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UK inflation since 1948
Inflation in the UK has fallen to 4.2%. Get the full data over time - and see how it compares to pay
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UK inflation dropped to a six-month low of 4.2% in December, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed today - down from 4.8% for November 2011.
More precisely Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation stands at 4.2% for December. When looking at this drop it is important to remember that in September this year, when the CPI stood at 5.2%, it had never been higher in recorded history.
The Retail Price Index (RPI) measure of inflation stands at 4.8% down from 5.2% in November.
There are some important differences between these two main ways the ONS use to measure inflation. The government prefers the Consumer Price Index, which also includes services, housing, electricity, food, and transportation, but the Retail Price Index covers more items. The RPI includes housing costs and is used for many pay negotiations and used to be used for pension payments. We've included both here - just click on the links on the spreadsheet. You can get the full list of items in the inflation basket here.
We have also added in pay data - and you can see how inflation is racing ahead of average earnings.
We have gathered all the data for inflation since June 1948. Let us know what you can do with this data.
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DATA: UK inflation since the 1940s - CPI and RPI
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- Inflation
- Economics
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guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Call for 'industry standard' to protect investors from hidden charges
Hidden charges make it difficult for investors to compare funds. Now Fidelity is calling for a simple charging structure so the true cost is clear to all
Fidelity Worldwide Investment is calling on investment fund companies to adopt an industry standard breakdown of costs to help end hidden charges that can damage investors' returns. The firm said inconsistent price comparisons did not help investors, and urged the industry to develop a universal approach to disclosing the total cost of investing in a fund.
Investors typically use the annual Total Expense Ratio (TER) to compare the cost of investment funds. This may include published fees such as a company's standard annual management charge as well as various administration fees. But, deceptively, the TER excludes dealing commission, stamp duty and other portfolio turnover costs that can add considerably to investors' annual charges, depending on how often a fund manager buys and sells shares within the portfolio. Investors only find out they are paying more in fees than they would have thought at the end of the year through their annual statement.
The average yearly TER on a £10,000 investment across all UK retail funds is 1.65% – £13.75 a month or £165 a year. But Fidelity said this rises to 2% when portfolio turnover costs are included – that's £16.67 a month or £200 a year. For wealthier investors, a small percentage difference in fees can seriously add up.
Fidelity's research mirrors an investigation by consumer rights group Which? in October 2011, which found that £258m of portfolio turnover costs was being hidden from consumers each year. It said a high level of portfolio trading can sometimes double the annual costs of holding investment funds.
Gary Shaughnessy, UK managing director at Fidelity, says: "We believe the charging structure on funds should be simple, easy to understand and not discriminate against smaller investors.
"We are seeing selective pricing start to emerge, which runs the risk of misleading investors about the real costs they are paying. Some companies are only presenting part of the picture and, crucially, they are failing to show the cost of advice or the cost of the platform without which investors would not be able to access the fund.
"There are a lot of headline figures being bandied about but they do little to help investors understand the true cost of investing, or to evaluate whether these costs are fair for the service they are receiving. What will really help is a transparent and standardised cost breakdown in pounds and pence."
Alan and Gina Miller, co-founders of exchange traded fund specialist SCM Private, have been critical about the information available on charges, and have launched www.trueandfaircampaign.com calling for greater transparency over charges and how managers invest clients' cash.
SCM's research indicates that only 19% of savers and investors know how much they are charged; while hidden costs across the entire UK savings and investment industry run at £18.5bn.
Alan Miller, who was chief investment officer at New Star Asset Management until 2007, says: "British consumers have, over many years, been comprehensively misled by the investment management industry in relation to transparency of charges and investments.
"Key issues are the multiplicity of hidden fees, lack of product transparency and the convoluted language which the investment management industry uses. The odds are stacked against consumers being able to make informed and competitive investment decisions."
The asset management industry's trade body, the Investment Management Association, argues that trading costs are readily available in fund literature, while investment fund regulation also requires their disclosure. Richard Saunders, chief executive of the IMA, says: "People need to save for the long term. They do not need to be scared off by false stories that they will be ripped off by the industry."
