I don’t celebrate Christmas because I don’t have anyone to celebrate it with. Instead I meditate a lot and do my annual spring clean. If you’re also alone this Christmas, I recommend this as a coping strategy. It’s still pretty bleak, but waking up on 27th having had no Christmas with a clean flat is definitely better than waking up on the 27th with a not-so-clean flat.

This year I’ve decided to really go to town and literally clean EVERYTHING. Although I’m starting to wonder whether moving the fridge and physically washing the walls down with soapy water is maybe a bit excessive. Even though I’ve been in my flat three years, the walls behind the fridge don’t look dirty to me, so my present dilemma this Christmas Eve is should I wash them or not?

I think I will, because I have committed to washing everything, but I got to wondering, is this excessive, how often do people wash the walls behind their fridges?

Anyway, I created this survey to find out, so please if you’ve found this site, humor me and complete it, thanks and for what it’s worth, Merry Christmas.

 
NB: The survey refers to whether you wash the walls behind your fridges at any time of year, not just at Christmas time. 

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This is also my first embedded survey, something of a practice run… So apologies if you can’t see the results, I will update later as I’m sure they’ll be a lot of interest in this….

Also if the survey just doesn’t work for some reason, do let me know, as I say, this is a trial.

Actually just in case the embed doesn’t work – here – Click here to take survey

Reserach suggests Jamie Oliver is responsible for 27% of anomic feelings experienced by UK males aged between 30-39

He’s such an inspiration that, in my efforts to emulate his energetic,  socially-conscious uber-interesting, jam-packed, metro-sexual-male-having-it-all life-style, I simply don’t have time to make his delicious home made-pasta recipe this week – I mean, I’m sure you can feel my pain, I’m gonna have to sink to the lows of bying pasta-in-a-packet.

Fortunately this month’s ethical consumer magazine has a handy guide to packet-pasta and sauce, that allows me to purchase pasta according to my ethical standards – i.e. to avoid purchasing from companies that damage the environment, harm animals, or employ their workers under poor conditions. Actually, perhaps this is another reason why Oliver is responsible for my Anomie – he did such a great job setting up his 15 restaurant, giving local unemployed teens a chance, and then he goes and becomes the face of Sainsbury, which, like the other three supermarkets, are intent on maxmising profit, often at the expense of people and planet.

Anyway, back to the pasta -

If you care about animals, you might like to boycott the Bertolli range

The two with the lowest scores include Buitoni (Pasta and Sauce) – owned by Nestle, Bertolli (sauce) – owned by Unilever, and Seeds of Change - owned by Mars (I was expecting Monsanto with a name like that) – this last one’s particularly deceptive as it look so lovely and cosy-homely-organic.

For details of why you might want to avoid the above pasta varieties – follow these links

Boycott Mars - it’s basically over animal testing

Uniliver – is buying palm oil from companies who destroy the rainforest

And Nestle - it’s still babymilk!

The best buys – Clearspring Pasta and La Terra e il Cielo  

Haribo - Damn their delicious, fizzy sweetness - I will have my revenge...

Since I’ve been back at work I promised myself I’d do pithier, shorter posts, instead I just spent the last hour cogitating over this – still I think it’s worth putting out there.. one for the teachers really…

On noting my cravings for sugar over two consecutive days at about 15.00 hours – cravings which I don’t get while I’m on holiday – this depressing thought occurred to me – ‘If I wasn’t in work I wouldn’t want Haribo, and if Haribo wasn’t on sale in the college I wouldn’t buy it’.

What’s depressing about this is that I’m reminded of just how far my unconscious desires are shaped by my environment – I want to eat healthily – I don’t want the ‘sugar rush-then-low’ – I don’t actually want to eat Haribo ever, yet simply being at work makes me want to eat junk, and the presence of junk food at work makes me more likely to buy it – I’ve succumbed two days in a row and the students aren’t even back yet!

Now, the confluence of these three factors (being at work, work making it easy to buy junk, yet my not wanting to eat junk) puts me in a situation of having to resist buying junk food - which is a problem, because I am put in the situation of constantly having to say ‘no’ to my desire to eat Haribo – once a day at about 15.00… Now according to some research I can’t remember the details of (just trust me on this – I’m not a politician) this kind of resistance will eventually wear me down….constantly having to say no to things is bad for one’s mental health, you know (although Buddhist Monks don’t seem to do too badly out of it – but then again Buddhist monastaries don’t having Haribo vending machines).

