Is it China? Or is it you?

Will Hutton, in the Observer, explains "why the Himalayas might not look like this for much longer". He points out that the Chinese are playing an enthusiastic role in the destruction of the Earth's ecosystem, and seems to assign a large part of the blame to the lack of democratic accountability in China. But we should look closer to home for those responsible for this destruction of the environment. Have you bought a computer recently? Have you benefited from the deflation in consumer goods prices? Ever wondered how it is possible to make all this stuff so cheaply? It isn't just that the workers in China don't get paid very much; or that they don't get sick pay, or a pension. It is also that there are no expensive restrictions on the disposal of toxic waste, or the emission of toxic pollutants or greenhouse gases. When we 'outsource' this manufacturing, we also outsource the damage that it does to the environment. The companies that do this do it knowingly but in general the consumers who collude with them just close their eyes to the reality - out of sight, out of mind. But it won't go away; there is only one planet, and we are all living on it. We must consume less, no matter how tempting those low prices might be.

Good job HP!

Not quite such a good job Citylink.

HP have been doing pretty well in the PC market recently. Looking around my house there are 5 computers, 3 belonging to us and two belonging to my employer - they are all HPs. I can't answer for my employer, but in the case of our machines I didn't go looking for an HP, it just seemed to be that the best deal I could find was an HP. Now it turns out that the after-sales service is just as good.

My son has an HP laptop, abut 9 months old, which recently started forecasting the demise of its hard disk. So we called HP and they said they'd pick it up on Wednesday. On Monday we got home from work to find a card from Citylink saying they'd tried to deliver something, and if we wrote on the card where we wanted it left they'd have another go on Tuesday. So we wrote some instructions and left the card for the Citylink driver, and when we got back from work we found a card saying that he was actually trying to collect the laptop. On Wednesday, as arranged, we were in to hand him the laptop - he had a specially designed transit case for it with lots of foam padding. On Friday he reappeared, with the transit case again - I wondered if a routing error had just returned the broken machine to us. But no, the computer had a new hard drive and a reflashed BIOS and seems to be fixed - all under warranty. I think this is pretty good service - if Citylink had managed to turn up on the right day I'd say it was perfect service.