Country Reflex - A Poem for America

Tuesday 1 June 2010

mobile phones, pensions and McFuckery

I'm almost half ashamed of this post, especially having not even logged on here and written anything for a while. I suppose I've been too busy.
Anyway - this started as up update to facebook status but its too long, so here it is:

after a long a valiant fight for life, and in the face of much adversity, my phone has eventually spluttered to a more or less dignified end. No doubt it will now be sent along with all other "recycled" phones to the African Continent upon where small children will deconstruct it with their nimble fingers in order to extract minerals originally mined in the so-called 'Democratic Republic of Congo'. And because I - like most others - couldn't possibly live without a mobile fucking phone, I shall knowingly perpetuate this cycle of mineral extraction, war, poverty and general McFuckery safe in the knowledge that i will have a new shiny phone tomorrow with the same number as before. However, I can offset this hypocrisy by having canceled my public sector pension. I can now bask in the fact that my future financial security is more or less uncertain while being safe in the knowledge that I am no longer investing in mineral and oil extraction, and that this - my small contribution to not having a financial interest in planetary destruction - may mean a more secure future for the same nimble fingered children soon to be setting about removing the Coltan (Google it) from my dead mobile phone. Phew. This of course depends on whether or not you think the income these children receive for extracting metals from our dead consumer durables could outweigh the possibility that the industry itself is part of the machinery destroying our planet?
Do let me know what you think.
Answers on a postcard please.
Fuck, that's a tree - if only all postcards were made from hemp!