To ask you to swerve Shein & Temu

I don’t know what the answer is. I used to shop purely second hand at charity shops and boot sales but EBay and then Vinted took that away and they are shells of what they used to be. Now investors profit from what used to be a lifeline.

Happy to swerve and don’t need to make xenophobic comments about the Chinese only making shit to do it (not you op but others here, China exports a lot of very high quality and essential stuff we all take for granted)

Depends what you mean by cross check every item I buy. I do only buy from reputable UK/EU regulated retailers or brands though. Or second hand. If i shop small, I do check provenance. It's not exactly difficult.

That's an amazon reseller. It's EXACTLY the same stuff as temu. Avoid it for sure as anyone can easily start a business on amazon buying tat for £3 and selling it for £30.

The only difference with amazon is that there are also some regulated brands on there. But personally, I'd minimise how much money I gave to Bezos regardless.

If you think you can avoid Chinese imports you're sadly mistaken.
If it says "manufactured in the uk" on it, it means the item was built here, not where the components came from.
I work in import, there's items that are no longer made anywhere else in the world.

Cheap clothes are produced in Pakistan etc. for high street shops. We have an agreement with developing countries regarding customs duties. They are often no better. You just pay for the label and maybe a slightly higher quality control.

Tariffs don't make much difference either.
I noticed that Rachel Reeves is hoping to close the small imports waiver. That will only hurt the indivdal people purchasing from Shein etc. It will not touch the manufacturers who have things in place already.

It's too late. Local is unaffordable and rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
We are global now. This is what global is.

Do you cross check every item you buy?

Don't buy it from amazon either then. Amazon is just a marketplace. Don't buy the unregulated shit from anywhere.

Interestingly I’ve just looked at some of the items I bought on Temu. The EXACT SAME items are on Amazon but more expensive. So I would still be buying unethically.

A family member lets her daughter (12) take Temu eyelashes and glue into school to put on other pupils’ lashes in break or lunch time. I have been so worried about these chemicals so near to young (or any) eyes, but even the girl’s grandmother thinks it’s funny.

Nowt to do with you what others buy.

They're not "just as bad" though. This is a myth.

Well yes, lots of charity shops don't even take Shein stuff. A lot of this is a mindset shift of the last decad where people "need" so much stuff. I read somewhere that an average US household has 300,000 items in it and I bet the UK isn't far behind.

My DC got a partybag full of temu stuff once and after writing with the pen that was in it, their hand was yellow as the dye had rubbed off. It smelt weird too. It all went in the bin immediately

On my! Were you trying to be so patronising?

when you buy shite from Temu you KNOW it’s unethical. Guaranteed. When you buy from uk or Europe it might be, but they try to avoid skavery. Obvs.

The thing is, unless you are buying handmade local artisan items, most things you buy online or in mainstream cheapish high-street shops are just as bad in terms of being made abroad in sweatshops. Most of us are struggwith a cost of living crisis and although we'd love to buy everything local and hand made, it's just too expensive. So if I'm buying foreign made sweatshop clothes I'd rather pay as little as possible for them.

Oh my! You think only cheap stuff you buy from China involves slave labour. That’s funny.

I think everything i own comes from temu.

There is enough clothes already in existence to clothe the next 6 generations.

What did you need so urgently out of interest?

There are fucking tons of free clothes out there. People literally dump them by the bag full.

And we get to the bottom of it. You're not using child slaves because you have to, you're using them because you want to, for complete non-essentials.

"It makes me uncomfortable" my arse.

Because I want to.

Brexit actually does have something to do with this. UK’s safety legislation is derived from the EU rules. They are pretty much back to back. What we don’t have any more is the same testing regimes. Previously the testing of products was a shared responsibility through the EU, more was done because more were available to do it. Now we have to test these things ourselves. How much resource do you think our Government puts in to that? It isn’t any more than they used to, and now we have much more to test.

Wouldn't consider using either of them.

If money is really, really tight then why in the name of all that is holy are you buying non-essentials like advent calendars and stocking fillers (your words) for adult children?? Just don't. They're adults. They're old enough to be told "Look guys, we don't have a lot of money this year, let's not do presents."