Whatever your political persuasion, defend your corner here. All we ask is that you voice YOUR opinion, rather than just post a link to a half-hour youtube video. Politics can get a bit lively, and if you prefer a less combative debate, please post in the Politics for Moderates section instead.
Jimgward wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:37 am
One of our problems is that we've become accustomed as consumers, to ridiculously cheap prices on some items we might only ever buy once.... the last time I saw a DVD drive, it was £12 in ASDA. That means it was manufactured in the Far East, packaged shipped and sold to Asda for probably £7. An item we would only every buy one or two of in a lifetime. We've driven prices to the point where we're killing the planet with emissions, with ships carrying ridiculously cheap goods to the west, and returning loaded with waste to be dumped at sea, on African beaches or at best landfill somewhere.
It's time people dropped the throwaway mentality. You rarely see people in cars over 7 or 8 years old now... kids want brand new cars, brand new houses and are too lazy to even cut their own grass.
God help us all!
Those cheap DVD players will not last more than a couple of years. They conk out very quickly.
I was reading an article yesterday about mobile phones, and why the older ones were much more robust. They were made in factories by people who were more used to making precision military equipment, and as a result they were made very well, and very slowly. In order to meet demand, that had to change. It was not a change for the better.
Web Designer / Developer. Currently working on Paphos Life.
Living in Polemi, Cyprus with my wife and daughter.
Jimgward wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:37 am
One of our problems is that we've become accustomed as consumers, to ridiculously cheap prices on some items we might only ever buy once.... the last time I saw a DVD drive, it was £12 in ASDA. That means it was manufactured in the Far East, packaged shipped and sold to Asda for probably £7. An item we would only every buy one or two of in a lifetime. We've driven prices to the point where we're killing the planet with emissions, with ships carrying ridiculously cheap goods to the west, and returning loaded with waste to be dumped at sea, on African beaches or at best landfill somewhere.
It's time people dropped the throwaway mentality. You rarely see people in cars over 7 or 8 years old now... kids want brand new cars, brand new houses and are too lazy to even cut their own grass.
God help us all!
Those cheap DVD players will not last more than a couple of years. They conk out very quickly.
I was reading an article yesterday about mobile phones, and why the older ones were much more robust. They were made in factories by people who were more used to making precision military equipment, and as a result they were made very well, and very slowly. In order to meet demand, that had to change. It was not a change for the better.
My company supplied test systems to mobile phone factories in the UK, China and the US.
Having visited many of them going back 25 years I can assure you that the phones were not built by military equipment specialists!
Mobile phone production (like that of most electronic goods) is largely automated - humans exist on the production lines to load PCBs in at one end, keep the pick and place machines filled with components and remove and box the completed phones at the other. Even testing the display is an automated process using machine vision.
As for DVD players, most people replace them because of improvements in video and sound quality - in the same way we replaced our VHS recorders with DVD.
Since I've been in Cyprus I've bought a DVD player, replaced by a progressive scan DVD player which was replaced by a Blu-Ray player which will in time be replaced by a 4K Blu-Ray player - hardly something that 'we might only ever buy once'...
keving wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2017 1:24 am
Shall we talk about coffee? No EU tariff on imported green coffee beans. A 7% tariff imposed on roasted coffee beans imported from Africa. So, if I buy roasted coffee beans from Africa it costs me 7% more than had there been no tariff. And I tell you what, that 7% tax is almost eroded to nothing if you compare with the price of Lavazza.
Be careful of the very bullshit comparisons that bring Africa into the EU debate.
We can support Africa through the 0.7% of GDP that we give to aid.
Yes, the point being that African roasted coffee would be 7½% more expensive than coffee roasted in the EU so we roast coffee in the EU and deny Africa the extra revenue - which results in us giving them 0.7% of our GDP instead - utter madness....
And I suspect that you have been a little selective in the quotes you have used from this article...?
The article is titled, "How the EU starves Africa into submission"... well worth a read of the full thing but this stands out and supports my earlier claims in this thread regarding tariffs: -
The concern is not that Germany benefits from processing coffee. It is that Africa is punished by EU tariff barriers for doing so. Non-decaffeinated green coffee is exempt from the charges. However, a 7.5 per cent charge is imposed on roasted coffee. As a result, the bulk of Africa’s export to the EU is unroasted green coffee.
