West is not to blame for poor conditions in Asian factories

IN the last year there have been two fires in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which have destroyed clothing factories and caused a large loss of the lives of the people working there.

Thorough investigations must be urgently carried out into these tragedies but, I believe, it is very wrong to immediately vilify the British companies who were the major customers of these factories, somehow implying that it is the greed of these British companies for causing this.

Asian countries have undercut British manufacturing companies over the last few decades, with its much cheaper prices leading to our factories closing, thousands of our workers being made unemployed and their exports flourishing.

Now, just how do you think it did this? It didn’t do it by using far higher skilled labour; it didn’t do it by using ultra-modern and vastly superior machinery; it didn’t do it by building state of the art factories, so how did it achieve such big orders?

It did this by employing cheap labour in conditions which would not be tolerated in Britain. Criticism should be directed to the right target and if this leads to them paying proper wages etc. then Britain will be able to reopen its clothing factories and compete at the same level. Is this too simple to understand?

Will similar condemnation be directed at our Government over coal? Britain closed its coal industry and abandoned three billion tonnes of coal underground but still imports millions of tonnes of coal from abroad and one of the reasons for this is that imported coal is far cheaper than mining our own.

Ah, but are these miners working in the conditions we would ensure and being paid the appropriate money for their labour?

Of course they’re not and we are well aware of this, so if a mining accident occurred here, would our Government be vilified in the same manner to that of our clothing firms?

From: Arthur Quarmby, Underhill, Holme, Holmfirth.

IT is reported (Yorkshire Post, October 12) that the United States, long established as the world’s largest oil consumer, will shortly be transformed into the world’s largest single-country producer of oil, thanks to the bonanza of the shale gas and oil revolution. Britain also has extensive shale reserves – so what are we waiting for? Dismiss the Greens’ fairy tales and let us get on with it, before being compelled to do so by country-wide power failures!

From: DS Boyes, Rodley Lane, Leeds.

THE pathetic responses from my many detractors really make me smile. On energy prices, it is commercially impossible for any Government to restrict the price of any commodity traded on world markets without eventually having to subsidise it by the taxpayer.

Bills would not be so high anyway but for crackpot green taxes and levies imposed by Labour Energy Minister Ed Miliband which benefit wealthy landowners more than anyone else. On “inherited” wealth or tax avoidance, there is plenty of that in the Labour ranks