Non-standard labor

After the BBC news it was off to breakfast in the hotel and the complimentary copies of the Financial Times and International Herald Tribune. While I read the Tribune’s story about the Danish police breaking up an alleged terror plot in Hans Christian Anderson’s home of Odense, which we passed through two days ago, Claudia read about Europe’s answer to illegal immigration in the Times. Non-standard labor. This is the new world threat and the origin of the alleged Danish terrorists – illegals who work dirt-cheap under threat of constant arrest in barrios or slums, with no government protection for things like mistreatment or loss of life and limb.

Then I read about the poor child workers in India who now face being liberated from the slavery of middle-class Indian families who employ them as domestic help. It seems India has now passed a law making such employment illegal and threatening a two-year jail term to any middle-class Indian family who takes such a child off the streets. Now these middle-class families will have to bribe police to keep the kids or send them back to the streets.

What challenges for the brave new world. Fortunately there were some stories about silly stuff like the birth of the boy to Japan’s royal family and the escape of the Austrian girl from the man who put her in an underground cell for eight years. It’s nice to have distractions from the real world.

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