archive for April 08
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
Met up in the Windmill Tavern on The Cut last night for a political economy discussion group meeting with Charles, Chris, Dan, Ed, Laura, Rob and Cecilia! It’s a regular grouping that they take part in, though first time for me.
The topic was Fairtrade, and they had put us in teams where we had to argue for the opposite point of view that we would normally hold. So I was in “I hate Fairtrade” team, opposing the “I love Fairtrade” gang.
It was an interesting discussion. I found it quite useful personally to try and attack Fairtrade, as in general it’s something I find hard to fault.
We considered the politics of the global Fairtrade movement, the claim that the inequalities between North and South are reproduced through the fact that southern producers must adhere to stringent standards of democracy and transparency and undergo rigorous audits while all northern companies have to do only have to buy their commodities at a slightly higher price. There are barriers to entry for many individual marginalised producers, in that they have to be organised into groupings in order to bring their product to market themselves and redistribute the Fairtrade social premium.
I’m glad that no one was particularly interested in the idea that Fairtrade represents a market distortion: we all seemed to agree that markets are always “distorted” in the sense that the abstract concept of the neoliberal “free market” doesn’t exist. After all, it’s hardly a subsidy or market distortion to pay people the correct value for their goods and services rather than prices that have been artificially depressed by the powerful monopolies of corporate multinationals.
We spent some time debating how far Fairtrade can feasibly go in terms of effecting large scale change in the global trade system. One strength of Fairtrade certification systems is that they certify transactions rather than companies, so lots of commodities can be shifted through the system and the likes of Nestlé and Tesco can be involved. The corresponding weakness is that Fairtrade certification has nothing to say about companies in the North.
Nestlé can sell one Fairtrade coffee line and this is audited by FLO but then the other 99 per cent of Nestlé’s business goes on as usual, including their key global role in forcing down coffee prices as low as they can go in order to maximise their profits. Given that Nestlé spends a staggering $7bn a year on PR to portray itself as an ethical and responsible company, they can easily afford a Fairtrade product or two. Giving them the Fairtrade Mark strengthens their global machine, a strategic mistake that surely far outweighs the benefits to producers of the Partners Blend.
But the Fairtrade movement can only talk about Fairtrade transactions, not about the companies that sell the products. I argued that dealing with the likes of Nestlé and Tesco means that the Fairtrade movement will never have the moral authority to challenge the broader system of global trade, though I think this is a simplistic point of view. But there is the danger that Fairtrade boxes itself in to being a system for distributing a well defined set of benefits to a limited pool of producers (currently 7 million globally), rather than an engine for systemic change.
Were Fairtrade to go on expanding, driven by ever increasing consumer demand, presumably there would come a point where we turn around and see that the system has been fundamentally changed. But I feel that consumer pressure will always hit a ceiling. I think there’s a figure that only 20 per cent of the population in the UK is ever likely to modify their behaviour according to ethical considerations, to pay more for Fairtrade or take action to be more green. To go further, we need strategic political action to reshape society.
Having said that, this is a query about the strategic direction of the Fairtrade movement as it currently stands, not a call to chuck out all the babies and bathwater. Fairtrade still represents a living working practical realisation of a radically different way of doing trade, and thus a springboard for pretty much anything!
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Monday, April 28th, 2008
Spent Sunday with Dan H and the walking gang: Teresa, Peter, Emily, Mike, Kate B. I brought Fares along too, who could only talk to us in Arabic or BSL, so that added a fun linguistic learning dimension to the day.
This section of the North Downs route intersected every so often with the M25 and M23, so you get the contrast of these ancient farmed chalk hills with their old pilgrim’s route and then the almighty concrete juggernaut of the motorways cutting through them.
We crossed the motorways twice, and the view from the bridges of the endless stream of roaring traffic cascading along was pretty magnificent in its own way. From above the noise really blasts you, and the warm fumes rise up around you, before you retreat from the bridge to the quiet of the countryside again.
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Sunday, April 27th, 2008
Kate was 30 on Friday. We all piled into the understated sometimes forgotten but excellent venue Lark in the Park, for fun and drinking. The place was packed to the rafters with her vast extended networks of friends, including representatives from Beirut, Paris and Barcelona. I had never seen them all in one place at once. It was much like stumbling upon Shanghai for the first time.
