Conor Woodman | Page 2

One of these days, these boots are gonna walk all over you..

Jun 162011

Ask anyone from the world of ethical business to name their top 5 companies and the same names tend to crop up again and again. I’ll bet you 10 to 1 that one company, Timberland is always on the list. It’s perhaps not all that surprising then to see that last week they were snaffled up by corporate clothing giant VS corp.

VS corp? Who the hell are they? Well They are as US super-corporate that make Wranglers, North Face, Vans and half a dozen other clothing brands. Their turnover last year was close to $10 billion.

So what do they want with Timberland? Timberland are the company who use renewable energy in their factories, recycled and organic materials in their footwear and have done more than any other brand to stamp out exploitation of workers in their overseas factories including China. Timberland are one of the good guys.

Well VS corp apparently want a part of that. It’s a business strategy that seems to be coming increasingly popular with other corporate giants too - see also Cadburys (Kraft), see also Innocent (Coke).

There is a definite trend in the Mergers&Acquisitions market now for major corporates to buy in leading sustainability brands. But is the motive to learn from them, or just to exploit their good reputation?

The great hope for the future was that relatively newer companies like Timberland and Innocent with sustainability and social responsibly at their heart could demonstrate a way of doing business that maximised return while remaining true to those core values. These were the brands that were meant to become the champions of the future.

So the stage is set to see whether those core values can win out in the end, which will depend on whether they are strong enough to become transferable within their new corporate families. Otherwise they will merely get swallowed up in old-school profit maximising and eventually be frittered away.

Time will tell.

The good, the bad and the downright ugly

Uncategorized 1 Response »

Jun 062011

Last week, I was at the Hay International Literary Festival and the very first event I attended was Lord Digby Jones (former head of CBI and ex-government Minister for Trade) in discussion with Sir Stuart Rose (creator of Plan A when formerly CEO of M&S). The topic was Can Big Business Be Truly Ethical?

Now “Ethical” can mean many things and the conversation flowed freely by way of such issues as boardroom renumeration, jobs for British industry and even the need for rather less legislation from government when setting the Social Responsibility agenda.

Rose gave us the statistic of the day - that 63 of the world’s richest 100 economic entities are companies not countries and thus the agenda for global development is more likely to be set by them. The developing world needs big business whether we like it or not.

I rather like Sir Stuart. He banged the drum for sustainable business models, the need for big business leaders to listen to the young, who ‘get it’ better than they do and for the bigger principle of business having a wider responsibility. He at least talks a good game.

Unfortunately the same can’t said for the former Trade Minister. Jones represents the old guard. He continually patronised and insulted the audience with self aggrandising cliches and issue dodging platitudes. But it was one particular comment that gave me the greatest cause for concern.

When asked about the wider responsibility of big business in the developing world, Jones asked the audience why African and Asian governments didn’t do a better job of protecting their own. “What are these African governments doing while their people are supposedly being exploited by Western business?” He asked.

Well Digby, they’re probably sitting by their pools in their Monte Carlo apartments bought with the latest backhander paid into their Swiss bank accounts. Everybody (except Digby apparently) knows that African governments are notoriously corrupt. The idea that big business could simply rely on them to protect ordinary people would be laughable were it not so offensive.

It troubles me greatly that Digby Jones even holds, never mind publicly espouses these antiquated views. It troubles me even more that he sits on the advisory boards of twelve major British companies including HSBC, JCB, Harvey Nash and Jaguar as well as the UKTI and the House of Lords.

More than once during the discussion, Digby bemoaned journalists for continually portraying businessmen as the ‘bad guys’ in the press. He pointed to Sir Stuart as an example of a businessman who was quite the opposite. I couldn’t agree more, but it’s not Sir Stuart that we’re talking about, Digby.

The Great Chinese Takeaway

China No Responses »

May 262011

Greece stands at the crossroads. Unable to pay national debts, the country must soon make a choice on whether to default and thereby endanger the whole eurozone, or find another way to raise the money it doesn’t have. And it’s a lot of money we’re talking about - €50bn.

