Fairtrade Fortnight

[Gayle]

For your information the annual fair trade fortnight runs this week and next week. For further information, visit www.fairtrade.org.uk

Hyndburn is currently trying to achieve Fairtrade status and residents of Hyndburn are being asked to buy at least one item of Fairtrade goods each week to support this.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Gayle

Hyndburn is currently trying to achieve Fairtrade status

I'll ask because I am sure you will know the answer.
Why do we want Hyndburn to have fair trade status?
What do we get out of it?

[entwisi]

There is a big who ha at the minute as people like Nestle have been granted fair trade status for some of their stuff but this is a company that is anything but Fair trade,

I would much rather 'fair trade' with local suplliers, I buy my veg etc from the market, meat from a butcher with a local farm, dairy etc from another farmer.

Doesn't cost anything extra only a little more of my time but teh quality is better

[Gayle]

I was going to try to answer it myself but the Prospects Foundation's website does it so much better.


Help the PROSPECTS Foundation's Fairtrade Campaign by looking for the Fairtrade logo when buying a bottle of wine or a bar of chocolate.

The PROSPECTS Foundation began a campaign in January 2003 to make Hyndburn a Fairtrade Borough. The idea was originally suggested at an Oswaldtwistle Area Council meeting in June 2002, and the Foundation set up a steering group to push forward the campaign in late 2002.


The aim of the campaign is to persuade Hyndburn retailers and caterers to sell Fairtrade products such as tea, coffee and chocolate, which guarantee the producers in the developing world as a fair price for their product.


In order to achieve Fairtrade status for the borough the steering group needs to find 17 retail outlets and 9 catering outlets that would be willing to sell or serve at least two Fairtrade products.


Support for the campaign has been generated with around 600 people signing support sheets at various events held in the borough.


Hyndburn Borough Council has shown its support by passing a resolution to use only Fairtrade tea and coffee in it's meetings.


Members of the Steering Group recently went on a visit to Garstang, the World's first Fairtrade Town as they thought it would be beneficial to the Hyndburn campaign by sharing ideas, discussing problems and seeing what a Fairtrade town actually looks like.


The group met Bruce Crowther of the Garstang OXFAM Group who talked through the process of how Garstang became a Fairtrade town and gave advice on Hyndburn's Fairtrade Campaign. He then took the group on a tour of the town, visiting shops that have agreed to sell Fairtrade products before finishing with lunch at the Coffee Pot Café, where most of the food sold is either made from Fairtrade ingredients or is locally produced.


The following shops and catering outlets already qualify as Fairtrade outlets in Hyndburn:
Retail outlets:
• OXFAM, Accrington
• ASDA, Accrington
• Co-op, Great Harwood
• Co-op, Oswaldtwistle
• Co-op, Clayton-le-Moors
• Co-op, Rishton
Catering Outlets:
• Tiffany's Café at Haworth Art Gallery
• New Era centre, Accrington
• ASDA Café, Accrington


For further information please contact Mike Stapleford at the PROSPECTS Foundation.

[Gayle]

Basically it's about getting quality foods but not at the cost of the people from developing countries.

[garinda]

It might encourage free trade for local shops if HBC don't grant planning permission to greatly expand the retail park at Whitebirk.

[garinda]

Originally Posted by Gayle

The PROSPECTS Foundation began a campaign in January 2003 to make Hyndburn a Fairtrade Borough. The idea was originally suggested at an Oswaldtwistle Area Council meeting in June 2002, and the Foundation set up a steering group to push forward the campaign in late 2002.

Hyndburn Borough Council has shown its support by passing a resolution to use only Fairtrade tea and coffee in it's meetings.

Will we have signs when entering Hyndburn, saying 'welcome to a Freetrade Borough'?

I remember living in loony Lambeth in the mid 80's, signs were erected informing me that I was living in a 'nuclear free borough', though I don't remember having a say on what my taxes were spent on, regarding armaments.

How much would the bill be for the council coffee slurpers, if it didn't use Freetrade coffee, and what about tea? Can't they find a Freetrade Earl Gray?

[Dean]

well i do my bit and buy fair trade when ever i can and when i can afford it i know it expencive but i feel i am doing my bit when i buy something like cookies or a bsar of chocolate and they are really tasty.

oh and does seling fair trade as past of a church count towards the bourgh fair trade thingy?

