Christmas is coming

I tried to buy one the other day, but PayPal was down. I'll try again soon. :) My tea awaits...

December is the worst month of the year for me.... it's the month of endless essay deadlines at uni, the month where I am reminded that I have just become another year older, the month where finances are stretched to their ultimate limit as I try to please 3 children, the month where my husband is at his busiest at work so we don't get to see him until christmas eve, the month when I am reminded of how my parents ruined christmas every year by putting other peoples needs before mine and my sisters and um.....oh bugger, am just in a really shitty mood because I don't 'get' popular culture.

I know it's a bore to bang on why you hate Christmas so much, but I just do. It's never as magical as it is when you're a kid, unless you have kids yourself. All Christmas does is remind you of some nostalgic past that you can never relive again. And don't forget how miserable it must make all those lonely people out there who are forced to spend it alone, or the poor and under-priviliged who can't afford to enjoy it. It's a truly hateful time. Still, I'm having my Mum down in Brighton, and I'm cooking a big fuck off meal - which I am looking forward to. As well as my traditional 'chocolate Orange' and bottle of Southern Comfort. That should ast least be a distraction from the horrible retail attack.

I've opted out of the family Christmas this year. I have no real plans. I think I might just sit around and watch Bond. Maybe, if the mood takes me, I'll pop downstairs to the 24 hours shop that NEVER closes, and get a turkey sandwich. I'll have a nice siesta and take advantage of being alone in my flat by singing loudly to cheesy 60s pop, and I MAY even throw in a few Phil Spectre Xmas classics. I think I'm going to have a Merry Christmas this year. ~CaRDeNio~

I've always loved Christmas. That doesn't mean I've always enjoyed it, because for the most part I haven't, the terrorist has seen to that. In recent years though I've got a lot of pleasure from my grandchildren, and I wouldn't miss seeing them on Christmas Day for anything. In fact I'm returning from America for 10 days specifically so I can be with them, before going back on the 27th Dec for a month.

www.getethical.com is coming along extremely well! There's some brilliant products online there, for example: No Sweat Trainers: http://www.getethical.com/getethical_shop.php?id=16&cat=Shoes%20and%20Tr... These are my favourite. As big brand training shoes become increasingly tainted by emerging evidence of exploitative business practices, No Sweat Trainers are a winning ethical alternative. Produced in unionised workplaces in India, each pair ships with a run down of the wages and benefits paid to the workers who produced them. In hi-top and lo-cut styles, all No Sweat Sneakers are 100% vegetarian. They’re a perfect opportunity to get the look you want without walking over the backs of others to do it. Do have a look if you get a chance, it isn't all muesli trousers and chocolate made from grass and cow dung. There's a lot of stuff that you wouldn't know was ethical, organic or Fair Trade, so you get the inner feeling of smugness without everyone pointing at you in the street and calling you a hippie. Imagine that, some stuff for you, your house, your family or friends that looks great, works well and hasn't ripped anyone off or destroyed any of the planet... Have a look at what www.getethical.com has got, and maybe, if you fancy, buy something! Cheers, Mark Brown, lending a hand to, www.getethical.com

Hate to burst your bubble, but American multinationals and their affiliates pay their non-American employees in low-income countries, on average, eight and a half times the average income, and rising. They bring new jobs, technology and skills to an area - just look at the Tiger Economies, where healthcare, education, income, transport and living standards dramatically improved through foreign and national investment in light and heavy industry, which relied initially on a large, unskilled, low-income workforce, but led to dramatic improvements in infrastructure, resulting in increasingly high-tech, high-yield, highly-paid industries with exportable commodities. The risks of investing in a low-income country are massive - operating costs are driven up by dire infranstructure, a dearth of skilled workers, political instability, and corruption dressed up as bureaucracy. If a foreign company paid Indian workers British wages, it would rapidly go bust - fortunately, Indian workers do not live in Britain, and their living costs are drastically lower. Countries like China and India have rapidly rising GDPs and subsequent improvements in areas such as healthcare, education, technology and transport because they offer cheap labour and thus encourage foreign investment. Massive service industry investment in India has been made possible by years of light and heavy industry investment. The Fair Trade argument is, I'm afraid, still plagued by a lack of economic rigour. Most proponents seem to lack a basic grasp of economic principles and realities. Lest we forget, Britain underwent its own industrial revolution on the way to developing a modern infrastructure.

'It's a very poor argument to justify causing someone to an endure an unnecessarily miserable existent on the basis that at least it's better than being dead.' I agree - that wasn't the argument I was making. I understand that the national average wage and the national average income are two distinct things, but the comparison is still suggestive. The point is, turning a profit in low-income countries is, for the reasons I've outlined, extremely hazardous. One of the main assets a low-income country has is cheap labour - it allows them to offset many of the significant factors that discourage investors, thus creating jobs and a chance for development towards prosperity. When American steel workers went on strike in protest at the pay and conditions under which Chinese steel workers laboured, it was motivated far more by protectionism than a sense of collective responsibility - low and behold, a month later Bush Jr introduced punitive import duties on Chinese steel. The working conditions in these countries are uniformly dire; with such poor availablity of skills and resources, forcing European safety standards upon foreign businesses in low-income countries would make investment utterly unsustainable, meaning the businesses would close down and workers would have to find employment with local, worse-paying, totally unregulated companies. As comparitvely low as the working conditions may be in some of these multinational affiliate companies, they are manifestly higher than comparable indigenous business, and they pay far better as well. Their existence provides choice to the local labour market.

My memory of what happened in the industrial revolution is a bit shaky, but I seem to remember that one of the prime motors was empire, which meant selling into markets that were effectively controlled by Britain. This then wasn't free trade in the sense that we're talking about here, where outside capital is being invested in production in a country where costs are lower, but a kind of extremely beneficial protectionism, where the market colonies is limited to suppliers from one country i.e. Britain. The definition of free trade that is current simply defines it as trade that is entered into with the agreement of both parties, a company to company agreement. I'm not necessarily sure that what companies see as being best is what actually is best for most people, or that choosing to enter into an agreement freely guarantees that the agreement is fair. Profit generation and efficiency i.e. getting the best profit margin, doesn't factor in costs outside of the balance sheet. The best example of this is using asbestos to build things is efficient and cheap. It does however have huge health costs etc. These are costs to a country that don't figure in the profit and loss of business transactions. Even GDP is no guide to how life is for people within a country. The trickle down theory of wealth is a bit suspect, witness areas of America, or of the UK for that matter. The above may sound garbled, so please feel free to rip it to shreds! Cheers, Mark Brown, Editor, www.ABCtales.com

'I'm not necessarily sure that what companies see as being best is what actually is best for most people, or that choosing to enter into an agreement freely guarantees that the agreement is fair.' Well, 'fair' is a pretty elastic term. Fair by whose standards, in comparison to what? What about sustainability? Also, I have to pick you up on your assertion that GDP 'is no guide to how life is for people within a country'. Admittedly, it doesn't tell the whole story, but as a rough indication of wealth and standard of living, GDP per capita is fairly reliable. I realise I may come across as a beliigerent neo-Thatcherite apologist when it comes to issue of global trade and economics, but it's only because I believe that the dynamics of free trade - unfettered by subsidies and import duties and other trade barriers - offer the best hope for improving the lives of billions of the world's most impoverished people. The system is by no means flawless, but it is far and away the best available to us.