h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Aboy? that shud have been about!

Absolutely squat diddley in the guide, looks like another project to start and not finish for me!

Educating people about fairtrade has got to be a priority to encourage its use so that it can achieve the improvements in peoples lives!

Z.

Hey peeps I've been a busy boy and got an entry that I feel good about putting in the writers workshop for comments, it would make me very pleased if all you guys could give it a onceover before I put it in peer review!
Fairtrade movement! http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A560404

Z.

Me too?

*confused*

Woof?

Z.

Brilliant entry! I have no criticism of the content, but there are a couple of formatting issues...

- lose the asterixes on the bullet-points.
- there's an acronym in the final para - what does it stand for?
- again in the final para: trade is spelled 'traid'

Is there any chance that you could find and include links to the websites of the other organisations?

Thanx Rob, I'll sort out the first two, but the third one is actually the name of an organisation and not a mispelling!

thought it might have been, but better safe than sorry

Marvellous Z!

*humble*


Z.

Starbucks does offer a certain amount of fair trade coffee, beating out most random other coffee houses. on the other hand local places at least don't send their money to corporate stockholders, instead funneling it back into the local economy. your choice.

it seems silly to bring up these very old threads that i've just now stumbled on, but the way snagbucks just keeps (steam)rolling on must give us pause... recently in London i was dumbfounded: riding a no. 11 out to St. Paul's i saw these places about every 100 yards. here in california it's no better. i think of how much more interesting the world would be if every coffee shop had its own decor, style, and name. beyond that, why do so many people prefer these milkshaky designer caffeine delivery systems to real coffee? fortunately, france is far behind the worldcafe trend, but it's only a question of time...

there's nothing for it... everything good, true and beautiful will go, to be replaced by something convenient, trendy and... marketable.

how i understand claude levi-strauss; if i live another 30-odd years, i know i will leave this world without regrets, for the world that i regret will already be gone and forgotten.

What???? What planet are you people on? Why are you spouting rubbish? Starbucks is wicked! The reason you think they can't make coffee is because the only coffee you drink is ASDA's cheap version, you load of council estate chavs. Get with the real world and stop trying to be philosophical about things that don't matter. Bugger off back to your vice girls.

A voice of reason in the darkness. How many of the Starbucks haters have ever drunk Nescafe? Hmm? Own up, be honest....Have you eaten a Pret sandwich?
Does your local shop buy ethically sourced organic beans? Do you know that the co-op that grew them is actually getting the money and it's not being syphoned off by the co-op manager working in coalition with corrupt fairtrade organisers? Take of the rose tinted specs and make some informed choices.

*climbs off soap box, dusts down trousers*

Sorry, got a bee in my bonnet about that.

those who complain about starbucks for equitable trade reasons may or may not be right, but that's not my point at all.

what i don't like about starbucks is not what it's doing to the 3rd world but what it's contributing to do to MY world. the standardization of consumption within a "chained" perimeter of starbucks-macdonalds-walmart-target-clare's impoverishes our lives, our world, ourselves.

Apparently 1 in 8 retail pounds in the UK is spent in a Tescos. Not 1 in 8 supermarket pounds, but 1 in 8 retail pounds.

I want to check this, and it can be questioned, (do you include money spent on Tesco's insurance, for example, since insurance is not a high street retail product? What about money spent online? If you spend it at www.tescos.com does it count? What about money spent at amazon.co.uk? Or UK money spent at amazon.com?)

But even if it were wrong by a factor of two, it would still be a chilling statistic.

And you want to know the really annoying thing?

I know this and *still* shop there.

B

I saw that stat too, scary. They have much more of an influence over the living conditions of farmers than Starbucks. Have you read their CSR report?

No. What's a CSR report?

I've been thinking about the 1 in 8 stat. Tescos sells insurance and banking and phone services as well as physical goods.

Are those services (ie not physical goods) included in the "1", and are the non-Tescos versions of insurance and banking and telecoms included in the "8"?

I loathe statistics - when used in headlines they deceive more than they reveal.

B

CSR = Corporate and Social Responsibility Report. It's like a declaration of how they want to do business and normally stats are included about sustainability and environmental issues and things. They're quite the fashion now, Starbucks' is available from their website and is independantly audited. Tesco's is interesting, not sure how much they follow it. Ask store managers to see it, it really scares them!

Those who think their duped missed the point in d'Elephant's post, above. At least Starbucks is making an effort. If you want to promote organic coffee, you CAN buy it at Starbucks (for $20-30/lb). If you want them to use it to make your espresso drink, make a formal request - if enough people request it in your area, maybe your local store (Starbucks or family run house) will start using it... you could start a global trend!

But, if, instead, you bypass Starbucks' $3 coffee and go to the cheapest cup you can find at the local stop-n-go, you have no control over where they got that slop... which you can bet will not be putting one penny out to promote decent wages and organic farming.

Me, personallly, I love the burnt coffee flavor of Starbuck's coffee... but I do live in Seattle, so it's nearly a requirement.

OK, so my reply must have been to a really old post. Sorry to be out of line...
oh well...

back to the rain.
I need a cup-o-coffee!