First let’s think about whether Greece could flog anything that foreign investors might want to buy. It does have a few prized assets - its ports and utility companies would be attractive investments. But both are so heavily unionised that they would only be sellable against considerable political and public resistance. Combined they aren’t likely to raise the whole 50 big ones needed, but they could certainly go a long way toward balancing the books.

Let’s say they were put up for sale tomorrow. The question then is - who has that kind of spare cash lying around these days? And more to the point, who has the kind of backbone required to ignore the public backlash that will inevitably result from such an assault on national sovereignty?

Well, I don’t think it takes too long to think who. That’s right, you’ve guessed it - everybody’s favourite cash rich, PR ambivalent, billion dollar bargain hunter - China.

And why not? China threw $8bn Tanzania’s way for a few million acres of farmland a couple of years ago and no-one batted an eye. They paid $5bn for Congo’s tin mines and it barely made news. And they’ve quietly whipped up a few hundred more billions worth of oil and gas reserves from half a dozen other developing countries struggling, like Greece, under the weight of crippling sovereign debt. So why not Greece next? Because it’s Europe? Give me a break.

Flights from Beijing to Athens are reported to be fully booked these days with Chinese investors and politicians flying over to eye up Greece’s crown jewels. Last month, for the first time, Air China began direct flights to Athens to meet increased demand.

Sitting on $3tn of foreign reserves denominated in increasingly less valuable dollars means China is desperate to invest in income generating assets overseas. Give the eurozone debt crisis another few months and China may well be stepping in to buy more than just the Greek ports. How about some Spanish fishing rights, or an Irish phone company or even the odd Portugese golf course or ten?

The Chinese are going out for ‘a European’ this year and as we already know - they often prefer to ‘take-away’.

Underground. Overground.

football 2 Responses »

May 232011

This isn’t ever going to be a blog about football but something happened in the world of sport this weekend that made my heart sing. AFC Wimbledon were promoted to the football league and in doing so, set an example of how community values can triumph in the face of big business.

9 years ago, Wimbledon Football Club were given permission by the English FA to relocate to Milton Keynes. This kind of move was unprecedented in English football and motivated purely by money - the club’s owner Sam Hammam who had bought the old Plough Lane ground for a mere £50,000 profited personally to the tune of £8 million when he sold it it to supermarket chain, Safeway’s. None of the money went into building a new ground in Wimbledon because Sam put it in his back pocket and ran off to buy another club in Cardiff.

There was also big money motivating the move from the Milton Keynes side. Rather than cultivate its own team from grass roots, Milton Keynes council saw an opportunity to buy one ready-made. A multi-million pound consortium representing the town as well as Ikea and ASDA-Walmart proposed a new retail park complete with football stadium. They had the money. All they needed was a team.

And so the deal was done. In August 2001, despite fierce objection from the people of Wimbledon, their club was sold from under them to new owners 50 miles away on the other side of London - the first big business led football franchise was created and renamed MK Dons.

So what did the disenfranchised football fans of Wimbledon do? Well they didn’t start commuting 100 miles every Saturday to watch ‘their’ team, that’s for sure. Instead they founded a new community owned football club, AFC Wimbledon.

As Milton Keynes would have known, had they ever tried to grow their own team, you have to start a new club from the bottom - the very bottom - so AFC Wimbledon began with try-outs on the local Common to recruit local players, a ground shared with local neighbours and a position at the foot of the Combined Counties League. But eight seasons later they have been promoted five times, most recently, last week when a win over Luton saw them restored to the Football League.

This is a wonderful riches to rags to riches again story of a community that wouldn’t be beaten. During their re-building process, AFC Wimbledon have been watched by average crowds of nearly 5,000 supporters. The community has engaged in continuous fund raining that culminated in them finally buying their very own ground again in 2006. The Wimbledon community, by acting together, have demonstrated that football, at its best, can still be an expression of community and not simply a money making exercise controlled by Russian oligarchs and Saudi sheiks.

