I haven’t written on here in a while, but I’ve had a few moments in the past little while where I’ve wanted to scream this… Now working as IT support, which I often do, makes me want to scream it quite a lot, but here are some less usual situations that hae cropped up…
The first chronologically that comes to mind (there have been loads I’m sure) is when someone mentioned about Nescafe being a bad idea because their owner Nestle is notoriously unfair when it comes to trading with coffee producers in third world countries. Now I don’t know if it is true any more, or if they have evened things up with pressure from campaigners, but this lead someone to comment how they didn’t see why fair trade was a good idea… After all, we pay more for fair trade products, and the producer gets more, so the trading from the company isn’t any different is it? They still make profit, we are the ones bearing the brunt!
But that’s the point! Very few corporations are going to give up profits to make people feel better, the genius of the Fair Trade initiative is that companies don’t have to lose profit, in fact they stand to gain profit in most cases. What the Fairtrade foundation has done is to provide an extra marketing boost to companies products, this allows them to inrease their sale price, while still remaining competitive (a lot of people will pay the little bit extra to make themselves feel better and be charitable). The company doesn’t lose out, in fact can make more money. But to get the Fairtrade status, they have to live up to certain criteria, criteria which help out the producers of the raw materials; giving them a fairer amount for their produce rather than ripping them off because they have no other choice. All the while the company gets a nice bit of PR and a healthy profit. Ultimately the only loser is the end buyer, and even then its only a small amount lost for the gain of a cleaner conscience.
So the point isn’t to make companies nicer or make them pay out more, it’s to give the producers a fairer amount of money in a way that the companies will be happy to comply with.
Number two was at a billboard I saw in Belfast last week. It was campaigning for disabled people’s rights, which is a good thing, but it was done badly… Let me explain. The billboard was expounding in short and snappy form the fact that the percentage of unemployed people who are disabled is disproportionately high. Sounds simple and unfair right?
But if we are living in an equal opportunity society (in terms of disabled/able-bodied opportunity (sorry if you are offended because I don’t know the PC terms…although feel free to enlighten me)) then for each opportunity for employment you should have an equal chance of getting the job regardless of your disability. Still the billboard seems right!
BUT when you consider that a disabled person will not, for reasons of practicality and safety, not be able to do certiain jobs, the statistics will change. For example, a blind man cannot become a taxi-driver, no matter how good his dog is. Thus the number of jobs that a disabled person can go for is immediately and unavoidably lowered.
And, if society was equal, in the jobs disabled people can do, their chances of employment would be no higher than anyone elses. So the pool of jobs is smaller and the chances are the same. The outcome of this will be a disproportionate number of disabled people being unemployed. Simply because society is both safe, practical and fair. And this is ignoring all of the other factors…
Important!
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for equality. I know that the billboard is making a valid point, the numbers of disabled people, even with this factored in, in employment is disproportionately low and it is unfair and whats more I’m ashamed to be part of a society that is this way. But for some reason it bugged me that the billboard would put up something that, if thought about, is really not saying anything at all.
The third one was seeing a sign outside a Gospel Hall near Carrickfergus. The sign, an obvious attempt at reaching out, said “He died for our sins!”. Nothing wrong with that, perfectly valid sign. Except that the makers obviously didn’t stop to ask “How will passers by read this?”
If you are passing by without any link to the church, you are going to read the sign and think “How nice that he died for their sins” and carry on.
Perhaps a better sign would say:
“He died for your sins”
As I said there are plenty more, but mostly IT related and pretty geeky!
In other news I found out that LG, the company who make TVs, phones, computing stuff, other electronic goodies began life being known as the “Happy Happy Good Times Company”.
