JUSTICE

For those of you who know me will realise I am one for ranting and raving, I find that a lot of things make me angry, whether it be; political, environmental, dishonesty, etc. But one thing that annoys me more than anything is injustice. Injustice can come in many different forms, we can have major injustices like the situation in Zimbabwe or minor injustices like unfairness at work. Regardless of what that injustice is, it is still wrong and if it affects you personally it can cause a lot of problems. I am a Christian and for a number of years I lived my life like everyone else, if you had met me you probably wouldn't have known I was a Christian, but for the fact I went to church on a Sunday. So a number of years ago I decided to change and make a difference, I started to look into how people were treated, I started to get involved with a number of organisations and I started to campaign.

One of the first things I looked at was how supermarkets behave; for most people supermarkets are fantastic; they are cheap, convenient and clean, you can get everything under one roof, with very little hassle. I understand why people like them (I was very much a fan of supermarkets myself), but when I started to look into how they behaved my viewpoint changed. I looked at how they treated their producers especially the wages they paid fruit pickers in Africa. I started to research certain supermarkets and their practices and very very quickly realised that these lovely clean shops which seem so benevolent where rotten to the core. One supermarket above all others stood out when it came to injustice and bad practice and that was TESCO, I will give you one example of how they behaved. Tesco decided they wanted to build a supermarket in a certain Norfolk town, the majority of the residents, councillors and all local traders did not want a large supermarket being built in the town, because they new that as soon as they opened they would see the town centre die (this has been proven to be true in the majority of towns who have large supermarkets). The Town council rejected the planning application, unfortunately Tesco put in another application and this was rejected. To cut a long story short, the man from Tesco came into a council meeting and told the councillors that it wouldn't matter how many times the council rejected the application Tesco would keep going, and because they are a big company they could afford to do this. This story was told to me by a councilor just this year. I could give you story after story about the behaviour of supermarkets, but it would take me too long to write them down, suffice to say, most supermarkets behave appallingly. I have spoken to a lot of people about this and unfortunately I have found that an awful lot of them laugh at me and make no difference to their shopping habits. I believe as a Christian we should be the ones more than anyone else who should be shouting about injustice and there is no excuse not to, especially when you know something is wrong. There are over 2500 verses in the Bible which talk about injustice, I would say then that God thinks this is a really important issue. I also believe that to do nothing is a sin, most people think that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of their sexual immorality but it says in Ezekial ch 16 v 49 "Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; and they did not help the poor and needy". I think it is quite clear what God thinks of those who do nothing when they know something is wrong.

We all use supermarkets, I do (unfortunately we have no choice), but I do think we all have a responsibility to think about what we buy and which supermarket we buy it from. Not all supermarkets are bad, but some are worse than others, let me state this categorically; TESCO ARE AN AWFUL COMPANY, they do as they want and they don't care about anything else except making money. If you don't believe me take a look at this website : http://www.tescopoly.org/. You might say "there isn't much I can do", well there is, firstly buy what you can locally, even if it is just your bread, it makes a difference to that local trader. Secondly; get involved and campaign against these big companies, get them to buy as much Fair Trade as possible.

I could mention many issues to do with injustice, because it is almost a never ending subject, but one thing I would say is do something, it can make a big difference to someone.