Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Panorama on Tesla

Correct. I have worked in agribusiness and continuous-process manufacturing in some fairly unforgiving parts of the world. Belive me, there are some horror stories. A cynic might say "at least those guys in the mines have a job" which is true. Best not to dwell on what happens to them and their families when the roof caves in and they are injured. In the comfort of our homes in the UK we are not generally aware of industrial accidents ranging from "Slips Trips and Falls" to lacerations, amputations, scalding, crushing, poisoning, and asphyxiation. I'm not talking about Dark Satanic Mills in the 18th century, but right here and now in the 21st century. And that's just in the "developed economies".

Maybe the feeling that Tesla's great sin in the eyes of BBC staff was to be both American and successful. Conditions in the Congo are the resposibility og the government there, not Musk, irritating though he is.

Excellent. So as well as being really annoying like Michael Gove, Susan Calman, Mel Giedroyc, Amol Rajan, Michael McIntyre, Rylan, and of course M&S TV ads (lingerie excluded), we now have Elon Musk on the list.

Well I must say I rely on the BBC for news. If there is a more accurate source , please could someone advise?

Not quite so sure of that, its no different to questioning cheap clothes from Asian sweatshops that pay pittance in wages and have poor work conditions to satisfy our throw away society consumerism. He has a 'moral ' ethical duty to ensure that his raw material suppliers meet minimum conditions and standards. Otherwise we are back to the old offshore colonial exploitation 'type' of mentality and approach to trade. As I understand it, they are currently fighting a massive legal award for racial discrimination in their factories for systemic failure to deal with racial abuse, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/05/tesla-pays-137m-black-former-employee

No. It is the responsibility of consumers of services to ensure that those services are provided ethically. In this case Musk should have a huge responsibility. Cue Dyson just having dumped one of his major suppliers.

To provide a bit of balance.

There is an organisation called the Fair Cobalt Alliance (FCA) whose objective is to resolve the issues of artisanal mining of cobalt in the DNC.

It appears that Tesla amongst others (including the UK's own Britishvolt) is a member of the FCA.

It would have been equally appropriate for Panorama to have attacked Britvolt and all the other battery manufacturers who are using Cobalt from DNC or equally they could have provided some balance by highlighting the work being carried out by the FCA to improve the situation.

Becoming more true today than it has been in the past but very difficult to find the truth from any given vendor. I remember when Apple started to track through it's suppliers for forced/underaged labour etc. it took a massive number of resources to do this and they still got some flack for finding and working to eliminate them.

The future generations will hopefully hold vendors to a higher standard but it will be difficult. Look at the recent COPout event in Scotland where India and China took a soft stance. Where does a high percentage of our stuff come from? Low cost (labour and plant) locations such as these and Indonesia. We believe we want batteries to power our cars which we have long known are an ecological challenge then we antsy about the problems these bring in programs like this. Panorama need to bring both ends of the spectrum together on this issue. The government for driving this rapid forced agenda somewhat blindly as well as the various people pushed into the chain to adjust to the new requirement.

I believe we need to change, it just feels a little knee jerk? (Spoken as a true armchair warrior)

Anyone?

We often have to supply customers with various amounts of form filling regarding slave labour, problem with the vast majority of this type of thing is it's virtually totally reliant on someone telling the truth when completing the paperwork. Never been checked by an outside authority. Which to me just makes a mockery of the whole thing.

Similar to carbon neutral. I can be as pollutant as I want to be but if I pay for some trees to be planted I'm carbon neutral? So if the East plants enough forests they can continue building and using coal power stations? At what point do we run out of land arhhh, kelp plenty of room in the sea. Not sure how the Mer-people (PC) will feel about that though, let alone the cod