Now they need only one more promotion and a corresponding bad season for Milton Keynes to get the match they’ve been dreaming about since 2001 - the two Wimbledons facing each other is a real possibility for 2012. And no prizes for guessing whose side I’ll be on.

It’s not US, it’s them.

Apple, DRCongo, Electronics, Sony 1 Response »

May 122011

So here’s the problem - it has three parts…

The Congolese jungle is riddled with militia groups, who roam around raping and murdering tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent people every year - 5 million dead in the last 10 years gives you some idea.

Those same innocent people live largely from the money they make from digging holes in the ground and pulling up small quantities of minerals that they can sell because electronics companies like Apple and Sony need them to make laptops and phones.

The murdering and raping militia groups also profit from the trade either by controlling mines themselves or by taxing the transport of the minerals.

Ergo - every time you buy a new iPhone, you are supporting the innocent people but also inadvertently helping the raping and murdering bastards.

The solution devised by two US senators is currently passing through Congress - The Dodd-Frank Act will force all electronics companies to prove where their minerals come from. Under the terms of the law, Apple, Sony etc will have to be able to show that the minerals they use didn’t come from areas that were under rebel militia control.

Sounds great. Put the onus on the world’s wealthiest companies to take responsibility, so that maybe something might get done. Right?

Wrong.

The response from the electronics industry this week has been to censure the very idea of Dodd-Frank. The industry’s lobby group, the US Information Technology Industry Council, this week warned that rather than embrace the law and start to sort out these supply chains, the big companies would just look elsewhere. The effect, they warned, would be only to encourage business away from DR Congo and thereby rob ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Congolese of vital jobs and throw them ‘into poverty’. Murder and rape or Poverty - helluva choice isn’t it?

What the big electronics companies are effectively saying is “We’re happy to make billions of dollars from the Congo as long as we all turn a blind eye to the murder and the rape. But if you try to make us do anything about it, then it’ll be your fault that everybody starves to death.”

Herein lies the real problem. As long as the industry takes a collective standpoint, nothing will get done. So, how do we get ONE of these companies, just one, to break rank and say, “You know what? We contributed to this mess, so we’re going to stay and invest in helping to make it better.”?

Because that would be a company whose laptop/phone, I’d buy.

Will you be paying cash?

British, tax 1 Response »

May 062011

Hands up if you’ve ever paid cash for something because it was cheaper. I need to put my hand down now so that I can continue typing. Of course I have, we all have. Despite knowing deep down that the reason it’s cheaper is probably that it will never be declared to the tax man. “But we all do it. Doesn’t do anyone any harm. We pay enough taxes already. It’s not my responsibility.” are the justifications we use.

When we think about the ‘cash’ or ‘black’ economy, we tend to lump it into two categories - First there’s the prostitution and drugs and smuggling, which we conveniently link together as the ‘criminal’ side. Then there’s the other side - the cash in hand transactions, the undeclared income from second jobs or overstated expenses on tax returns that we pretend to ourselves isn’t criminal at all.

The HMRC estimate that a total of £42billion passed under the radar of taxation last year, which was an increase of nearly 10% on the year before. The amounts lost to under-declared self assessment and cash-in-hand transactions come to over £10 billion alone. That means that our black economy currently represents around 12% of UK GDP (i.e. bigger than the whole UK manufacturing industry). But is it necessarily a bad thing?

Well first let’s look at the supply side. The kind of jobs we’re talking about are those which are typically found in the low paid service sector - the nannies, the cleaners, the minicab drivers etc who perform vital roles in our society. These jobs provide vital additional income to families who may be working without visas or may largely depend on benefits that would be lost if the income was declared.

