I felt that too WM, he is such a bitch when he has had a drink.

Describing the IMF as not being loan sharks is the real joke. Good one Formby..you crack me up.

Interesting dicussions. I thought this is a clothing forum? Just for your information: many of the leather shoes you all are wearing are tanned in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka under HORRIBLE circumstances (execpt vintage shoes, Horween leather shoes and SOME FEW Italian - from Tuscany for instance - tanned leathers) reardless of where they were made. Child labour, modern slavery and the likes are a problem of course. But I doubt we can change that. There is no guarantee that something you buy new that is made in the western world is free from all that - that Madras cloth is a good example. Even if you have your shirts made at a local tailor you'd never know where he gets the cloth, and WHO IS sewing them. One of the best Viennese shirtmakers has them all made in Hungary... by hand. But sewn by poor Hungarians (not children of course).

And the IMF isn't more of a loan shark than your average bank. I suppose to avoid loan sharks we should put our money under our pillows, right? There is a bit too much conspiracy theory, although there is probably some true core in all that, too... but... yeah.

You know the tanneries? If they are Italian... 80% of them abuse poor Africans and Chinese workers.

They don't claim their source, right? They don't even use Rendenbach soles.

P.S. Apart from that C&J are pretty high quality.

Last edited by Leer R. (2015-08-29 04:21:50)

Well... Different story

Loake have an operation in Chennai and some of the stitching is actually done in here, there is some debate that because of this, they shouldn't qualify as English made shoes. This does explain in part, why they are significantly cheaper than other English shoemakers. I've never owned Loake's so I am in no position to testify on their quality and comparison with other shoemakers. But I do tend to agree that if a significant portion of the manufacturing, as opposed to the supply of raw material, is in India, then the shoes should not qualify as English made.

The aim of this representativeness study is to identify the respective national and supranational actors (i.e. trade unions and employer organisations) in the field of industrial relations in the tanning and leather sector in Italy. In order to determine their relative importance in the sector’s industrial relations, this study will, in particular, focus on their representational quality as well as on their role in collective bargaining.

Just seems a bit doubtful that the findings would be so positive in an industry that is made up of small workforce companies if it were flooded with cheap foreign labour and had bad working conditions and pay. Not that I'm bothered really, just showing the findings of EurWork. It studies the whole of the EU and Norway.

http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/european-observatory-of-working-life-eurwork/about-eurwork