Article for discussion, February the 14th.

• By Stephen Hayward
• Comments
• 12 Feb 2012 00:00

'We'll water down your beer': Tory's plan to cut binge drinking

A billion units of alcohol could be drained from Britain’s booze stocks in a bid to tackle binge ­drinking

Water idea: Pints of beer

Getty

A billion units of alcohol could be drained from Britain’s booze stocks in a bid to tackle binge ­drinking.

That is the figure Health Secretary Andrew ­Lansley is ­expected to set in the Government’s new ­alcohol ­strategy, to be ­unveiled in the next few weeks.

And he wants the drinks industry to volunteer to hit the target by ­watering down top- selling beers, lagers and spirits to ­weaken them, ­industry ­bible The Grocer claims.

“The Government wants a headline figure it can ­promote,” said an ­industry insider.

A billion alcohol units is equivalent to 333 million pints of beer or 111 million bottles of wine. An ­estimated 66 billion units are drunk in the UK each year.

Other tactics being ­considered are higher ­taxation on stronger drinks and a minimum price for booze.

The strategy has moved up the Government’s agenda amid rising concern about alcohol abuse, said to cost the economy £20billion a year through crime and health risks.

Figures show drinkers treated in hospital have doubled in 10 years.

Several big brewers such as Budweiser, Stella Artois and Beck’s are ­already reducing alcohol in lagers by about 0.2 per cent from five per cent.

One unit is ­measured as 10ml – a single measure of whisky, a third of a pint of beer or half a standard glass of red wine.

The ­strategy comes after ­ministers announced plans to tackle rising obesity levels by ­cutting five ­billion calories from the UK’s daily food intake.

But there are fears it will be hard to persuade all firms to cut products’ strengths without regulation.

A source told The ­Grocer: “Retailers are going to face massive challenges and one or two of the big ones are at the point of walking away and saying, ‘Go on, just ­legislate’.”

Article for discussion, February the 14th.

February 6th, 2012

03:47 AM GMT

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Are 'sweatshops' an economic necessity?

Posted by: 
CNN.com business producer, Kevin Voigt

Hong Kong (CNN) – A few years back, influential New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof shocked readers by opening a column this way: “Africa desperately needs Western help in the form of schools, clinics and sweatshops.”

For Kristof, who regularly advocates better conditions for people in the developing world, this advice seems to belie his progressive views. But he’s part of a chorus of liberal economic thinkers who advocate that sweatshops –  a broad term for factories or workshops characterized low wages, long hours, sometimes underage workers and unsafe conditions – are an unsavory but necessary first step to help bootstrap the world’s poorer economies.

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman penned a 1997 piece for Slate entitled “In Praise of Cheap Labor” that argued “bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all.”

That brings us to the once sleepy fishing village of Shenzhen, across the border from Hong Kong, which was the center for China's economic reforms in 1979.  In just three decades the city has grown to more than 10 million people. Shenzhen is now home for numerous technology manufacturers and a large part of the Chinese operations of Foxconn, the electronics manufacturing giant that help builds the bulk of the world’s Apple iPhones, Microsoft Xboxes and Amazon Kindles.

Apple plant workers complain of long hours, militant culture

Foxconn – and by association, Apple, Microsoft and other multinational tech companies who lean on Foxconn’s million-plus Chinese workforce – are now under the microscope for allegations of poor labor conditions, especially after a more than a dozen  of employee suicides at company plants in 2010.

Under the “sweatshop economics” argument, the troubles at Foxconn suggests Chinese labor development has reached an adolescent stage, with workers no longer content that any job is better than no job at all.

What is Foxconn accused of?

The progression follows the route that Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan took toward building their developed economies – a path laid out by post-World War II Japan. “Made in Japan” has disappeared from back of low-cost electronics, much like the once proliferate “Made in Hong Kong” or “Made in Singapore” can no longer be found clothing labels. Foxconn itself is a Taiwanese company that has shifted the bulk of its labor-intensive operations to the mainland.

The sweat from the first generation of factory laborers in those East Asian nations paid for the education of their children and grandchildren, and the rise of their companies and economies creates  higher value jobs in management, research and design, marketing and the like.

At least, that’s the dream.  The ultimate macroeconomic test of the virtue of the sweatshop is does it really create upward social mobility?

Some critics say no. In a piece for Foreign Policy in Focus, Jason Hickel of the London School of Economics, argues that especially in post-colonial areas of the third world, sweatshops arose not because of market forces but “the outcome of a deliberate strategy to render people desperate enough to take jobs that paid pennies."

“People — in Thailand and Peru, for example — only choose sweatshop jobs because they have been made desperate and given no alternatives for livelihood. So it’s not really a  'choice'  at all,” he wrote.

