Celebrating my Mum’s 70th birthday

I was asked to give a speech at my Mum’s 70th birthday party. Here it is. There were a couple of ad libs as well, but I can’t remember them. The asides (in brackets) were scripted.

Honestly, Mum loved it!

This birthday is a bit different to last year – Mum had planned a quiet celebration but then I had some unexpected difficult news and so Mum and Dad came suddenly to Cardiff to see us. Sorry for causing you such an unusual birthday last year, Mum. I hope this year’s makes up for it.

As we prepared for today, my wife Cathy trawled through photo albums and CDs of photos to create a photo exhibit. There are some very funny photos in there. But along with the best-forgotten fashions, and one or two outfits that still look really good, the one constant in so many of the photos are family, friends, people and celebration. We had photos from many previous birthdays and it’s obvious that as a family we mark milestones.

Cathy's hard work

There’s also a photo in there of Mum teaching me when we lived in the Gambia. Mum taught me to read and it wasn’t long before I was reading anything I could get my hands on – including medical journals someone gave me as a joke. [Mum reminded me afterwards that the only word I got stuck on was hypernatremia. For reference, I was 5.]

That shared love of reading and of books has always been something that has brought Mum and me together. When we were very little we had a very wet holiday in the Lake District (I don’t think there’s any other kind!) and we spent a lot of time in the car driving to various places where the rain didn’t matter. Along the way Mum read us chapter after chapter of The Lord of the Rings – and I’m sure my fondness for that book relates to hearing it in Mum’s voice first.

[Actually, Mum told me afterwards that she thinks that was a holiday we had travelling round the South of England, but hey, it’s still true that she read all 1,061 pages to us. And who’s making the speech here, anyway?]

As a teenager I started reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and it wasn’t long before Mum was also fully conversant with the misadventures of Rincewind the wizard and the streetwise cynicism of Captain Sam Vimes. So whether it was the mines of Moria or the streets of Ankh-Morpork, we always had those shared worlds to discuss.

It’s funny the things you learn from your Mum, and what you take with you into adult life. This year I will have been involved in Fair Do’s, the fair trade shop in Cardiff, for 20 years. But I was involved in Shrewsbury Fair Trade first, thanks to Mum.

In fact, I’ve often said the fair trade movement in Britain was built on the back of coerced teenage labour. I lugged a lot of boxes on her behalf – the trade-off was after I dropped her off I could keep the car for a couple of hours. Mum’s car was a Vauxhall Cavalier (the classic 80’s design with the boxy front end). It became my first car in the end until it sadly died of rust and over-use. But ask Mum and she will tell you it was a good car and we both loved it.

So we have memories and milestones, but even on the cusp of 70 my Mum is full of surprises. Just after Christmas we went as a family to see the new Star Wars film. Afterwards, as we left the cinema, Mum said: “Oh that was so much better than those prequel films. The fight scenes were so much more realistic!” (If you think that’s surprising, you should hear her talk about how much she likes Die Hard!)

So, from Middle Earth to a galaxy far, far away, thank you Mum for being there with us. That’s something worth celebrating.

Happy Birthday, Mum!

And reason number 10 why Peter Griffiths was wrong…

My good lady wife reminded me of another assertion by Peter Griffiths at The Great Fair Trade Debate which either completely missed the point or was a deliberate misrepresentation (your call).

10) Peter Griffiths claimed that fair trade is about paying higher prices so that some of the money goes to the producer. Again, not quite right. Some fairly traded products are more expensive than unfairly traded equivalents. But then many companies who trade, even in this country, tend to drive the hardest bargain they can. Promising one price, then offering a lower price at harvest time is one classic trick.

But what about those fairly traded products that are cheaper than their equivalents? They do exist. What’s going on there, in Peter Griffiths’ view of the fair trade world?

If fairly traded products do cost more, there are often a number of different reasons for that. Trying to trade across geopolitical trade tariffs and barriers are reasons for higher prices. Simple economies of scale play a part too. Nestle dominate the world coffee market and can drive down their prices if they want to (guess whether they do or not), but they also have their own packaging plants and can fill chartered planes with coffee. They don’t have to pay a third party to have their coffee packaged and transported, so it’s cheaper for them to get the coffee to market.

Plus, ‘fair trade’ is more than just ‘we pay more money’. Yes, sometimes there is a ‘fair-trade premium’. But at its heart, ‘fair trade’ is about sustainable relationships – where the buyers pay the agreed-on negotiated price and don’t try to wiggle out of it later, where long-term trading relationships matter, and where producers are often paid some of the money upfront so they don’t have to go into debt while the crops are growing or the products are being made.

