It’s a strange thing. Every day, we are assaulted by the intimations of companies who would have us believe they are doing their utmost to be ‘friends of the environment.’ Whither HSBC, who stamp every piece of junk mail with some environmentally friendly logo, or SCMP, claiming to be environmentally friendly while offering me another piece of glossy crap advertising a new development that will transpose my living environment from Hong Kong to Monte Carlo… if only I’ll buy into their concept of what Monte Carlo living is like… but we know it’s all shite… and today it was perfectly illustrated to me. There was a review in SCMP on Sunday for a book, I’m susceptible, they said it was a good book, I bought into it, and bought the book. It was “The Whisperers” by John Connelly. It was shit, to me, but only because I dislike genre hopping. If I buy a crime/detective novel, I want a crime/detective story… not a fucking ghost story, but that’s neither here, there, nor limbo. What really got my attention was the following disclaimer:
” Hodder & Stoughton policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.”
Expected? EXPECTED? Ex-fucking-spected!!!!!!!! So there you go, thats simple. Translated… “Yeah we know all you arseholes are concerned about the environment but we just print books, we have no intention of checking the provenance of our paper sources but our disclaimer makes us one of the good guys. So up yours.”
Hodder on a moment Hodder & Stoughton… do you not have an obligation to check? Wankers!