I started a business. It made me want to drink copious quantities, smoke myself into oblivion and hit my head against a brick wall. Instead I wrote a blog.
Site Launch Day: 48
User Count: 72
Going right: One good product review one 'work-needed' review...they're all good :)
Going wrong: Tapped into pity party yesterday at potential move.
Comment: There should be more advice about how to shift yourself from half empty to half full.
Despite my inclination to tell you all sordid stories about my past, it seems incongruous with my current folic-acid pumped, green tea-infused, 5-veg-a-day lifestyle. Pregnancy is odd like that, since it is both very exciting and also extremely boring. The switch between wild child and earth mother is radical - albeit temporary - and has prompted responses like
"Who are you and what have you done with Louisa?"
It has also inspired me to do some uncharacteristically selfless, things. Ok, there is no truly selfless good deed, but some things benefit wider society as well as benefiting me. Take for instance the whole premise behind Investment Impact.
1. It is designed to host many consultants who can all benefit from a more flexible way of working.
2. It is also green - virtual, no travel and less carbon emissions.
3. It is more cost effective for the smaller more innovative company.
But whilst I flirted briefly with using non-disposable nappies, my family, eco and non-material oriented thinking has now extended even further. In August we were joking about how beneficial Sweden was as a child friendly culture. And today, we are seriously considering moving here. Not only Sweden. Brännö. The island with no cars, no locked doors and no shops. I can hardly believe it myself, because the whole thing started as a reckless Dice man experiment when I tossed out an idle thought on where speculation and planning would take us. The whole process took around four weeks to get serious and it went like this.
Week One: We passed the little red hut of a pre-school on the island of Brännö and my boyfriend joked "I wonder what the knife crime is like here." That was the week of the London Riots. "Can you imagine our family growing up here next to the sea?" That week we were blessed by the weather too. Boating to the neighboring island to get a whole salmon, with the sun glistening off the water, it was difficult to think of any place more heavenly.
Week Two: "If by any chance I'm pregnant with twins, we'll have to move to Sweden. We're cramped in our terrace house as it is, I cant imagine having another two babies in there. Actually I'm having difficulty imagining one. It'll have to sleep in our room." Boyfriend sees danger sign of curtailed sexual activity. "We'd get far more for the money here." He said. "But only if you were able to work here as well as I" I reminded him. Turns out I wasn't pregnant with twins. Embryonic idea put to rest.
Week Three: We visited a friend with a new baby who said "But of course you would get 80% of your income in maternity pay for 13 months if you moved here. And childcare is more or less free if you pay for it with child benefit." My boyfriend and I looked at each other. We had considered moving out of Richmond because rental was so expensive but hadn't yet decided where. But somewhere with family, financial benefits and nature was high up on the list. Idea was dug up.
Week Four: "If you can't work from here, then we can't move here." I said. "And I've never heard of a company letting someone move country and still keep them on as an employee." He said "Well it can't hurt to ask. Especially as we are realizing that there are so many advantages." They said yes. With certain conditions of course, but essentially. Yes. Idea blossomed.
The advantages, they are aplenty. As for the disadvantages. There is one big one. My friends.
'You know that love is found when it hurts to leave them.'
For all that you supposedly make decisions in the interests of family, friends count for a huge amount in my life. And leaving them will really hurt. So there you have it. New Business. New baby. New country. Why do anything by halves?
Site Launch Day: 51
User Count: 72
Going right: Feel that moving country legitimizes spending wads of cash
Going wrong: Trying to write to all the Investment Impact 'likers' in facebook with a similar message and Facebook marked it as spam
Comment: For all its trying to be reactive to change and responsive to Google plus, Facebook creates very cumbersome and manual processes
The consequences of being in the public eye are unpredictable. Let me tell you about Robert Scoble and the boobie incident. Robert Scoble - for those of you who have never heard of him - is a pretty powerful American blogger, author and photographer. He posted a photo of a friend's boob for 'Booberday' - an event supposedly organized either to raise awareness for breast cancer or simply a joke site invented for people wanting to see more titties on the internet (I thought there were enough of those sites already, but apparently there's always room for one more...)
