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Hindujas: Four members of Britain's richest family get jail sentences,

In what way is this a surprise: for those who remember it - this family has form:

www.theguardian.com

Peter Mandelson and the Hindujas

Peter Mandelson, who resigned from the cabinet five weeks ago, has been cleared of wrongdoing in a report by Sir Anthony Hammond, published this morning. But questions still remain about the former Northern Ireland secretary's dealings with the wealthy Hinduja brothers, and Downing Street has...
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Colin L said:
Well done to the swiss but a question, does anyone think that if they lived in the UK this case had been brought, and if it was, that they would have been sentenced to prison. I know what I think.
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Yes, there have been cases. There was a Lithuanian gangster who brought over servants and had them working all day polishing his house for a pittance, he was prosecuted and jailed for modern slavery.
 
PaulMB said:
I think it is possible. J.K.Rowling, football players, actors, film directors and producers spring to mind. But even in commerce and finance I'm sure it is possible.
What we are talking about here is a form of gratuitous physical and psychological oppression, so that your servants are no longer human beings like those they serve, but an inferior form of life, which perhaps serves to underline (underpin?) the "superiority" of those served. This family is worth £37 billion! They are not doing it to save money. I'm sure they do not travel "tourist class" or wear ready-made clothes.
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It was a rhetorical question. If you've amassed that much wealth, somebody somewhere has been exploited, whether directly or indirectly. (I doubt many, if any, footballers actors etc are billionaires, but the same logic applies anyway).
 
kensalriser said:
It was a rhetorical question. If you've amassed that much wealth, somebody somewhere has been exploited, whether directly or indirectly. (I doubt many, if any, footballers actors etc are billionaires, but the same logic applies anyway).
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That's probably true. But it is also true that if you buy a new TV, a new car, or invest your savings in a fund or single company shares, somewhere up the line, directly or indirectly, somebody has been exploited. There is also the tricky thing of defining "employment" and "exploitation." Are Amazon employees exploited? Are Peruvian tin miners exploited? Are schoolteachers in the UK exploited? We would all agree, I think, that a 10-year-old making gym shoes in India is being exploited, but he may be helping his family to eat and, maybe, even buy a TV set.
Sorry, I'm just rambling away; one thought leads to another.
 
Which leads to the question: "If the Indian family's servants were earning more than they would have done in India, and were willing to go to Geneva and work like medieval serfs, can one say they were "exploited"? If they had been working under the same conditions in India, nobody would have said they were exploited, but rather were lucky to have such a good job.
But in Switzerland there are laws regarding employment which trump any ethical considerations, and the law is the law.
 
PaulMB said:
Which leads to the question: "If the Indian family's servants were earning more than they would have done in India, and were willing to go to Geneva and work like medieval serfs, can one say they were "exploited"? If they had been working under the same conditions in India, nobody would have said they were exploited, but rather were lucky to have such a good job.
But in Switzerland there are laws regarding employment which trump any ethical considerations, and the law is the law.
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Yes they are being exploited. Because the morals apply to the place where you do it.
 
Just like "worth", etc, "exploited" can cover a wide range of things. And as a result can easily be used to gloss over real differences in the reality. Grades and shades matter. Standard trick of politicians and the ultra-rich to exploit this to provide a cover story.
 
In all of that success, they failed to earn the humanity and compassion to treat people properly. I hope that their appeals are unsuccessful and that justice is served, and I hope that their victims can find the strength to lead happy lives.
 
Linear said:
Exploitation is morally wrong, wherever it occurs.
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Of course it is. Conceptually human rights can never be a scale according to who you are or where you live: that's the relativism that leads to slavery and extermination, because those people are/were never really people like us anyway.

Economic systems have evolved in such a way that for many individuals, participating in exploitation is unavoidable because they have little or no agency, that all rests with the rich and powerful.
 
kensalriser said:
Of course it is. Conceptually human rights can never be a scale according to who you are or where you live: that's the relativism that leads to slavery and extermination, because those people are/were never really people like us anyway.
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I think the point is that they are people just like us.
 
PaulMB said:
That's probably true. But it is also true that if you buy a new TV, a new car, or invest your savings in a fund or single company shares, somewhere up the line, directly or indirectly, somebody has been exploited. There is also the tricky thing of defining "employment" and "exploitation." Are Amazon employees exploited? Are Peruvian tin miners exploited? Are schoolteachers in the UK exploited? We would all agree, I think, that a 10-year-old making gym shoes in India is being exploited, but he may be helping his family to eat and, maybe, even buy a TV set.
Sorry, I'm just rambling away; one thought leads to another.
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this is it , one has to think we are not perfect either
when you buy a mars remember this

In November 2023, CBS News ran an investigation into Mars’ supply chain, discovering that children as young as 5 years old harvest some of the cocoa beans that end up in the chocolate giant’s candies, including Snickers and M&Ms.
The conditions in which the Ghanan children were forced to work were appalling, too: blistering hot temperatures, with the minors yielding machetes “nearly as big as themselves” to collect the beans.