We drank and mingled, got Kate up on the table to make a speech, and then large numbers of us headed on to Bunning Way, pausing only for a mass stop in a Cally Road kebab shop.
At the Way, the revelry went on all night, fuelled by alcohol, spliffs, strong opinions and the occasional dash of MDMA. In the end, Kevin, Alex and I were left standing. Steve rejoined us, having had a nap, and we wandered out into the sunny Saturday morning to my flat for tea and breakfast, before the final well earned collapse!
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Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
Happy St George’s Day!
It’s a day for proud revolutionary left-wing nationalism!
What’s your favourite piece of Englishness? I think mine is real ale and the glory of the traditional English pub! And roast dinners!
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Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
I just broke an egg, and there was only one piece of old bread left, so I decided to soak the bread in beaten egg, fry it in butter and make a peanut butter and jam fried eggy bread sandwich. This was a classic from our days in Zimbabwe, when I shared a house with Steve and Ceri. We used to make eggy bread peanut butter and jam sandwiches when we wanted a treat!
Instructions:
Take two slices of bread. Spread one side of each piece of bread with a thin layer of jam and a thick layer of peanut butter. Put slices of bread together into a sandwich and place into bowl of beaten egg. Soak both sides of the sandwich in the egg for a few minutes. Heat some butter in a small saucepan and fry till crispy golden brown on both sides.
It’s quite fatty, but oh so nice! The slight saltiness of the butter brings out the sweetness of the jam and peanut butter.
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Sunday, April 20th, 2008
To Woking for multiple birthdays last night! Ros’s birthday at their pet filled home, and Delia’s 30th at their house nearby. We flitted between the two in our implausible 1980s outfits, enjoying ourselves immensely.
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Friday, April 18th, 2008
Popped round to Bunning Way for the evening to see James and Kal, and Kate and Steve were there too. Lovely to see them all, got to chat about lots of politics and generally catch up.
I was particularly struck by a discussion about the cultural and emotional rewards of being surrounded by a rich historical built environment. We started out talking about how devolution has accelerated the assertation of a distinct Welsh identity, and then reflected on how the UK is quite lucky in terms of having long histories embedded in its lands and cities.
Then we were thinking about how a significant portion of our cities were flattened in the Second World War, from Sunderland to Coventry to London. Aerial bombing ruined so many of our cityscapes and created many of the more depressing environments we find around us today. How cool would the East End have looked today if its old winding medieval streets hadn’t been such a target for German bombers? Or the fine gardens and industrial palaces of Sunderland? Coventry was once the best preserved medieval city in England.
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Friday, April 11th, 2008
Juicy cooked for us and Cynthia. Haven’t seen his nice flat for a year or two. I had forgotten about his oriental style low red table sit on the floor setup, which creates a good vibe for intimate conversation and food. He served key lime pie for desert – the latest in a series of pioneering Juicy puddings. The talk turned to bestiality at some point, as it does at all truly great dinner parties. It is always shocking reminding yourself just how much cum comes out of a horse.
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Thursday, April 10th, 2008
Saw our last film at the Lesbian and Gay Film Festival this year, Les Chansons d’amour, a charming French musical set in a rainy modern Paris of attractive twenty-something year olds who fall in and out of love. It loosely follows the structure of another innovative French musical film, the exceptional Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, and even features a humorous homage to the scene in that film where Genevieve and Guy sing to each other as they glide unrealistically along the street on tracks.
Les Chansons d’amour is much more modern, with Ismaël and his long term sweetheart Julie, and their recently acquired threesome lover Alice. Alice moves between them in their tempestuous but loving relationship, “like the bridge between their banks” as she sings in one song. Tragedy strikes when Julie dies of a random catastrophic coronary in the street. As all the characters try to recover from her death, Ismaël finds himself being courted by Erwann, a boyish and enthusiastic gay student with a good line in stripey Breton jumpers. The two men begin to fall in love, and the film ends with a beautifully romantic balcony courtship scene between them.
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Monday, April 7th, 2008
world like a dewdrop
though it’s only a dewdrop
even so, even so
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