Monthly Archives: March 2006

General

New Blog on the Block

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This blogging lark seems to be catching on… Recently I’ve added a new one to the over one hundred that Bloglines keeps track of for me, which is Bunny’s World, writing by the intriguingly named ‘Mrs F Bunny’, which I’m sure is some sort of pseudonym. 😀

Anyway, so far there has been a pretty mixed bag of postings, including a comment on the combination of sandwiches and a hangover, an appeal from the Mrs Bunny wants a new handbag campaign, and a decidedly amusing reminder for anybody trying to sell to a small company, that nine times out of ten, the person who answers the phone is not a receptionist!

P.S. If you don’t like pink, you might want to use something like bloglines to read the blog…

Pictures

Whitewash or Justice?

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This week, Panorama looked at the events of 22nd July 2005 that led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.

I’ve already blogged about my concerns over the whole incident, and to be frank having seen the Panorama report, I’m even more concerned.

Essentially the conclusions of the programme were that Menezes was shot because he was incorrectly identified by special branch surveillance officers as one of the bombing suspects. The person in ultimate charge of the operation, and who would have taken the decision to deploy the armed team was in a control room in Scotland Yard, and since the armed team lost radio contact when they went down to the tube would have taken the decision based purely on the incorrect identification. The armed team would have been told that this was confirmed as one of the people who the day before had tried to blow up the transport network, only two weeks after four others had done so, and you can start to see how the shooting of an unarmed, innocent man happened.

Ultimately it seems that if the senior officer at Scotland Yard gave the order, the armed response team merely followed their orders, and did their job correctly, so maybe you can’t blame the officers that pulled the trigger. However the officer that gave the order had a confirmed identification of a known terrorist from special branch officers on the ground, so again, based on the information at the time, they followed the policy. That leads back to the people who made the flawed identification, whilst following Menezes from his flat to the station. Certainly it seems that they feel like they will take the fall as the Panorama report reported evidence of doctored records, changing whether an identification was made – a serious allegation indeed.

However, what I found most concerning was the underlying principle of Operation Kratos – the so called ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy. The programme included a near farcical discussion between the reporter and a senior policeman, where he maintained that it was not a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy, but a ‘shoot-to-incapacitate’ policy. The reporter replied that the policy directed to shoot possible terrorists in the head, and surely that would lead to death. The policeman agreed that this was the directive, but that the shots to the head were to incapacitate – the fact that it was likely to kill the suspect didn’t mean that it was a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy. I thought the whole discussion was a barmy bit of spin.

It has been mentioned previously, that Operation Kratos is based on the practices of the Israeli Security Forces. However the programme highlighted that it differed in several respects, the biggest being that the Israeli’s are not allowed to shoot a suspect unless they have seen the bomb, in London, that is not the case, it was confirmed by one of the policemen interviewed that the policy allows the police to shoot a suspect if they have reasonable suspicion, even if there is no sign of a bomb at all.

Ultimately I think that whatever happens, the police will loose. Quite apart from the evidence of tampering that has come to light already, if nobody is prosecuted, then the whole investigation will be seen as a whitewash. However equally it seems that if the order was given, then the officers were only following the policy, it would seem that all the police involved were trying to do their jobs, and genuinely believed that Menezes was a terrorist. In that situation it seems that whilst nobody could be prosecuted, more senior people in the police force would find themselves out of a job. But if the team that pulled the trigger are prosecuted, as the family of Menezes would like, that could cause major problems, and as has been threatened before, possibly a walk-out of armed officers. Whichever way you look at it, there doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory conclusion at all.

Politics

How Fair is Fair Trade?

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Like many Churches and other organisations, St James recently managed to get awarded FairTrade status having ensured that we make use of fairly traded products such as the coffee and tea we serve after services.

With all the push to encourage more use of fair trade products, it was interesting to see tonight’s edition of the Money Programme, which looked at the whole phenomenon of fair trade, and particularly now that the large supermarket chains prominently stock fair trade goods.

It has to be said that the thrust of the programme was not at the concept of fair trade, but more a fairly heavy implication that the big supermarkets are using it as an opportunity to make more money from consumers. It is worth pointing out – and this was confirmed by the deputy director of the Fairtrade Foundation – that the only thing they guarantee is that the original producer of the produce is getting a fair price. Whilst most people are assuming that the extra money that we pay for fair trade products is going to the third world, it seems that the sums don’t quite add up.