For actively managed funds in the UK All Companies sector, the IMA said trading costs totalled 0.31% of funds' average assets in 2009 (the latest figures available from the IMA). For tracker funds, transaction costs totalled 0.06%.
Saunders adds: "The IMA's figures demonstrate clearly that so-called hidden charges which cost investors billions a year are a complete myth. If the accusation were true, it would show up in the net returns achieved by investors. But there is no sign of it. The accusations of hidden charges do not stand up."
Gina Miller said SCM's proposed code would provide 100% transparency by showing the whole range of fees, to be called the Total Cost of Investment (TCI). She also highlighted the call for improved transparency. "If managers were required to publish a full list of holdings once a quarter, investors would be able to see if the manager had done something odd or if a fund was straying too far from its stated approach."
Patrick Connolly of IFA AWD Chase de Vere says: "It is a balancing act. While investors may want more transparency so they can see a full breakdown of fund holdings, the danger for a manager is that their best ideas are simply picked up and copied by others who don't invest in the fund."
He added that the investment industry often fails to make fund management charges clear and transparent: "Many investors believe that the total charges they pay on an investment fund are the initial charge and the annual management charge. However, the reality is that the TER can be much greater than the annual management charge."
Mark Kingguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
North-south divide grows as jobs are lost at four times the rate elsewhere
Unemployment figures give new impetus to calls for an elected assembly for the north of England
Jobs in the north of England are being lost at four times the rate in the rest of the country, deepening the economic divide and prompting new calls for devolution of powers to an elected assembly for the north. About 98,000 jobs were lost in the north-east, north-west, Yorkshire and Humberside in 2011, according to an analysis by the centre-left thinktank IPPR North. This was an 18% increase on the previous year, dwarfing the 4.5% rise in the rest of England. In the most extreme case, in the north-east, 12% of the working-age population are unemployed compared with 6.5% in the south-west, 6.4% in the south-east and 9.9% in London.
The figures will bolster the growing movement calling for a "voice for the north" through an elected assembly. In the Observer, a letter from six Labour MPs from across the north, supported by parliamentary colleagues from other regions, says that the debate over Scotland's potential move to further devolution or independence should not "ignore the growing political marginalisation of the north of England, with a cabinet dominated by southern politicians who seem to know little, and care even less, of the economic and social problems of the north".
It demands that the north is given a "stronger say in its own destiny" and calls for a debate on the benefits of directly elected regional government. The MPs, who are patrons of a new thinktank, the Hannah Mitchell Foundation, established to campaign for an elected assembly, said: "We need to move on from the pessimism that descended on politicians after the defeat of the referendum for north-east devolution in 2004, and recognise that the UK has changed."
Barry Sheerman, the MP for Huddersfield and a signatory of the letter, said the movement aspired to create an assembly, but in the short term he believed that each region should have a commission made up of business and academic leaders to protect its particular interests.
"I am very passionate about this. The north has a much larger population than Scotland, and look at London, which has an assembly and a powerful mayor to protect its interests. With the scrapping of the regional development agencies, we don't have a body to deal with strategic problems and issues for the north.
"As I keep telling the prime minister and chancellor, the northern regions have been in recession for years."
Linda Riordan, MP for Halifax, said: "The disparities between the north and south are widening and demand action and it is extraordinary that the government is getting rid of the regional development agencies that provided us with some support."
The government is funding 164 projects through a regional growth fund, "creating and safeguarding" more than 330,000 jobs, supported by more than £6bn of private investment. In November, the chancellor announced an additional £1bn for the fund, bringing the total to £2.4bn.
Daniel Boffeyguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Lord Ashcroft's Caribbean bank asked to hand over documents
Court gives insolvency practitioner tracing assets of collapsed company power to demand information from Tory peer's bank
The Caribbean bank of Tory peer Lord Ashcroft faces demands to hand over documents relating to the collapse of a company whose subsidiary is accused of benefiting from a culture of corruption.
An insolvency practitioner appointed by the British Virgin Islands courts to trace the assets of Oxford Ventures Limited has been granted powers to request information from the British Caribbean Bank (BCB), an Ashcroft business based in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI).
