Trade fair Damnit

I like coffee, more than a man should perhaps, but i am also a wishy-washy namby-pamby loony-liberal. What this really means is that I like little ways of being slightly less cruel to the world around me and people I've never met. With my coffee, and with food as far as I can, I'll go for fairtrade. Most high street chains respect this and offer fairtrade or, more normally, have fairtrade as standard. Starbucks do fairtrade pretty much by default, that's starbucks, the evil ones. Now flavour wise fairtrade is no different to your unfairly traded coffee (Organic can change that but that's a whole other argument) but it costs more because apparently if we want to treat farmers fairly we will have to pay for it rather than big companies taking small cuts in their massive profits.

Anyway, I was in sainsburys last night and was trying to pick up some coffee (Real stuff, instant is not coffee, its coffee flavouring) and I was particularly keen on a 2 for £3 offer, however in Sainsbury's own range there are 4 fairtrade options out of about 15, A basic Colombian, and organic and a decaff equivalent of each. This is pretty much standard across all the major chains, and is in my view pretty unacceptable. Think of it this way, the only difference between the beans bought for Sainsbury's Fairtrade Colombian coffee and its unfair trade equivalent, is how much the people producing it were paid. This seems absurd when you think about it, Sainsbury's, or Tesco, or Asda, or Morrison's, go to Columbia, and buy two sacks of coffee, for one they say "We'll pay you £20 for this" and for the other, for Fair Trade, they say "We'll pay you £100 for this" this must lead to some confused coffee producers. Its almost as if Fair trade is treated like a separate product, and there are few who are not guilty, Whittards don't have a 100% fairtrade range of coffees, Taylor's of Harrogate have no Fairtrade markings except on designated fairtrade brands and as previously specified all the major supermarkets have a mix.

So, to the Fairtrade people, I say stop this, don't let people away with this anymore. I will look at buying Cafe Direct or that ilk if the supermarket won't sell me fairtrade, so stop letting them away with this, I won't hold them to 100% fiartrade yet, although the Co-Op is there with its own brand stuff, but don't allow a fairtrade range anymore, deny them the use of your mark if they won't buy all their coffee fairtrade.

42 Days

Well, it happened, I even wrote to my MP to try and stop it. See that's due process for you, I should have used my mighty hammer to stop this nonsense. Brown decided to pin his entire career on a policy that undermined magna carta, was deemed unnecessary by most of those in the know, and was only popular amongst the Sun/Daily Hate fraternity. In fact I had to switch off an ex scum editor for harping on about how if this takes suicide bombers off the streets then its worth it. Yes, we arrest everyone who looks a bit Asian, and anyone who protested against the government just to be sure, and keep them for over a month, without even telling them what they've done, brilliant, it was tried in Northern Ireland and was the IRA's most successful recruiting campaign ever. I do shudder about what sort of deal with the devil has been made with the Ulster unionists.

It is a very strange world we currently live in, where men of principle (well at least showing the most principle) are Tory's, and the best hope for freedom and democracy lies with the unelected, undemocratic house of Lords.

However, I'm not one for moaning, ok that's not true, I'm a huge fan of moaning, but at base the problems we have here is twofold.

1. The government wants more power to lock up those who disagree with them, it is paranoid ramblings but this government has done more to take more power unto itself and less to democratic process than any other
2. The MPs in the 42 days vote were more interested in what could be got for them rather than the views of their constituents

So, what can you do. Well, when a vote like this comes up, write to your MP about how you want them to vote. It won't make much difference, but when they do care about you (Come election time) you can broach this subject with them in person when they're trying to toady for your vote. My actual threat was that if my MP voted yes, I wouldn't vote labour in any election, so no support for MSPs MEPs or councillors. You can see all your representatives voting records at www.theyworkforyou.com, a useful site that keeps these people accountable.

The second thing you can do is visit www.noliberties.com, the website of the film "Taking liberties" it has details on action you can do and covers exactly what's been taken by those in power. What I plan to do next time they're grubbing for my votes, mostly in the next Westminster election, is have a copy of what has been taken, and what acts have done this, and ask every candidate if they will work to repeal these laws, regardless of party politics. I doubt I'll get a straight yes/no but seeing them squirm should be fun. And BTW coming from a long standing opponent of Scottish Independence, if you can promise me, on the blood of your expense account, that we'll have none of this nonsense in an independent Scotland, Sign me up matey.

Whiskey Mike

A quick post following up my piece on War Machine. Ok so he's not got the solo title yet but news is that the next Iron Man story is a War machine story. A nice idea, basically when Tony was taken out in Secret Invasion, it triggers an automatic call to Rhodey telling him what he has to do. Its a nice touch, firstly because the War Machine suit was originally designed by Stark to clean up his affairs before he "Died" and something which puts War Machine into taht role is a nice reference, also because that has been Rhodey's role traditionally, replacing stark when he's down.

Looking forward to this needless to say.

Still no further on his cyborgisation, my guess is that no one actually has an idea of why yet, they're still coming up with a story, for the future presumably.