Fair do's

I've always been a little suspicious of fair trade products. I'm torn between the ideas that they're just a ploy for stealing money from hippies or that if free trade and global capitalism is so good at dragging the poor kicking and screaming from abject filth then it's not needed at all. The farmers are using it as a way to upgrade their sky sports package.

Either way there's obviously been a press release issued today as The Mail, The Mirror and the Express have all copy & pasted it onto their website and passed it off as news. (Churnalism.com is my newest friend)

Obviously having copy / pasted their afternoon away the journalists (Professionals don't you know!) didn't have time to actually bother reading the article and so sold it as a positive that fair trade sales have increased massively over the past few years.

Again I'm not too bothered if people want to pay more for their bananas in the hope they're helping a farmer see how Spurs do in the Champions league, carry on Rainbow-Child say I.

The Telegraph however has a different view. They've obviously received the same press release and decided they'd actually put some thought into a story pointing out some of the fallacies that the hippies may be falling for. I'm quietly impressed with them, regardless of whether you agree with them or not it's refreshing to have an honest opinion put forward.

And my favourite honest opinion was put forward in the comments by LordBarnet, and seconded by five of his minions:

Shouldn't really laugh at him as looking at his other comments it appears he's either a mental racist or suffers from keyboard Tourettes. Tweet