This is what's wrong with the world

Over 100 people killed in a clothes factory fire in Bangladesh, to go with the 300 plus killed early this year in Pakistan. All so we can have cheap clothes and big profits. The factories keep the prices down by having appalling health and safety conditions and wages. All the while British firms can't compete meaning more and more of our manufacturing base disappears abroad. That's what neo-liberalism gets you, no jobs here, exploited people there, and the middle men getting richer.

And it barely makes the news. Life really is cheap in the developing world.

 

We can't even be sure that "expensive" clothing is ethically made - it's not just the cheap stuff.

 

I blame Scott Wiseman

 

Neo-Liberalism? Sounds like plain old capitalism to me.

 

Very good point. Should certainly have said 'cheaply produced clothes'.

 

I think you should start to get some serious help mate, you are getting fecking dafter!!!!

 

I think some of the major kit manufacturers have been "caught out" in the past havent they? Not sure if things have improved.

 

Same rules of exploitation I suppose, just on a world scale now.

 

It is only recently that the major sportswear manufacturers have appeared to regulate themselves. If you had bought a pair of N*kes ten years ago, chances are they were made by a child. But when it comes to desirable goods, people don't want to hear about it, same as they don't want to hear about the abuse of animals or the hundreds of civilians who die daily in Afghanistan in to the name of democracy. How un-patriotic!

 

its only going to get worse.

 

One of the reasons British manufacturing went abroad was it was becoming too expensive to make things here.

 

I wonder what will happen when the working classes of the developing world start to demand some of the basic human rights we enjoy.

 

Or its just that someone else in a different country didn't care about the welfare of their workers and could therefore make it cheaper. It's why free market economists would rather we all still worked in 19th century conditions because health and safety damages profit margins.

 

I think this is starting to happen in China. The more skilled employees can start to pick and choose where they work (and under what conditions). I guess the same happened in this country when we had the "dark satanic mills".

 

it'll come full circle and workers in this country will be working for a sack of rice a week.........its a long way off,but it'll happen