Do you live your life by your principles?

Again, I have no doubt this is true. There are people who do geniune good with their lives and are not motivated by a desire or* need *to earn large sums.

But conversely, there are people who design Nestle chocolate bar wrappers, who shoot Mercedes adverts, who sell their music to H&M advertisments or star in commericals for BP. Again - a fairly trite line of argument to take, but a valid one nonetheless. These 'creatives' who choose the paycheck over ethics are, imho, little better that the execs who are running these companies.

Agreed, and in fact I'd go a little further and say that those 'creatives' are actually quite a bit worse, because creatives have an OPTION. People who sell their art to the highest bidder disgust me, because artists are supposed to be better - to understand ethics. I don't think it's a trite argument in the slightest, I think it's the only really valid one.

Furthermore, we all go to supermarkets and buy vegetables from Kenya that are grown by people who are paid tuppence for their unrelenting hard labour. Many of us buy clothes from high street stores that subcontract every level of their manufacturing process out so many times that there is no real accountablity, no real way of ensuring the workers in whatever south-east asian town are actually getting paid *any *kind of decent wage.

I do my very best not to do this - don't buy from Tesco, don't buy from clothes companies which use sweatshops, yadeyah. My point is that I don't see it as being incompatible with making money. In fact I think we need more successful people with a grasp of their own luck - just as people who were born into wealth are lucky, even those of us who are dirt-poor are just as lucky not to've been born in a third-world country.

I can't really be bothered to go on, because I know many people view this sort of arguement as typical left-wing bollocks, because I know nothing will ever be done about it, and, like Tynan et al, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that we might as well just live life, enjoy it and wash all the 'bad stuff' down with delicious (locally sourced) ale.

Totally agree about the ale, but don't agree that nothing'll be done. McDonalds used to sell nothing but artery-hardening horribleness, now they're doing salads. If it's not for consumer pressure to resolve these issues, then nothing will be done, and there'll end up being no ethical companies for the rich to invest in. Then we really will be fucked.

EDIT - I didn't make this last point very well due to the fact that I was on a call at the time. What I was trying to say was that if all the ethical people are outside the mainstream, that means that the inevitable assholes working for large corporations will remain unchecked. Some corporations - like McDonalds and RBS and whatever - are so rotten that they jsut need to die. But others can be saved. I work for a large multinational communications company and we work in an ethical way but if it weren't for people like me constantly raising ethical issues, there would be a slippery slope downwards.

Or as someone wiser than me once said - don't hate the media, BECOME the media.