Wish4 Fairtrade merchandise goes on sale

Just a few days to Xmas, the perfect moment to get one's act together and launch a range of merchandise to help raise money for Fairtrade enterprise. So here it is !  

Click here for Wish4 merchandise

With roads frozen, business struggling to deliver goods for the last minute panic buying frenzy, and everyone wanting the holiday to come sooner rather than later, it seems that opposing forces are the norm  !!

Nobody working in accounts payable departments, but everyone able and willing to send out invoices early for the month end. Nobody paying attention to prices, so spray-on snow varies from 99c to €2.50 in shops no more than 200yds apart.

And tonight a complete lunar eclipse if only we can stay awake late enough / wake up early enough to appreciate such a once-in-a-few-years feat of nature.

 

So, the big drinking season is upon us ! Another reason for supermarkets to actively encourage excessive alcohol consumption by selling 'slabs' of beer (24 cans in a shrinkwrap tray) for apparently irresitible prices. And all that Half Price wine, which must be illegal, because those wines have never been worth double the 'half price', as even a monkey could tell you.

So, what to do ? How to remain true to the values you espouse, amid the unsustainable consumerism, and in the face of a financial meltdown ?

Surely a perfect moment to really get used to the fact that your wallet is a weapon. Whatever you buy will be replaced on the shelf by another of the same. That's how retail stock control systems work. They are software packages. They are NOT thinking, intelligent, people. They dont distinguish right from wrong. Just full from empty. Cash or NO cash.

So your every purchase is a direct vote for the kind of products you want more of, and ultimately the kind of world you are actively creating around you. The things you aren't buying are also voted off the shelf just as directly. So despite what they say, it's not the thought that counts in Tesco, ASDA, Dunnes, SuperValu or ALDI and Lidl; it's the till receipt. 

So how about a toast to fairtrade and organic wine , and a Wish4 a fairer world in 2011 ?

Cheers,

Bolder in Boulder but not yet in Kinsale

 In my town of Kinsale, we harbour some of the most intelligent life forms on earth. And today the good and the best gatherd to dissect the budget into the kind of detail that left me thinking.....well.....its no THAT bad is it. And I guess that's because many of us dont have massive pensions under threat, or property empires buoyed up by tax relief, or ministerial cars now havin got be down graded to under 2 litres.

So, back at the office, cashflow is king, and there are flickering candles at the ends of a few of the tunnels. So as we despatched great new orders of Fairtrade muffins just in time for Xmas, and are now in limbo while we speculate about what Jan 2011 will bring, someone sent me a link to the Unreasonable Institute in Boulder, Colorado
http://vimeo.com/15739837

A bit like the Positivity ladies in Cork, and the Transition Town movement, the future seems most likely to bring satisfaction if we take it upon ourselves to plant a tree, say thanks to bank clerks, and give our time to community initiatives.

And anyway, being unreasonable is not new to any of us here in Kinsale if the local car parking habits are anything to go by.