Oxford Ventures, which collapsed in 2010, is the ultimate parent company of Johnston International, a construction and engineering firm that went bust in the same year with debts of $30m and is now under scrutiny in the TCI and the UK. Oxford's main creditor was BCB.
Last week, in a libel action brought by Ashcroft against the Independent, the paper's lawyers claimed the Tory peer was linked to Johnston which, they alleged, had benefited from a property boom in the TCI "knowing this boom was being created through systematic corruption".
Ashcroft insists he has had no "economic beneficial or legal interest" in Johnston since he sold it in 1999.
Documents obtained by the BBC's Panorama programme, however, suggest its chief executive, Allan Forrest, who was also a director of Oxford Ventures, reported to Ashcroft and also believed the peer owned Oxford.
Chris Johnson of CJA Associates, the insolvency practitioner charged with unpicking Oxford's collapse, was last week given new powers by the TCI courts to request documents from Ashcroft's bank. BCB has previously declined to provide Johnson with requested documents. On Friday the bank confirmed it would hand over Oxford's bank statements.
"We have now obtained a court order in the Turks which empowers us to receive such documents," said Johnson.
The Lib Dem peer, Lord Oakeshott, said he would be tabling parliamentary questions to establish what British officials in the TCI knew about Johnston.
Jamie Dowardguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Lord Ashcroft's Caribbean bank asked to hand over documents
Court gives insolvency practitioner tracing assets of collapsed company power to demand information from Tory peer's bank
The Caribbean bank of Tory peer Lord Ashcroft faces demands to hand over documents relating to the collapse of a company whose subsidiary is accused of benefiting from a culture of corruption.
An insolvency practitioner appointed by the British Virgin Islands courts to trace the assets of Oxford Ventures Limited has been granted powers to request information from the British Caribbean Bank (BCB), an Ashcroft business based in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI).
Oxford Ventures, which collapsed in 2010, is the ultimate parent company of Johnston International, a construction and engineering firm that went bust in the same year with debts of $30m and is now under scrutiny in the TCI and the UK. Oxford's main creditor was BCB.
Last week, in a libel action brought by Ashcroft against the Independent, the paper's lawyers claimed the Tory peer was linked to Johnston which, they alleged, had benefited from a property boom in the TCI "knowing this boom was being created through systematic corruption".
Ashcroft insists he has had no "economic beneficial or legal interest" in Johnston since he sold it in 1999.
Documents obtained by the BBC's Panorama programme, however, suggest its chief executive, Allan Forrest, who was also a director of Oxford Ventures, reported to Ashcroft and also believed the peer owned Oxford.
Chris Johnson of CJA Associates, the insolvency practitioner charged with unpicking Oxford's collapse, was last week given new powers by the TCI courts to request documents from Ashcroft's bank. BCB has previously declined to provide Johnson with requested documents. On Friday the bank confirmed it would hand over Oxford's bank statements.
"We have now obtained a court order in the Turks which empowers us to receive such documents," said Johnson.
The Lib Dem peer, Lord Oakeshott, said he would be tabling parliamentary questions to establish what British officials in the TCI knew about Johnston.
Jamie Dowardguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Report: Civilian Deaths at Record High in US-Occupied Afghanistan
The number of civilian casualties resulting from the conflict in Afghanistan has risen for a fifth consecutive year, according to a report (pdf) by the United Nations. The number of civilian deaths in 2011, according to the report, was up to 3,021 - an increase of eight per cent on the previous year's total of 2,790.
Report: Civilian Deaths at Record High in US-Occupied Afghanistan
The number of civilian casualties resulting from the conflict in Afghanistan has risen for a fifth consecutive year, according to a report (pdf) by the United Nations. The number of civilian deaths in 2011, according to the report, was up to 3,021 - an increase of eight per cent on the previous year's total of 2,790.
Report: Civilian Deaths at Record High in US-Occupied Afghanistan
The number of civilian casualties resulting from the conflict in Afghanistan has risen for a fifth consecutive year, according to a report (pdf) by the United Nations. The number of civilian deaths in 2011, according to the report, was up to 3,021 - an increase of eight per cent on the previous year's total of 2,790.