And where is the demand coming from? These jobs wouldn’t exist unless people needed people to clean their homes or look after their children . And for many of those home owning parents, the reality is often that they can’t (or won’t) afford to pay over minimum wage plus NI plus benefits plus holiday pay etc for those services.

So a deal is struck, both sides need each other, and a black market is created in which both are equally complicit. Therein lies the argument - a black market exists because we’d be ALL be a lot poorer without it.

There is growing evidence that the black economy becomes even more vital to society as times get tougher. For example Ireland and Spain reported in the last week that their black economies have grown to around 20% and 25% of GDP respectively. When the economy is struggling, desperate for work, people are more willing to take lower pay in exchange for cash-in-hand work. And then armed with that cash, they buy products for cash, which are, in turn, cheaper because they come tax-free. In effect, a vicious circle is created in which people become criminalised by their own desperation. One reason the Irish aren’t rioting right now, may be because they’re keeping their heads down.

But where does it end? Another EU member state, Greece shows us the potential dangers that arise if the black economy gets out of hand. Greece almost went belly up last year because its tax collection was so inadequate. At the height of its own financial crisis, an estimated 40-50% of the money sloshing through the Greek economy went undeclared. The result of course was that Greece nearly went bust.

So is there a perfect level for the black economy? Even HMRC accept that to eradicate the black economy would be impossible. Does that make us all criminals? Of course not. Most of us can only admit so freely to the odd cash payment here and there because we feel comfortable that we pay enough tax already. The size of our black economy is probably a good indicator of what we collectively feel ‘enough’ is.

But a word of warning. The next time you’re offered a discount for cash, you might just want to think twice - let it grow too large and the black economy might take us all down with it.

NOTE- I’m interested to hear your experiences of the cash economy - please let me know by posting here or if you’d prefer to be more discrete then email me - admin@conorwoodman.com

King Bono anyone?

Bono, Celebrity 5 Responses »

Apr 262011

This week as Prince William takes his place on the altar of Westminster Abbey, he might spare a thought for how the the next time he walks up that aisle, it will be to receive the British crown - when he will simultaneously become one of the country’s highest net worth individuals and tax exempt. Across the pond, the closest Irish equivalent, it seems, might be U2 frontman, Bono.

I was surprised to read this week that Bono was being drafted in (at enormous cost ) to write a song that Broadway producers hope might save the failing musical - Spiderman. Shame, I thought that Bono isn’t willing to contribute something similar to help sort out the failing economy/tragedy - Ireland.

You see, a bit like the British monarch, Bono doesn’t pay any taxes. For many years all artists in Ireland were exempt from income tax. Then a few years ago, the law changed. Under the new regime only the first €250,000 of artist earnings are exempt (which still covers most Irish artists), but thereafter they must pay taxes like everyone else. But not Bono.

For Bono and the other members of U2, who paid themselves €21 million in wages last year, the Irish exchequer still receives not a cent.

Because Bono has “gone Dutch”. By which I don’t mean he’s agreed to pay half, but that he’s agreed to pay precisely nothing. No sooner had Ireland announced the change than U2 moved their tax residency to Holland whose government still guarantees artists a 100% tax free income.

Now is there anything wrong with being ‘tax efficient”? I’d say it depends on where you stand morally and ethically with respect to social responsibility and social justice. If these things aren’t important to you, then off you go - go knock yourself out in Amsterdam or the Bahamas or whatever other tax exile you chose.

But when you’re the same guy who last week lobbied the Irish government to ‘do more’ to honour its debt relief commitments to Africa, then I have to take a rather different view.

I don’t care if your name is King WIll or King Bono, whether your business is holding sooper dooper weddings or writing songs about superheroes, until you pay taxes, then leave the decisions about where our money gets spent to those whose money it is.

Apple and a new Asian paradigm…

Apple, China, Electronics 1 Response »

Apr 212011

This week I heard a presentation at the Royal Society of Arts by Constraining Consumption author Chandran Nair. What we do in the West over the next 40 years doesn’t really matter, argues Nair, because by 2050 there’ll be 5.5 billion Asians and only 750,ooo Westerners. It’s a pure numbers game and thus the “planet’s future will be determined by what happens in Asia”.

