to be a fully functioning model at the point of purchase, just as I'd expect a take-away delivery to be cooked and hot. If it were flat-pack or self assembly, I'd expect this to be clearly stated. That was my point.


For me, the key word there is 'could'. It could have functioned in the same way as a plastic model, but it required several hours to assemble first. As I and others have said, they might have stood a chance if they'd put it together, so that it looked like a model of a skeleton.

Didn't you hear him? On this program he is the judge, jury and executioner.

My argument would be, where did Sugar get the £310 fine from ?

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourc...price&tbm=shop

Where do you think he got it from? £260 guide price + £50 fine = £310.

The guy in the shop where the other team bought a skeleton said it cost £260 so the guide price looks pretty spot on.

Beds can come assembled or (in most cases due to size) unasssembled. If you go to a takeaway, there is an intrinsic expectation that the pizza will be cooked, as takeaways don't sell frozen food. If, on the other hand, I said to someone: "I want to eat a pizza tonight, bring me one", and they bought me a frozen one from a supermarket, I'd have no cause to complain. I haven't specified it has to be cooked and I didn't specify it had to be bought from somewhere where there is an intrinsic expectation that it will be cooked. If I had also told the person that I wanted them to get the best bargain on said pizza, then I really wouldn't have any right to complain about a frozen pizza as that would be far better value for money!

Interesting. I wonder if the words "full-sized" implies it has to be assembled to a full size?

Skeleton should've counted, Sirrallun is just mad because his" specific"ations weren't "specific" enough.

Although I'm glad they lost because Sanjay won and he's well fit

What a bizarre episode.

I expect there was much arguing and debate off-camera between the 'losing' team with Lord Sugar himself and with producers that we didn't see on screen as they want to portray Lord Sugar as infallible. Felipe went from his opinion in the taxi of, 'I'm a lawyer, I know we are correct within the specifications,' to very meekly accepting Lord Sugar was right. It can't have been as straightforward a debate as that.

On all the tasks but probably this one more than any others, the teams must receive a list of rules and many explanations that we don't see on camera. It would be interesting to see those to see if their skeleton met the standards. The same with the rope. They were by far the better team on the day, so I was surprised they were fined for both items. The other team were extremely lucky on so many counts, I couldn't believe the negotiations between Roisin and the diamond seller, they went from his minimum price being £140-£145, her maximum being £60 to ending up agreeing on £50. WTF? I know she's good looking but I didn't realise she was hypnotically attractive or so attractive she causes people's brains to freeze.

I tend to think their skeleton was fine but it would be interesting to see the exact rules. There's a similar task where teams have to go out and buy items for a hotel or somewhere like that, so that would be understandable if the hotel turned around and said 'No we can't accept that skeleton that we have to make ourselves,' but then equally they would probably also say 'yeah that rope is fine here are some scissors.' However, when they are simply being asked to bring the items to the boardroom for no specific purpose then it's difficult to say whether a flat-pack skeleton is still a skeleton. I'd lean towards yes on the information we have available to us.

I'd also like to see them go through the items one-by-one on tasks like these, when announcing the results, so we could directly compare exactly how the teams did and ramp up the tension a bit.

The losing team must have known their time was up when they walked into the boardroom and the only item of the 10 on display was the other team's skeleton. No one dragged the kitchen sink in there for a visual aid.

I don't think that paper skeleton could ever be properly considered anatomical.

Proper plastic anatomical skeletons are exact copies of real human bones, very detailed, with textures and groves and bumps and complicated curves in the bones showing tendon attachments and minute details. A skeleton made of folded paper could never possibly duplicate the true shape of the the bones of a human.

Medical students often use plastic skeletons these days, The skeleton the other team bought appeared to be from a proper medical supplies shop. I hope to God no one is using a paper skeleton to study anatomy!
.

Didn't it say anatomical on the box though?

I'm not sure it did, they kept asking the shop keeper in the book shop whether the paper skeleton was anatomical or not.

As a further example, the human foot alone has 26 separate bones in it. From what I could make out from looking at the pictures of the paper skeleton, it didn't look like it had anything close to 26 separate paper bones in each foot.

