…and Values-Based Consumerism works both ways
If you’ve ever heard of Values-Based Consumerism you’ll already know people increasingly prefer to spend their money on businesses with similar values to their own. In the UK, for example, people have started asking holiday cottage owners about their stance on fox hunting before booking. If the holiday cottage owner allows hunts on their land, hunts themselves or supports hunting, holidaymakers are stepping away. But it works both ways. How about Values-Based Supply?
As a B2B writer, do I want to support business owners who vote Tory? Who think it’s OK to poke fun at ‘woke’? Who don’t think black lives matter and believe it’s acceptable to insult people who identify with a gender they weren’t born with? Who want to keep the old statues standing rather than labelling them for what they are or removing them to museums where they belong?
Why would I want to work with people who thought Brexit was a jolly good idea, and still do? Who hate immigrants and migrants, and are proud of England’s old dodgy slave-trading, land-stealing, genocide-committing Empire? Who reduce social security benefits and privatise bits of the NHS by stealth. Who allow hunting wild mammals with dogs when it has been illegal since 2004. Who handed PPE contracts to their unsuitable mates, partied through a pandemic, play silly buggers with Northern Ireland and keep on breaking International Law without breaking into a sweat. Who are sending displaced, distressed people to Rwanda, and who are extraditing Julian Assange to the USA.
The answer, as the master of untruth Boris Johnson and his cronies continue to lie and cheat their way through their latest term in power, is a definitive ‘no’. Take a look at this hilarious video from Led By Donkeys, which says it all.
Monsters like Geoffrey Cox, Patel, Gove, Dorries, Raab, Rees-Mogg, Fabricant, Truss, Porn boy Neil Parish and the rest come across as unbelievably thick as well as incapable of empathising with the ordinary people they represent. They have forgotten they’re public servants, forgotten they should be working on our behalves, to our benefit. The deep vat of nastiness that today’s breed of Conservatives and their conservative-minded supporters wallow in is not something I want to support with professional writing.
Brexit is a shambles. Too many conservative voters are openly racist, happy to admit they’re intolerant. Climate change is being side-lined. England is nothing but an enormous international money laundering machine. Young people are in despair. So am I.
The long and short of it? If you voted Tory, are happy to stick by your decision, and will be voting Conservative next time, please don’t come to me for copy. It might be a crazy business decision – we’ll see – but at least my conscience will be clear. You’re on your own.
