There was a bit of a disaster here in the UK the other day, when 19 people drowned collecting cockles on Morecambe Bay, which isn’t all that far from where I grew up.

The funny thing about this tragedy was that these people were all Chinese (and the Chinese population in the UK isn’t known for its fondness for shellfish), they were picking cockles at high tide, and it was the middle of the night.

It turns out that the most likely explanation is that they were illegal immigrants who were working for a pittance – possibly as little as GBP1 (USD 1.50 or so) a day. As you can imagine, there’s bee a lot of sucking of teeth and hand-wringing about this – and people are understandably a bit concerned as to how this can be happening under their very noses.

The fact is, it’s been happening for years. I used to live in Norfolk in the East of England, where there are a lot of strawberry fields amongst other crops, and an awful lot of Eastern-European and middle-Eastern looking people picking them. The people of Norfilk may be many things, but swarthy they are not. So guess what’s going on there. And I should imagine it’s the same wherever there’s a labour-intensive harvest anywhere in the developed world.

It’s a disgusting trade in people – but we’re all complicit. Last summer was very warm in England, and the supermarkets were doing a roaring trade in very, very cheap strawberries. Fair enough you might think. But have you ever wondered how they can afford to sell 500g of strawberries for 99p?

Exactly. Your hands are as dirty as mine.

The most depressing this was the way by the evening the story about those poor displaced sould dying a sad and lonely death thousands of miles from home has been relegated to the middle of the news bulletins. Jordan had been booted off I’m a Celebrity…