Price of beans doesn’t matter compared to Kenya bloodshed

Mar 19 2008 by Bill Gleeson, Liverpool Daily Post

A FEW weeks ago serious civil unrest in Kenya prompted the Foreign Office to issue one of its "cover all bases" warnings advising people not to visit parts of the African country unless their journey was absolutely necessary.

These messages always strike me as being less than useful. Unless, that is, you are in the business of offering travel insurance.

Some companies, I am sure, will have a clause in the small print of their policies which means they do not have to pay out to people who have travelled against advice from Her Majesty's Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The images and news reports emerging from Mombassa and Nairobi at that time were shocking.

As well as showing the deadly aftermath of the unrest they also showed an economy teetering on the brink of collapse.

And it was to one of these reports about the Kenyan economy that my attention was drawn.

Supermarkets in the UK were apologising to their customers because Kenyan-grown vegetables and roses were not reaching the UK's supermarket shelves. The flights critical for the transportation of such perishable produce were disrupted after the Stay at Home warning from Whitehall.

On the face of it, and with harrowing images of blood being shed in Kenya, a shortage of green beans or roses in Allerton or Altrincham seemed to matter not one jot.

And, if the world's carbon emissions took a dip because aircraft were covering fewer "food and flower miles" so much the better. In the scheme of things, supermarkets apologising in the way they did seemed a less than fulsome gesture. It's the same when they claim growing roses in Kenya and air freighting them north is less harmful to the ozone than growing them elsewhere in giant greenhouses.

When you consider the impact these chains are having on the rest of our environment, there is still a lot of ground to be made up.

Step forward Justin King, chief executive of Sainsbury's who has just taken delivery of his new company car.

It's a petrol-electric hybrid produced by Lexus. Mr King uses his chauffeur driven barouche as an office, claiming the leather seats are like business class used to be years ago.

The technology with which the car bristles allows for electric and petrol propulsion to be divided.

When it's purring along on batteries it's not emitting harmful carbon dioxide.

For a firm responsible for so many food and flower air miles, not to mention a fleet of juggernauts on our roads, it's a small gesture.

I guess for now we just need to wait till our supermarket kings decide how much to charge us for their branded plastic bags.

Happy Easter.

MATT JOHNSON is chairman of Mando Group