[Tealeaf]

My best advice to everyone who has read this thread is to ignore it. "Fair Trade" is a scam to get people to cough up far more than they need to in purchasing their everyday foodstuffs. It is already bad enough being in the Common Market and having to fork out twice as much as neccessary for food.

All this racket does is to pay for for various middle class soft southern lefties as they jet off on three month trips to various exotic places to seemingly negotiate higher prices for inefficient peasant farmers' produce. (In reality, it is a holiday junket).

You may as well just stick your money in the Oxfam tin; It's the same thing - sod all of it will get to the third world poor - 95% of the additional money will be spent on over-inflated salaries, travel & marketing, while the other 5% will line the pockets of the usual corrupt local bureaucrats.

Spend your money down the pub instead.

[entwisi]

St Johns Baxenden have a fair trade stall

[Gayle]

Originally Posted by Tealeaf

My best advice to everyone who has read this thread is to ignore it. "Fair Trade" is a scam to get people to cough up far more than they need to in purchasing their everyday foodstuffs. It is already bad enough being in the Common Market and having to fork out twice as much as neccessary for food.

All this racket does is to pay for for various middle class soft southern lefties as they jet off on three month trips to various exotic places to seemingly negotiate higher prices for inefficient peasant farmers' produce. (In reality, it is a holiday junket).

You may as well just stick your money in the Oxfam tin; It's the same thing - sod all of it will get to the third world poor - 95% of the additional money will be spent on over-inflated salaries, travel & marketing, while the other 5% will line the pockets of the usual corrupt local bureaucrats.

Spend your money down the pub instead.

Once again you are doing your usual thing of jumping down the throat of anything that sounds remotely worthy. If you insist on knocking this then come up with facts that support what you've said. Don't just state things as fact when you have absolutely nothing to back them up.

And as usual your sole answer to everything is to go to the pub - very productive!

[Tealeaf]

Originally Posted by Gayle

Once again you are doing your usual thing of jumping down the throat of anything that sounds remotely worthy. If you insist on knocking this then come up with facts that support what you've said. Don't just state things as fact when you have absolutely nothing to back them up.

And as usual your sole answer to everything is to go to the pub - very productive!

You began this thread, Gayle, so I would respectfully suggest that the onus is on you to prove the worth of this particular cause. Accrington is not a wealthy town - it is one of the poorest in the country - so I am wondering why you are encouraging those who can least afford it to give their money to this dubious enterprise.

Chancellor Brown has already written off billions of our money that is third world debt, our taxes have been raised to pay for more billions in aid - in reality to prop up one stinking, rotten, corrupt regime after another - and now you are asking us to fork out more money at the check-out till.

Please. Give us a break. No wonder I need to go down the pub.

[Doug]

I don’t disagree Gayle, I farmed in Garstang on a regular basis and I aware of there status, I also shop at Sainsbury’s in Bispham and regularly purchase Fair Trade goods. But it is somewhat of a con when it’s the main markets that are still setting prices and there is little reliable monitoring of what’s getting to the people who need the income i.e. the workers. But what really concerns me is the lack of internal investment in our own producers whilst all this is going on…..

[garinda]

Perhaps if we'd have had Freetrade in the past to protect our mills here, we would still have a cotton industry in Lancashire, instead of being undercut by the workers in India.


I do think that it isn't the job of local councils to preach about morality, when we live in a free market economy, and a lot of people do not have the luxury to be able to choose what they but. The cheapest is very often their main concern.

I have nothing against the Freetrade movement or it's aims, I just don't want to be preached to about it by my local council.

[Gayle]

Tealeaf, yes you are right Hyndburn is not a rich area, although it has now risen up the rankings and is out of the bottom 50 deprived areas in the UK. I did not suggest for a minute that anyone who was below the poverty line should spend their money on more expensive items, I suggested that some people who do have that few pence extra to spare may consider what they are buying and purchase goods that are fairtrade rather than alternative expensive items (and Fairtrade goods are not the most expensive items on the shelf). In other words buy using your concience occassionally.

Yes, there are countries and governments out there that are corrupt, I don't even begin to know how much money we have poured into their coffers, but the whole point about Fairtrade is that the suppliers are organisations who have guaranteed to pay their staff acceptable wages and to operate under certain codes of health and safety that other suppliers have not. For a supplier from a third world country to be able to supply Fairtrade items they have got to sign up to the basic principles which is why it is called 'trade' that is 'fair'.