Domino

wasnt there a joke about a company who sent a product out to China for production out there and the sample they sent back was identical down to the Made in Britain on the back ?

I can remember the days when British Products were seen as "must have" by the rich and elite in the Far East. A company making a range of upmarket hi-fi loudspeakers had a maximum figure for sales in certain countries - this kept the price and cache attached to their brand.

jojojojojo

Apparently the wealthy chinese still like to have western goods and now they can, so they have become major consumers in the west - by making cheap copies!

Jo xxx

Fred James

Really?

Perhaps you should advise Steve Jobs that the 15 million iPhone 5 phones that he has just ordered are rubbish products.

Not to mention the millions of Dell laptops that they produce - I could go on but you can do the research!

Saxy

Don't run anything well any more. The 'skill base' has gone, and far too many youngsters encouraged to go to Uni. What good is a nation where everyone has a degree, and no one knows how to handle a spanner.

John

bobd22

Because for Blair and Brown it kept them of the unemployed records at the expense of their parents

EllisG

errr .......Dell has never been a quality product, the Iphone 5 is set to go into production today so we can wait and see for any problems with them. My main gripe was actually directed to pure Chinese products not where they do sub contract work to a foreign manufacturer's specification

Just because the mass market is willing to downgrade it's quality expectation in order to get their technology fix at a bargain price does not change the fact that China achieves it's price advantage by either oppressing their people, using inferior materials or, as in the case of their home grown brands, both.

Mitzyboy

That must be why so many people buy them then!

Dick Dasterdly

Err, how much worse ?

You mean worldwide nuclear war breaking out or something like that ?

Saxy

I'm afraid it goes back much further than that. The decline started in the late '60s. We were talking about the inverted pyramid then, more bosses than workers & apprenticeships cut to three years from five. Talking about apprenticeships, what the hell is a modern apprenticeship ?

John

Saxy

Dell don't make computers, they like many others, assemble components made by other companies into their cases.

John.

Fred James

True but their laptops are all "assembled" in China.

rugbymatt

A friend of mine works in some sort of high level company company security crap, I don't understand it meself but he basically sets up networks and all that sort of crap for blue chip companies and he said ages ago that one client he worked for was getting over 3000 cyber attacks A DAY on its server and almost every one of them originated in China, they are so worried they have actually undertaken a very covert "Employ no Chinese" policy.... I bet they don't ever advertise that!

jimenato

How about a religious fundamentalist regime like Iran or Saudi?

agoreira

Still a few about.

Saxy

Yes, but few of these are proper apprenticeships as they used to be, where you worked under the instruction of a skilled man, on a one to one basis, and learned your craft. The first ten months of my five year apprenticeship, I spent pushing a file for nine hours a day, working to 0.001". That taught me the basic truth - 'Near enough isn't good enough!'. My final working years were spent in Quality Assurance for one of the worlds largest aviation companies, and watching many of the so called 'skilled' fitters, was a very worrying experience!!.
I believe that one giant do-it-yourself store, advertise their jobs for shelf filling/helpers as Modern Apprenticeships. This, I think you'll find is the type of job he's talking about.

John.