A number of towns announce their Fairtrade town status on the signs at the town boundaries. I think it’s time that Kendal did the same: “Welcome to Kendal – a Fairtrade Town” – and for that matter “A Transition Town”.

Now to canvass opinion, and find out who is responsible…

While it’s good to see Fairtrade food and drink, clothing, handicrafts, etc., an article in today’s Guardian is a reminder that Fairtrade principles have a long way to go before they become the accepted way of doing business. There’s something particularly offensive about purchasing policies in the UK’s National Health Service that result in children being exploited in third world countries. Surely we can do better than that?

So, I’m reduced to offline blogging until I can upload, and reading newspapers and watching terrestrial television. The BBC are plugging their exposé of the Primark fashion chain for using child labour in India to deliver low prices in the UK high street.

I’m baffled why anyone should be surprised by this. The Sunday Times has a full page advert from Sainsbury’s: “Fairtrade cotton T-Shirts. Collar one for £3″.

Excuse me, the cotton may be Fairtrade certified, but there is no way on God’s earth that the Fairtrade cotton can be turned into T-shirts and sold in UK supermarkets for £3 without someone being ripped off along the way. I hope the workers in Asian sweatshops working twelve hours or more a day on piecework for pennies appreciate the fact their raw materials are Fairtrade certified.

Meanwhile consumers in the UK see the magic Fairtrade logo and think what a bargain they have got. £3? it’s hardly worth washing the damn things at that price – if the T-shirt gets grubby, just throw it out and get a new one out of the cupboard.

I think the Fairtrade Foundation, wonderful people that they are, are in danger of losing the plot here. Their logo is too valuable to be devalued in this way. If the price of clothes – or anything else – looks too good to be true, then it probably is. If any item of clothing with a Fairtrade logo sells for less than £10, then someone is rigging the system. So the BBC have caught Primark with their fingers in the till of the poor – there are plenty more.

With Scotland aiming for Fairtrade nation status, and Britain’s biggest sugar producer switching all its retail sales to Fairtrade, Fairtrade no longer conjours up an image of old ladies selling dodgy groceries from rickety stalls at the back of churches.

However, congratulations to all these pioneers – without your commitment none of this would have happened, and your work is far from over. European supermarkets are still flooded with goods from developing countries at ridiculously low prices. The ability of the world trade to exploit the weak truly knows no limits.

The guest speaker at the AGM was Andy Good of Equal Exchange, another Edinburgh based fairtrade company. Fairtrade in the UK started off with big tins of disgusting instant coffee drinkable only by a committed deviant minority. Today, it’s mainstream, with all major supermarkets forced by consumer demand to stock fairtrade products. This turnaround has been achieved by a network of small values-led companies like Equal Exchange, Twin Trading, Traidcraft, Triodos, etc. What is impressive is the way these small companies have developed their own areas of specialist expertise, but yet co-operate to create trading chains that span the globe. What ties them together is common vales, expressed in umbrella organisations like IFAT. This model is the complete oppositeof the supermarket model of “command and control” supply chains, own-branding any individuality into oblivion.

Can these small companies survive now that their retailers (like OWS) have to compete with the supermarkets for fairtrade business? Andy’s example of tea gives grounds for optimism. Supermarket demand requires bulk supplies, met by plantation-scale producers. Fairtrade requirements are driving up standards along this supply chain, which is good news for plantation workers. However, they are still employees, churning out a mass-market product for the plantation owners. Equal Exchange’s approach is to go to independent farmers, usually through co-operatives, to source specialist and higher quality products. Can this niche marketing work? well, do you want to spend the rest of your life drinking exactly the same cup of tea or coffee, if you can easily afford something better?

This vision of the future works for me – an increasing variety of specialist, quality produce, offered through retailers who have the knowledge and interest to explain the product to shoppers. It’s the complete opposite from fairtrade’s roots in catering-size tins of instant coffee. The trading model – specialist, independent producers and specialist independent shops – is a genuine “equal exchange”. No amount of creative marketing could apply that term to the stalinist economic model of the “pile it high, sell it cheap, reap the profits” of the UK multiple retailers.