The skeleton should have counted.

Its a tricky one. I had no doubt with the words saying "Human Skeleton" meant that Sugar wanted either a proper skeleton or a model of a skeleton already made up. I'm sure the skeleton has been put on the list on this same task in previous years too.

Felipe got a bit too clever as it did say Human Skeleton on what he bought but he should have made it up. I think it was unfair to make them lose over this though and Sanjay should have been the one who got the chop.

That makes no sense at all.

Lord Sugar was wrong.

1 - yes it would have helped if they had built it, but it met the specifications. As someone has pointed out when you receive an Amstrad satellite dish it comes flat packed and you have to build and install it.

2 - Lord Sugar suggested that it wasn't a real one like the other team had brought. Guess what, Lord Sugar, the other one was plastic. What's the difference, paper or plastic, both are models of a real skeleton. Or does Lord Sugar really think that are bones are made of plastic.

3 - the fine was inconsistent, designed deliberately to make the team lose. If he really felt the skeleton did not meet the specification then he should have fined it as a no-show which I think was £50.

Lord Sugar made a mistake with his specification - in the real world Lord Sugar would have lost.

He didn't like being seen to have made a mistake, so the bigotted bully in him came out.

We all know that he is probably like that, but to demonstrate it in public on National TV - what an idiot.

The decision was biased and unjust - and shame on the BBC, Nick and Karen for going along with it.

Cheers,

Nigel

Of course it shouldn't count and anyone's that it should I believe is biased by their opinion of Felipe.

Think of it this way, at work you ask someone to get you a full size skeleton for a really important meeting you have first thing in the morning. if someone brought that skeleton in that format 5 minutes before would you go 'thanks, great job'?

What they supplied was not full size, not 180cm high (or however tall it needed to be). I actually think if they'd built it, it could have been different. What they supplied however at that time did not meet the spec.

Yes as a consumer you do have to assemble products but this was about purchasing for business.

Yeah but that's the whole point, it WASN'T worded that way and the way it was worded was open to interpretation. There's a lot of people trying to move the goal posts in this thread when the simple truth is that based on the actual task description, the item was valid.

However Sugar does what Sugar wants and being the intellectual snob that he is, the lawyer was always gonna get it over the serial simpleton.

Was what they supplied full size? No. Was it 180cm tall? No. Was it anatomically accurate? No, also being made out of paper it wouldn't have been even when built.

How was what they supplied valid based on the description?

Sugar always uses this task to berate the teams for not paying attention to detail.
Felipe got every requested specification right and the response from Sugar is "Yeah, but that's not what I meant."

Sugar always lists the sort of people he doesn't like ("schmoozers", "yes men", etc), but it seems that the ones he really doesn't like are those who are smarter than he is.

Was the skeleton technically correct...? Maybe. But if you know someone will get fired you don't provide them with ammunition.

You can sit there arguing you are technically correct forever, but if you are doing it to the person who wants to get rid you then you don't have any chances.

What was the exact fine for the wrong object??

Surely they should have minus 14.00 paid for it then the 50.00 reducing their overall amount by 64.00???

What was the fine? if it was more then SAS has flipped and lost his credible marbles and the team didn't deserve to lose.

Sugah is a w*nker; of course the skeleton was fine. And the rope too. But the w*nker believes its the Alan Sugah Show and thought that he'd better shove his considerable weight around and make an *rse of himself. He knew, correctly, that everyone would put up with it. Nick and Karren didn't say anything against it: they were too busy playing footsie with Sugah under the table.

When will someone stand up to Sugah? "Sorry, Sugah. A quarter of a million from you is great, but you know what? It's simply not worth taking all of your sh*t anymore!"

"You're fired!"

"And you're an ugly toad with the face of a dog's behind! But tomorrow I'll be working again and you'll still be an ugly toad with the face of a dog's behind!"

Of course you have a chance, if you are a real man or a real woman! See post 74! The person to do that will have the whole nation behind them, and more job offers - from Sugah's rivals - than they can wade through in a week! But more importantly, they'll have proved to themselves that they're not a sheep or a mouse like their rivals in The Alan Sugah Show are!