The New Corporation takes on the myth of goodhearted corporations, the ones that pretend to give even half a shit about the disposable fleshpods that make up their customer base. The ones that care about the social problems they’ve very definitely caused. It’s horseshit, of course.
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Most humans on earth are aware of how Big Bidness stomps all over humanity’s face in search of its next shabby cash-grab. Joel Bakan’s The Corporation helps explain why: Corporations are, in human terms, amoral, antisocial psychopaths. That is a million percent my jam.
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Having graduated from the Bond Villain School of Bastards and Bastardry, Nestlé, the world’s biggest food and drinks company, apparently set out to also be the world’s biggest contributor to infant mortality, aggressively marketing its baby milk substitute in countries where the water used to make it was so filthy it killed babies…
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I’m back with another pile of old shite, making this a very definitely sustained comeback. To be fair to me (full disclosure: I am me) I’ve not been entirely inactive, putting together a fundraiser that got five grand for a children’s home in Nepal, but given I can’t get any credit for that on an anonymous blog I’m starting to wonder why I bothered.
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Cards on the table, gang: I’ve spent most of the last 18 months off my tits on painkillers. Not to a Jacko/Prince/stomach-pump degree, but enough to take the edge off my do-gooding and let evil have its way with the world. It’s no coincidence I was out of it when Brexit Brexitted and Trump trumped, when white supremacists showed their faces again, when Nazis rebranded and all manner of clusters were fucked.
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Steve Jobs died last week, and here I find myself writing about it with all the delayed topicality of a Ben Elton novel. He’s been on my mind for two reasons: first, because he was cracking and, second, because of how he wasn’t.
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Read through the Nepal Diaries, you could reach the end thinking I hate the place, presenting as they do an endless parade of poverty, frustration and half-empty glasses. But it’s a cracking country, a ramshackle would-be paradise packed full of friendly, generous people, packed full of culture and tradition and cracking food, packed full of energy and activity and ambition. It’s just a shame so much of it gives me the shits.
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After last week’s earnest-fest I’ve been Zeroing away to do my bit for Fairtrade Fortnight. My efforts have focused on three areas: me, someone else, and the world at large. Inspired by last week’s interpretive dance I was tempted to express each through the medium of puppet street theatre but opted instead for practical action.
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Fairtrade Fortnight is upon us. From 22 February to 7 March the Fairtrade Foundation will be working its Fairtrade cotton socks off to persuade the people of earth to stop being shitty to each other. Fairtrade is a novel idea that suggests instead of screwing over the world’s poorest people for trainers and chocolate we should instead pay them enough to live.
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I’ve been writing The People’s Zero for about four years now, at times with a manic fervour, at others in a distinctly half-assed fashion. Since work began I’ve boycotted Nestlé, expanded the range of Fairtrade food in Zero Towers, recycled everything I can get my hands on and generally Butterflied my heart out…
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