Fairtrade whips

It isn’t often that I have sinister thoughts, or see things that may or may not be there. This morning, fresh from dehydration and a morning queue for milk, the stall where said queue protruded from had a large, hand drawn Fairtrade sign.

Now, Fairtrade, as I’m sure you know, deal with getting a better deal for third world farmers than Nescafe probably do but there is something sinister in this commonplace logo that I have never spotted before – that of someone being whipped.

For the uninitiated when it comes to magic eyes (I’m colour blind so cannot do those anyhow), my reading of the Fairtrade = torturous masters logo is in the black gap between green and blue segments. To me it looks like a body with one arm outstretched as if brandishing a whip. The whip is the right side outline of the blue section and the circle in the middle is the head. See it?

I guess it could mean one of two things. One that Fairtrade alleviates this sort of global conglomerate bullying or two, that hidden within Fairtrade’s increasing production and prominence in global supermarkets, some questionable labour practices are going on.

Ludicrous? Probably. But which one?