The programme included several contributions from John McCabe, who has been saying for a number of years that supermarkets are overcharging for Fairtrade. The programme used the example of bananas, where they first looked at loose bananas, where the loose Fairtrade bananas, only sold by Waitrose, seemed to reflect pretty closely the difference in the amount the farmers were paid. However the pre-packaged Fairtrade bananas were significantly more expensive, and the supermarkets were unwilling to discuss where the extra money was going.

The programme then looked at coffee, where the average price of a Fairtrade brand was about 50p more than a regular packet – and yet the coffee growers see only a fraction of that. A professional coffee expert appeared and said that there was pretty well no difference between the regular and Fairtrade brands in terms of quality, nor packaging. Again the question was left hanging, where is all the extra money going?

John McCabe sums up the feelings of many people who buy fairtrade:

“What I’d like to see is the whole premium going back to producer, and that being the only difference between non Fairtrade and Fairtrade.â€?

When you think about it, to supermarkets such as Tesco, Fairtrade is almost just another product line, in the same way as they sell the value and Finest lines, organic and healthy eating lines. As with the other lines, it seems to be about marketing – labelling something as Fairtrade appeals to a growing group of consumers, consumers who are willing to pay a little extra to support people in the third world. It saddens me that it seems that big businesses that make millions of pounds profit appear to be charging the prices that people are willing to pay, and it seems generating more profit for themselves, rather than passing on the additional money the consumers have spent to the producers.

This idea that Fairtrade is becoming a marketing ploy has been further enforced by the news that Nestle, still subject to a boycott over their baby milk, and after years of claiming that Fairtrade was bad for the industry, have changed their mind, and are now producing Fairtrade Nescafe. Not surprisingly many people see this as nothing more than a cynical marketing ploy. As the program synopsis concludes:

The problem facing the Fairtrade Foundation is whether they can go mainstream without making too many compromises with big business, and whether core supporters will continue to stick with them.

That is an interesting question to ponder. I’m not buying Fairtrade in an effort to make super rich tycoons richer, I’m buying to help people who before fairtrade were unable to earn enough to live on. I’ve got no problem with the supermarkets making a profit on the goods, but I think it should be the same profit that they make on the non-fairtrade item, anything else would seem to be perverting the whole idea. Having said that, whilst we’re paying more than we maybe should, there is extra money going to those who need it – fairtrade does make a difference, even if big business is trying to make extra from it over here. Certainly I don’t think we should stop buying fairtrade. Instead, I hope that with increasing awareness there will be increasing information about how much of the extra we pay for fairtrade is actually going to those who need it – and how much is going elsewhere.

General

Blog Recommendation

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If you haven’t discovered it already, I can thoroughly recommend Scott Adams blog, called not surprisingly, The Dilbert Blog.

Having said that, despite the graphics, this is very much Adams blog, rather than Dilberts. (If you want the Dilbert feed, you can find it at http://www.tapestrycomics.com/dilbert.xml.) All the way through the postings are permeated with Adams unique brand of humour, even when dealing with quite serious subjects. Take for example his posting today about his problems with spasmodic dysphonia which resulted in him being perfectly able to speak on his own, but unable to make a phone call or have a one-to-one conversation.

Contrast with that a whole series of postings that were really trying to bait both sides of the evolution/creationism debate, and postings such as this one that poses the following point that:

the sentence for attempted murder should be the same as the sentence for successful murder. Otherwise we’re just rewarding incompetence.

Or this one that postulates that there should be a special category of swearing reserved only for Olympic losers, who have worked their whole lives for one particular moment, in one particular competition, only to mess it up.

There are new postings almost every day, and many days they put a smile on my face, highly recommended.

General

Faith Needs Doubt

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One of the blogs I regularly take a look at is Hugh McLeods Gapping Void. In the past it has usually been a posting, paired with a usually unrelated black and white cartoon. However, over the past few weeks there has been a bit of a change in the content on the blog. The subtitle of the blog is “cartoons drawn on the back of business cardsâ€?, however Hugh has a new toy, a Tablet PC, as a result there has been somewhat of an explosion in colour, as he explores what he can do with the new toy. Quite often now we’re just getting a number of great colour cartoons, on a variety of topics.

Browsing through some of his past cartoons, you’ll find that Hugh has done some pretty profound cartoons on a religious theme, indeed I have a copy of one pinned on my wall where the words say: “What a happy coincidence. God hates the same people I do.â€?

Amongst the new images is this one called ‘faith needs doubt’, which I think is great, and which I thought I’d share. If you take a browse back through his archives, there are quite a few more interesting pictures too.

Incidentally, if you’re involved in a Church, you may find a recent posting showing what his friend has managed to do with a Church newsletter pretty interesting too.