As predicted Haiti has disappeared out of the headlines, and off the screens. Until today when I heard the irish government is giving about €20m to a fund for long term reconstruction. Thats good, until you compare it with the extra €10,000,000,000 it gave to the dodgiest bank in the land on the same day.
Somewhere buried in the nonsense of what passes as good-sense in the commercial world is Fairtrade. And its still growing despite the cooling down since Fairtrade Fortnight. In my town the Fairtrade bananas have been put away for another 50 weeks, and despsite the good words of the top CEOs, retail buyers continue to ignore the fantastic efforts of grass roots customers to increase the range of Fairtrade products on the shelf.
I met a seriously influential buyer last week at the Food & Drink Expo in UK who really doesn't understand what Fairtrade actually means, has never visited any of the suppliers of his amazingly cheap products, but who makes decisions worth thousands of livelihoods every day !
Luckily young people DO travel more these days, and DO see what is going on, so I think there is hope, and I'll be spending an evening in Liverpool today with an NUS group that is serious about getting its behaviour to line up with its declared values. Something much harder to do than you think !!
