Melton Mowbray Fair Trade Town Does Breakfast

Saturday 12th May was World Fair Trade day, as you were all aware! The Fair Trade Foundation invited us to host a fair trade breakfast, so we took up the challenge.

Fair trade breakfast ... umm .. what can we serve? Fair trade bacon - no! fair trade eggs - no!

Eventually we decided to offer fair trade drinks, coffee, tea, hot chocolate and juice, together with fairly trade museli, lovely flapjacks made with fair trade ingredients and bread with jam, marmalade or honey.

We had a fantastic range of jams and marmalades made in South Africa from fairly traded ingredients by Eswatini Kitchen (http://www.eswatinikitchen.com/ )
This cooperative has developed a huge range of not just Jams and marmalades, but chutneys and other sauces too.

The people who came to enjoy the breakfast (about 25 altogether) discovered some amazing products .. Kumquat marmalade, mango jam and pinapple jam. This was just a small selection of the range.

If you visit Melton and fancy a taste pop into the Fairtrading Post and buy some.

So what happened to the Greenest Government ever?

I seem to recall being promised the greenest UK Government ever at the last election here in the UK. 18months on and I am struggling to find any evidence of it! Sustainable development has been locked in a dark cupboard and the key thrown away. We now are in another era of dominance of economic concerns, with no thought being given to the huge social and environmental impacts of economy driven policy.
Social and environmental benefits are seen as costs, rather than seeing the long term savings that can be achieved through integrated policy. Those policies and initaitves that are aimed at dealing with the fall out of the economic situation are scattered geographically and sectorally and lack integration with other initiatives.
In 2012 expect to see planning as the key area where conflicts occur, this will cause more uncertaincy and a further brake on the economy.
Who is going to explain to the coalition what sustainable development means?