Apple exec explains modern slavery to the New York Times…
“You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories or you can make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards. And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”
If Dave Were President He’d Have Resigned By Now | Alex Wickham
Loongate: What Happened in the Blue Boar Bar | Simon Walters
Feldman’s Tennis Days With Dave | Telegraph
How Geoffrey Howe Has Lost the Debate | Robin Shepherd
Dave Has Lost Control on Europe | Geoffrey Howe
Lib Dems Should Support EU Referendum | LibDemVoice
Feldman’s Denial | Fraser Nelson
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What Are You Really Paying in Income Tax? | TPA
Galloway’s Mad Month | The Commentator
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Tom Harris bemoans the public’s attitude to politicians…
“Mr Oborne echoes the lazy, anti-politics whine we hear so often these days, all based on the absurd notion that politicians were once loved and only fell out of public favour during the expenses scandal. He should take a walk to the Strangers’ Bar. But not to sup with the patrons he seems to despise so much, dearie me, no; he should instead look at the paintings on the corridor outside the bar, which depict the devastating fire which consumed most of the Palace in 1834. And he should reflect on the fact that on that dramatic night, as the Commons went up in flames, a crowd gathered on the South Bank to clap and cheer.”
The thing that Dave needs to work out is which group is more likely to vote Conservative. Mad swivel-eyed loons or mad homosexuals wishing to get married.
4?
Quenelles ?
What is this lefty crap? Next thing Guido will be voting NuLieBore.
So you’re saying to treat workers humanely is a leftie thing to do? Twat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony
Also a ‘dull tosser’ apparently http://www.tenwordwiki.com/NuLieBore
Clearly it is not the Communist thing to do if the factory conditions are less humane than those of capitalist USA.
Actually, there are people with principles that want a decent phone, does not have to be rock bottom cheap, but is not controlled and locked down by likes of Apple / Google / Microsoft / RIM.
If Apple didn’t screw every last cent for itself and gave some to their suicidal workers, there would be no fuss on slave labour.
People can get round this by buying secondhand, at least the money you spend on a phone won’t be going to scum like Apple.
No let’s get this right, the wet left wing liberal Guardian reading/BBC elite who wank on about workers rights and the 1% love these shit apple products and buy this crap.
Take the BBC, almost every twat you see on the BBC has an ipad, Apple laptop or iphone, yet this is the same BBC that wanks on about ‘Tory cuts’ and hoe the poor will have to struggle by on only 26K (tax free) a year.
As others pointed out yesterday, you have an obsession with the bbc and anal sex, though I will concede that this post managed not to refer to the latter for a change.
I agree with you ‘Daisy Cutter’. I wonder how long it will take Militwit to jump on this particular bandwagon?
As for ‘Deep Seated issues’ he’s probably a little no-mark, who can only bully on the internet. Poor sod; more to be pitied than scolded.
Bully? Dear oh dear.
Yes bully.
Did someone mention Brazilian beef ?
Bully?
I’ve come to loathe Apple, not only over this – which like so many other corporates offers near explicit support to a regime that employs judicial murder on a massive scale, infanticide and ethnic cleansing, never mind the subversion of large parts of Africa for minerals and the longstanding illegal occupation of a neighbouring sovereign nation – but also having seen the way they welcome their pathetically grateful punters into their shops, like fiends dancing round lost souls trekking into purgatory. Hieronymous Bosch had no idea how prescient he was. Anything but Apple for me when my old iPhone3 finally dies.
Could it just be that in China, a worker is better off earning in a foreign devil’s factory than starving in a work camp ? And where are the stats for suicide rates outwith the foreign enclaves for comparison?
India has told us to stop paying them Left-wing guilt-money for all those awful things we did in India, like giving them a common language, uniting the country under a central government and stopping them burning widows. That’s £600,000,000 back into the Exchequer, for Dave and the Greenies to piss up against the wall elsewhere.
Why does a successful company automatically have to be scum?? This is a stupid argument. We NEED Apple-style companies in the UK. For too long the ‘ordinary worker’ has been dictating and as a result we have an inflexible poorly educated workforce who costs way too much to employ. If you want to manufacture and compete, you’re up against Chinese workers. They earn a pittence and are grateful for it. You can’t have it both ways. The UK to succeed must become a services economy and shrink its population. We must be selective in our immigration. Educated, or skilled and nothing but. Otherwise, the UK will slowly disappear and die off.
While this might give the Apple haters some more fuel to throw on the fire, don’t forget that Foxconn also manufacture products for Acer, Amazon, Asus, Cisco, Dell, HP, Intel, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motorola, Netgear, Nintendo, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sony and Sony Ericsson. If your phone / computer / tablet says “made in China” you’re complicit this compromise between ethics and shiny gadgets.
T’was ever thus – did any of the wealthy southerners, wearing their cosy worsted suits, ever give a moment’s thought to the desperate state of the workers, many only children, in the textile mills of Yorkshire ? Of course not – they bought a product at a price they were prepared to pay, and that could only be delivered with a measure of workforce-abuse.
Same goes for modern electronics – no-one forces you to buy them, but if you buy them, you are buying into the supply chain. Grow up or stop buying them.
That’s how the cookie crumbles!!
Hypocrisy runs full circle as we insist on our freedom of speech using devices made where there is none. Yet this is the free market, isn’t it? They sell it cheaper than anyone else. Communism, the new Capitalism.
Why does every generation have to learn all over again that free trade benefits everybody?
Here’s an article about some kid who decided to eschew Apple products as well as every other modern communication device for a 90-day period:
http://news.yahoo.com/90-days-without-cell-phone-email-social-media-015300257.html
It IS possible, you know. Not convenient, but possible. Most people over age 40 managed OK growing up without them.
(And I used to wonder how Mum and Dad got along without the telly.)
I’m reading this on a iPhone.
Mmmmm Chinese slave labour mmmmm
Chinese workers are overpaid and under taxed. I’d soon sort them out.
Where’s the problem. Rugged, makes-us-free capitalism is it not?
Victorian industrialists were saying the same about British factories and workers 150 years ago.
The trouble for the likes of Apple is that there will be no more untapped labour markets when the indias and chinas ask for the same Western thing Western workers began asking for 200 years ago.
Feb 28th’s All India General Strike will see 100,000,000 workers on strike….
Shhh! It’s how capitalism work. Exploiting the labour of others.