Foxconn: workers threaten suicide if their demands are not met.
11/01/12
Just imagine London's underground tube workers saying that if their pay demands were not met that they would kill themselves on mass. The British media would go into an orgasmic frenzy.
And yet, today in China, workers for Foxconn, makers of Microsoft's XBox 360, have said that unless they receive the pay they are owed, they will throw themselves from the roof of Foxconn's factory. The British media didn't mention this event.
Foxconn are one of the big dogs in electronics manufacture, supplying Apple, Dell, Nintendo, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Nokia.
You might be forgiven for thinking that with a name like Foxconn that we are here talking about a US company, forget it, Foxconn is run by Hon Hai Precision.
And Hon Hai are no strangers to worker suicide, in fact it's all part and parcel of industrial relations in China. Their latest move to improve working conditions is to place nets around their factories to catch suicidal workers. In fact, the chairman of Hon Hai, Terry Gou, is well pleased that the suicide rate at his factories is below China's average.
And the message for Microsoft customers is - 'be calm' Microsoft take worker deaths seriously and they are investigating. However, since Foxconn supply everyone in the electronics market, customers can hardly switch to a more ethically inclined high street name.
Why is television rubbish?
'the empty room principle'
An artist, feeling inspired, decided to paint an empty room white. Closing the door to the room at the end of the day, he felt fulfilled, the empty room was completely white; floor, ceiling, walls - all white. Mission accomplished.
That evening he was entertaining an artist friend and his ego got the better of him - he decided to share his latest creation - the empty white room, with his guest. He opened the door to the white room and both men peered in from the door. Very interesting said the friend but it needs something, perhaps a pair of old shoes. The artist removed his shoes and threw them into the room - the creation was complete.
All this occurred in the days before the Turner Prize, otherwise the artist in question would have been much the richer and feted as a celebrity. In fact, the White Room with Shoes was a little known piece and little remarked outside of a coterie of people living in an insulated dreamlike bubble.
However, the story of this artist provides us with an explanation as to why television is rubbish - we call it the 'empty room principle'.
TV companies buy a slice of the broadcasting airwaves and feel the need to fill it. And fill it they do, with vacuous rubbish, 24 hours a day.
Once, when the BBC had nothing to show, they gave us the Test Card. The most famous test card of all, Test Card F. Designed by George Hersee and featuring his daughter Carole, made its first appearance on BBC2 in 1967.
The test card dates back to the 1947. It's reintroduction would be infinitely preferable to Ant and Dec, and celebrity scientists and historians. In fact, even Ant and Dec would be preferable to Brian Cox and Niall Ferguson.
At least with the Byker Grove boys fronting programmes about the marvels of the universe and colonialism we would know they were talking bollocks - that is, we would know before we started watching.
Bring back the test card.
Scoop
The Gulag Archipelago - Blast-It finds 'The Lost Generation'
The national press has recently brought to our attention that the British economy has a lost generation of young people. We found that very mysterious and so decided to put our best people on the case.
Apparently, one million young people who were looking for work, have become lost. Not so, as our picture reveals they have been sucked into a labyrinth of deceit, otherwise known as Job Centre Plus.
Our best people watched day in and day out as legions of young job hopefuls entered Job Centre Offices but never came out again. This caused us to speculate that these offices were being used like gulags to process dissidents.
We couldn't persuade any of our best people to go in and have a look round, they've all read "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and reportedly, said in unison, "bollocks to that"!
Radio GA GA
Radio 2
Jeremy Vine
This man has managed single-handedly to turn a once superb political discussion forum into a sad version of Woman's Hour. The man just oozes phoney sentiment and frequently encourages debate on meaningless subjects. The joke is that the listenership phone and email in with their views and seem happy to take part in the charade.
And worse, Vine regularly indulges his own dark depressive personality by discussing subjects related to death and suffering. Frequently the outcome is a number of distressed callers, tears gushing, that Vine struggles to console.
Vine finest hour was surely the day a woman phoned in to relate her continued suffering following the death of her son, 18 years previously, and then announced that she was about to kill herself. The best Vine could do was to change the tone of his voice to a sickening whisper and pass on the Samaratan's phone number.
He also has regular weekly contributors, among them is Martin Lewis 'the money saving guru' - the man's a steaming idiot. He seems to think that every waking moment should be given over to saving a few pennies a week. There's also a doctor, who's never wrong. However, the best regular is a man from Wales with an allotment. The BBC have given him a microphone and avid listeners are invited by Vine to listen whilst the man plants his carrots, highly entertaining.