I have made the decision to move all of my tea blogging – such that there is- to this site. So I probably won’t post again on the old blogger site. So here’s a roundup of the few posts I blogged in about a year – I’m obviously not that prolific.
Teaconomics 101 : This was a bit of background after looking into the horrendous living conditions of many tea workers.
In most tea-producing countries the gap between rich and poor – as well as the ability to access justice – is huge.
But, as I sit here and sip some delightful Chun Mee, I can’t do much but hope a thin trickle of brightly coloured green tea is carrying a whisper of economic benefit to the person who picked my tea.
In More Tea, Vicar? I further explored exploitation and looked at Fair Trade
At the Needwood Bio Tea garden in Sri Lanka, a fair trade tea estate, workers are fired after three months of employment, only to be rehired immediately thereafter. In doing so, Needwood does not have to distribute the social benefit provisions guaranteed by full employment, but the company is able to retain nearly all of its workers year-round.
Never one to leave well enough alone, I then explored the economically offensive tea bag in Bagging Some Extra $$$ :
So adding wood, paper, vegetable fibres, extra packaging, plastic, metal and string to my tea with an extremely expensive machine actually REDUCES the price by 20%.
How can this be?
I then wrote what seems to be one of my most interesting posts, Taking Tea with George Orwell, which was an examination of Orwell’s treatise on making tea.
So, what does A Nice Cup of Tea say to us about Orwell’s 1946?
Firstly, I love the word ‘nice’.
I’d use ‘brilliant’, or ‘superb’ or ‘exceptional’ if it were me, but Orwell says ‘nice’. When you consider that 1984 has a recurrent theme of the manipulation of language, the plain old word ‘nice’ both serves its purpose and reflects his status – it is very Orwell.
That post, and my related video where I attempt to recreate tea, Orwell style, generated a lot of comment.
Next, I moved on to A Sense of Communi-tea, where I spoke about being united in tea, in person and on-line:
Whenever I go for a High Tea somewhere, there is that sense of camaraderie, of doing something outside the norm. I often get talking to others at other tables, even though High Tea is essentially a collection of private events.
The remaining posts are all part of a series of three I wrote having been graciously sent some tea from India, I asked some hard questions – perhaps rudely – and saw some excellent answers you can read here in the December Archive:
I invite Darjeeling Tea Express to write to me and explain what steps they are taking to improve the lot of the impoverished Indian tea worker. I already know they share my concerns – I read their blog.
I hope that retrospective serves to give any reader game enough to tackle it an insight into my thoughts. And that there’s some benefit in that.
You know @thedevotea reading through this post of yours takes me back in time. You really wrote some pretty interesting stuff there. Thought provoking. I hope that others will click through your links and see what you talked about.
You’re right of course, the “George Orwell” video you made is my personal favorite of all your many insightful videos. I enjoy it every time I watch it.
Thanks for coming over here wholeheartedly so to speak,
J.