Some very amusing tidbits from the sites of some of our ‘finest’ corporations:
Halliburton - under Sustainable Development:
“We are all connected. As individuals and as a citizen of the global business community we are conscious of the role we play in shaping our common destiny. We must understand our responsibilities not only to our employees, our customers and our shareholders, but also to the wider community and the lives we touch.”
so touching, so sweet, so very funny..
“..as a leading pharmaceutical.. our business activities touch so many lives, including patients, physicians, employees, investors, and the communities around us. We know that how we do business, as well as what we do, is important to our reputation among these groups and wider society. Maintaining their trust and confidence in AstraZeneca as a responsible company means ensuring that wherever we have a presence or an impact, we live up to our publicly stated standards of ethical behaviour.”
right..
Pfizer: “Everyone should be able to get the medicines they need”
“We dedicate ourselves to humanity’s quest for longer, healthier happier lives through innovation in pharmaceutical, consumer and animal health products”
er..why can’t they just tell the truth -we’ll do all this in the quest for profits. oh in the name of CSR/Sustainability we’ll do a bit of this and that..but we’re not really interested in everyone getting the medicine they need - maybe a few lucky folks here and there so we can look good occasionally..but you africans in need of cheap drugs - forget it. At least we might ‘respect’ them a bit more.
But it’s true! Iraq is very connected to Halliburton. I’m not so sure that they want to be, though. Never mind. Bill Gate’s soup kitchen will clean up the mess. I don’t think it’s just about the money. It’s about power and dependence. America will do anything to stay top of the pecking order. But, like the Roman Empire, it won’t last forever. Which is about how long it will take for me to develop respect for Halliburton.
It is easy to see the world in coloured glasses when you are a well paid member of the companies in 4 bed room in a good area of Anytown and have a spare 10 quit for the cause the kids (in private education) are collecting for.
Typical self consumed rubbish! They will be charitable alright but won’t shake the foundations. If too many of the lives they touch move next door, the charitability will end right there!
XXX
Daniel
I was being ironic. It is precisely the culture of dependency that causes all the misery. One man and his wife now control charitable funds worth more than Lloyds TSB or Tesco or the GNP of Kuwait. This research budget will have a distorting influence on scientific and medical research for years to come.
Yes I did think it was so ironic for Halliburton to have that on their site.. it’s all so ironic..
yes that was the thing about pfizer - they’ll give some kid a handout, but generic AIDS drugs cheap? oh no..
A lot of ads we see on the TV are funny because of their blatent lies. Companies seem to want to project an image that they actually care about the customer not the profit they generate. Captions like, “We work to see you smile” (dentist’s ad), “Taking care of you is our business” and so on are plain hilarious.
I know - and it makes me wonder about the state of advertising. creating such crappy ads! i feel like reporting all of them to the Consumer Council. Oh right - so you say this is natural then - if so - why’ve you got a patent on it? oh i forgot - we do have patents on nature nowadays so why not?
Fucking ad executives and their so called glamorous lives!
I stopped giving to charity a long time ago and Oxfam is a particular bugbear of mine (worse than bloody HMV for records - £12 for a scratched up old Drifters LP. Criminal!) The rectitude of this stance was confirmed by a piece I read recently in a New Statesman from around the time of Live 8 saying that Oxfam has basically cosied up to Blair and Brown and is pushing New Labour policy at the expense of more radical options for dealing with debt relief/global poverty/AIDS in the Third World. Just look at their wesbsite. It’s not a charity, it’s a company. Look at the details of their ‘board’ and see where the directors have come from - all opportunists who have embraced the new ‘everyone’s an entrepreneur and isn’t it fabulous’ mentality and awarded themselves nice comfortable salaries while they screw as much as they can out of their (probably voluntary) staff and customers. It’s capitalism at its purest - maximum yield from minimum outlay. I’m sorry, but I just don’t think you can make someone with a stomach full of poison better by giving them more poison.
But then, whaddoo I know? I’m tight as arseholes anyway.
Leighton Cooke, Sonia, Swipe, Cridewen, Twisted, etc
I too oppose charity of any kind but my opposition stems for an entirely different reason than that of the sundry communists on this blog.
All charities are evil. period.
Gates and Buffet are brilliant businessmen, but when it comes to understanding the root cause of poverty the are clear imbeciles. The root cause of poverty in the world is (I will say this loudly so that the deaf leftists can hear)- LACK OF CAPITALISM IN THE THIRD WORLD.
So by their so called charitable endeavors Gates and Buffet will help no one, they will only succeed in creating even more misery and even more poverty.
Instead of wasting their money on useless charity if they had decided to earn more by expanding their business in the third world, they would have created thousands or even millions of new jobs and improved the productivity of the third world people.
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On a different note - Halliburton is a great company and I would love it if they decided to expand their business into india.
Ok comrades, you guys need to check out this link.
http://newjersey.craigslist.org/wri/177003775.html
Like like a King!
Aaaaah IC - how I’ve missed you since the Grauniad ethnically cleansed itself of all the top-level spammers like you and I!!!
So, we meet again!
“LACK OF CAPITALISM IN THE THIRD WORLD”, you say?
This would, presumambly, be the same lack of capitalism that causes row after row of beautifully lush and ripe-for-the-plucking produce to be grown for export to the West in the same, supposedly famine/drought stricken parts of Africa we are being urged to send relief to. Or do Multinational corporations now favour the communist model of economics?
As my old mate Dennis Cripps used to say:
“It don’t make sense, do it??”
….oh, and Raja - thanks for the job!! I got it - start Monday. I’m checking typoes for Anne Coulter. Interesting work - I’ve read five pages and there isn’t a coherent sentence yet!
Robert and IC - i’ll be happy to host this space for a replay of the old Grauniad jousting..what larks..nowadays the old G blog has lost its spice and verve..
Robert,
Ann coulter is the sexiest woman alive, intellectually and phisically. I agree that she does seem as if she were ranting at times, but I think she has a valid point.
And my good friend IC is a big fan of Coulter too.
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“This would, presumambly, be the same lack of capitalism that causes row after row of beautifully lush and ripe-for-the-plucking produce to be grown for export to the West in the same,”
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When West takes anything from the pest hole that Africa is these days thanks to the leftist dictators, it PAYS for it in $$$$$$. I would love to sell what I produce to the Western Multinationals, because they pay the best rates. That is the benifit of globlization, people come togehter and wealth gets redistributed.
I think you have probably lost your job due to outsourcing and that is why you are against it.
Robert Swipe,
I can’t imagine why you should drag a great thinker and writer like Counter in this debate. May be you object to these lines that she has written in her latest article”PARTY OF RAPIST PROUD TO BE GODLESS”:
“In addition to the consensus position that liberals are godless, no one has made a peep about that swipe I took at Hillary, proposing that she have a chat with her husband before accusing others of being “mean” to women in light of Juanita Broaddrick’s charge that Bill Clinton raped her. Hillary beat a hasty retreat on her chubby little legs and is now hiding behind Rahm “Don’t Touch My Tutu” Emanuel. ”
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Well , let me tell you I like to read Ann Coulter precisely because she has the courage to speak the truth. The world needs more Ann Coulters now, and certainly the third world countries need her more than ever.
Oooh this is fun - i’ll have to read these properly over the weekend - Enjoy everyone!
Well, Sonia, now it seems you have your media empire blog. All the usual suspects have turned up. I agree that charity on the scale of Buffett/Gates will distort issues rather than bring any real benefits. We shall have see over time which research projects they sponsor.