Yet looking at the macroeconomic success of China, it’s hard to not be awed by the country’s incredible strides since cracking open its markets to capitalism “with Chinese characteristics.”  Since 1979 about 600 million people – or 10% of the entire population of the planet –  have escaped poverty in China, according to the World Bank, a feat more successful “than all the aid programs we have seen throughout the world,” as Stanford economist Paul Romer put it.

Whether Western consumers will start to feel guilty – and switch off – from electronics products made in China remains to be seen. But as thousands lined up for jobs late last month at a new Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou, the spigot of Chinese workers who want to make your iPhone appears in no danger of running dry.

Article for the 24th and 27th of January

Breast implants: Venezuelan women count the cost

By Sarah GraingerBBC News, Caracas

Women affected by faulty implants are getting together to seek redress

Continue reading the main story

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Mary Karla Perdomo was looking forward to a family Christmas in the hot dusty town of San Juan de los Morros in central Venezuela.

But news that French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) had been producing faulty breast implants which had been distributed around the world ruined those plans.

Mary Karla, 22, had had breast augmentation surgery three years earlier and apart from some recent back pain, she had had no trouble after the procedure.

But she went to her doctor anyway to have her implants checked and received devastating news.

"They told me the implants are already ruptured and the prosthesis has already leaked into my right breast and it's starting in the left one too," says Mary Karla, a medical student.

Suhail Cantalamessa is afraid her implants will rupture

She needs to have her implants taken out as soon as possible.

Her family is scrambling to help her pay the price tag of some $4,600 (£3,000) for extraction and replacement of the prostheses at a private clinic.

The Venezuelan government has offered free surgery to remove any PIP implants but is not offering reconstruction or replacement.

"I originally had the surgery to look better, not worse, and if I just have the implants removed now I think it will be a psychological blow. It's going to look really ugly," Mary Karla says.

Dilemma

Like Mary Karla, Suhail Cantalamessa is reluctant to take the government up on its offer.

"No-one really wants to go to a public hospital. We want to use our own doctors or chose a clinic to both remove and replace the implants," says the 29-year-old electrical engineer from Caracas.

Suhail's situation is not an emergency - initial tests have shown that her implants are still intact.

But knowing that they could rupture is, she says, like a ticking time bomb in her chest.

"I like to go jogging, but I feel I can't exercise because I'm afraid they'll break," she says.

Suhail had saved up for some time before she had the surgery three years ago, visiting several clinics and seeking personal recommendations from friends before deciding on a doctor.

Plastic surgery, especially breast augmentation, is widespread in Venezuela

She cannot afford to pay for surgery to remove and replace the implants purely as a precaution, but she does not want to wait until she is in the same situation as Mary Karla.

Both have joined a group of more than 400 women in Venezuela who are suing five local distributors of the PIP implants.

"They're Venezuelan companies which made money from this product and they should now make that money available to the victims to get surgery to make repairs," said lawyer Dr Gilberto Andrea, who specialises in medical malpractice suits.

Dr Andrea says the group will later consider bringing other lawsuits against the French state and any individual doctors who may be at fault.

The women came together through a Facebook page "Afectadas por Protesis Mamarias PIP Venezuela" (Women affected by PIP Breast Implants Venezuela) which has grown rapidly in recent weeks.

That number is likely to keep on increasing.

Feeling guilty

The Venezuelan Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery estimates between 35,000 and 40,000 women in the country have breast enlargement surgery each year.

In Venezuela - as in much of Latin America - there is little, if any, stigma to having plastic surgery.

What could be seen as vanity in some societies, is admired as good personal presentation in Venezuela.

Weekends are for spending at the beach and showing off your physical attributes, be they natural or man-made.

Continue reading the main story

PIP implants: the risks

• The silicone inside the implants is not medical grade - but was intended for use in mattresses
• Tests have not shown any increased risk of toxicity from this filler compared to normal implants
• But mechanical testing has shown the implant covers have an increased risk of rupturing
• The gel inside can irritate, increasing the risk of inflammation reaction - making removal more difficult
• There is no increased breast cancer risk
• One case of a rare form of cancer called anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) was recently reported in France
• French and US experts suggest there is a small but increased risk of this cancer for women with breast implants in general

• PIP breast implants: Your stories

The plastic surgery sector has built on this cultural cornerstone to become big business.

There are hundreds of clinics in the country. Special bank loans are available to pay for cosmetic surgery procedures.

But this business is at risk if the PIP affair ends up turning the tide of public opinion.

As dozens of women gathered in central Caracas earlier this month to see court documents filed, 50-year-old Charo Perez turned to me to complain about her situation.

She was angry and frustrated by the casual response she had had from the clinic that had performed her surgery.

She was worried, too, about her health should her implants rupture.

But she also felt depressed.

"I feel guilty," she admitted "I feel like I should never have had this done."

Mary Karla also regrets her decision to go under the knife.

"If I could go back in time," she says, "I wouldn't have the surgery again."