Open and shut case?

[fivemack]

Tesco. Pineapples. 44 pence.

Next shelf up: Fairly traded pineapples. £1.74

The case for the prosecution rests

Comments

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

It may be relevant that the 44-pence pineapples are universally from Ivory Coast, a country currently in the grips of fairly severe turmoil, and whose travel advice from the FCO is 'under no circumstances go there'.

The 174-pence pineapples are from either Costa Rica or Ghana, both of which are basically safe.

I bought the more expensive pineapple - you know well that I'm a soft touch. And it's so much more convenient to do the one-stop process at Tesco than to buy the cheap pineapple and then figure out how to donate £1.30 to the pineapple producers of Cote d'Ivoire.

Of course, I suspect that the split grower:middlemen:tesco is 10/80/10 for the cheap pineapples and 20/60/20 for the expensive ones, so Tesco's profits are much improved by my buying the costly pineapple.

[fanf]

The pineapple pits at the Lost Gardens of Heligan are an impressive feat of Victorian horticultural technology, managing to provide enough heat and humidity from the decomposition of bark and horse manure and sunlight to grow pineapples in England.