Re: UKIP masterstroke : Thu Mar 21, 2013 1:43 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

Rubbish.
You don't have to be a Christian to have a conscience and a secular society does not prohibit an individual's adherence to a faith.

You really do knee-jerk some bollox Dally.

I just think his trolling is getting more obvious/desperate.

Re: UKIP masterstroke : Thu Mar 21, 2013 1:54 pm  

JerryChicken wrote:

Titus Salt was far from secular in his beliefs, building a congregational church opposite his mill and donating land for a weslyan church.

He was a remarkable man though and a wander through his village is a very pleasant way to spend a sunday afternoon, but you can also say the same about many other Victorian philanthropists who saw the value in treating their workforce humanely rather than as items on a balance sheet.

And a level of wealth that would make many of today's rich look poor. Society was very different then and whilst he had a superb way of treating his staff how much of what he did was from a selfish point of view i.e. the need to keep the factory staffed and functional?

Hw was also in a very competitive market for staff - the industrial revolution especially in Bradford expanded at an incredible rate - if you wanted the right staff you had to present a compelling argument for them to work for you.

What is interesting is how quickly the fortune evaporated.

Re: UKIP masterstroke : Thu Mar 21, 2013 2:00 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

And a level of wealth that would make many of today's rich look poor. Society was very different then and whilst he had a superb way of treating his staff how much of what he did was from a selfish point of view i.e. the need to keep the factory staffed and functional?

There's nothing wrong with a spot of enlightened self interest.

Between that and a spot of common sense, it's difficult to understand why some employers don't realise that treating employees well is actually good for recruitment, retention, sickness rates, productivity ...

Re: UKIP masterstroke : Thu Mar 21, 2013 2:58 pm  

Dally wrote:

Meanwhile, back in the real world inter-personal relationships, business ethics, etc, etc have all mardedly improved with the decline in religious observance haven't they. That's at a stage when most people in influence still grew up with a degree of religion in their childhood. That won't be the case in a few years time.

Rubbish again.
In the days of such things as the slave trade, child labour and hanging kids for stealing petty items "most people in influence still grew up with a degree of religion in their childhood".

The good examples we can point at such as Cadbury, Rowntreee and the like were largely Quakers or non-conformists and ostracised by mainstream Christians.

THINK before you post, Dally.

Re: UKIP masterstroke : Thu Mar 21, 2013 3:18 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

Rubbish again.
In the days of such things as the slave trade, child labour and hanging kids for stealing petty items "most people in influence still grew up with a degree of religion in their childhood".

Linking this to something else that's arisen, it's actually quite intriguing to compare Britain with Germany during a period in which the latter is asserted, by certain types of historians, to have been dreadfully militaristic and simply paving the way for old Adolf.

This is usually claimed to have started under Old Fritz, yet comparisons of rates of execution, for instance, show that non-militaristic ( ) Britain executed vastly more of its people than did Frederich's Prussia. And like his friend Voltaire, Frederich was hardly convinced of there being any sort of deity.

El Barbudo wrote:

THINK before you post, Dally.

Oh now you're really pushing it.

Re: UKIP masterstroke : Thu Mar 21, 2013 3:38 pm  

Mintball wrote:

... Oh now you're really pushing it.

Sigh ... yeah, you're right.
The symptoms suggest an opinion born of another opinion born of a previous opinion, all baseless but arranged in a convenient circle such that each "proves" the previous one.

Re: UKIP masterstroke : Thu Mar 21, 2013 5:22 pm  

Sal Paradise wrote:

And a level of wealth that would make many of today's rich look poor. Society was very different then and whilst he had a superb way of treating his staff how much of what he did was from a selfish point of view i.e. the need to keep the factory staffed and functional?

Hw was also in a very competitive market for staff - the industrial revolution especially in Bradford expanded at an incredible rate - if you wanted the right staff you had to present a compelling argument for them to work for you.

What is interesting is how quickly the fortune evaporated.

I don't automatically subscribe to the generous benefactor theory either in his case or Benjamin Gott and other examples, they lived in remarkable times, were wealthy beyond imagination and lucky enough to have investors throwing moeny at them and inventors banging on their doors with ways to make their factories even more efficient, incredible to imagine.

There is an small exhibition inside Salts Mill about the man and his family which promotes the generous benefactor opinion but truthfully he rented those houses to his own employees, he was very strict about the upkeep of those houses so that they didn't devalue into slums, and obviously benefitted from then having a very loyal and hardworking workforce - on the other hand his village wouldn't have housed everyone who worked there so presumably the houses went to favoured staff or management and the rest had to travel in from nearby slums ?


Its a good afternoon out (I'm sure you've done it) but the most remarkable thing is how the hell the businesses who trade from there now manage to sell anything at those prices and how the hell David Hockney ever sold anything too

Re: UKIP masterstroke : Fri Mar 22, 2013 12:30 am  

Dally wrote:

Meanwhile, back in the real world inter-personal relationships, business ethics, etc, etc have all mardedly improved with the decline in religious observance haven't they. That's at a stage when most people in influence still grew up with a degree of religion in their childhood. That won't be the case in a few years time.

I agree.

Regards
Enron & Lehmann Brothers

Re: UKIP masterstroke : Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:06 am  

Sal Paradise wrote:

And a level of wealth that would make many of today's rich look poor. Society was very different then and whilst he had a superb way of treating his staff how much of what he did was from a selfish point of view i.e. the need to keep the factory staffed and functional?...

Valid point, that.
As was mentioned in the "Revolution" thread, establishment figures were very wary of possible revolution and working-class uprising.
It's perfectly possible that the likes of Ackroyd (Ackroyden and Copley Model Village) and Salt (Saltaire) saw the advantage in keeping the workforce placid. But it's also possible that they had a paternalistic view towards their workforce, so my guess is that it was probably a mixture of what they felt was right and what was expedient.

In some other cases though, such as the Crossleys in Halifax (where Mrs Crossley, in particular, always remembered where they had come from and how Christian it was to help others ... and was known to berate her husband and sons if they dared to forget) and the Fieldens in Todmorden who campaigned for a shorter working week for children and compulsory education for those children rather than have them working full-time in the mills.
Of course, Fielden could only go so far or the less altruistic employers would have out-competed him on cost and he'd have been out of business with his workers then unemployed, homeless and starving.
It required an act of parliament to keep that playing field level.

Today, we need to remember that businesses cannot afford to be be moral because business and the market are, in essence, amoral because they can't afford to be anything else ... the baseline of fair play to employees and customers always needs to be set by government to ensure that level playing field.
The market has no conscience.

Re: UKIP masterstroke : Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:19 am  

El Barbudo wrote:

... Today, we need to remember that businesses cannot afford to be be moral because business and the market are, in essence, amoral because they can't afford to be anything else ... the baseline of fair play to employees and customers always needs to be set by government to ensure that level playing field.
The market has no conscience.

And entirely valid point.

And of course, globalisation has made this situation worse, allowing companies to simply flit to a country where a lower cost of living means they can pay less.

On the other hand, the likes of KPMG have become Living Wage employers because they realise that such moves eventually save money by improving recruitment, retention, sick rates and productivity. It shouldn't be rocket science, should it?