Thinking that ‘fair trade’ is all about money, and not realising that actually it is a life-affirming dynamic, is the kind of error made by the kind of person who doesn’t understand that human beings trade with other human beings – and trade is just one of many human relationships. Or, to put it another way, the kind of person who extrapolates behaviour based on the premise that everyone behaves like automatons, then wonders why there complex models don’t work in the real world. Or, to put it a third way, a person who is a classically trained economist.

And just to set the record straight, because my good lady wife told me I’d got one of my facts wrong, the chap from the Windward Islands wasn’t actually from a co-operative. He was a member of the Windward Islands Farmers Association (WINFA), which works on behalf of the farmers e.g. to get the Fair Trade Mark on their bananas.

But even if he wasn’t from a co-operative, he still (rightly) took offence at Peter Griffiths’ assertion that someone in the developing world would automatically steal if they had the opportunity. But then that statement was based on an anecdote, and according to Peter Griffiths, anecdotes don’t count as evidence…

And finally…
I stood up and said something at the debate, challenging Peter Griffiths on a couple of these things. Obviously when I sat down I thought of several more things I could have said. That always happens.

Anyway, Cath has told me that she met people at a fair trade fair at the weekend who commented that what I said was helpful. When she went into the shop at the weekend, one of her co-workers said that she’d heard I’d stood up and made a good point. Fame.

But my encouragement to you is speak up and speak out in those situations where you just know you have to speak up and speak out.

Take courage, because other people want to, and will love the fact that you have.

And the more of us who do it, the more other people will.

And the brighter we shine, the more we roll the darkness back.

The Fair Trade Debate

We went to a debate on fair trade last night, which featured an economist called Peter Griffiths, who has worked in the developing world and written a book about it. He was very critical of fair trade as a concept, blaming it for various economic ills and for being “dishonest”.

Now it’s tempting to just dismiss his views on fair trade as those of an arrogant idiot, and certainly that’s the persona he put across, and move on. But the problem with idiots is that they tend to be noisy and promulgate their idiocy aggressively. So, here are some of the basic things Peter Griffiths got wrong last night.

1) He characterised “the fairtrade” as one homogenous movement with one website and one point of view. But it’s a bit more complicated than that.

There is not one business model, not one monolithic outlook, not one dictated point of view. It is a heterodox movement, of many trading and education organisations, in both the developed and the developing world. To attack the concept of fair trade as not relying on statistics, of not presenting facts, of being dishonest in the way it presents itself, on the basis of visiting one website (as Peter Griffiths implied was his basis for his attack) is at best naïve, or at worst willfully ignorant.

2) He was factually inaccurate.
“The first thing the fairtrade says is that it will only deal with co-operatives.” Rubbish. Fair Do’s isn’t a co-operative. As a Director there, I’m a director of a Limited Company. We trade with some co-operatives, charities, other limited companies, small family-run business, sole traders and Traidcraft who are a PLC. When he states nonsense as fact, Peter Griffiths shows he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he talks about “the fairtrade”.

3) According to Peter Griffiths, “the fairtrade” is primarily agricultural and is a food-oriented issue and that keeps people in poverty, ergo “the fairtrade” is bad for people.

Visit our shop, Peter, and you’ll see that we sell crafts and low-tech produced goods, like soap. The reason many fairly traded goods are agricultural produce is because there are hideously unfair trade barriers and tariffs, which prevent value-added products from being exported to the developed world.

These trade barriers are designed to protect Western jobs and keep the developing world reliant on trading agricultural products. It’s not the fault of “the fairtrade” that the EU, America and various other powerful nations limit what developing world countries can export. As an economist, you should really know that.

4) Also, according to Peter Griffiths, paying fair prices stimulates over-production, which results in lower prices for everyone else, thereby causing a greater social evil. This is one of the main things he accused “the fairtrade” of being dishonest about.

But as another panelist said, the power of fair trade organisations to influence global productivity, pales in comparison to the power of large multinational companies and the Western governments the multinationals use as stooges.

5) On that note, coffee is a price-volatile commodity. So, how does the guaranteed price offered by most fair trade organisations cause price volatility? Stabilising prices should surely have the opposite effect, unless “the fairtrade” is a convenient scapegoat for Western corporate greed.

6) Peter Griffiths described co-operatives as a ‘dirty word’ in the developing world as they are ‘inevitably corrupt’.

“The guy doing the books has never seen thirty quid before in his life, so it goes into his pocket…. If, as a co-operative manager you don’t take the kickback, someone else will.” Those statements didn’t go down at all well with the chap who was at the meeting and who works for a co-operative in the Windward Isles.

