The great issues of ethics - like human rights, social justice, balance between peaceful co-operation and personal self-assertion, synchronization of individual conduct and collective welfare - have lost nothing of their topicality. They only need to be seen, and dealt with, in a novel way. (Bauman, 1993: 4) What is to be made of this question? For me, it invites consideration of whether a particular action, intention or outcome is morally defensible according to some, as yet unspecified but implied, ethical yardstick. Reference to ‘ethics’ signals a concern to focus attention upon the morality of an action. Such actions include the use of child labour, ...