Who pays for Primark’s high profits?
contribution by Jesse Lerner-Kinglake
British companies have been battered by the financial crisis. Yet Primark, one of Britain’s largest retailers, continues to thrive. Fuelled by the retailer’s impressive sales growth of 7%, AB Foods, the group which owns Primark, yesterday announced £655 million in yearly earnings. The future looks bright for the high street chain.
How is it that Primark has been able to post lucrative profits while the rest of the country plunges deeper into recession?
The answer lies in its business dealings with overseas suppliers. To obtain cheap garments as cheaply as possible for sale in the UK, companies like Primark squeeze suppliers in developing countries. The net result of this practice, however, is a vicious race to the bottom in which overseas workers are hit the hardest.
The conditions facing men and women in factories making clothes for top high street brands are simply scandalous. According to original research carried out by War on Want, garment workers in sweatshops across Bangladesh earn as little as 7p an hour and face up to 80-hour weeks. Abuse at the hands of factory owners is endemic, with women workers particularly at risk.
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Sun angry over ‘puppy fiend’; story untrue
Last week the Sun newspaper offered a reward of £2,500 to catch a bunch of “puppy fiends”.
We told yesterday how a yob stamped on the ten-week-old pet’s head after it approached three youths wagging its tail.
The assault happened in front of Sandy’s horrified owner, April Alderton, 15, who has attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity.
We put up reward posters offering the sum to anyone who provides information leading to the arrest and conviction of one or more of the evil trio.
The story was also on the front page of the Daily Express. Must have been a slow news day.
Turns out the story wasn’t true:
A Cambridgeshire Police spokesman said: “A detailed veterinary medical examination revealed that it was most likely to have died suddenly from a virus and showed no sign of injury.
“Despite an intensive and thorough investigation, police have been unable to locate any other witnesses to an alleged incident in which the puppy was reportedly injured.”
Police said no further action would be taken with regards to the owners of the dog.
via Tabloid Watch. The Sun and Express really need new researchers.
Fabian ‘Global Change We Need’ conf. Saturday
The Fabian Society is hosting a ‘Global Change We Need’ conference this coming Saturday.
The half day conference will feature dignitaries ministers from across Europe and the USA discussing how to create a progressive movement for change in Europe.
As we approach December’s Copenhagen summit & world leaders build upon a post-G20 agenda, the Fabians will debate the extent to which President Obama’s movement for change has influenced major global debates.
Much of Obama’s success is deeply rooted in grassroots interventions on climate change, human rights, Middle East engagement and a progressive vision for the economy.
The morning session will discuss whether a movement for change can be mobilised in Europe and how strongly President Obama’s campaign pledges have come to realisation, while our afternoon session will attempt to locate the European voice in the economic debate, and seek to define a vision for the progressive economy we want.
Speakers include Rt Hon David Miliband MP, Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs;
Ben Brandzel, Organizing for America;
Jennifer Palmieri, Centre for American Progress;
Charlie Kronick, Greenpeace UK;
Anthony Painter, Author of Barack Obama: Movement for Change;
Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, President of PES & former Danish Prime Minister;
Richard Miller, ActionAid UK’s Chief Executive,
Owen Tudor, Head of European Union and International Relations, TUC, the 10:10 UK campaign director
Sunder Katwala, Fabian Society.
7 November 2009, 10am to 4pm
Amnesty International UK
17-25 New Inn Yard, London, EC2A 3EA
Tickets: www.fabians.org.uk
From a press release
Why are these EU-haters so silent?
In 2007 around 47 Conservative MPs, including prominent ones such as Iain Duncan Smith and Douglas Carswell, signed an EDM calling for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty even if it was ratified.
And now? What will they do? Why are they so silent?
Yesterday Daniel Hannan MEP wrote:
I’ve argued many times that the case for a British referendum shouldn’t be dependent on what happens in other countries. The case for a British referendum is simply that all three parties promised one and that, in any case, no one under the age of 52 has had the opportunity to vote on the EU. Alright, a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty might no longer be the most logical option: it’s hardly for us to tell the Belgians or the Slovenes what institutions they should work under. But a referendum on European integration – ideally on the broad repatriation of powers – is essential.
What a climb-down. Regardless, I can’t wait to see how David Cameron is going to square this circle.
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Will Tories delay Human Rights Act repeal?
The Conservatives may not complete the repeal of the Human Rights Act and the introduction of a new British Bill of Rights in their first term in office if they were elected to government. And it is also becoming increasingly difficult to work out what substantive difference the policy would be intended to make.
“I would like to think we could do it in the course of a parliament”, shadow Justice Secretary Dominic Grieve tells Joshua Rosenberg in an interview for his Standpoint magazine column.
Perhaps the more important part of the policy is that Britain will not pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights – so British citizens will keep the right to appeal to Strasbourg. (Tory Eurosceptics like to grumble about this, but in doing so they are usually appealing to the public’s inability to tell the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Union apart).
More broadly, he makes it perfectly clear that Britain will not pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights. We will not be able to send people to countries where they will be tortured, he promises. Whatever else happens, individuals alleging breaches of their human rights will still be able to take the British government to the European Court in Strasbourg
And so the new “British Bill of Rights” will seek to protect the convention’s rights British law, to prevent British citizens having to go to Strasbourg to protect those rights. Rather as the Human Rights Act has sought to do, it seems to me.