As I understand it, the ensuing debate about the alleged impropriety of the photo got rather heated and Robert Scoble was called out not only for posting the aforementioned boobie, but also for not leading by example and stopping his followers from insulting one another.
1. Was Robert wrong for posting a picture of a boobie? Hmm. What on earth is it that some people have against pictures of boobies. Here is one which was made [a lot] earlier.
2. Was he responsible for wounding the delicate feelings of his female followers? Anyone who's been in therapy knows that you own your own issues. Besides in my opinion, there are far more important issues upon which to take a stand than a boobie. Slavery for one (see below).
3. Should he have stopped the insults flying back and forth on his own profile page? Probably. People have a right to voice their own opinion. But they could have done it somewhere else...Robert has the right to protect his own image and I'll bet he didn't like being made a forum for sexism.
His last comment on the matter was -
"I won't be participating anymore in these conversations. I'm a geek and want to talk about tech, not sex."
That's too bad Robert, sex makes for very interesting conversation. Definitely on my list of future blogs.
Onto my own tiny bad publicity experience. It had nothing to do with boobs, no - if only. But it did have to do with an unthinking comment I made on Corporate Social Responsibility. In one post a while back I said that Nestle was the only company who consistently got away with bad CSR; of course I meant within my own sphere of knowledge, but Eric14 - a very active and vocal commentator on Huffington, called me on it and pointed out that there were plenty more - his own personal bug bear being the Cocoa trade. Surprised at the comeback, I agreed with him. There are plenty more out there of course. But whilst I won't apologize for my lack of knowledge, or my lighthearted blogging style - I do want to live up to my own principles and make sure that people know :
A) I take the comments made on my blog seriously (hopefully I learned my lesson from Robert's mishap)
B) That in line with our values Investment Impact is absolutely willing to expose practices that are unethical.
Note that the below need more justification before it can deem itself fact - please get back to me on this!
My own corner of research stemming from his comment so far consists of a conversation I had with an anonymous source on Fairtrade:
BC (before cadbury) Fairtrade ingredients were completely traceable, so you could know that the person who farmed it was getting the Fairtrade price and premium [the social premium is a fund for the community]. Anyway, Cadbury came along with their big fat pockets and wanted to make their biggest seller - Dairy Milk - Fairtrade. They said
"We get all our cocoa from the same place and we can't make everything Fairtrade because it would cost too much. And we can't tell you which bit is Fairtrade and which isn't because it ends up in the same melting pot."
So Fairtrade said
"Okay so you need to pay a premium on 20% of your cocoa', because 20% of your cocoa bought goes into Dairy Milk."
In other words since all Cadbury's cocoa goes to the same place, you cannot guarantee that the cocoa in that Dairy Milk bar is Fairtrade because its mixed with the 80% non Fairtrade cocoa.
Why is this 80-20 split important?
- Because Cadbury will make a far bigger profit by certifying Dairy Milk Fairtrade than it would be certifying any other of its brands Fairtrade;
- They get this certification without implementing any measures to embody the standards and principles of Fairtrade - transparency and traceability.
- They disproportionately represent themselves as Fairtrade by putting it on Dairy Milk which is their biggest seller (more than 20% of their sales) when 80% of their cocoa is still sourced from non-fairtrade (where slavery, child labor, torture and abuse are commonplace)
Of course being in the public eye means that in order to justify this hearsay, we should really have more proof. Cue students with an ethics issue to burn. Got any info?
Meanwhile, be very aware of what you may still be funding if you don't buy goods that you know are 100% fair trade.
Thanks Eric14 for calling me out and giving me the opportunity to highlight some one of the biggest hidden issues in our society - slavery in the 21st century. Let's keep up the good work.
If you want a peek at the business that's driving me insane you can click here.