In Nair’s dystopian vision of the future, Asian governments will have to become even more totalitarian so as to impose the draconian measures necessary to prevent their populations from consuming as we do in the West. Imagine if 3 billion people in China and India all wanted to buy a car, there just aren’t enough resources available to make them. So, it’s totalitarian rule or total bust? Helluva choice isn’t it?

What it means is that Asia must find another way forward i.e. not the Western way. Not only must it constrain consumption but it must also create employment at all costs. Factories will have to remain labour intensive and not be drawn into introducing machines to do the work. Imagine, if you will, a permanent state of Industrial Revolution.

Which brings me to two recent publications from Apple.

First the good news. Apple’s quarterly financial reports for 2011 show revenues up by 83% as the number of iPhones sold has more than doubled from a year ago. All together now - “Woo hoo!”

Second the even better news. Apple’s Supplier Responsibility report for Q1 2011 shows that Apple are working hard with the Asian suppliers of those same iPhones to ensure that they ‘provide safe working conditions [and] treat workers with dignity and respect.” You’ve got to just love those guys at Apple, don’t you?

Get into the detail of the second report and you’ll see that in particular, they’ve turned their attention to the infamous Foxconn factory in China where tragically, 16 young men and women took their own lives over one month in May 2010. Every one of them jumped to their deaths from a factory or dormitory window.

So what exactly are the world’s most profitable company doing to solve this awful problem in their supply chain? Well the report tells us - Apple are working with Foxconn on ‘several fronts’ but first and foremost they are ‘attaching large nets to the factory buildings to prevent impulsive suicides’.

Yes that’s right. The dignified and respectful solution to your impulsive suicide attempt is to be caught in a large net in full view of your co-workers. After which, you’ll presumably be lowered safely to the ground and encouraged to go kill yourself off the premises - or at least a safe distance from Apple’s reputation.

What the report does not go into is what might be driving these youngsters to such desperate measures in the first place. When I interviewed Foxconn workers outside the factory gates in Sept 2010, the answer to that question was clear - working on a production line where you are required to perform the same mindless task up to 10,000 times per day, every day, 7 days a week DOES YOUR HEAD IN! Eventually 16 young Chinese workers just couldn’t take it any more and literally ran for the nearest exit. Many more told me that it had crossed their minds more than once.

Chandran Nair told the assembled crowd this week that he was surprised how well his work had been received by the wider business community. I’m not. This is exactly the kind of intellectual ammunition that Asian leaders and businessmen (like Foxconn’s Terry Gou) lap up to justify maintaining a twin track path to economic development. Now they can continue to add to their untold personal wealth and at the same time argue that it’s in the planet’s best interests. Because if you buy into Nair’s argument, then you accept as inevitable the need to continue to exploit a labour intensive workforce in Asia as Apple/Foxconn does.

It is not right that what we do in the West, has or will have no bearing. As long as an Asian workforce is making products for Western consumption, then we in the West have a responsibility to support their demands for as much freedom as we enjoy and that should include working in a factory without need for nets.

Following the Sugar Trail…

British, Sugar No Responses »

Apr 182011

A couple of miles outside Royston in Cambridgeshire and halfway up the big hill on the A505, there’s an old dilapidated pub. It’s a long time since the The Horse and Groom served any customers but recently planning permission was granted to turn in it into a swanky new two-storey restaurant. No doubt the new menu will boast of having top quality locally sourced produce and they don’t have to look very far for it when they do. Directly opposite is the entrance to Thrift Farm, 3500 acres of sprawling farmland that falls into four counties Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Essex. The farm is owned by Robert Law.

