Primark
June 23, 2008 on 1:50 pm | In General Bits | 6 CommentsPeople in the past have asked me many times why I don’t shop in Primark.
6 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Entries and comments feeds.
Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^
36 queries. 0.215 seconds.
Powered by WordPress with jd-nebula theme design by John Doe.
Also: it’s shit.
Comment by Flix — June 23, 2008 #
*Sigh* I watched the Panorama exposé last night, and was saddened. Primark had previously claimed that they did not use child labour, and whilst I didn’t entirely believe them, I did to an extent. BBC3 showed a series recently called “Blood, sweat and Tshirts” in which a group of young people interested in fashion travelled to India and worked in the factories that make western high-street clothes.
The pay is horrifically low by our standards, even in the higher-standard factories, but this western industry gives people in the slums much-needed employment to support their families.
To stress: I am not, in any way, shape or form, advocating child labour, but I do feel that we as an eco-friendly, fair-trade, caring-west jump far too readily to say “any clothes made in India/Malaysia/etc etc are evil and should not be bought”.
If it’s still on iPlayer, watch the Blood Sweat and Tshirts programme. It points out how our industry is important to the economy of struggling developing countries.
Comment by Claire — June 24, 2008 #
I’ll echo Flix’s statement. So many of my friends always gush about the bargains they find. It’s just all crap. I never find anything and I’m glad I don’t know :oS
Comment by hannah — June 24, 2008 #
If you’d posted this two weeks ago I’d've been able to say with a clear conscience that I don’t buy from Primark for just that reason. As it is, I recently went in there on a girly shopping trip to the Metro centre and came out with a skirt and a top, both of which are surprisingly good finds and not actually that badly made (in terms of garment quality, which has always been my other issue with Primark).
I’m not particularly proud of myself for shopping there, and I do think that the consumer has more power than we’d sometimes like to think. But there are still issues. Claire has a very fair point about employment, and there is also the question of where you can buy from and be sure that your clothing is ethical. M&S, yes, smaller retailers if you have access to them (which I don’t), probably yes, but where else? As Gap has shown, paying more money for your clothes doesn’t necessarily guarentee that a fairer wage is being paid.
Comment by Lucy — June 25, 2008 #
Oh sure, we might be important to the economy there but we could be more important if there was an increase in pay for the people working to make our clothes. As it is, we are still responsible in part for the conditions – if more people buy from (and with regard to Lucy’s comment) less ethically questionable retailers, the very ethically questionable ones will catch on and increase their worker’s welfare in response, to increase their sales here in the UK. They provide us with what we want using whatever methods they can get away with to turn a profit, and if we remove that profit until they clean up their act then they will clean up their act, even if it does mean a slight increase in price. £1 here is a lot less than £1 there and I would happily pay £5 rather than £4 for a T-shirt and have even half that go to the worker’s wages. As for the children question, they might be importanrt in terms of helping families to subsist but while they are stuck working they can’t be educated and the whole situation won’t change. Vicious circle. Tricksy.
Comment by Callan — June 25, 2008 #
As for the children question, they might be importanrt in terms of helping families to subsist but while they are stuck working they can’t be educated and the whole situation won’t change. Vicious circle. Tricksy.
As I said, I was not referring to child labour. I think our industry is important to the economy of developing countries, but not child labour. Important differentiation.
Comment by Claire — June 27, 2008 #