A Research Strategy for Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials
A Research Strategy for Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials
In the Electric Tram
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Tram and Rail, 1914
This is the second in a series of excerpts from Robert Walser’s Berlin Stories, which have been translated into English for the first time by Susan Bernofsky, and just published in a new edition by New York Review Classics. The first excerpt can be found here. —The Editors
Riding the “electric” is an inexpensive pleasure. When the car arrives, you climb aboard, possibly after first politely ceding the right of way to an imposing gentlewoman, and then the car continues on. At once you notice that you have a rather musical disposition. The most delicate melodies are parading through your head. In no time you’ve elevated yourself to the position of a leading conductor or even composer. Yes, it’s really true: the human brain involuntarily starts composing songs in the electric tram, songs that in their involuntary nature and their rhythmic regularity are so very striking that it’s hard to resist thinking oneself a second Mozart.
Meanwhile you have rolled yourself a cigarette, say, and inserted it with great care between your well-practiced lips. With such an apparatus in your mouth, it is impossible to feel utterly without cheer, even if your soul happens to be torn in twain by sufferings. But is this the case? Most certainly not. Just wanted to give a quick description of the magic that a smoking white object of this sort is capable of working, year in and year out, on the human psyche. And what next?
Our car is constantly in motion. It is raining in the streets we glide through, and this constitutes one more added pleasantness. Some people find it frightfully agreeable to see that it is raining and at the same time be permitted to sense that they themselves are not getting wet. The image produced by a gray, wet street has something consoling and dreamy about it, and so you stand now upon the rear platform of the creaking car that is rumbling its way forward, and you gaze straight ahead. Gazing straight ahead is something done by almost all the people who sit or stand in the “electric.”
People do, after all, tend to get somewhat bored on such trips, which often require twenty or thirty minutes or even more, and what do you do to provide yourself with some modicum of entertainment? You look straight ahead. To show by one’s gaze and gestures that one is finding things a bit tedious fills a person with a quite peculiar pleasure. Now you return to studying the face of the conductor on duty, and now you content yourself once more with merely, vacantly staring straight ahead. Isn’t that nice? One thing and then another? I must confess: I have achieved a certain technical mastery in the art of staring straight ahead.
It is prohibited for the conductor to converse with the esteemed passengers. But what if prohibitions are sidestepped, laws violated, admonitions of so refined and humane a nature disregarded? This happens fairly often. Chatting with the conductor offers prospects of the most charming recreation, and I am particularly adept at seizing opportunities to engage in the most amusing and profitable conversations with this tramway employee. It pays to ignore certain regulations, and summoning one’s powers to render uniforms loquacious helps create a convivial mood.
From time to time you do nonetheless look straight ahead again. After completing this straightforward exercise, you may permit your eyes a modest excursion. Your gaze sweeps through the interior of the car, crossing fat, drooping mustaches, the face of a weary, elderly woman, a pair of youthfully mischievous eyes belonging to a girl, until you’ve had your fill of these studies in the quotidian and gradually begin to observe your own footgear, which could use proper mending. And always new stations are arriving, new streets, and the journey takes you past squares and bridges, past the war ministry and the department store, and all this while it is continuing to rain, and you continue to behave as if you were a tad bored, and you continue to find this conduct the most suitable.
But it might also be that while you were riding along like that, you heard or saw something beautiful, gay, or sad, something you will never forget.
1908
Is this Facebook's great leap forward?
Site's share offer will create new billionaires and millionaires – but analysts worry about its capacity for growth and many users fear for their privacy
Management consultant and business expert Peter Cohan does not plan on investing in Facebook stock any time soon. The author of 10 business books, including Capital Rising and Export Now, took a look at the social media network's filings for its coming share sale, which could value it as high as $100bn, and knew he would take a pass. "Everything is so hyped. They are tapping a bubble," he said. Nor does Cohan intend even to join Facebook. "I hope that I can outlast it," he said.
