Carelessly Thrown together in The PRC - Or Giving The Expression Chinese Junk A Whole Nother Meaning.

As 2013 wheezes slowly to its end, presents opened, turkey consumed and Boxing Day Cornish pasties scoffed with bubble and squeak, thoughts turn to presents given and received.

All of mine given and received had one thing in common: none of them were Chinese tat. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not rich - not even comfortable; the Spanish State for which I work has seen to that. No, the point that I want to make is that we have all avoided the made in PRC label for one very good reason. We wanted to make sure that the gifts were still serviceable after New Year's Day. 

Notwithstanding most Euopean and American brands who maintain acceptable levels of quality in their Chinese subcontractors, any generic article emanating from the PRC tends to be, in a word, crap. And crappy crap of the crappiest crap kind.

Take the case of the two timer plugs that I bought this year. The first, an electromechanical affair, made in PRC, was purchased in summer. It lasted for about three weeks before getting thoroughly confused with our western imperialist electricity and rebelling. As such our immersion heater was switched on and off  with all the oriental inscrutability of an I-Ching reading. Peradventure the Feng Shui of the immersion heater was not propitious.

Two days ago I bought a (rather expensive) digital timer switch from an upmarket Spanish department store. It didn't even last an hour. When pressing the reset button, said button fell inside the device and so made it unuseable. I then looked at the maker's details. What a surprise! It was yet another fine article carelessly thrown together in the PRC. I should have known better. 

However, the real problem is the fact that retailers the world over seem to prefer the cheap and cheerless Chinese tat to (not much) more expensive articles made in the UK, EU or USA. We are being robbed of choice, subjected to a tyranny of tat while we see our own manufacturing jobs exported to the long-term benefit of no-one.

Instead of being condemned to endlessly replacing things that should last a lifetime, I would happily pay twice or more for an article that I know is not going to break or fall to pieces . In the case of the timer, I would prefer to pay the rapacious electricity companies more (at least electricity is produced fairly locally and employs people here) than line the pockets of billionaires living half a world away in an oppressive one-party regime with a human rights record that most third-world dictators would envy. 

And it would seem that most people are beginning to think the same. Many small Spanish shops have closed in recent years, driven out of business by the Chinese bazaar next door. Now we are beginning to see Chinese stores close down as consumers begin to realise that low prices and the lowest of abysmally low quality is not a real economic option.

So my wish for next Christmas is that our own business and political leaders realise that there is no real economic or social advantage in trade with the Middle Kingdom; just short-term gains and long-term losses. And please, Santa, bring me a serviceable timer switch, made in the UK, EU or USA! 

Update: Yesterday (18.01.14) I bought a different model of timer at the same store only to discover that the instructions included had absolutely nothing to do with the new model - they referred to the previously purchased piece of junk. Obviously this new timer was also chucked together in the same oriental sweatshop as the last. Wasn't it Einstein who said that madness was when one endlessly repeated the same action in the hope of a completely different result? Who is the lunatic, me for committing the same mistake twice in the same department store, or our society/economy for continuing to buy and peddle such low-quality crap from a corrupt rapacious, undemocratic country that oppresses its own people?

Note: Does PRC mean People's Republic of China - or, as I suspect, Produces Rivers of Crap?

A REVELATION

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

At the moment I am reading G.W.M. Reynolds’ Mysteries of London. Written in the 1830s, it is now considered by some as the first steampunk novel. I was pointed to the book by Asa Briggs through his masterly tome Victorian Cities. I have no idea of its the length – I have it on my Kindle. Suffice to say that I am now on chapter CXXV and am not yet 50% through the story.

The plot is no surprise to readers of Victorian improving literature: fallen women, honest journeymen and tradesmen ruined at the hands of dastardly noblemen, unscrupulous bankers and speculators; aristocrats who pay their debts of honour within a matter of hours while letting their tradesmen lose their livelihoods by refusing to pay them for months; a wronged hero and a cast of thousands, mostly of a disreputable nature. Add to this mixture a corrupt body politic, a callous judiciary who show nothing but contempt for the poor while indulging the high spirits of the aristocracy and what you have is a super-long novel that condemns the whole of British (English?) society. You can however, skip tens of pages at a time when the author starts spouting off about the one true saviour &.c &c. &c. To Reynolds’ credit, however, professional clerics and the Church of England in particular also come in for a good lashing.

