The UK Today

Over recent years we've seen an increase in outsourcing of call centre and IT jobs to India. Now Reuters has taken it a step further by outsourcing journalism to India. I kid you not. As this story shows, Reuters are planning to transfer the routine reporting of Wall St business news to Bangalore.

Management makes the claim that the cost savings from this move will actually work to preserve jobs in the struggling company. That's a position I'll reserve judgement for now. From past experience this looks very similar to the stealth approach followed by other companies who claimed it would have no negative impact, only to make significant numbers redundant over subsequent months.

However, with the Civil Service hiring staff at a rate of 500 per week, perhaps there are some cost savings to be made by shipping the whole Government and supporting infrastructure to Bangalore or Mumbai. They certainly appear to have suitable skills, offering an improvement over many of the current incumbents of Westminster.

Just saw that Peugeot 206 advert on TV. The one where the Indian lad covets a 206, but can't afford one. So instead he bashes some old Hindustan into a semblance of his object of desire. First few times I saw it, I thought it was great.



But then I thought about it a bit more, and its actually quite a damning comment on globalisation, or what should more accurately be called Corporate Colonialism. It basically says that we've successfully exported our desires and aspirations to a nation that can't as yet support them. And with the wave of outsourcing spreading east to China, is most likely giving them a brief glimpse of a false dawn.

I'm all for supporting developing nations, but outsourcing our corporate culture and attitudes is not the way.

This is a theme I'll come back to.