Kind comments and Chinese trash

One pens these thoughts and presses "Publish", only for them to vanish into the aether. I don't get many comments or feedback, and never know who is reading them, but a generous comment came from Hijaz Shaikh today: "This is my first time visit to your blog and I am very interested in the articles that you serve. Thank you for sharing and don't forget, keep sharing useful info." Thank you for this! It's nice to know it is being read somewhere in the world.

On a sadder subject, how many of you have bought "bargain" items on the internet, only for them to prove useless? For a long time, China has been renowned for forging counterfeit goods such as clothing or other goods. This obviously was harmful to the luxury goods market, but was generally harmless to the customer, who was happy to buy something marked Prada or Ralph Lauren, at a cheap price. But now, the Chinese are copying Western technology to produce inferior articles that simply don't work.

Some time ago, we had a good quality printer, needing expensive replacement cartridges. We bought them from a supermarket, but they wouldn't work. On examination, the little copper pads that connect to the printer controller didn't have any printed-circuit wires to them, and the cartridges had no chip inside. They were marked as made in China by HP, but we do wonder about the quality control.

Amazon is particularly careless in checking what it sells. Recently we bought a Crock-Pot and used it for a slow-simmered vegetarian dish. The old one had worked perfectly for a long time. We could leave it on all day gently simmering, and it never burnt the food, but not only does the thermostat not work on this new one, the non-stick pot is more like a glue pot. It wouldn't stop boiling even on the low heat, and the food burnt so completely round the edges I had to scrub it repeatedly to try and get it clean. I can only conclude that this too is a poor Chinese copy, masquerading as the real McCoy.

Ann was once recommended by her hair stylist to buy a set of hair straighteners made by ghd (good hair day), a reputable brand. She bought them on Amazon, but they were shoddy and the thermostat didn't work properly. If she'd tried to use them, her hair would have been singed beyond recovery, never mind straight! We had to throw them out and she then went onto the company website to buy them directly from ghd. These were perfect - so the others must have been Chinese fakes.

The old Trade Marks used to boast: "Made in England" or "Made in Germany", and one knew that meant good quality. They say, "Buyer beware", but it is hard to beware when we don't always know the true country of origin. President Trump has a good point when he says, "Make America great again". We should strive to make Europe great again, and stop being so dependent on shoddy Chinese manufacturing, or downright counterfeiting. It is time to stop giving China our technology, just for them to rip it off and sell it back to us. Far better to have fewer things, but better quality that lasts.