Sitting in a streetside cafe in the sunshine yesterday I found myself becoming most alarmed at the number of people walking around with Primark bags. For those of you not already aware of what Primark is, it is almost without doubt the cheapest place to buy clothes and accessories on the highstreet. In my mind it is a true ambassador of our throwaway society: The prices are ridiculously low, encouraging shoppers to buy multiple items that they don’t necessarily need, and the quality is extremely poor, meaning that people wear, throw away and buy again.
The recent scandal involving Primark – which showed that the company employs illegal workers in a factory in Manchester, paying them less than the minimum wage and making them work 12-hour shifts – should have hit the company hard in terms of sales, but the recession seems to have rescued Primark. The company is the cheapest highstreet fashion store and for too many people in the UK, this appears to be reason enough to shop there.
Unfortunately it is not just a case of people not reflecting on how the prices are so cheap (there must be some exploitation along the supply line); most people know full well that Primark has been proved to be exploiting workers, not in developing countries on the other side of the world, but in Manchester. Sadly it seems people care only about saving a few of their own pounds.
Below you can see some photographic evidence of the power of Primark: Ragil was armed with a camera and photographed everyone that walked past us carrying a Primark bag in the space of 15 minutes.
