headwayyouth- phil smith's blog

S**t: climate change is going to cost us money!

Whoever commissioned Stern to produce a report on the effects of climate change was a genius. People have known about most of the effects of climate change for years, but still public opinion is against green-taxes or a curb on aviation. 500 million are going to become permanent refugees and Bangladesh will be one large lake and no-one bats an eyelid, but Stern produces a report saying it's going to cost us £3.68 trillion and everyone is suddenly thinking twice about that holiday in Trinidad...

A PR masterpiece from Tony and Gordon I suspect!

The Stern Report is 700 pages long, but there is a great PDF presentation which accompanies the report.

Black Gold

Black Gold isn't fully released in UK cinemas until next March, but fair trade enthusiasts should check out the advance screenings that are showing around the UK throughout November. The film is about the Ethiopian coffee industry and Starbucks reportedly gets it in the neck; unsurprisingly it turns out they're not as ethical as their publicity would suggest.

Lots more including a fine forum over on the Black Gold website

P.s. sorry about the typos on my previous post. The lesson is if you need to rush a post, don't post at all!

Grafitti lovers...

  I appreciate that it can be a nuisance and the personally offence stuff is just plain nasty, but something about me loves graffiti. Just stumbled across London Frontline and their stuff is incredible.
And well done to Banksy, whose Mona Lisa made £57,600 at Sotherby's!

See the Flipside

For the past six months (and particularly for the past month) I've been working on a new campaign to get yoof involved in all things fair trade. The campaign is called See the Flipside and everything is just about finished; the website went live last week and everything to be printed will be signed off tomorrow. It's all very exciting!

Even more exciting is that we've managed to find someone to supply our paper stock who boasts that his paper stock is the most environmentally friendly paper stock around. The paper is 100% recycled, the water is recycled, the water is heated in some kind of eco-friendly way, and the paper has never seen any of that nasty chlorine stuff!

Although See the Flipside is about fair trade it's also about ethical living, so the fact that we've managed to find an ethical printers is jolly exciting! Anyway if you want more information on the campaign itself, rather than our printing practise just fill in your details on the website and I'll be sure to get some info in the post along with some (85% recycled, 15% sustainably sourced) beermats.

(RED)

Late last week GAP launched it's full (RED) range. I think I love the (RED) campaign but I'm not quite sure. Don't get me wrong I love the clothes, but  should I really be buying GAP clothing at all, even if half the profits do go to fighting AIDS in Africa?
Such a cliched dilema, but a dilema nevertheless!

Stand up against poverty

The last twenty- four hours have been the climax of GCAP's Month's of Mobilisation and activists have been invited to read the following pledge, which we read at Traidcraft this morning. I like it because not only does it call on George W and Tony to do their bit, but also recognises the role of the leaders of developing nations to do their . We stand here proudly as members of the generation that intends to defeat extreme poverty, the greatest challenge of our times.

"We stand here proudly as members of the generation that intends to defeat extreme poverty, the greatest challenge of our times. We stand up now because we do not wish, years from now, to stand in front of the next generation and say ‘we knew that millions of people were dying unnecessarily every year – and we stood by, doing nothing.”
We cannot stay seated when a child born in a poor country today will die 30 years earlier than a child born in a wealthy one. It’s is time to end all this heartbreak. And we stand up because we are asking not for charity but justice – we know, that in our names, world leaders have already made promises to bring this yearly tragedy to an end – they are called the Millennium Development Goals. What is needed is the political will to achieve – and to go beyond these goals - So we, hundreds of thousands of concerned individuals from over 100 countries, are on our feet to say - To the leaders of the wealthy countries – be great - fight to keep your promises on poverty–. debt cancellation, more and better aid, and trade justice – you know what needs to be done– do it. We also stand before the leaders of poorer countries to say – be great – make it your first responsibility to save the lives of your poorest citizens.
We ask you to tackle inequality, to be accountable to your people, to govern fairly and justly and to fulfill human rights. You know what needs to be done. Do it. Every generation has mighty battles to fight against evils such as slavery and apartheid, which seem as though they cannot be defeated. But history proves time and again they can, if enough people stand up against injustice. We wish to set a record today of the number of people standing up to demand action on poverty – but the record we really want to break is the world’s record of breaking promises and just ignoring the poor.
We are six billion Voices. We want justice now. No more excuses. We will not stand for them.”

Alt-emerging on the Tyne

I posted about a month ago about meeting with Andii Bowsher to discuss the lack of all things emergent on the Tyne, well he's been a little more pro-active than I and has done something about this problem:

"On Wednesday night in Ryton, Tyne and Wear, at Holy Cross Church an alternative/emerging kind of service puts its' head above the waters and takes a breath of the Wind. We hope. 8.30pm in a service called Holy Ground. it's a bit of a rallying call to try to see if there are people wishing to get together on a regularish basis to do more"

Looking forward to it!

Leaving theology in limbo

I have to confess that I'm left a little perplexed by today's report that the Catholic church is about to denounce it's theology of limbo. I totally agree with what Berry has to say about the matter; I think it speaks volumes about the nature of faith if a belief which has been held by the majority of Christians for hundreds of years is going to be no more. Surely this serves as a warning to those who hold firmly to beliefs that inflict suffering on others? Surely it speaks to the Vatican itself, whose stance on contraception has significantly worsened the AIDS pandemic? Surely it's time that such risky beliefs were held more loosely.

Children of Men

Last night Zoe and I went to the cinema; I wanted to watch An Inconvenient Truth, Zoe wanted to watch The Devil Wears Prada, we ended up watching Children of Men.

We'd both heard good things about the film, but walked out well impressed. It looked incredible, the plot was full of twists and the direction and acting was immense.
For me it also raised lots of issues. In particular a real awareness that I have adopted that modernist philosophy of progress and that such a philosophy is naive to the extreme.  Stats on terrorism, crime, health, climate change and poverty seem to suggest things are not improving, they're getting worse and therefore unless there is some dramatic change my kids and in particular their kids are going to have a pretty rough time.
I haven't read PD James' book, but the film also raised issues about the division between those that will suffer and those that will prosper. In the film borders were closed as the world collapsed and non-British citizens were held prisoner in Guantanamo like conditions.  The way it was shot however seemed to suggest that those who will suffer most in the future are eastern Europeans and Muslims. Maybe I'm reading too much into this but I can't help thinking that such a suggestion might just be correct!