Walking down the high street I was accosted, as often happens, by a young person wearing a worrying shade of organic green and a hopeful- or desperate- smile. She was friendly enough and gave her name, which I now forget and wouldn’t publish anyway. You'll find out why.
She was from Friends of the Earth, and had that annoying habit of knowing so much that she had to speak extra fast to get it all out. With no pressing duty to attend to I joined in the conversation. She asked what I did for a job, and promptly dismissed my reply of ‘Surf Instructor’ as a lie. Fair enough; we were in Aylesbury. She chuckled asked me if I were a spy as well (hasn't she read my concerns with the ESTA application in my first post?!) to which I replied “Sure, and I’m flying out on a mission on Monday”.
She reeled off an impressive list of Acts that FOE had helped in pushing through, making the world a better place, but the final stuttered example of “...and..err...the Energy Act” had me suspiciously amused. The problem is that She has targeted the wrong person when asking for money. Damn she managed to make me feel guilty, and undoubtedly her cause is noble, but I refuse to pay to support her self-ingratiating moral activism. She has been supplied with a packaged route through which to channel her awakening to the wrongs committed worldwide.
The latest act is aimed at getting corporations such as Tesco to fund growth of chicken feed in this country, thus saving the Amazon rainforest by not cutting it down to make way for fields, and at using free range produce, not steroid fed battery hens.
I wanted to look at the Act first and you can find it at http://www.foe.co.uk/what_we_do/fix_food_chain_20576.html
There are two sides to every story. Are we in the right climate to make this change at the moment? I don’t disagree with the proposal or with lending more aid to our farmers, but with free-range produce prices rise, and people have had enough of soaring costs throughout our financial meltdown. Such a movement could bankrupt farmers instead of helping them as customers look elsewhere for cheaper produce.
Alongside this is the idea that She should have been doing something else. The tiny financial reward She and FOE were asking of me would have only funded further press-gang street campaigns. This is pointless. People pay the money to assuage guilt and are happy in the bubble it builds, confident that they have done their bit. It does nothing to encourage better practice and safeguard against further damage to our planet. Far better not to ask for money first, but to sell the changes based on the good they would do. I would rather sign a petition and agree to make my voice heard to push the change through. Democracy has been removed and a financial system has taken its place here, where political rivals buy rather than earn our support. True activism doesn’t require cash. It needs only moral or political awareness, lashed together with outrage and courage, as aptly demonstrated in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and now Libya.
Then She told me her star sign and queried mine. When I replied “Pyrex- I am a test tube baby” She simply asked if that meant that I had no star sign and felt sorry for me. Frankly stunned, I managed to tell her that the celestial calendar had shifted recently and She acknowledged this saying that she was now a Leo, and felt more caring.
“No I would not like to make a donation this time.” Was actually all I could manage to say at the time. Esprit de l’escaleir.
