(no subject)

[ewt]

Is this real?

I'm getting pretty close to just giving up and boycotting goods made in the US. Except that all the manufacturing that actually makes profit there is done by 8-year-old girls in Thailand anyway, and there are some things I won't do without that I probably can't buy without some US involvement.

I don't boycott lightly or often; I figure it's better use of time and energy to focus on the good than to focus on the bad.

My brain is feeling very fragile. Brainhacking today was difficult and upsetting; I think reasonable progress was made but right now my brain is in the "OW STOP POKING ME" stage.

I think I shall buy a bowl of chips. Yes. Chips here are good, and potato products make everything better.


The rest of this evening:
My brain is a bit too fried for real work, but I'm going to try to sort out schedule-y stuff for next week's teaching. Many of my students are off school for Succot and as they're missing so many Sundays I'm going to try to get up on Thursday to do some teaching.

Tomorrow:
-horn lesson, then class, then meeting with S. re: Mammoth Project, then Horn Class. This is going to be a long and tiring day - I have hardly played at all this past week because of my hurty elbow, and while I think I'll get through okay, it's not going to be easy. I think I'd best get there early and do a long slow warm-up, then go to the library and find some music. I'm not going to have time to go home for lunch and I haven't been organised and packed one so I guess it's a Pie Day. MMmmm. Pie.
-laundry. I'm way behind on it at the moment.

Thursday:
-doctor's appointments in the morning (mental health update followed by cervical smear. I'm sure you can sense the unbridled joy); not worth going to Trinty beforehand so I'll have to go straight there afterward to practise. Possibly working on Mammoth Project the rest of the day, although I'd really like to make Thursday afternoons Sewing Time. If I'm not working on the project, I'll be doing some tidying, because I can't do any sewing until I've tidied anyway because there isn't anywhere to sew. Go me.
-more laundry.

Friday:
-In the morning, straight to Trinty to get some practising in.
-practising music for Suzuki school stuff on Saturday
-the Big Push with tidying; I want to make the living room presentable and the kitchen less cluttered. For the kitchen this is going ot mean taking everything off the surfaces, one at a time, cleaning the surfaces, and then putting things back/away (as sensible). For the living room... I'm not sure. I think I'll have to do 15-minute intervals or something.
-more laundry.

Saturday:
-Suzuki school. Possible pubbage (Porterhouse), but I really ought to get home and practise. Dinner party in evening.

Sunday:
-Gardening.

I've just been brought a bowl of chips. This place is heaven.

Comments

[exmoor-cat.livejournal.com]

True, but the price is much higher. I've often pondered whether ethical shoping, even without the profit margins delbiertely being hyped because it's trendy, falls down on hard economics when it relies on people's abilities to pay. It's very middle class.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

It's getting better though. Five years ago I remember ethical alternatives being twice the price of chain-store products; now they're often about the same for clothing. Foods are still a bit different.

[ewtikins.livejournal.com]

Well, it doesn't work if you want to buy stuff stuff stuff all the time, but then neither does ordinary shopping. What I've seen isn't substantially more expensive than ordinary high street shops. If one is so strapped for cash that one cannot afford those prices, one can take a different ethical solution and purchase clothes in charity shops, get an allotment (these are cheap, although one may have to wait a while) and grow one's own veg, learn to forage, and so on to make the money go further. Or just not eat so much chocolate or coffee or banananas or rice; there's a lot to be said for eating local.

Life is expensive. If I buy something new very cheaply, I expect that either it will be very poor quality or someone somewhere is suffering for my thrift. The richness of material goods we enjoy in this country is not realistic; it's not something that can be globally attained, it isn't sustainable. We like the lie that we arne't taking more than our fair share, we like the illusion that the monetary price of things actually reflects the true cost in human and environmental terms, but we're wrong.

My main problem at the moment is trying to find ethical clothes that fit. Long Tall Sally don't make any point of being fairtrade, and everything else is too damned short, and I really, really need to learn to sew much better, because there is enough fairtrade/recycled fabric around that I could solve this.

[exmoor-cat.livejournal.com]

The process is called internalising the real cost of the item, something economists have spent decades busily trying to externalise from the item, the obvious example being the passing on of VAT to the customer. What the ethical movement is effectively doing is returning the cost margin back to the user.