So faithless were great.
Maxi Jazz is a complete inspiration. His lyrics and philosophy of peace and love are mind-blowing.
Next time I go to a faithless gig I need to take a notepad or something because between songs the guy comes out with some gems.
Off to London again tomorrow...
You may have seen a while back that Levi are now selling organic jeans. For those of us who are optimists this was another victory. Hurrah, another company going ethical...
Hold on a minute though. Becky, a fellow ethical enthusiast at TC, has just stumbled across this:
"We regret to announce that Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&Co.) has resigned from ETI [Ethical Trading Initiative] following their suspension for refusing to adopt the ‘Living Wage ’ provision of the ETI Base Code."
Shock horror! Looks like it's back to Howies!
London this week was much fun. Busy, but fun! I can imagine hating London if I lived there but while I'm just a visitor I love it.
For obvious reasons I'm a public transport fan and once you've mastered the tube it is so unbelievably efficient and also quite fun. But the best thing about London is definitely Soho: all those quirky little shops, Black Market Records (pictured) and ridiculously cheap food (also pictured).
If heaven is like anything Soho (minus the sex shops and prostitutes) I'll be a happy man!
So apparently not everyone has photoshop... feeling your pain...
If you are one of those unfortunate peeps, then you might be interested in Picnik. It's just a beta at the mo, so some of the functionality is missing, but basically it allows you to edit and amend your photos online using the glorious technology of Web 2.0. Even if you have got photoshop, Picnik has some big advantages primarily it allows you to edit photos that have already been uploaded to Flickr (without downloading and re-uploading), saving a lot of time and hassle.
Yes, I know this is 'my thing', but I figure me commenting about fairtrade during fairtrade fortnight is kinda like a Christian writing something reflective at Christmas or a Jew writing something religious during Hanukah, so get over it!
So my exciting trip to london included attending the glitzy launch of Fairtrade Fortnight. The event was full of licensees (ie Green and Blacks, Tesco, Ben & Jerry's) and so I felt a bit out of my depth as more of a campaigner, but the speeches were really interesting. Gail Porter, left, was beautifully simple in her description of how fair trade makes a difference, but the evening was largely dominated by Sainsbury's.
As a bit of a fair trade puritan snob this made me more than a little angry. 'We [Traidcraft] bust our ass to make fair trade what it is then Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer's waltz in a steal the limelight... grumble, grumble!'
I reflected on this a little on the way home and once I got off my high-horse I realised what a good thing this mainstreaming is. Sainsbury's are in the process of switching all their bananas to Fairtrade, their currently at 85% and will reach 100% by May. Sainsbury's sell 1,000 bananas a minute. That is a lot of farmers getting a much better deal than before a few consumers started to kick ass requesting fair trade.
There was a feature about all this in Monday's Guardian,
"Yesterday, Caribbean prime ministers who lobbied British government officials for better trade terms, lined up instead to thank Sainsbury's. Sir John Compton, the 82-year-old premier of St Lucia, told Justin King, the head of Sainsbury's: "You have saved the banana farmers of St Lucia."
Roosevelt Skerrit, 35, the youngest prime minister in the world when Dominica voted him in last year, said: "The commitment of the relationship [with Sainsbury's] is unparalleled."
He added: "As a result of fair trade, our farmers are now able to invest in their community in the form of school equipment, farm roads and community facilities."
So inconclusion. Hurrah! The mainstreaming of Fairtrade seems a chuffing good way to MakePovertyHistory.
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