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anglo29
Posted: 03 October 2018 07:33:47(UTC)
#39

Joined: 04/12/2015(UTC)
Posts: 779
mark spurrier;69849 wrote:
"If local people were employed to do this, not only would it give them employment, good for the local economy, they'd be paying tax to the Scottish government, improving the country's finances."

If local people were employed to do this? - Do you think they would work for £30/week - 12 hour shifts in a fish gutting factory?

let me think about that one?

Do you think everyone would like to pay the higher costs coming from Uk wages? Will te fishermen be cheerful that their catch isn't really wanted as it would be so expensive
Don't you think that the great unwashed would rather get cheaper cod imported from places that do use the Chinese?

You are also assuming that the cod is actually landed in UK rather than transferred to factory freezers in international waters

Just some thoughts


I don't have the facts to argue about the £30 a week/12 hour shifts statement. That is obviously less than the local unemployed would receive in benefits.

Perhaps this brings into question the whole question of whether we should be taking advantage of what appear to be almost slave labour conditions in far off countries, just in order to bring us cheaper food? It appears not that different from the "sweatshop" conditions of clothing factories in some parts of Asia, enabling us to buy a T-shirt of dubious quality for £3. In the meantime the clothing manufacturers of the North and Midlands go out of business, leaving UK produced clothing a niche market.

I honestly don't know the solution to this, except maybe we should value our food/clothing products more than we do, buying locally produced products wherever possible.
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jvl
Posted: 03 October 2018 08:15:53(UTC)
#43

Joined: 01/04/2016(UTC)
Posts: 1,125
Perhaps it's a bad example but I'm just left wondering: how helpless are people who can't buy a whole fish and cook it? How hard is it? Why does it need to be processed in China before it's useful? It's a fish, not a barrel of crude oil to be refined!
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anglo29
Posted: 03 October 2018 09:35:13(UTC)
#44

Joined: 04/12/2015(UTC)
Posts: 779
jvl;69867 wrote:
Perhaps it's a bad example but I'm just left wondering: how helpless are people who can't buy a whole fish and cook it? How hard is it? Why does it need to be processed in China before it's useful? It's a fish, not a barrel of crude oil to be refined!




It's not hard, but we've become a lazy nation, preferring the convenience of take-away rubbish food, to a more healthy home cooked diet. People who would never dream of putting the wrong grade of petrol into their car, pour all kinds of rubbish into their own bodies.

You only have to take a walk down your local High Street to witness the result of this; overweight/unfit people everywhere. And rising cases of cancer testify to the over consumption of processed food.
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1 user thanked anglo29 for this post.
Tim D on 03/10/2018(UTC)
Tim D
Posted: 03 October 2018 11:23:06(UTC)
#40

Joined: 07/06/2017(UTC)
Posts: 8,883
anglo29;69863 wrote:
I don't have the facts to argue about the £30 a week/12 hour shifts statement. That is obviously less than the local unemployed would receive in benefits.


I think the point was probably that that's how much these jobs pay in China. (Googling suggests £30/week is RMB1000/month and that that's about what this sort of job pays there. You also find stories about the trade war meaning that Vietnam and Thailand might now undercut China and take the business).

anglo29;69863 wrote:
Perhaps this brings into question the whole question of whether we should be taking advantage of what appear to be almost slave labour conditions in far off countries, just in order to bring us cheaper food? It appears not that different from the "sweatshop" conditions of clothing factories in some parts of Asia, enabling us to buy a T-shirt of dubious quality for £3. In the meantime the clothing manufacturers of the North and Midlands go out of business, leaving UK produced clothing a niche market.


The people in the sweatshops haven't been forced there at gunpoint. They're there because it's better than the alternatives available to them... being a subsistence farmer in rural Asia is even worse and people flock to opportunities in the cities to escape that existence. Europe went through the same sort of societal transformation in the Industrial Revolution (1760+). That had some hellish aspects to the people caught up in and exploited by it too of course, but here we are today. Would it have been better to stop the clock on "progress" back then and freeze the UK as some agrarian pastoral idyll (at least until when it would have inevitably been invaded by its more industrialized neighbours)?

anglo29;69863 wrote:
I honestly don't know the solution to this, except maybe we should value our food/clothing products more than we do, buying locally produced products wherever possible.


No matter how much people profess to like the idea of this, such good intentions rarely survive when it comes to parting with their hard earned cash and there's a huge price differential. Hmmm... back in the 1970s I seem to remember you'd see lots of "Made in Great Britain" Union-Jack stickers on things in shops. Not clear to me whether they disappeared because of EU rules or because UK manufacturing died out... wonder if those will reappear post-Brexit?
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