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The left and the Berlin Wall
Kick over the wall, cause governments to fall, how can you refuse it? Once again, I’m showing my age by introducing a blog post with a couple of lines from a Clash track. But the sentiment expressed here constitutes an aphorism that should hold good for anybody on the far left, irrespective of generation.
So it is that in about a week, Europe will mark the 20th anniversary of that unforgettable day in Berlin when the wall that was very likely the reference in this particular lyric was indeed kicked over, and in some places, torn apart by hand.
Its destruction was thankfully followed in short order by the demise of the repressive dictatorship that cowered behind it. Take any analytical position you like on the Deutsche Demokratische Republik – actually existing socialism, state capitalism, deformed workers’ state, you name it – but there is no getting away from the sick joke that inhered in the very choice of name.
The real questions we should ask Mr Hague over Europe
LibCon reported that Labour MP Denis MacShane sent an email to journalists attacking William Hague, following the latter’s claims in the Mail on Sunday that David Miliband and Labour “spend their time trying to orchestrate a ruthless smear campaign against the Conservative Party’s allies in the European Parliament.”
Now, MacShane’s attacks on the Tories’ European alliance have not, in my view, been at all effective, and the emailed list of questions is also fundamentally wrong-headed. The questions are intemperate, and each take a ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ type format, for instance:
4. Does he [Hague] support kaminski’s homophobic language?
6. Will hague be joining his new friends in Latvia when they commemorate the Waffen SS?
10. Does he agree with the Economist that he has created a “shoddy, shameful alliance” with Kaminski and Vile?
This type of non-serious questioning is counter-productive: it only aids the Tory counter-claim that Kaminski and others are the victims of a baseless smear campaign. If interest in the details of the Conservatives’ Euro alliance dies a premature death, or the public and media swing decisively behind the Tories’ narrative, it will be because of misjudged attacks like this.
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Twitter related changes on libcon
Twitter is an important conversation tool for us for various reasons.
Firsly because an increasing amount of politics related chatter, linking and discussion takes place there.
Secondly, in terms of direct traffic from specific webites Twitter is now our biggest source of readers.
So I’m experimenting with how to have tighter integration between the two.
I’ve added one plugin by Topsy.com that now automatically inserts Tweets about a blog post on to that post as a comment. That way people can see what people on Twitter have said about it.
I’ve also got rid of the tweetmeme button because I found it too clunky, and because it only shows how many people had re-tweeted it (there are other websites that show that now)
I’ve replaced that with a javascript based plugin that tells you how many people have clicked the Twitter link to land on that page from Twitter. It also allows you to ‘retweet’ the post as before.
I’m still experimenting with all this so let me know your thoughts. If you don’t use Twitter that’s fine too.
I’m still on the hunt for a good and functional tool to integrate with Facebook (our current plugin doesn’t work at times).
I’m also on the hunt for a light-weight plugin that just Tweets when a new blog post is published. Twitter Tools is a bit heavyweight and I don’t use most of its functionality. If you know either please let me know.
Be scared, be very scared
The busier you are, the faster time passes. So right now it feels to me like we’re hurtling towards the day David Cameron will be in Number 10. And i’m increasingly scared.
I’m scared because of the Conservative’s rhetoric on economic policy. Tory grassroots have already launched an attack on the Financial Times (that renowned bastion of worker solidarity) for allegedly being biased against Cameron and Osborne.
But it’s not just the FT that’s sounding alarm bells about Conservative economic rhetoric.
Think tank Centre:Forum last week released a report on Tory economic proposals. Despite having many political differences with CF, over the past few months I’ve come to respect their economic output – and in particular, their chief economist Giles Wilkes – a great deal.
I’ve not had time to read the “Slash and Growth?” report yet, but I have read part of the conclusion posted on Free Thinking Economist:
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Tory bloggers offer cover to Cameron on EU
So, what do you do if your boss gets caught out writing cheques he knows he can’t cash?
Well, if you’re Tim Mongomerie then you start weaselling if your life depended on it:
DAVID CAMERON PROMISED A REFERENDUM ON AN ‘UNRATIFIED’ LISBON TREATY, NOTHING ELSE
In doing this, some will say that Cameron will have broken a “cast iron” pledge – made to Sun readers – to hold a referendum. That’s unfair….
And if you’re Iain Dale you simply pretend its all a leftist plot…
Labour and others will accuse David Cameron of reneging on a referendum promise, but Eurosceptics should not fall for their black propaganda.
Watching Mongomerie and Dale turning somersaults in an effort to direct their readers’ attention to the small print in Cameron’s promise that was never there in the first place, I can’t help but be reminded of another recent bit of prime political weaselling…
Fellow British Patriot
Question Time is scheduled for 10.35pm tomorrow evening (Thursday) and will be a milestone in the indomitable march of the British National Party towards saving our country…
However, members and supporters must be aware that this show will be a stage-managed farce organised in a specific way to leave several impressions.
The audience will be hand-picked and overtly hostile – thus giving the impression that the British people at large must be hostile to BNP views.
The panellists will be overtly hostile, even the non-political guests will be hostile.
Everyone will be hostile – this will leave the impression to non-informed viewers that BNP views have minority status.
I will, no doubt, be interrupted, shouted down, slandered, put on the spot, and subject to a scrutiny that would be a thousand times more intense than anything directed at other panellists…
Yours sincerely for Britannia
Nick Griffin MEP
You see how it is?
It’s a plot by those nasty leftists and the BNP really isn’t being led by a dough-faced bullshitter…
…just like the Tories.
In circumstances, I think we can safely sum up Cameron’s policy on Europe as follows:
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