Ethical shopping

[Myrkk]

Prompted by the roses/quality street thread and why people boycott certain brands.


If you read "The Good Shopping Guide" go to www.thegoodshoppingguide.co.uk and then look up some of the companies that made the simple everyday items you have in your house i.e. my philips kettle......


Philips have a middle rating on nuclear power
bottom ratings on oppressive regimes
workers's rights
armaments
political activity

I won't go into the full details of how this book rationalises its marking system but to quote a small bit from the "People" section which includes oppressive regimes and workers' rights.......

Pge 18 Section 2 Edition 4 ......explanation of
the bottom rating
" ...... represents criticism of the company or its suppliers for infringement of workers' rights, which includes: intimidation of workers by management; use of forced or slave labour; payment of wages below a level which is adequate to live on; a working week of over 48hrs; forced and/or excessive overtime; exploitative use of child labour; denial of the right to associate, form unions or bargain collectively; discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, sexuality, or creed; the provision of inadequate or dangerous working conditions."

It is partly the reason these large companies take their business out of Britain. Why keep your business in a country which has strong enough laws to protect the worker [well mostly] when you can go to another country and exploit its people.......

[snapdragon]

Am pretty sure that Tesco - for all thir looking after farm workers growing out of season green beans in Kenya, are likely to be guilty of something ungood - if you sell jeans at £3 - the material is nearly that - so what does the machinist get out of it?

How come a pair of leather boots is the same price as two pounds of fish? eh? My old grandad would be fuming

[Kwackerz]

Just looking at the Nestle stuff.. they make all this lot or profit from the products.. http://www.babymilkaction.org/pages/products.html No way on the planet we could boycott some of that stuff.

Oh and SNAPPY... http://www.channel4.com/news/special-re ... sp?id=3554 There's yer thing on Tesco!

This seems a posh, techy way of protesting against companies of 'ill repute' http://www.karmabanque.com/modules.php? ... file=index

[Gio]

I can't blame companies for taking a stand against unethical government.

Stupid laws like:

Minimum wage
Race relations bill
Employment (14 stages to getting rid of an incompetent employee)

What the hells wrong with working over 48 hours a week, it won't provide any extra jobs if people worked less.

Small companies (those with 5 or fewer employees) have certain exemptions, its why they only employ that amount, so are they are being unethical?

[lazarus]

Prompted by the roses/quality street thread and why people boycott certain brands.


If you read "The Good Shopping Guide" go to www.thegoodshoppingguide.co.uk and then look up some of the companies that made the simple everyday items you have in your house i.e. my philips kettle......


Philips have a middle rating on nuclear power
bottom ratings on oppressive regimes
workers's rights
armaments
political activity

I won't go into the full details of how this book rationalises its marking system but to quote a small bit from the "People" section which includes oppressive regimes and workers' rights.......

Pge 18 Section 2 Edition 4 ......explanation of
the bottom rating
" ...... represents criticism of the company or its suppliers for infringement of workers' rights, which includes: intimidation of workers by management; use of forced or slave labour; payment of wages below a level which is adequate to live on; a working week of over 48hrs; forced and/or excessive overtime; exploitative use of child labour; denial of the right to associate, form unions or bargain collectively; discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, sexuality, or creed; the provision of inadequate or dangerous working conditions."

It is partly the reason these large companies take their business out of Britain. Why keep your business in a country which has strong enough laws to protect the worker [well mostly] when you can go to another country and exploit its people.......

OK Myrk. You buy your stuff from an ethically responsible co-op and stick to the few things still made in the UK by your ethically irresponsible compatriots. Meanwhile the rest of us will continue to buy on the basis of the best deal we can get irrespective of where it comes from and under what conditions its made / grown. We'll admire the stans you are making.

[BikerGran]

It's a bit simplistic to make a stand about some of these things - for instance, if everyone refused to buy goods made in far east sweatshops - what would happen to the workers - some of them only children - and their families?

They'd lose their jobs, that's what.

[Kwackerz]

http://www.killercoke.org/

Found this while looking for the advert Sam was on about elsewhere

[Myrkk]

I think you've misread the intention of the thread Lazarus....... I couldn't give a rats ass if you "admire" me or not. If I were the sort of person who cared what others thought of me I certainly wouldn't post on an open internet forum!

I just thought it was an interesting point that may make some interesting conversation.

[Kwackerz]

Well it served some sort of purpose for me. I decided as a result of the thread to do a bit more research on the companies I do buy from. We clearly see the shop fronts, but seldom see the behind the scenes stuffthat occurs, either in this country or Africa, Asia, etc.

I will however continue to buy Walnut Whips whatever. If it means someone in a sweatshop has to sit and apply a walnut to the top of a chocolate at gunpoint then so be it. I'll give up drinking coca-cola instead.

[Gio]

The only thing I won't buy is goods manufactured in China, as they have the worst human rights record in the world.

If it kills a few million of them cos of starvation, so be it.

[moletrap]

You could apply some measure of 'ethicalness' to every corporation in the world if you wanted to, but it wouldn't help you much in living in this day and age. So you have to make judgement calls based on broad principles. I try to not buy clothes produced in SE Asia, but how do I know which factories are sweatshops and which are ethically run? I buy food from Waitrose but also from Sainsbury’s, does that make me good or not? Do Fairtrade goods really give a better income to farmers?

As for drinking Coke: why would anyone want to, it’s disgusting stuff.

[Kwackerz]

Shhh.. I was trying to make myself sound good.. Drink it?! Hell NO! I clean my Weapon with it..








my Gun..