OK, so people are up in arms over some of Primark's suppliers being found to use child labour in India. While I suppose Primark cancelling its orders from them shows that they care about ethical sourcing to some degree (assuming they don't quietly resubmit the orders a few weeks from now), anyone who thinks you can get clothes as cheap as you can now with just bulk buying and avoiding advertising campaigns, which is how Primark claim they keep their prices down, is a fool. Even without child labour, the whole story of manufacturing in the Far East has to do with keeping wages down and regulations loose. Does anyone remember being able to get clothes made in England? These days hardly any of it is, and the reason is that they could not compete with cheap labour in the Far East, where poverty pay and curtailed union rights are the norm. Think about it.
On Wednesday, BBC Four aired the first in its Jews season, focussing on the ultra-Orthodox or Haredi community in Stamford Hill, north London (watch it here until Tuesday when the next episode is out). The programme focussed on a Hassidic Jew called Samuel as he tried to get back into Jewish life after several spells in jail for drug running; apparently he used his Jewish "uniform" and the fact that such people don't usually get into trouble as a disguise (a precursor of the "niqab trick" allegedly used by one of the bungling Somali bombers in London few years ago, except that he didn't need to dress as a woman).
The story itself was interesting, but I found the continual attempts to mock their subjects with stupid questions about Jewish dietary and dress laws annoying. The laws they were following are not that far removed from ours, although in my observation the dress of the Jewish women in that programme was both duller and less concealing than that of most Muslim women. Clearly they knew less about dealing with the media than Muslims do; I would have told the journalists flat out that we follow these rules because they are part of our religion, full stop, rather than offering timid justifications about temptation and so on.
Has anyone proposed an "extraterritorial minimum wage" to protect First World producers from cheap-labour competition?
Its pretty much the price you pay for free trade. I've seen with my own eyes the horrific use of child labour in Bangladesh. Supplier chain ethics don't exist when it comes down to the smaller manufacturers.