Oh, my very first blog entry!

I feel that my description as the devils advocate may need an explenation. I enjoy debating immensly, and often provoke debates by taking on the role of the devils advocate, giving arguments that I do not really support myself - just to get the debate going.

Last night I returned from my first weekend with the Swedish Red Cross Fair Trade class. It was interesting, and especially interesting was the negative sides of Fair Trade that emerged. That is Fair Trade as in the FLOs labelling, not fair trade as a whole. For example, they promote small scale producers in the third world, and exclude larger producers. This also means that if a Fair Trade producer is very successful and grows, they will eventually be excluded from the Fair Trade organisation even if they still conduct their business in a fair way. The inevitable conclusion is that Fair Trade will always be a small, marginal, movement. This is quite a bit contra-productive, since the reasonable thing would be to try to make all businesses fair. Right? Even the big ones. Especially the big ones. The more big business get fair, the better for the workers.... I think so, anyway. But this aside, I can also symphathise with the idea of promoting small businesses, to give them a fair chance.

Damn, I just heard on the radio that there has been a bank robbery in Tierp, the small town I grew up in, and that someone got shot. My father is a policeman there, so I must call him and see what is going on...