Right Or Left?

Doctor Who on Saturday got me to thinking, in fact it got me to thinking so much that Sunday’s sermon was abandoned in favour of one following a Doctor Who theme.

For those of you who didn’t see it the whole story pivoted around Donna changing a decision she made and turned right instead of left while driving her car this seemingly minor incident meant that she ended up not meeting the Doctor, with massive consequences.

Now the cynic out there, might say a simple change like that doesn’t change much and certainly wouldn’t have the effect on the whole world that Donna’s change did.  We don’t know if choices we have made have made big differences, small differences or no difference at all.  However the choices we have made, have made us the people we are today, and they do shape the world around us.  There are of course also certain choices that we make that we know will and do have an impact on others, choosing fair trade being just one example.

Donna’s change meant that southern England was wiped out by a nuclear explosion, that vast numbers of Americans were turned into blocks of lard, and that the Doctor died to name but three.  Surely our choices don’t have such a massive impact, or do they?

At St Mark’s we have been embarking on ‘Leading Your Church Into Growth’, which shows in commonsense straightforward ways how evangelism can be easily done, on some level or another, by everyone.  The choice is do we do something or don’t we; do we turn right or left; do we spread the Good News or not; do we or don’t we make that seemingly insignificant turn in our lives that will make a significant impact on someones life?

Fair Trade Roses Part II

In the intrest of fairness I am putting this as a post in it’s own right.  This comment was posted by Sainbury’s in reply to my post on Fair Trade roses which you will find here, it was lost in my spam box until just having been discovered.

Thank you for your comments regarding our Fairtrade Rose offer during Spring. We are able to provide our customers with such a great offer because as a retailer we choose to invest in this promotion. The products are of course fairly traded and in accordance with the agreement on floral we pay approximately an 8% premium on market prices.

Fair Trade?

I had no intentions of making an every day post today, way too much on, but Sainsbury’s has driven me to it, and with today being Good Friday I just can’t let the day pass without saying this.

I had make a quick trip to Sainsbury’s and saw for sale fair trade roses, nothing wrong in that you might say, in fact nearly two years ago I bought 200 fair trade roses from Sainsbury’s for our wedding day, I can’t remember the cost of them, but I do remember they were dearer than the other roses that were on sale, however I made the decision to buy fair trade.  Today the roses are priced at £10 for 40, yes I didn’t make a typo and you didn’t misresd it, £10 for 40 roses.  I am sorry but no matter how hard I think about it I can’t see how that can be fair trade.  There is the shipping, the packing, the supermarkets profit included in that 25p a rose price, just how much is the grower getting?  While buying lilies at a florist earlier in the week I saw they had beautiful long stem cream roses, okay they are long stem and demand a premium, but they were £8 a stem while their cheap roses were priced at £5 a bunch (I don’t know how many were in the bunch for sure - 5 or 6 I would think, where they came from, or indeed whether or not they were fair trade).  I wish I had looked to see if they had any non fair trade roses in Sainsbury’s now and seen what the price they were, but I am afraid I was in a rush and didn’t.

Has the supermarket buyer done with those in Kenya (for that is were those roses come from) what they are doing with farmers in Britain and beat them down on a price, because the only other option, once they had been grown, was to let them rot in the fields, I hope not, however if that is the case why has Sainsbury’s been allowed to stick a fair trade label on them.  Increasingly I am starting to think that rather than the fair trade label being an information label for the customer; it has become a promotional label for the supermarket.

On a day like today I can’t help but wonder whose blood is being shed on the thorns of those roses.