To make things worse – The Ethical Consumer magazine gave Haribo the worst possible rating for both supply chain management and environmental responsibsility. So, given the harm resisting this evil product does to me and the harm purchsing this evil product does to people and planet, it strikes me that removing the option of buying all Haribo from college – and replacing said Haribo with a healthier and preferably more ethical choice – strikes me as an ethical broader goal for the coming term, but the problem is it’s wildly unpragmatic – My problems are as follows – (assuming I rule out smashing up the vending machine)

• The canteen at college is run by a profit making company - and income is everything to the college… so there’s barrier 1
• I actually quite like the canteen staff – and getting them to change might offend them as it implies what they’re doing is unsatisfactory (actually with a bit of sensistivity I think this can be negotiated fairly easily.
• The college hosts 200 staff and 1900 students – many of whom probably want to eat Haribo – and here is the biggest challenge - if I want to get my own way – what I know to be right – If I wanted to remove the Haribo I would have to mount some kind of education and mobilisation campaign just to get Haribo removed, sort out some clear arguements for its removal and probably suggest some reasonable alternatives…

Now a man alone may well balk at this, giving up in the face of all of this effort for such a small victory. But herein lies the joy of working in education – I can generalise this out, and when we’re focussing on fairtrade and ethical consumption at some point in early 2012 I can turn it into an ‘educational project’ – all I need to do now is think up a few aims and objectives….Making The College Healthy and Fairtrade…or something like that’ll do …  

Then all I need to do is email Jamie, maybe a Buddhist Monk (to remind us what an uncolonised lifeworld is about, and the robes are cool) and, of course, the lovely Stacey Dooley – she could motivate anyone to do just about anything – and Bobs yer uncle, fanny’s yer aunt and Karl’s yer Sociology teacher – I’ve got myself an easy week’s ‘teaching’ – all in the name of helping me overcome my sugar addiction – brought on by my work environment.  

For those of you that think manipulating students in this way is somewhat unethical – obviously it isn’t because -

1. It is in their long term health interests to make if difficult to eat sugary foods

2. They can still get Haribo off campus anyways, even if it gets banned

3. Students can of course choose to mount a campaign to ‘save the junk food vending machines’ (I can imagine this being very popular as an option)

4. Students are already being manipulated by the very existence of machines full of junk, as are the relationships between students and staff – I know of many staff members who use sweets as teaching aids – thus life-world interaction is mediated through the medium of sugar – this isn’t necessarily a good thing ya know!

So in the meantime until this glorious age of the sugar free enlightenment – I’ll just have to rely on my Zen Mind to help me resist my sugar lust amidst the evil Haribo vending machines.

Tetley's Tea - buy it and you perpetuate the abuse of Bengali Tea Pickers

I’ve started obsessing about ethical consumption recently – And as I’ve just run out of tea and had to buy some more – I did some digging -

The British drink  165 million cups of tea every year, but some of our most popular tea suppliers perpetuate great environmental and social harms in the process of bringing us our national drink.

Tetley’s, the second most popular tea brand in the UK, and owned by parent company Tata, are notoriously bad, scoring only a dismal 4.5/ 20 for it’s ethical trading policies as measured by Ethical Consumer - which looks at the parent company’s environmental, workers rights and political activities.

Buying Tetley’s effectively involves supporting a company which doesn’t support fair pay and conditions for its tea pickers – also see this site for how Tetley’s attacks its tea workers in West Bengal – so you can either boycott them, which wouldn’t actually help the tea pickers,  so far better would be to take some stiffer action – letter writing, or you could, not that I condone such action, go to 18 Grosvner place in London and spray paint on their offices details of what they’re doing.

NB – Tata also own good earth tea – you’d never guess this was on dodgy ethical grounds judging by the packaging – incidentally this is why I reject most forms of marketing as a valid career – marketing involves dressing up a product so it seems more than it actually is – in this case, deliberately misleading the public.

Top of the ethical tea standards table were Equal Exchange Tea - with 17/20 for its ethical credentials – seems to be a reliable fair trade company which means that the tea is produced sustainably and the tea pickers get a decent price.

So if you are also a filthy, dirty and weak caffeine addict and your middle class enough to be able to afford it, go for the fairtrade option – alternatively I’m awaiting delivery of a batch of new T shirts I’ve designed – a range of colours and sizes bearing the logo ‘I don’t give a toss about worker’s right’s in the developing world so make mine a Tetley’s’ – so you could always buy one of those instead…