Robert is a rare thing these days, a first generation farmer. Having grown up the son of a lawyer in Newmarket, he spent his school summers working for a local farmer, “I got the farming bug.” He tells me as we bump along in big 4×4 toward the other side of his vast farm, where the sugar beet grows.

Robert is a giant of a man standing well over 6 foot and looks as strong as an ox, but underneath he’s clearly got a soft streak. He is pointing to a newly planted copse that he put down himself a couple of years ago. “In the 1950’s they’d have got a good subsidy for pulling out woodland to plant new crops but I’ve been putting new trees in.” Robert wants something to remain on this land long after he’s gone and he hopes these trees will be his legacy to the land. “And it’s great for the wildlife too.” He grins.

We pull up and hop out into a vast 30 acre field that stretches out down and back up the hill in the distance. The field is planted with thousands of neat rows of knee high sugar beet that looks to me a lot like rhubarb. Around the top of the field is an acre-wide strip of linseed, oats, millet and sawgum. These have been sewn purely for birds to eat. Robert gets money from the EU to do it but he says he’d do it anyway. “Maybe I’m different because I’m not from farming stock, but the wildlife is an important part of life round here.”

Robert is explaining to me how sugar beet in particular, is a good crop for the birds because after it is harvested in the autumn, he leaves the stubble in the ground so the birds can eke a meal out of it throughout the difficult winter. Further north in Norfolk the beet fields are the main habitat of the pink footed goose. Robert has even recently been advocating the importance of sugar beet in the UK to the RSPB. With over 1milion members, the RSPB is one of the biggest activist groups in the UK and Robert feels that it is important they get behind the sugar farmers.

Sugar beet was originally introduced to the UK after WWII. During the war, the UK had run out of vital sugar supplies as German U-boats sunk trading ships carrying sugar cane and so the post war government invested heavily in convincing British farmers to grow sugar beet for processing at several newly built sugar mills. The aim was to ensure that we never found ourselves in a position of dependency again. By 1970, we had eighteen sugar processing mills in UK. Now there are only four.

The EU made an important decision to reform its policy on sugar subsidies in 2005. The two largest sugar producing countries in Europe, France and Germany were pulled up by the WTO for producing more sugar than they needed and then dumping the surplus onto the world market, thereby devastating sugar markets that many Third World countries depended on for selling their own sugar surpluses.

The choice the EU faced was to either scale back subsidies just enough to protect the farmers but prevent the dumping of surpluses or go the whole hog to remove subsidies altogether and create a level playing field between producers in Europe and the rest of the world. Many pro-fair trade campaigns such as Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair advocated this bolder move.

“The problem was that they hadn’t thought it through.” Robert explains to me. “If we opened up the market like that then Brazil would completely dominate. No one in Europe could compete with them on price but neither would most of the other Less Developed Countries that currently produce sugar.” The result could have been a complete disaster for the Brazilian rainforest. If Brazil was given unfettered access to the world’s sugar market place then, who knows how much rainforest could be cleared of trees to create sugar cane fields?

The EU went for the compromise solution. European subsidies have been reduced to prevent the dumpling of cheap sugar onto the world market but maintained enough to ensure to preserve the British sugar industry. For now the pink footed goose and Robert are safe. “People are very fickle.” Says Robert. “It may all be Fairtrade now but it wasn’t long ago that it was all food miles.” He’s right. The ethical consumer must of course be aware of the carbon footprint of what they buy too and Robert’s sugar beet has a footprint of only 120 miles. Compare that to the average tonne of sugar cane sold in the UK with a carbon footprint 15,000 miles long and you have to ask yourself again; which is more ethical? These two choices are mutually exclusive and we as consumers must chose between them.

In fact, Tate & Lyle cane sugar imported from Belize has a very low carbon footprint because so much of the rest of the cane plant not used to make sugar is recycled as fuel and there may very well be no conflict between choosing to support developing world farmers and seeking to minimise your carbon footprint. But then British Sugar make a convincing case for being just as ethical. For example, most of the CO2 and heat that comes from their Wissington processing plant is recycled back into a huge eco-friendly nursery that produces over 80 million tomatoes annually and supports a population of 5000 bumblebees. Ask the bumblebees which sugar they would rather you bought and I’m sure they’ll have a thing or two to say about it.

