Minty Bit Stronger

I'm going to treat you to a story from my dusty bookshelf of memories. This particular yarn will be familiar to a few readers and some might have even lived it with me. For this latter reason I will change the names of those involved to hide their identities. So, why am I sharing this? Wrong question. Why am I sharing this now? The issue of fidelity and questions of blame, repercussion and consequence have hung in the air in recent weeks. I am left, watching from the sidelines, with my dusty storybook eager to be opened. Its lessons, eager to be shared. Are you sitting comfortably? Shall we begin? It's was a grim autumn in 2005 and I had been working for Skittles Theatre company for eight months since leaving Blackpool. It was a summer like no other travelling up and down the country performing day in, day out and not having a care in the world. My second tour of Alice in Wonderland was finished and my Tour Manager Natasha and I were heading back to the Scottish head offi...

I came across this info-graphic today and it got me thinking about the the power of these big brands. I was reminded of the scandal surrounding Nestlé breast milk. The boycott that followed was and is ineffective against such a powerhouse company. Nestlé can freely get away with marketing baby formula to sub Sahara Africans where access to clean water is often impossible. Over 1 billion dollars have been spent on formula by African mothers with perfectly good, sterile breast milk. A huge amount of money on something they simply didn't need. But Nestlé had spun a clever marketing strategy first telling mothers the powdered formula was better then giving them free samples. When the babies were on the free sample the mothers would often stop lactating and be forced to start buying the powder. (This is the same tactic used by drug dealers). In areas where sanitary water was an issue the powdered formula would be mixed with what ever water was available and often diluted to make i...

  Click here to watch Much to my horror I recently discovered that our building maintenance manager was featured on Cowboy Builders – see link above. Andrea Binda and he’s a seemingly charming and jolly individual. The reality is slightly different, - isn’t it always? Andrea Binda did a little work in our flat described at the time as a ‘free fix up’ that will ‘saved you loads of money’. I later received an unexpected Invoice which of course, I disputed immediately. Without fuss or fanfare it vanished. It would seem to be acceptable practice for my Building manager to employ the services of a chancer. Watching the programme above I gathered that perhaps his days as a whole-sale con man / chancer might be over but he’s still not someone I particularly trust. See earlier Pound Coin of Doom blog for more details on the idiots who manage my building. What do I do with this information? Should I go to the Estate Agents? Should I blog ab...