The charge on cocoa is even more debilitating. It is reported that the “EU charges (a tariff) of 30 per cent for processed cocoa products like chocolate bars or cocoa powder, and 60 per cent for some other refined products containing cocoa.”
The impact of such charges goes well beyond lost export opportunities. They suppress technological innovation and industrial development among African countries. The practice denies the continent the ability to acquire, adopt and diffuse technologies used in food processing. It explains to some extent the low level of investment in Africa’s food processing enterprises.
Usually, the know-how accumulated from processing exports such as coffee could be adopted for use on other crops and in other sectors. This in turn would help to stimulate industrial development and generate employment. Being defined as raw material exporters undermines technological innovation in the wider economy, not just in agriculture.
To large swathes of the population, the whole notion of having a physical copy of a film is completely alien.
With regards to phones, the article I was referring to stated the following:
"The important thing that was going on here is that 3G shifted the power balance. In 2003 the only manufacturers who could ship in quantity were Motorola and NEC. Vodafone was so desperate for 3G phones it had set up Orbitel, a joint venture with Ericsson to make 3G handsets. Unfortunately these were made by people used to building high spec military equipment so while the manufacturing was superb and they worked well, the production rate at the factory in Nottingham was relatively weak."
I just found it quite interesting, while drinking my morning coffee. I am happy to concede that not every journo knows what they are talking about though.
Web Designer / Developer. Currently working on Paphos Life.
Living in Polemi, Cyprus with my wife and daughter.
Dominic wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:58 am
To large swathes of the population, the whole notion of having a physical copy of a film is completely alien.
With regards to phones, the article I was referring to stated the following:
"The important thing that was going on here is that 3G shifted the power balance. In 2003 the only manufacturers who could ship in quantity were Motorola and NEC. Vodafone was so desperate for 3G phones it had set up Orbitel, a joint venture with Ericsson to make 3G handsets. Unfortunately these were made by people used to building high spec military equipment so while the manufacturing was superb and they worked well, the production rate at the factory in Nottingham was relatively weak."
I just found it quite interesting, while drinking my morning coffee. I am happy to concede that not every journo knows what they are talking about though.
Interesting article!
I worked very closely with Motorola so know their manufacturing processes in detail.
Modern electronics really are made by robots - the surface mount components are tiny and are placed by machines that work so quickly and accurately (they use machine vision to ensure that each is accurately placed) they are a joy to watch. I really don't think that engineers used to 'high spec military equipment' could do it better - and certainly not 24/7. Perhaps employing military engineers caused them to over-design their products and make them noncompetitive....?
I've replaced my mobile phone many times over the years (at an increasing rate it seems!), I'd be willing to bet that all of them in that big cardboard box in my man cave would still work if I could find a charger for them....
I agree that consumerism is out of control in the West- thing is we have paid for that with huge borrowings and it is our kids that will be picking up the tab for most of that. In order to make that process as painless for them as possible we need real economic growth (not just a big Ponzi scheme based on ever cheaper labour)- this is growth of the type the EU is increasingly less able to deliver
Africa?- yes buying a bit more from there isn’t going to solve the poverty problem, but neither is throwing money at it. We could try and organise the migration, but the illegal migration won’t stop.
Last time I heard we are looking at upwards of 10-15 million African economic migrants heading for Europe in the next 5 years.
Now given that the current Syrian refugee crisis is still ongoing and has only been temporarily halted by bribing Turkey to do our dirty work for us, the EU needs to totally re -think it’s policies on border security along the poorer Mediterranean countries, asylum/Dublin and Schengen because the tide of humanity on the way is going to dwarf the wave that almost brought down Merkel and has seen the rise of the far right throughout Europe. The influx is even more worrying when you look at the EU unemployment rate in general and even more importantly the unemployment rates in the countries in the migration front line that are meant to be playing "host" to those migrants
Is there any sign of that happening?- nothing that I have seen I’m afraid. The countries in the front line don’t even have the resources to tackle their own domestics problems, let alone the pan European ones.The EU rules on spending deficits were in the way of Italians helping to pay for the victims of the recent earthquake- quite how they are expected to cope with what’s coming under current EU rules on asylum and refugees I have no idea ?