We are sending out this invitation
And hope you will join our celebration.
If to send a gift is your intention,
In modesty we would like to mention,
We have already got a kettle and a toaster,
Crockery, dinner mats and coasters.
So rather then something we have already got,
Please give us something for our saving pot.
But, most importantly, we request,
That you turn up as our wedding guest!

Unfortunately Google soon showed this was not the original piece of poetry I first imagined. However, should you be the recipient of this verse in future, I hereby put my reply into the public domain:

Your wedding invite was quite splendid!
We hope you’ll not be too offended:
alas that date we cannot make;
a prior engagement is at stake.
We don’t decline from sheer perversity
We’re fetching kids from university.

We’re pleased that household goods galore
have flowed so freely through your door.
Lucky the new wed man and wife
embarking thus on married life.
A gift from us is just a drop
your savings pot’s full to the top.

To celebrate your happy day
we’ll help you give some wealth away.
Such giving as we’ve oft been told
the Lord rewards a hundredfold.
Best wishes from us both, and now
best wishes too from “Send A Cow”.

I’m sure the recipient of the rabbits will be very grateful. Whether we are still on my cousin’s Christmas card list next year or not remains to be seen.

This isn’t philanthropy. The reality of life in developing countries is that you can get pirate copies of any commercial software for pennies. Microsoft is merely acknowledging that its better to get one or two dollars than nothing at all

This is part of a well established Microsoft policy

“Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”

This is the start of the collection process.

Open-source software like OpenOffice.org is still a better solution

• we don’t offer a ‘poor persons version’ – everyone gets the full version of the software
• we don’t encourage dependency on first world monopolies – our community model empowers local communities and encourages self-help and local development
• as Microsoft deploys increasingly sophisticated anti-piracy technology, it will “figure out how to collect” more and more valuable foreign currency from countries who have become addicted to their software
• mother language support is key for developing economies. Even a corporation as rich as Microsoft cannot offer full mother language support on a commercial basis. OpenOffice.org prevents digital exclusion and supports endangered languages by enabling local speakers to form their own native-language projects

Beware – this gift-horse is designed to bite long term.

However, there’s one card that I just couldn’t throw out – not just because it came from my wife – but because of where it came from. The text on the back of the card tells part of the story:

This hand crafted product has been made in Bangladesh where skilled craftspeople have been producing fine applique and embroidery for centuries

We met some of the producers at Swajan last year in Dhaka, and saw how these cards make all the difference financially to the producers. Suddenly a birthday card becomes more than just a piece of ‘post-consumer waste’, but a link between two different worlds. Once people make this link, Fair Trade isn’t just a trendy trade mark – it’s a way of using consumer power to help balance the manifest inequalities of the world trading system which underpins the life styles we enjoy in the western world.

Gold stitching…	…Snowflake Card
Embroidery class…	…Mice Purse

For us, the products are little luxuries. For the producers, the difference between their children going to school or not. Fair Trade makes the world a little fairer – bit alas only a little.

The arsenic in Bangladesh is the greatest case of mass poisoning the world has ever experienced. In the sheer magnitude and numbers of victims it exceeds the Chernobyl disaster nearly 100 fold
…
The World Bank and UNICEF are morally (even if not legally) responsible because they installed tube wells without checking for arsenic, and the British Geological Survey (BGS) was delinquent in publishing a paper as late as 1995 saying that the water was safe to drink, but forgetting about arsenic. Indeed a lawsuit was instituted in the UK in 2003 claiming that BGS are legally liable for the illnesses of the sufferers. The Court of Appeals dismissed the suit (in 2004) because of a lack of jurisdiction but on January 25th 2005 the House of Lords agreed to consider the case. In January 2006 the hearing date was postponed to May 2006.

This case has now finally reached the House of Lords, although it has been almost completely ignored by the media. The exception is of course The Guardian. There is also a useful press release from the solicitors handling the case. The next key step is the judgement, which is expected in late July – i.e. just before the Summer recess.

I was wondering if there is anything we could do to raise the profile of the case, and of activists in the area like WaterAid? Is anyone interested in trying to take this further?”