Action Briefing Feb 2003 - Mar 2003
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Ten Easy Ways To Beat The Corporate Bullies!

1. Use your purchase power
As a consumer you have the power to choose which companies you support with your hard earned cash. If customers tell businesses how to act, they do listen! Choose companies that sell fairly traded goods, and write to companies that don’t telling them that they should.

2. Boycott
Consumer boycotts carry immense weight with companies. A recent boycott of bra makers Triumph made them abandon the factory they rented from the repressive Burmese government in just 8 weeks, and in the mid-1990s a student campaign achieved similar success with Pepsi. The international campaign against Climate Change villains Esso is another prime example - a June 2002 MORI poll showed a 7% drop in the number of regular petrol buyers who bought Esso petrol.

3. Celebrate Buy Nothing Day
Why not go a step further and exercise your right not to purchase at all? Buy Nothing Day is an annual festival of the rejection of consumer culture, and a celebration of spending time rather than money on yourself and those you love. For more info see www.buynothingday.co.uk or www.adbusters.org

4. Buy Local
Buy food and other goods from local shops, markets and farmers’ markets rather than the big supermarkets. This helps to keep money in the local economy rather than the pockets of big corporations and maintains vibrant local communities as well as giving you the opportunity to have a say in what you eat. Organic box delivery systems operate in many local areas too. Contact your nearest wholefood shop for more details. This counts for eating out too, by the way. Next time you’re tempted by Starbucks or McDonalds, why not look for a local, independent alternative?

5. Use LETS
Local Exchange Trading Schemes let you exchange services and goods for an alternative currency, so you’re swapping skills and time rather than money. South Birmingham LETS deals in Hearts, and North Birmingham works with Diamonds. For more information, call Malcolm Currie on 0121 523 6682. Credit Unions and community investment trusts are also on the increase, as alternatives to the big banks. Contact the Aston Reinvestment Trust (www.reinvest.co.uk) or call the Balsall Heath Credit Union on 0121 248 1448.

6. Grow Your Own
Since World War II every household in the UK has been entitled to an allotment. Exercise your right to be a gardener and enjoy a relaxing hobby that will keep you and your family fit and healthy. Schemes are springing up all over the Midlands to help you get started. The Balsall Heath Jungle is one in Birmingham, working with communities to promote healthy eating and growing fruit and veg. Call 0121 446 4798 for more info.

7. Get Out More
Local sports facilities are being closed down and sold off all by local authorities throughout the Midlands, to be replaced by exclusive leisure clubs. In Sparkbrook, Birmingham, both Moseley Road Baths and Birmingham Sports Centre are under threat of closure. A recent campaign to save the baths has gained a year's reprieve, but local people could be left with no sports facilities at all. The simple way to keep your local facilities open is to use them! Birmingham also boasts the largest public park in the EU - Sutton Park. Why not find your nearest bit of green space and get out jogging or cycling instead of driving to the gym?

8. Take Action
Biotechnology “biggie” Aventis (or Bayer) recently tried to plant a GM trial crop at Woolston near Coventry. This was close enough to the renowned Henry Doubleday Research Association Gardens (or Ryton Organic as it is more commonly known) to have stripped it of its organic status if the trial had gone ahead. An energetic local campaign convinced the company that it really wasn’t worth the bother. Getting involved with campaigns on issues you care about in your community is an empowering and effective way of achieving real change.

9. Take it to Government
Contact your MP at the House of Commons, Westminster, London SW1A 0AA and ask them if they have signed Early Day Motion 113 in support of the Corporate Responsibility Bill. If they're one of the 220 MPs who have already signed it, ask them to write to Secretary of State for Trade & Industry, Patricia Hewitt, and demand that the Government brings in its own company law based on the four principles of (1) Mandatory Reporting of companies' economic, social, and environmental impacts; (2) Proper Stakeholder Consultation before embarking on major projects; (3) Clearly Defined Duties of Directors to consider the wider impacts of their business; and (4) Enforcement and the creation of a Standards Board to ensure the effective implementation of the above.

10. Come together
It's easy to be overwhelmed by the scale of the problems, especially when you feel like you're on your own. But being an active part of a campaigning organisation or residents' group helps enormously to allay those feelings. And that's not just a plug for Birmingham FOE's Monday night meeting and post-meeting pint!

Jenny Thatcher & James Botham