Following cues from a whistleblower, the CBS News team traveled to the West African country and was able to confirm that children were indeed working on the farms that supply Mars with cocoa beans, despite the company having previously vowed to completely eliminate child labor from its supply chain by 2025. Time is certainly running out.
Do any of us drive Hyundais ?
According to the late 2022 report, children as young as 12 years old worked in the Alabama-based plants, with one former engineer stating that he had worked with “at least 10 minors” in the past. Similar statements were made to Reuters by a further six former plant employees.
www.careeraddict.com

15 Companies that STILL Use Child Labor (2024)

Find out which companies around the world are raking in the profits with child labor, from H&M to Microsoft.
www.careeraddict.com www.careeraddict.com
 
kensalriser said:
Of course it is. Conceptually human rights can never be a scale according to who you are or where you live: that's the relativism that leads to slavery and extermination, because those people are/were never really people like us anyway.
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But reality is relative. What applies in Switzerland, by law and morals, does not apply in most of the rest of the world. There are cultures in which it is OK to kill your daughter if she has dishonoured the family. A family that does this is doing "the right thing" by their moral and social system. I'm not saying it is "right," but we, civilised and sensitive Europeans, cannot universally apply our standards to peoples and cultures that have other standards.
I hope the Hindujas family goes to prison. For breaking the law in Switzerland, and thinking that they can blithely apply their standards in a country that has other standards.
 
PaulMB said:
But reality is relative. What applies in Switzerland, by law and morals, does not apply in most of the rest of the world. There are cultures in which it is OK to kill your daughter if she has dishonoured the family. A family that does this is doing "the right thing" by their moral and social system. I'm not saying it is "right," but we, civilised and sensitive Europeans, cannot universally apply our standards to peoples and cultures that have other standards.
I hope the Hindujas family goes to prison. For breaking the law in Switzerland, and thinking that they can blithely apply their standards in a country that has other standards.
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Human rights must be universal. Just because something is the norm in any particular culture does not make it acceptable.
Your example, killing a daughter who dishonors the family is a good one. Such a killing is murder, regardless of culture.
Using culture or religion as a defense is totally bogus.
 
Linear said:
Human rights must be universal. Just because something is the norm in any particular culture does not make it acceptable.
Your example, killing a daughter who dishonors the family is a good one. Such a killing is murder, regardless of culture.
Using culture or religion as a defense is totally bogus.
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No, sorry, but it is all relative. In Europe you can only have one wife. In plenty of other countries you can have more than one. In Europe (most of it) you can be homosexual, in many other countries you get arrested. In the Uk they hanged people for murder, long after the death penalty had been abolished in Italy. In many countries a woman's property becomes the property of her husband, a clear curtailment of her human rights, and one that existed in England until not so long ago. In India, to come to the point, you can treat employees in a way that would be a crime in Switzerland. So who is right? Where are the universal human rights. Who establishes what they are? You can say, or the French revolution can say "These are universal human rights." Fine, but the reality is that if they are ignored by 90% of the world there is very little you can do about it.

The family in question committed a crime in Switzerland, under Swiss law, and they should be punished for it. But if they had treated their servants in the same way in India (and maybe they do) nobody would object.
 
PaulMB said:
No, sorry, but it is all relative. In Europe you can only have one wife. In plenty of other countries you can have more than one. In Europe (most of it) you can be homosexual, in many other countries you get arrested. In the Uk they hanged people for murder, long after the death penalty had been abolished in Italy. In many countries a woman's property becomes the property of her husband, a clear curtailment of her human rights, and one that existed in England until not so long ago. In India, to come to the point, you can treat employees in a way that would be a crime in Switzerland. So who is right? Where are the universal human rights. Who establishes what they are? You can say, or the French revolution can say "These are universal human rights." Fine, but the reality is that if they are ignored by 90% of the world there is very little you can do about it.

The family in question committed a crime in Switzerland, under Swiss law, and they should be punished for it. But if they had treated their servants in the same way in India (and maybe they do) nobody would object.
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Just because human rights are so widely abused does not mean human rights are wrong.
I agree that when it comes to human rights thair are many gray areas. But I also feel that some basic human rights are so fundamental that they should apply to all regardless of religion, local law or customs.
 
Linear said:
Just because human rights are so widely abused does not mean human rights are wrong.
I agree that when it comes to human rights thair are many gray areas. But I also feel that some basic human rights are so fundamental that they should apply to all regardless of religion, local law or customs.
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That’s quite magnanimous
 
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