There is no clear measurement of whether sugar beet or sugar cane has the greatest environmental impact because the clever ways in which all these by-products are recycled is so complex. Yet standing in Robert’s field, I can see the benefits of buying British sugar right there front of me. I can see the birds in the field harvesting the oats and linseed that he has planted for them and I can see the hedgerows and paths that Robert maintains around his farm. I know at least that this 3,500 acres of Great British Countryside is safe under his stewardship and I can feel confident that that will continue as long as Robert is here. I also know that the sugar here could be produced locally and by the time the new owners of the Horse and Groom are ready for opening night, there could be a chocolate pudding on the menu full of Robert’s sugar.

Ethical Dilemmas: Fairtrade or Local?

Cadbury's, Ethical Selling, Fairtrade 2 Responses »

Apr 132011

At the launch of Cadbury’s FAIRTRADE Dairy Milk bar in Birmingham last year, I came face to face with an interesting ethical dilemma. Fairtrade or Local? It’s not necessarily a choice you might have thought you’d ever have to make, but you’d be wrong.

While Cadbury’s were trumpeting the benefits to Ghanain cocoa farmers of their ‘ethical switch’ little attention was being given to the other vital ingredient in their flagship bar – sugar. To ensure that Dairy Milk could be labelled 100% Fairtrade, Cadbury’s also had to commit to sourcing all the sugar in it according to Fairtrade principles and so a decision had been made to get it from a Fairtrade source in Belize.

The sugar market in the UK is a market of two halves. Half of our sugar is imported exclusively by Tate and Lyle from Less Developed Countries that were once part of the Commonwealth such as Mauritius and Belize. This sugar comes in by ship and is refined at Tate and Lyle’s refinery on the Thames in East London, one of the world’s largest refineries. No doubt. Tate and Lyle were over the moon about winning a contract as big as Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

But business is a world of competition, of winners and losers, wherever there is a contract won there is usually a contract lost. At first I thought that Belize’s gain must surely be some poor Third World’s country’s loss. Somewhere in Swaziland or Zambia, I imagined a farmer was receiving the bad news that his sugar wasn’t ‘fair enough’ and so Cadbury’s were taking their business elsewhere. I wondered where exactly this poor soul might be but I was surprised to discover that previously Cadbury’s sugar for their Dairy Milk bars had been sourced from “Somewhere in East Anglia.”

Now Jade Goody famously thought that ‘East Angular’ was a foreign country but for the rest of us it’s still a part of Britain. Just down the road in fact from Birmingham where the Cadbury factory is. I’d say you could probably drive your processed sugar beet from Norfolk to Birmingham along the A14 in around three hours.

This is where the other half of our sugar comes from. British Sugar is responsible for the production of the other million tonnes of sugar we consume every year. They refine sugar grown by around 4000 farmers located all over East Anglia and the East Midlands. The total value of these contracts is worth over £200 million to British farmers.

The move from British sugar beet to Belize sugar cane wasn’t in the press pack at Cadbury’s. I felt as though I’d discovered a dirty little secret that I wasn’t supposed to and was suddenly confused. I’m supposed to buy British because I’m supposed to cut down my carbon footprint and the sugar industry in Britain needs support as a world leader in the development of sustainable bio-fuels not to mention the stewardship of the Great British countryside. But then don’t the farmers in Belize need my help too?

I felt thrown on the horns of an ethical dilemma, a dilemma that I’m sure Cadbury’s had already considered; Third World versus Home Grown. Cadbury’s have obviously pitched down on the side of the Developing world and they are banking on their customers doing the same. Not that they are particularly going out of their way to draw their customers attention to it.

TO BE CONTINUED….