Fair Trade for All

You may or may not have heard of the Fair Trade concept but, put simply, it's about moving away from the slave mentality that so many businesses are happy to live with where producers do not even get paid enough to provide basics such as proper food, clothing and education while the Western purchasers make a fine profit.

While many people appear to see Fair Trade as a gimmick or a cult and therefore as a strange optional sideline of society it must be said that the concept of Fair Trade should be globally and thoroughly applied to all working situations and not just to a lucky few: it should be the worldwide minimum standard and anyone who disagrees is obviously not interested in civilisation.

Please take the time to type the words "Fair Trade" into a search engine and find out more.

Give them what you would want.

Flexible Approach to Law

You may have noticed that the Archbishop of Canterbury has recently suggested that British law could be made to have a more flexible approach toward religious nuance. While many people have ranted and raved at the mention of Islamic Law few people managed to contemplate what the Old Bish actually suggested which was, in my view at least, a relatively mild alteration of the view of law in order to cater more for matters of religious conscience which differ from the broadly Christian ethic that most British law is based on. As a basic idea, I see nothing wrong with this except that if such flexibility was to allow for cultural nuance rather than merely religious nuance it would make more sense within the modern democratic framework of upholding the rights of minorities.

But, of course, this frightens many people into thinking that the law would become too fragmented with a world full of people with their own ideas of what laws should govern them. It doesn't have to be very complicated; you set criteria which governs what flexibility is allowed and as long as the claiment's preference does not fall outside the criteria then it is valid in law. You don't necessarily have to keep extensive records of all sorts of differing ideas.

Some law already works in this way despite claims that there can be no flexibility where "core values" are concerned; unfortunately for those that claim this, they are already in error.

And on the subject of Christian values, I am not a Christian(or a muslim) and would prefer my government to be based from secular concerns while catering for religious and cultural differences as far as is practicle, instead of things being the other way around.