Purchases before principles?

There was a great cartoon in yesterday’s FT. A middle aged couple are speaking to another couple visiting them at home. They are in a totally empty room with bare floorboards and a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The caption is one of the hosts saying ‘we’re boycotting Chinese goods’.

This time last year in my speech on pro-social behaviour I made the point about how people tend to fall into a model of social change that is Government centric (‘what are they going to do for us?’) when instead we should start from a position that is more citizen centric (‘what are we going to do for each other?’). The cartoon captures this. Many of us support the protests of supporters of Tibetan rights and freedoms, which are aimed at those who govern the Olympic Movement and at governments themselves. Yet, we quite happily continue to go to the computer, electronics or clothes store and splash out on goods made in China.

I am not sure I have the strength of conviction to stop buying Chinese goods myself but it is worth noticing that we find it much easier to attack the ‘condoning’ of China by those in authority than we do to question our own retail collaboration.

• Vincent - 05 Jun 2008 1:52pm

  Stopping buying chinese made goods only harmful to millions of ordinary chinese people (mostly from countryside) who try to escape from proverty. Life in China has been improving a lot compared with 10 or 20 years ago. (I can see the changes as I lived in Hong kong/Macao before). Most British people are just ignorant and jump on the bandwagon.

• Steve Nimmons - 05 Jun 2008 1:48pm

  I attended the “Question Time on Sustainable Design and Development” on Wednesday evening and found the discussions very interesting. Griff Rhys Jones made an excellent chairman, combining effervescence, levity and intellectualism with enviable ease. There seemed to be ‘scant’ agreement about the impact of personal ‘pro-social’ activity in relation to carbon off-setting and although we might all have a little chuckle at personal wind turbines or solar panels as the latest self-righteous housing adornments, it is as little too easy to just reject social responsibility in relation to the environment as something of a fashion statement of the liberal middle class. I was subsequently very encouraged to hear that Atos Origin (my employer) has announced a project with the RSA “the first ever trial to enable real-time calculations of personal carbon emissions” and how this relates to the RSA’s CarbonDaq trading platform. I wonder if you could provide some additional insight into this and the overarching work of the RSA’s CarbonLimited project?

• John Guttridge - 05 Jun 2008 1:45pm

  If only the Games could be left to the athletes. There's no need for Gordon Brown or any other politicians (Britsh or otherwise) to go to the Opening or Closing ceremonies as the games are supposed to be non political. If they really want to go then let them go as private individuals and pay their own way.

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