thanks Lusitano. I also rather enjoyed your little foray into prose writing with your post.

I would further add - I'm no communist, but it p8sses me off when I hear people try to pretend that they're pioneering some kind of turn of the century 'American Dream' here (he started out as a tea boy in Dubai and now he's a CEO type-of-thing).

This debate is fundamentally about the interests of Capital versus Labour, and the moral urgency for concrete safeguards to prevent the exploitation of people who are at risk from their own unfortunate 'circumstances', to use Victor's word. Minimum wage being just one of a number of safeguards that can be used.

Maybe then we could move away from the irritating fashion of 'if you don't like it leave' which ACTUALLY means: "Life has given me a very sweet little package of privilege indeed, thank you very much, and there isn't enough to share around with everybody. So, rather than me losing anything, why don't you just go away and allow me to roll around in my lovely life like a pig in sh*t.'