The difference between Reynolds and Dickens is Reynolds’ total lack of sentimentalism. This is a documentary novel where occasionally the characters rather mysteriously have a grasp of the statistics regarding their particular calling over and above what they should reasonably know. They also have a tendency to regale their companions with the story of how they came to sink so low – a literary device that lets the reader see many aspects of how the poor were oppressed in so many different industries and callings. The novel, however, was not written just as an entertainment.  As mentioned before, this is rather an essay upon the plight of those members of the British population who have the misfortune not to belong to the aristocracy or to the highest class of capitalists – not that these latter are themselves completely safe from ruin and degradation.

Another great difference between Reynolds and Dickens is the fact that Reynolds does not only describe society; he examines it and the causes of its corruption and economic instability.

The most surprising elements of the book, however, is the fact that what Reynolds wrote 180 years ago is still true today: irresponsible banks and unscrupulous speculators (now called fund managers) who play with other people’s hard-earned money for their own enrichment while their victims find themselves on the street; the duality of the legal system where the aristos get fined (for them) meaningless sums (at least they do get fined – we all know about the infamous driving offences of the Saxe-Coburg, sorry, Windsor family that are never punished) for acts of high-spiritedness while the plebs who commit the same offences get jailed. The list is interminable.

For any of you, be you British, American, European or whatever, who think that you live in a free society where everyone is to some extent equal; I recommend that you read this book. You will find that, omitting the absolute misery and squalor in which people lived in the early 19^th century, we really haven’t progressed that much. Admittedly we are cleaner, healthier and materially better-off and better fed, but we are also more productive and more profitable for our masters.

As far as the economic gulf that separates us from our “betters”, it still remains the same – as does our reverence for such exalted beings, perhaps now both the gulf and our reverence are even greater.  

Read the book. You will be surprised by how contemporary the issues and social and economic abuses are. Even then, for example, Tower Hamlets had a reputation for being a sinkhole!

In Memoriam: Nelson Mandela

As the world mourns the death of Nelson Mandela – a truly great man – perhaps we should do so with a bit less open-eyed breathy wonderment and a bit more sensibly.

He was a mortal. He should have died months earlier, but his natural span was unnaturally and cruelly prolonged by the miracles of modern medicine. Had he been our father or grandfather[1], he might have been allowed to die with more dignity. However, the selfishness of the world, clinging to the wreckage of that once-great man, was unwilling to let him pass[2].

In my opinion, religion is an irrational security blanket that many need in order to face the uncertainties of life and death. Even though there are fortunately many others who have seen through the incense, smoke and mirrors of religion, some of them still feel the need for a secular idol – some greater being or ideal external to themselves. Some choose a pop star, some an actor; the most weak-minded choose a footballer or a fashion designer – perhaps even a shoe designer. Yet others, more intellectually and politically aware, chose Nelson Mandela.

Mandela was one of the greatest figures of the late 20^th century. He was a great man, a great statesman and a great father to post-apartheid South Africa. No-one could deny that his greatest achievement was that he showed the world how a single, dedicated man could change society. Yet at the same time what lay at the heart of his struggle was the belief that, in essence, we are all equal.

Bearing that in mind, perhaps the exaggerated reverence in which so many have held him for so long does in fact go against the grain of his philosophy and makes a mockery of his achievements. We will have to see if, without his presence, South Africa under the ANC will mire itself ever further in corruption and gradually return to being a one-party State, if it hasn’t already become one. 

Nelson Mandela was a man. No more, no less. Yes, a mere human being like you – like me – and as a man he surely had his faults just as the rest of us do. He might even, heaven forbid, have called his dog rude names when it did its number twos on the carpet.  He was not some sort of Christ-like figure as the first reports on BBC Radio 4 would have had us believe. I cringed as various journalists gushed on about his humility, his compassion; his capacity for forgiveness. I was half-waiting for news of his resurrection on the third day. At this moment in South Africa I am sure that, like the Roman soldiers around the cross played dice for Christ’s robes, a rather unseemly struggle is taking place to see who can make off with the great man’s mantle and political legacy. No doubt pretty soon the revisionist vultures, to their credit or shame[3], will also start to sink their talons into him and start to dig up the dirt.

Let us mourn then the man and his work and not the screen onto which so many politicians, artists and other trendy intellectuals, pseudo- or otherwise, have projected their own second-hand, lacklustre visions[4]. Rest in Peace Mr. Mandela, a peace that you have done so much to promote in your own country and continent. Let’s just hope that the example that you have set your land and countrymen will not, like your own remains, crumble into dust.

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[1] Although some people have deluded themselves into believing that he was indeed some sort of "universal" grandfather!

[2] Has anyone in the media said: “We shall not see his like again” yet?

[3] It all depends on your point of view.

[4] And no doubt made tidy sums on the royalites from their songs demanding or celebrating his release from prison – or indeed both.