Lowering the Standard
June 22nd, 2008We’re off on our holidays in a cottage overlooking Loch Broom, in the Scottish Highlands. Alas, my mobile internet connection fails to connect here – some issue with the Three mobile network when using legacy (GPRS) networks. I remember seeing comments about it, but as I have no internet access, I can’t Google for the solution 
So, I’m reduced to offline blogging until I can upload, and reading newspapers and watching terrestrial television. The BBC are plugging their exposé of the Primark fashion chain for using child labour in India to deliver low prices in the UK high street.
I’m baffled why anyone should be surprised by this. The Sunday Times has a full page advert from Sainsbury’s: “Fairtrade cotton T-Shirts. Collar one for £3″.
Excuse me, the cotton may be Fairtrade certified, but there is no way on God’s earth that the Fairtrade cotton can be turned into T-shirts and sold in UK supermarkets for £3 without someone being ripped off along the way. I hope the workers in Asian sweatshops working twelve hours or more a day on piecework for pennies appreciate the fact their raw materials are Fairtrade certified.
Meanwhile consumers in the UK see the magic Fairtrade logo and think what a bargain they have got. £3? it’s hardly worth washing the damn things at that price – if the T-shirt gets grubby, just throw it out and get a new one out of the cupboard.
I think the Fairtrade Foundation, wonderful people that they are, are in danger of losing the plot here. Their logo is too valuable to be devalued in this way. If the price of clothes – or anything else – looks too good to be true, then it probably is. If any item of clothing with a Fairtrade logo sells for less than £10, then someone is rigging the system. So the BBC have caught Primark with their fingers in the till of the poor – there are plenty more.