Air supply
I EnjOy the fresh air here in Glasgow and I was sorry to read your news report about pollution in China (22 October).
China has developed very quickly and much of what it produces is consumed in the West. But the environmental price of all those computers and electronic games is borne by the ordinary people who make them, as their cities are choked in smog.
The West has exported its own pollution to China and to other countries in the developing world.
The workers there are poor and need the jobs, so they put up with the conditions. The woman whose picture was published with your report is probably working on the assembly lines for perhaps ten hours per day to sustain her life and now she also has to breathe bad air. JIa XIE Student University of Glasgow OnCE again, Bruce Crichton deploys his comic-book villain caricature of Marx in place of attempting to Marx actually 22 October).
Since Mr Crichton picks up on the phrase “despotic inroads on the rights of property”, he might care to consider what interfering with “the rights of property” might entail in a particular case.
Suppose I were to own in their entirety the northern counties of Scotland and decided to clear the human inhabitants off the land to whatever Godforsaken places they might fetch up in.
Would that be fine and dandy, because I own the land and so can do as I like with it? Or might such clearances legitimately be halted by the state, thereby making inroads on the supposed “rights of private property”?
PaUl BrownSEy Department of Philosophy
University of Glasgow work out what meant (Letters, AS MUCh as I enjoyed the early stages of the debate in these pages about Marx, I wonder if the relevant correspondents wouldn’t mind swapping e-mail addresses and continuing the conversation between themselves.
As the man himself said: “Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.”
anGEla InnES Teachers’ workloads are increasing while pensions and pay are attacked. Even the holidays are wiped out by the workload. One friend estimated that based on a 35-hour week she worked a 54-week year with all the extra hours she did.
- Iain Mac The EIS seems to have caved in on big issues last time and now wants to make a stand on the minutiae. I’m not coming out on strike for this piffle after losing £200 last time.
- FWFW Definition of the teaching profession – the lowest paid baby-sitters on the planet.
- Angus lass Teachers are a pampered bunch. As a governor of two schools and a parent I knew them well. Except for a small core, the rest are lazy, bad teachers and their unions protect them. In any other private company the bad ones would If all the students were there to learn, then the job would be so much simpler and the pressure on task/demand and wage would not exist. There is only so much banging of heads against walls a person can do and remain healthy.
- Livibudgie If big business and politicians (cutting supply pay by 50 per cent overnight) can be ruthless and put money above everything then why can teachers, nurses etc not do the same?
- 4019775 Teachers are in school to teach. The idea that headmasters and teachers should control the schools rather than leave the decision to county councillors who should have stayed longer at school anyway, is pretty logical when you think about it.
- SpontaneousCombustion1