Let’s not be so naïve as to say that corruption doesn’t occur in co-operatives, but come on, Peter. Describing everyone who works in a co-operative as a thief-in-waiting is slander. Our own hands aren’t so clean. Not long ago the EU had to shut down for several months while it investigated internal corruption. And many farmers say they value being in a co-operative because of the open-ness, the transparency, the regular audits, and they know what everyone else is getting and whether it’s being fairly distributed.

7) Anecdotes aren’t evidence. Peter Griffiths railed against the dishonesty of “the fairtrade” and the lack of fact-based evidence. But then based his slurs about co-operatives on his own (negative) experiences. He presented no stats to back up his 'facts'. He offered no hard evidence.

8) Saving money is only half the solution. Peter Griffiths trumpeted how he had saved millions of pounds for developing world governments in food programmes and the like. Well done.

But saving is one thing, earning is another. If I go to town and buy a bargain I might have saved £20, but I will still have spent money. Enabling people to spend more efficiently is a good thing, but the bottom line is you are still helping them spend. And the money you save is just figures on one side of a balance sheet.

Trading fairly with people, on the other hand, enables them to earn. They end up with real money, which they can then choose to freely spend on the goods and services they need. Freeing up capital in the developing world to stimulate local economies is the great boon of “the fairtrade”. The savings Peter Griffiths has made won’t ever be spent, because they’re only numbers in a ledger, not real dollars in a pay packet.

9) And finally, Peter Griffiths attacked the whole of the “the fairtrade” as unprofessional and incompetent. Well, if I can return the favour and tar all economists with the same brush, I’d like to say this: economists like Peter Griffiths have had billions of pounds of resources from various institutions to sort out global poverty and decades to do it in.

And so far, they haven’t delivered.

Peter Griffiths may not like fair trade, he may even have valid criticisms to make, but compared to the mess economists have made in Africa, for example, the ‘damage’ caused by “the fairtrade” is negligible.

What fair trade as a method of business has done is bring real change to poor and marginalised communities, provided sanitation, education, security, health and wealth. It has given people benefits today and the hope for a brighter tomorrow. And it has done this, generally, as a grass roots movement, in the face of opposition from powerful institutions and governments. It has succeeded against the odds because it has proven that there is another way to do trade. And, frankly, it has rendered the opinions of economists like Peter Griffiths about “the fairtrade” irrelevant.

A final note.
When I was a kid we lived in a country in West Africa. Economists from various international bodies like the IMF and the World Bank, almost all of whom were white Westerners like Peter Griffiths, advised the government to stop people growing maize and to grow rice instead. Now thirty years later, that country has to import rice and other food to prevent its people starving to death.

When it was obvious that the switch to rice wasn’t working, the economists encouraged the government to promote peanut harvesting instead. And they said the same things to every other West African country. When we returned to the UK, the value of the peanuts which were being harvested was less that the value of the sacks they were being sold in.

Those are anecdotes, not evidence, although you can look it up if you like, to check out whether I’m lying or not. But, those stories indicate, perhaps, why I don’t really rate the opinions of ‘development economists’. The advice of economists destroyed that country and kept it impoverished. So forgive me for trying to find a better way to make life better for people.

900 000 Lego studs = VFM and fewer arguments!

I've been overly busy of late, firstly with arrangements for the Fair Do's Fashion Show, then with playing Lego Star Wars II with Cathy.

The first passed off without too many hitches, even if it was hard work. The second one is getting easier, especially since we found and purchased the 'Invincibility' extra. Easily the best 900 000 lego studs I've ever spent!

Cathy will moan about me mentioning this, but now we're invincible my excitable Wookiee co-gamer won't accidentally shoot me in the back (and to be fair Boba Fett won't blow her up with a thermal detonator), which means we argue less while playing.

Life's too short

I got about twenty minutes into tonight's episode of The Riches on Virgin 1 and I thought "This really is rubbish." It's amazing how any screenwriter could take the two sublime talents of Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver and somehow sling them together in something so stupidly mundane.

So I went and updated the Fair Do's website which I've been meaning to do for ages instead. Ah, the sweet feeling of meaningful achievement.

Hazards of doing a good deed

A day in Fair Do's should come with a snack attack warning. Apparently we've run out of fair trade eccles cakes because another member of staff can't stop eating them. But I've discovered the real butter flapjack. Mmmmm.

Driving a van makes me feel manly

It's the big fair trade fashion show tomorrow, which means I got to be all manly today and drive the Transit home from work. I could be spending my bank holiday weekend sunning myself, but instead I'll be intimidating boy racers with my giant van and my complete lack of concern for driving niceties. It don't get much better than that.