CONSUMER spending on “ethical” goods has almost tripled in the last decade, according to the Co-op Bank.
Their annual ethical consumerism report shows that ethical spending in Britain has grown from £13.5 billion in 1999 to £36 billion ten years later.
Fairtrade products lead the charge with just £22 million spent on them in 1999, compared to [...]

IS the BBC in favour of unfair trade?
That’s the question after the Corporation forced newscaster George Alagiah to quit as patron of the Fairtrade Foundation, a registered charity.
Seems the Beeb thought there would be some conflict of interest because Alagiah, who is unpaid and who was approved as a Patron in 2002, is due to [...]

ANY self-respecting journalist will shudder at the prospect of getting a terse ‘no comment’ from the subject of their latest exclusive.
It’s bad for the reporter (s/he looks easily fobbed off); bad for the story (it looks unbalanced); and bad for the subject (s/he/it looks like they have something to hide).
Our advice to any client, almost [...]

BANKERS appear to have overtaken estate agents and journalists at the top of ‘Professions You Love To Hate’.
The credit crunch, global economic crisis, rising unemployment and job insecurity have all combined to make the banker ‘Public Enemy Number One’.
Although Prime Minister Gordon Brown appears reluctant to start mixing it with the money men, the new President [...]

LOCAL newspapers have become amongst the first victims of the global recession with major job losses, pay freezes and closures announced.
Some commmentators are already predicting that the future for local papers is bleak, almost terminal, as they are hit both by the economic downturn and the march of the internet.
Editorial quality is always one of the first [...]

ONE of the world’s biggest advertising agencies is trying to sell its stake in a Zimbabwe company masterminding the re-election of President Robert Mugabe.
WPP, which owns a huge raft of global Public Relations companies including  Burson-Marsteller, Cohn & Wolfe, GCI, Hill & Knowlton and Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, has found itself in the embarrassing position [...]

TWO interesting developments in the Third Sector – the space between public and private organisations.
First, former Prime Minister Tony Blair hands out some advice to other Third Sector organisations as a result of his involvement in charity work.
Blair’s out-of-government office has now set up four separate organisations which all appear to loosely fit the term, [...]

Google has done it again.
The web giant has today started to accept donations to aid the relief effort in cyclone-hit Burma.
Google has created a special web page to channel on-line donations direct to Unicef and Direct Relief International.
It has also pledged to match every penny, cent, or yen donated – up to $1million.
While Burma’s military [...]

The giant arms dealer, BAE Systems has been accused of acting unethically by the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf.
We are only surprised that anyone is surprised. Have you ever heard of an arms dealer that acts ethically?
Cynics would say that such a concept is as tautological as, say, a PR company that acts ethically.
Let [...]

Sound photographer Steve Morgan’s pictures of the Drax power station (above and below) help place today’s Guardian story about the government’s ‘confusing’ climate change policy in some proper context.
Seems that, on the one hand, the Government is committed to reducing carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. All well and good.
Yet at the same [...]