ps the CAP remains an unmanageable cesspit of dodgy dealings with no incentive to sort it out whatsoever. Paying to keep inefficient farmers in business is a continual drain on resources and even if it keeps them in a job currently, in the long term it is a false economy
You say that immigrant workers are the only ones prepared to work in the fields in Eastern England. That may be so, but here in Herefordshire the fruit used to be picked mainly by British women. Indeed I was talking to one such lady only last week, who stated that the fruit farmers did the dirt on them by employing foreign workers living on their land, telling the housewives that they weren't needed any more, she was quite bitter about this, as her only income was from fruit picking.
Jackie
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
It seems that the coverage of Trump and his antics- and previously the Brexit saga- had pushed other very significant stories into the background.
The Guardian has this today on the elephant in the EU room (not Donald Tusk)....
.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ ... germany-us
Trump's "antics" and Brexit "saga", it seems you are talking my language.
And the fact that you are so brave as to post a link from the Guardian on this forum makes you my kind of woman.
Yes there is trouble brewing in Greece. It's obvious it will only be settled when Greece's debt to the EU and the IMF is written off and they can start again rejuvenating their economy with a clean slate.
Christine Lagarde says this. This will play out until October when Angela Merkel agrees also.
keving wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2017 10:56 pm
Hi Kingfisher,
Trump's "antics" and Brexit "saga", it seems you are talking my language.
And the fact that you are so brave as to post a link from the Guardian on this forum makes you my kind of woman.
Yes there is trouble brewing in Greece. It's obvious it will only be settled when Greece's debt to the EU and the IMF is written off and they can start again rejuvenating their economy with a clean slate.
Christine Lagarde says this. This will play out until October when Angela Merkel agrees also.
So Greece can dump their debt without any consequencies but Cyprus, Ireland, etc had to swallow it........ WOW some justice for the system!
You say that immigrant workers are the only ones prepared to work in the fields in Eastern England. That may be so, but here in Herefordshire the fruit used to be picked mainly by British women. Indeed I was talking to one such lady only last week, who stated that the fruit farmers did the dirt on them by employing foreign workers living on their land, telling the housewives that they weren't needed any more, she was quite bitter about this, as her only income was from fruit picking.
Jackie
I condemn that, as I condemn any form of labour exploitation. I hope the farmers have investigations by home office officials, as well as looking into if they meet minimum wages and if their foreign workers are coerced into paying exhorbitnetly for accommodation and board..... reminds me of California of the depression, where farmers created their own currencies to prevent their workers spending out with their tied stores.....
I very much doubt that the farmers have been investigated, but my point was that the British were denied work, because of foreign immigrants. Racial prejudice springs to mind, although that only seems to apply one way.
Jackie
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
If I were cynical I might suspect that one of the reasons younger people voted remain was to avert the possibility of ending up in a beet field themselves.
kingfisher wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2017 5:30 pm
If I were cynical I might suspect that one of the reasons younger people voted remain was to avert the possibility of ending up in a beet field themselves.
... and to retain the right to live and work where ever they wished in Europe
British women weren't/aren't afraid of hard work, in fact I consider it rather insulting to suggest otherwise.
As for cheaper labour, have any of you ever been fruit picking ? You don't demand a rate of pay, farmers aren't known for their generosity. The money paid was a pittance, but if that's your only income, it's better than nothing.
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Firefly wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2017 6:09 pm
British women weren't/aren't afraid of hard work, in fact I consider it rather insulting to suggest otherwise.
As for cheaper labour, have any of you ever been fruit picking ? You don't demand a rate of pay, farmers aren't known for their generosity. The money paid was a pittance, but if that's your only income, it's better than nothing.
If you were offered £5 an hour to pick strawberries and you accepted the work, I don't think you'd be terribly motivated to put your back into it. I know I wouldn't, not for a derisory £5 an hour.
However £5 an hour is not a bad rate compared to what an east European could earn back home. Enough I would say, to motivate them to be hardworking and productive.
... and to retain the right to live and work where ever they wished in Europe