That sort of scepticism has not been the dominant tone of what must rank as one of the most remarkable weeks in the history of the internet. It saw Facebook complete its journey from its birth in a Harvard dorm room to going public, in a move that will create hundreds of new millionaires among its employees and turn its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, into one of the richest and most powerful people in the world – on paper, at least.
Documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claimed that it had a staggering 845 million active monthly users, half of whom sign in every day, $3.7bn in annual revenue and a rocketing growth rate. It also has a very healthy profit margin of 27%, just above fellow internet giant Google. This is a company that seems to give the final lie to the image of tech firms as coming prematurely to market with more in the way of wild dreams than a solid balance sheet.
No wonder Facebook has achieved the almost impossible for a modern American corporation in being not only the subject of a Hollywood movie, but the subject of one that was exciting and critically acclaimed. Yet amid all the merited praise of Facebook's astonishing rise, it is possible to find sceptics about the future.
Facebook is entering a very different world from the one in which it grew up as a brash Silicon Valley startup. It will face different pressures now it has come of age. Even among those who reacted positively to Facebook's move last week it was possible to detect a change of mood. "It is a very valuable company. But there will be bumps on the road ahead," said David Sherman, professor of accounting at Northeastern University in Boston.
Facebook is unusual in that its biggest asset is not really something it makes. It is not a product in the traditional sense of the word and there is not a single service that it provides. Instead Facebook's true value lies with its vast user base and the myriad, ever-shifting ways in which its members use the website.
That mother lode of personal profiles is what advertisers prize above all. The information that Facebook harvests and stores on its users is a goldmine for marketers and any company serious about selling its products in the 21st century.
But one problem Facebook faces is how to expand that already enormous user base. What started out as a networking site for Harvard students now encompasses almost one in eight people on the planet. Thus the sort of massive exponential growth that has marked Facebook's astonishing rise is simply not going to be possible for much longer.
Coupled with that are problems in areas of the world where Facebook has yet to make its mark, notably parts of Asia where local social media websites have a strong market share, and most particularly China. In its filing to the SEC last week, Facebook mentioned China no fewer than nine times. It is not hard to see why. There are more than half a billion Chinese online, representing a tempting last hunting ground.
China's government is less keen on being infiltrated by a western social media giant. Beijing is notorious for its desire to control the information to which its citizens have access. Facebook has been blocked there for the last three years and, though Facebook's internal culture is less politically opposed to censorship than other internet firms, like Google, it might not be possible to negotiate a way in. The company admitted as much: "We do not know if we will be able to find an approach to manage content and information that will be acceptable to us and to the Chinese government," it said last week.
But Facebook has to find growth somewhere. Now that it plans to go public, it will gain shareholders who will demand nothing less than ever-rising profits each three months. So if broadening its user base might not be easy, another tack would be to deepen it. It could improve the value of its user base by extracting more intimate information from users that is valuable to advertisers, who could deploy it in ever more targeted and sophisticated ways.
Part of that value is Facebook's existence as a place for networks of friends. Advertisers are discovering that people are far more likely to pay attention to ads for products that their friends like, or have been recommended to them by friends, rather than by just clicking on a seemingly random internet advert that appears on their screen. Catherine Tucker, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan school of management, has published a recent paper on such "social advertising" and believes Facebook could unlock huge value with it. "Facebook knows who people's friends are, which can be hugely valuable to marketers. Feeding that social network into the Facebook algorithm creates huge and under-exploited profit potential," Tucker said.
But it may not be that easy. Firstly, the advertising cannot be intrusive. Many experts – as well as ordinary users of Facebook – believe that the more obvious the advertising on the website, the more people will be put off from using Facebook. There is another concern too. It is a common complaint of many Facebook users that the company is too keen to override their worries about privacy.
They resent the idea that Facebook is not simply a useful service that helps them stay in touch with people, but is in fact a gigantic, profit-making company that sees them as a valuable resource to sell to advertisers. Collecting too much data on users and allowing advertisers access to it too obviously could cause them to seek an alternative service. It is a delicate tightrope to walk.
The man most responsible for walking that fine line is Zuckerberg, who who has steered the firm this far. But now that it is coming to the market, Zuckerberg's role is set to come under increasing scrutiny. The needs of a startup – even a huge one – are very different from those of a fully grown corporate behemoth with a floating stock price and outside investors clamouring for returns at all costs.
