Wednesday 28 March 2007

Save Us From The Outsauce

151 workers in Abercarn, Caerphilly, as well as 28 in Newtown, Powys in Wales, where Reggae Reggae Sauce in made, will lose their jobs soon because the factories they work in want to move production to Poland. This means that a total of 179 people will be out of work when they close, and this is not including the 310 people who are also in the process of losing their jobs because of Burberry moving production from their factory in Treorchy to somewhere in China.

This has gotten me rather angry because I am from Wales and I don’t like the fact that businesses seem to be putting profit ahead of ethics. Now I know that they are businesses and that they have to make money, of course I mean Burberry’s shareholders probably wouldn’t be to happy if they announced that they were going to be a non-profit organisation from now on. I have no argument with the management for wanting to make money, it is how they are going about making money that I, and a lot of other people, have taken a dislike to, and when you look at the evidence it ‘s not hard to see why.

Burberry stated that the reason for moving production to China was because the factory in Treorchy was no longer “commercially viable”, even though they announced a 22% increase in profits earlier this year, and when you are selling polo shirts a £70 a pop, it is hard to believe that they can’t afford to keep production in Britain. It appears that the decision to move was one of greed and not corporate survival as Burberry would have us believe.

It would seem though that people have finally have enough of all this outsourcing with many celebrities, MP’s and members of the public voicing complaints about the closure of the Burberry factory, and now with closure on the cards for the two factories mentioned at the beginning of this article the businessman behind Reggae Reggae Sauce says that he will pull his business out if the jobs are outsourced to Poland.

And I say good for him, it’s nice to see that someone in the world of business has though about the plight of the workers who are made redundant by companies that wish to make more money.

I would also like to say to the people who run companies that outsource, or are thinking about outsourcing, if you want to make more money, try working harder, or even better try being happy with the millions and millions of pounds that you make and not attempting to make more at the expenses of hundreds of peoples lives.

Sorry if I am coming across all anti-corporate, but I believe that workers deserve more respect than they are getting from their employers. But I doubt there is anyway to stop it, people will continue to buy things no matter where they are made.

I mean you can find the words “Made In Taiwan” on so many products these days that it can actually be used for comic effect.

Monday 26 March 2007

The Smoking Ban: Will It Work?

A smoking ban is coming into effect in all enclosed public spaces in Wales on 2nd April and England will follow suit in July, but I wonder will it make a difference.

The ban only applies to enclosed public spaces, which mean lighting up in pubs, clubs, cafés and restaurants will be outlawed, but you will still be able to smoke outside and in the privacy of your own home. Now I understand why the government want to ban smoking because of the effects of second hand smoke on non-smokers, but, do they really have a right to tell people how they should be running their businesses.

Surely making decision of whether a pub or café is smoking or non-smoking should be solely up to the person that runs that business, and if they choose to allow smoking on their premises then they should be allowed to do so. Non-smokers are not forced to go into a smoke filled pub, they choose to under their own free will, and if they don’t want to be in a pub filled with smoke then they should go somewhere else.

It seems that whenever the government takes actions to protect us these days they are incapable of doing so unless they infringe on some of our civil liberties, like their excessive use of CCTV cameras, the billions of pounds they are spending on ID cards that you have to take with you everywhere otherwise you‘ll be sent to Guantanamo Bay, and they want to stick tracking devices in our cars so that they can keep tabs on how responsible each one of us is for polluting the earth, and then of course taxing us on the greenhouse gas emissions that our cars produce. Wouldn’t that money be better spent on improving the NHS?

I can understand the smoking ban, the government wants to improve public health, and maybe by doing so they can lift some of the strain on the NHS in the form of cutting down on smoking related illnesses, but what about obesity? That causes just as many if not more health problems than smoking, however I don’t see the government banning McDonalds, or fining us when we’re caught with a bag of chips.

Maybe the government is beyond fixing, maybe the problems run too deep making it impossible for anyone to repair them in the space of the four years that they are at number 10 before for they get voted out because they haven’t fixed any of the problems.

Such is the price of democracy.

Sunday 25 March 2007

No. 1

Hello, my name is Anthony Fox and this is my first post on my new blog The Anthofox Press. On this blog I will be discussing a wide variety of topics that interest me, and you (hopefully), topics such as new music and movies, TV, rumours, the state of the world and so on. Anyway I don't actually have anything to say right now so I'm going to stop typing.