A matter of principle...

[denny]

Was just talking to azekeil on ICQ and he reminded me of a rant I meant to post when I got out of hospital. The energy has gone out of it now, so it's not a rant, but I think it's still worth posting as a point for discussion:

While I was in hospital there was a fortnight where I didn't really eat much - I was on morphine, which does horrible things to your digestive system, the simplest of them being a loss of appetite. I lost enough weight (given that I started off skinny) that the hospital sent the dietician around to see me, and she recommended that I should be put on those protein supplement drinks. I agreed to this, until they turned up with one the next day and I noticed it was made by Nestle - who I'm boycotting. So I politely refused to drink it...

My dad was pretty narked about this when he turned up that evening - he was trying to tell me that "there comes a time when you can't let principles get in the way of what's good for you"

My answer would have been - if I wasn't too wankered on morphine to think straight at the time - "That's exactly when you find out if you've got principles... or just opinions". I couldn't believe he thought that I should stand down on something like that - regardless of what his opinion of the boycott itself was - just because it was now inconveniencing me.

Comments

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

This is why (http://www.breastfeeding.com/advocacy/advocacy_boycott.html). And if it means something to you, here's (http://www.breastfeeding.com/advocacy/advocacy_nestle_products.html) list a list of Nestle products worth avoiding.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

This (http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,862655,00.html) was actually the issue that pushed me over into joining the boycott - it was something I'd been thinking I should probably do for a while, but I'm low on moral fibre and they make a lot of things I like, so I'd been thinking about it rather than doing it.

I don't know why this made the difference - I think the whole thing with the milk is so completely outrageous that I didn't emotionally believe in it, whereas the loan thing was quite clearly just a really nasty bit of business policy decision making by a company that had no need to be like that.

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

Oh god yeah, I'd forgotten about that... Just so disgusting it's untrue.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

A thought that just occurred to me when this reply turned up in my inbox, on re-reading what I'd written myself: I class myself there as "low on moral fibre" because it took me so long to join this boycott... but I suppose I can have some pride in the fact that once I did make a decision, at least I meant it.

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

That's what I figured :) Your actions show that you had the fibre to stick to your decision once you'd made it, but I can understand making the decision in the first place sometimes needs an extra kick.