Some see Zuckerberg as less well equipped to tackle those demands as chief executive than current chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, who has a strong business background and is the company's highest-paid employee. They see Zuckerberg as more of a visionary and a creative force, while Sandberg as the real business brain.
Not that Zuckerberg seems to be stepping away from the frontline of Facebook's development any time soon. He owns about a quarter of the company and agreements with other shareholders mean he holds about 60% of the shares that carry voting powers: effectively, a controlling stake. That is far more than Bill Gates had when Microsoft went public and also more than Google's co-founders had when that firm followed suit. Even in its SEC papers, Zuckerberg showed his individualistic streak by telling potential investors he might make decisions that put Facebook users ahead of Facebook shareholders.
In a letter to investors describing the company's mission, Zuckerberg praised "hacker culture" and said the firm was more interested in its social mission than just making money. "Simply put: we don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services. And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximising profits," Zuckerberg wrote. Some experts welcomed that view. "In the long term that could be a good thing," said Sherman.
Yet Zuckerberg's sentiment will be news to most Wall Street investors, as Facebook is likely to discover soon after its first shares hit the open market. If profits or sales disappoint at any stage, then Facebook's shares will plummet just like those of any other company. "Wall Street will beat your stock down if you don't beat your profits every quarter," said Cohan.
Then there is Google+, the rival social networking website set up by Google. Other potential "Facebook killers" will almost certainly emerge from some starry-eyed student's laptop, just as Facebook itself once did. Another possible problem is the explosive growth of social networks on mobile phones, which currently do not carry much effective advertising and thus blow a hole in Facebook's existing business model.
The brutal fact is that Facebook's future is unknowable. For every pundit wowed by its possible applications and the supposedly infinite numbers of future services, there is another seeing little scope for growth. For every admirer of Zuckerberg who believes in his genius, there is another who thinks pride becomes before a fall. For every investor agog at the prospect of buying a chunk of Facebook's bright future, there is another calling the whole thing a gigantic bubble.
- Mark Zuckerberg
- Internet
- Technology sector
- IPOs
- Stock markets
- Social networking
- United States
- US economy
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Apple the target of playwright's ire over Chinese worker abuse
World's top tech firm brought to book by minor monologuist over working conditions in factories that make its gadgets
These days Mike Daisey is run off his feet. "I don't even have time to listen to my voicemail now. That's a phenomenon I have not experienced before," he told the Observer with an amazed laugh. Perhaps he shouldn't be so surprised. In the past fortnight, Daisey has gone from being a gifted but obscure solo act in the US theatre to the public face of a backlash against one of the iconic corporations of the 21st century.
Daisey's latest work, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, has triggered off a spasm of soul-searching about the sometimes appalling labour conditions in China under which many of America's most cherished products are made. Specifically, the shiny, sleek iPhones, iPods and iPads produced by Apple.
The Agony and the Ecstasy was devised after exhaustive research talking to exploited and abused workers in China, for almost 18 months. Daisey played to small but appreciative crowds across the US, winning critical praise but stirring little trouble, not even with the target of his ire: Apple itself.
But everything changed in January when a discussion and partial performance of Daisey's monologue appeared on the National Public Radio show This American Life. It rapidly became the most downloaded episode of the show's history and an online petition calling for Apple to reform its practices began. Within 48 hours it attracted 140,000 names. Then the New York Times ran an exhaustive investigation of Apple's supplier network in China that revealed industrial accidents, brutal working conditions and child labour. Daisey had briefed the newspaper's reporters and they had watched his show last year. Suddenly, Apple's Chinese supplier network was huge news.
That has turned him into an unlikely nemesis, sending tremors of fear through one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world. It is an amazing shift. After all, for 15 years the New York-based Daisey has crafted his art as a gifted monologuist, winning praise but little mass appeal on a variety of topics from his first job at Amazon to his views on Oprah Winfrey, or recounting a trip to the South Pacific.
