Today the Fairtrade foundation and Mars chocolates have made the exciting announcement that next year Maltesers will go Fairtrade. This is especially exciting as the last thing I’d heard (over a year ago) was that Mars were signing up to Rainforest Alliance and certified Cocoa and not Fairtrade but the press release today suggests this   Read More …

So it was the turn of Morrissons to receive an e-mail from me. Much like Sainsburys the response came quickly (unlike McDonalds who I e-mailed a month ago asking why they have Fairtrade coffee in Switzerland but not the UK and have had no reply) Here’s what I e-mailed: Hello, When shopping in your store   Read More …

So for the last few years I’ve been sold to the world of Apple…not because of the hype but because it works. Despite what others say the operating system (once you adapt) is far easier to use and far more logical than Windows and especially for the web-design, music creation, video editing, extreme multi-tasking and   Read More …

Recently we’ve tried shopping at Sainsburys*. If you didn’t know Sainsburys are the biggest stockest of Fairtrade (and also the most ethical of the big 4) in the UK and really simple things like basics (33p a box) tea bags are Fairtrade plus their own brand chocolate and alongside this there’s all sorts of other   Read More …

About 4 months ago after much debate as a church we started an open youth club on a Tuesday night. It started with 6 young people and over the past 4 months has grown to an average of about 20 a week…it’s nothing revolutionary…it’s a simple youth club: somewhere to hang out, tuck shop, pool   Read More …

Earlier this week I spent 2 days on a Scripture Union on a residential for associate trust workers and we spent some time exploring the idea of ministry in a digital age and in doing so looked at how the current generation are growing up in a world where they don’t remember not having computers   Read More …

If you follow me on Twitter then over the last few weeks you’ll have seen several tweets in reference to the alternative vote. On Thursday we have the opportunity to vote for a new way of voting for politicians in this country and whilst there has been division in all the political parties as to   Read More …

As I mentioned a couple of days ago I’ve been pretty excited for the release of ‘The King Blues’ new album ‘Punk and Poetry’ which was released yesterday and proving that my HMV pre-order was worthwhile the album turned up yesterday morning and it’s been on in the car, office and living room and I’ve   Read More …

When I was 15 I really got into music…that’s not to say that before I didn’t like music. My childhood was often filled with music…whether it was ‘The Beatles’ coming from my parents record player, the feel good pop coming from Top of the Pops (e.g. Aqua, B*Witched) or the 70/80′s music I got to   Read More …

On Thursday I went on a retreat day with a group of other youth workers from the York Diocese and it was nice to have a chance to sit back and reflect for the day. However one thing I seem to notice is that whatever youth worker’s get together sooner or later we seem to   Read More …

Every year Fairtrade run a campaign called ‘Fairtrade Fortnight’…in previous years it’s seen exciting announcements such as Sainsbury’s changing all their bananas to Fairtrade and the arrival of a Fairtrade Dairy Milk and whilst this year there are no huge announcements (yet) there are more and more Fairtrade products available than ever and at even more   Read More …

Hey all, My server got hacked yesterday and a load of code to malware was added to my site. I’ve fixed it now and it shouldn’t happen again (all security has been tweaked etc.) however if you used the site yesterday it’s worth a quick virus scan on your computer and also google a program   Read More …