Small Watch, Big Issue

-

Look, Haute Horologie it ain't, but you can't argue the value-point of the above: a Chinese smart-ish watch purchased via Amazon UK, via Düsseldorf, Germany. At £19.99; when it does most of what you want from a fitness tracker (don't laugh) with the added functionality - albeit somewhat truncated - of a smartwatch, what's not to like. Also, the fit and finish of the thing are none too shabby, either: not quite Apple, but as this thing comes in at something like forty-something-times less than the real deal can retail for, it does raise some questions; not least about the profit-margins involved. But the main issue would seem to me to be: why does the West appear to diss modern, mixed communist/capitalist economies so much, whilst relying so heavily on their manufacturing and distribution expertise? The Apple Watch™ has pretty much been made in China, with distribution - and soon more of its manufacture - recently shifting to Vietnam. Surely the irony - and hypocrisy, on all sides - can't be lost on us?

Wolfgang Münchau, in this week's New Statesman, encapsulates the situation succinctly, highlighting the idiocy of the kind of small-nation nationalistic mindset that currently pervades right wing thinking in the West. The title of his piece is "Rebuilding industry is a mistake. The West should be constructing alliances instead." Globalism is, as are both Capitalism and Socialism, far more nuanced than the Neo-Lib and Neo-Con chancers and con-men would have you believe: if co-operation sounds bad to you, then you probably are really beyond the pale. Society has to evolve beyond the outdated and naive - eighteenth-century - politics that we still cleave to. To adapt is to survive, and by God, we need so badly to come to terms with the collective idiocy currently gripping our politics, and do something about it...

Comments

  1. Anonymous30 May 2023 at 06:41

    What happened to distributed manufacture Kel?
    ATB
    Joe

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous30 May 2023 at 07:50

      I agree, but no bugger seems interested in tackling the socio-economic corollaries that go with it; such as the scaling back on personal wealth accumulation, the need for true stakeholder sharing, higher and more equitable wages, higher prices and less waste; to name but some of it. An economic revolution, in short. What I'm saying is that the Neo-Cons are happy to profit madly from Far-Eastern-driven manufacture - supporting it economically - whilst criticizing the whole deal in public to score points politically. Most Western-designed stuff is made in China, and the crass economics that operate the markets push us further and further back to the future...

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [
Read more