When buying ordinary products, you may be funding political causes you reject
I was in the supermarket the other day, scanning the most pretentious foreign lagers section, when to my horror I caught sight of a crate of Heineken, on the side of which was the message: “Here’s to an open world. To a world without borders or barriers. To the belief that there is more that unites us than divides us.”
Heineken is not my favourite ale – I usually only drink beer from countries with harsh immigration policies like Asahi or Tsingtao, though I’m sure that’s just coincidence – but it’s an odd thing to place on a lager bottle.
A similar theme could be found if you went down to Oxford Circus Tube station this autumn, where you would have seen a huge advertisement that proclaimed: “British Style is not 100% British. In fact, there’s no such thing as ‘100% British’. Or 100% Dutch, French, American, Asian or European. Whatever your opinion, at some point in your ancestry someone moved in and unsettled the neighbours.”
The advert was on behalf of the clothing brand Jigsaw, echoing Daniel Defoe’s famous poem “The True-Born Englishman”. It was put up to great fanfare.
If beer and diversity isn’t your thing, how about Smirnoff vodka, now recognisable from its rainbow-coloured bottles? Ditto with its rival, Absolut, which has now signed up to a promotion with the gay-rights charity Stonewall. Its website says: “For 35 years, we have been proud to stand behind the LGBTQ community, championing equal love for all.” It also claims that “Absolut have championed equal love since 1879.” Really? So Absolut supported same-sex marriage in the 1870s, when homosexuality was classed as a mental was classed as a mental illness in Sweden, and was until the late 1970s?
(Read more...)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are subject to deletion if they are not germane. I have no problem with a bit of colourful language, but blasphemy or depraved profanity will not be allowed. Attacks on the Catholic Faith will not be tolerated. Comments will be deleted that are republican (Yanks! Note the lower case 'r'!), attacks on the legitimacy of Pope Francis as the Vicar of Christ (I know he's a material heretic and a Protector of Perverts, and I definitely want him gone yesterday! However, he is Pope, and I pray for him every day.), the legitimacy of the House of Windsor or of the claims of the Elder Line of the House of France, or attacks on the legitimacy of any of the currently ruling Houses of Europe.