IN THESE credit-crunched times, it is hard enough to do the weekly shop without getting a sermon at every counter. Every time I pick up a product, it tells me how good it will be for me, how nothing nasty got anywhere near it, how nothing bad happened to anyone (including animals) in its preparation, or got released into earth, water, fire or air, and that happy workers sang all day long when they made it.
All this guff is designed to make me and you feel guilty for not buying that product and choosing something cheaper.
I have had all the guilt I can take. So I have launched a new marketing label. It’s called F-TP, and TP stands for The Planet.
F-TP is a label for fearless shoppers who want to spend their hard-earned money as they choose. Buying any F-TP product will be a way for all us Homer Simpsons to shout “In your face” to all the Flanders of the modern consumer world – and to all the pesky Lisas.
My F-TP label will be licensed to companies whose products or services comply with one or more of the following criteria: causing actual damage, or at least showing extreme recklessness towards the environment, and produced by methods certified as unsustainable. Any trees or plants used will not be renewed. F-TP packaging will not be biodegradable. If burnt, it will emit noxious fumes which will travel to the upper atmosphere and do bad stuff up there.
There will be known health risks; products will be assembled or provided in the lowest-cost, least-regulated labour markets, using a minimum proportion of unpaid prisoners.
Things will be tested on laboratory animals, preferably cute, furry ones with big eyes, even if they do not need to be. And they will genetically modified or irradiated (just to see what happens).
There will be minimum decibel levels for any kind of machinery, which will be energy-intensive and (if petrol-driven) unavailable in economy, electric, diesel, or alternative-fuel versions. F-TP star engines will require lead and/or sulphur.
In the case of food and drink, these will be free as far as possible of natural ingredients and uncontaminated by organic matter. There will be no sugar-free or lite versions, but lard versions, with extra saturated fats, available on request.
While there will be no de-tox versions, there will be re-tox ones to put back all those chemicals which shoppers get blackmailed into giving up. All F-TP tuna will be guaranteed to be dolphin-unfriendly. (“Oi, Flipper – who are you looking at?”)
All tobacco products are automatically F-TP, provided that they can be inhaled passively by a person at least 20 metres away from the smoker in an open space. Only high-tar versions will qualify for the F-TP star.
In the case of alcoholic drink, F-TP products will be free of any silly exhortation to “drink moderately/responsibly”. Such advice is always a waste of time, written in letters so minute that, by the time the purchaser has imbibed the product moderately or responsibly, he or she will be too fuddled to read them.
F-TP alcoholic drinks will present far more relevant information in large clear type, listing the quantity required to make an average-sized person drunk and abusive.
Meanwhile, the F-TP travel and tourism division will create inactivity holidays, located in places where there is nothing at all worth seeing. Patrons will be able to select from a range of exciting or improving activities, from paragliding to meditation, and discover that they are all unavailable.
These holidays will nonetheless be guaranteed to exhaust the local water supply, damage its eco-system (eliminating unwanted corals and other irreplaceable species) and subject the local economy to a perpetual cycle of boom and inflation in high season and depression and unemployment in low season.
F-TP banks will specialise in buying and selling financial products they cannot value or understand. When these products are proved to be worthless, taxpayers or savers will be compelled to purchase them or insure them as if they were valuable. (Incidentally, this paragraph was originally meant to be satirical. I apologise for the fact that, owing to circumstances beyond my control, it has now become descriptive.)
Executives in any F-TP company will have to possess professional qualifications in false accounting. They will have to cite three separate statements which were misleading and caused loss to people who relied on them, especially poor people.
There must also be a minimum ratio of 20 to 1 between the bonuses they award themselves and any value they actually add to their company. They must also present satisfactory evidence of personal expenditures charged to the company, and personal misuse of company transport, especially the executive jets.
F-TP will be a huge shot in the arm for businesses all over the world in these troubled times. They will save billions – not least on the cost of smarmy “mission statements” – and be able to turn all of their planet-trashing activities into a positive marketing asset.
Clearly, a huge number of products and services are potentially eligible for the F-TP label, including many which claim to be green or benign.
For that reason, the F-TP label will be tightly policed. It will be awarded by an independent institute (registered as a shell company in a low-tax non-regulated country) after stringent tests. The F-TP institute will thereby give reliable guidance to customers who do not care and refuse to be pressured into pretending that they do.
I almost forgot: F-TP products will be sold only in out-of-town hypermarkets with no bus stops, bicycle racks or admittance to pedestrians.
