Consumer Stuff...

Just taking a blog break…

Spent the last 4 hours marking and sorting through a range of various ongoing work tasks, some of which have been sitting waiting my attention for a while..

Enjoying the first half of ‘Everytown’ (read various reviews of it today too in the Guardian) where philosopher Julian Baggini moved into my old village near Rotherham. As Sarfraz Manzoor said “Although Baggini tries to fit in he is an outsider in this world – a stranger in his own country.”

Also currently watching Bear Grylls in the Alps: good for Extreme Environments for those centres doing mountains as their context.

The Guardian have given away a world map today which has stickers with Wonders of the World: the 7 wonders of the Ancient World today, to be followed by the Wonders of the Natural World, Alternative Wonders and Wonders of the 20^th Century

An interesting source of discussion.

Quite a few People as Consumers links around too:

Julian Baggini talks about the importance of CONVENIENCE to people today. This overrides other factors. He mentions the existence of motorway service stations as one piece of evidence of this…

New film out in May called “Black Gold”, with a tagline “Wake up and smell the coffee”. It is an expose of the coffee industry in a similar way that “Supersize Me” investigated McDonalds and Fast Food.

Also finally got round to reading Fairtrade magazine “Fair Comment” for Spring 2007 which I got just before Fairtrade fortnight. Good quote by Dame Anita Roddick on the front cover:

“If trade undermines life, narrows it or impoverishes it, then it can destroy the world. If trade enhances life, then it can better the world.”

Interesting article on Bananas in the centre of the magazine: good that Sainsbury’s and Waitrose are switching all their bananas to Fairtrade certified source.

Article on the front of the Daily Mail that the Government are going to try to change all light bulbs from incandescent bulbs to low energy ones. There are various tables which give information about the energy used by the bulbs, but not the cost of actually producing them, or disposing of them, which needs to be factored in to the overall environmental cost.

Another article which I read in ‘The Times’ on Tuesday suggested that what we should do to save the planet is to switch off our gadgets. This is cheaper than developing new technology. It would be cheaper to use washing machine on lower temperature cycles than buy a wind turbine…