But now, arriving apologetically late and harried in a trendy Brooklyn restaurant near his home in New York, Daisey is a man in intense demand. He has appearances lined up on CNN and other TV shows. On his blog he has been updating the story regularly and fending off criticism from Apple's defenders, including comedian Stephen Fry and Forbes columnist Tim Worstall.
Daisey is delighted but exhausted, having been up until 5am composing a response to a public attack from Worstall. "I am tired but I am encouraged to see traction. The only way you can fight for a thing like this is when you know the truth is on your side," he told the Observer.
Daisey's sudden catapult on to the world stage as the public face of criticism against Apple is an astonishing development, especially for such a rarely practised art as the theatrical monologue. It has also likely made his Steve Jobs piece one of the most remarkable performances of recent years, not least because of its leap from the stage to real world activism. "It's the first time maybe in a generation that the American theatre has affected change."
The play's premise is simple enough. It blends Daisey's own backstory as a nerdy geek who loved – and continues to love – Apple products, with the story of how Jobs ran the company with a mix of tyranny and genius before he died last year. But then it heads into dark territory as Daisey recounts how he became obsessed with photographs that emerged from inside the giant Foxconn factory in which many Apple products are made.
His fascination with how his beloved gadgets were built ends up with a subversive trip to southern China and interviews with ordinary workers who describe the physically and mentally crippling conditions in which many toil. On the trip Daisey was stunned that he, as a playwright, was the one digging up the truth. "I wanted journalists to tell the story. I am a monologuist and it's not the same thing. But I had to act as a journalist," he said.
Daisey is scathing about many of the journalists who cover Apple. He claimed they were often cowed by the firm, given strictly controlled access to the latest product launches but subject to intimidation over writing about anything that might hurt Apple's public image. He recites the story of one tech journalist who agreed to appear on a panel with him, only to be contacted by Apple and warned off doing so. "Apple has built an incredible institution of secrecy and people understand that when Apple threaten them they mean it. Everyone knows that," Daisey said.
As a performer, though, Daisey is immune. Yet he confesses he still has a complex emotional relationship with the company. He still uses an iPhone and does not tell people to boycott the company, just spread the word about Chinese labour practices in the hope that they change. When people email him to ask what phone they should buy – and they do in large numbers – he tells them to make an "ethical" choice they are comfortable with. He himself no longer upgrades his devices and is considering buying secondhand in the future.
Apple for its part says many of the stories emerging from China are not true and that it already is acting to monitor its suppliers' behaviour and bring in greater transparency. Other defenders of the firm point out that many other electrical goods firms are equally as culpable as Apple, if not more so.
For Daisey, perhaps because he loved Apple's caring and cool public image so much, that is not good enough. "It is like watching a friend lose his way. It is hard to imagine the Apple of a generation ago making this ham-fisted error." He believes the firm could have acted years earlier to improve its supplier network in China and would have reaped a PR bonanza, rather than the current global whirlwind of bad publicity.
"Now all they have to do is clean up the mess, but if they had got ahead of it they could have looked fantastic," he said.
Daisey himself is not stopping his charge. His monologue is still on stage and will remain so for at least the rest of the year. He may take it to bigger venues for one-off shows, aiming at 2,000-3,000-seat venues so the ticket prices can be driven down. He is also seeking to turn the monologue into a film. As a final way of spreading the word, he is soon to release a transcript of it and allow anyone in the world to adapt his show or put it on in as their own live performance. "People can tell this story to other people. This is exactly how the environmental movement really took hold. People realised these values mattered and they began to tell the story from person to person and that's what caused change," he said.
Though Daisey has other ideas for future monologues he knows the success of the Jobs show and the issue of Chinese labour practices that it illustrates is going to dominate his life for the foreseeable future. As he got up to leave the restaurant he left behind a half-eaten sandwich. He was headed to a car that would whisk him to a TV studio for another interview. "It's like that feeling you get when you climb a mountain and you get to the top and it turns out you are in the Alps, and there's a whole series of mountains ahead of you. Then you sharpen your stick and keep walking," he said.
Paul Harrisguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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UPDATE: (1:12 PM EST): Russia and China have vetoed a UN Security Council vote.
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