Satan Starbucks

I know I shouldn't laugh, but Charles Clover's piece in today's paper regarding the evil Starbucks put a smile on my face.

Too much guilt: are we really what we buy?

Not that I don't agree with him, but it put me in mind of another more notorious critic of the coffee chain: the Reverend Billy, pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping, pictured here being arrested earlier in the year at a Starbucks by the New York Police Department.

The Rev. Billy believes Starbucks to be so evil, he regularly goes about performing 'exorcisms' in them, trying to cleanse those who run and frequent them (well, he is as much performance artist as activist).

A friend of a friend who experienced one such exorcism at a south London Starbucks - complete with a rip-roaring performance by the holy-roller 'Stop Shopping Choir', said it was one of the most extraordinary and wonderful things she had ever seen.

(By the way the Rev Billy will also perform the same service for you on your credit card if you desire).

Anything that makes you laugh and think at the same time can't be bad, but joking apart I wonder whether having to worry about everything from where your morning coffee comes from to the diamond in your engagement ring isn't going to backfire at some point.

How much guilt can one person experience before they tie themselves in knots and give up?

It all used to be so straightforward in my youth: no products from South Africa or Chile and no student at university ever joined Barclay's Bank. Now there are so many things to potentially feel guilty over - the logical conclusion would seem to become a Jainist (the religious people you see in India walking with a cloth over their mouth, lest an insect should fly in and be inadvertently killed).

I am not one given to eco-guilt, but since looking into the details of coffee production, it is something that I think about every morning when I go for caffeine re-fueling after my morning bike ride at the local Starbucks.

Yes, it probably used to be the local baker's shop and is now a big chain, but this coffee shop has also become the hub of our area.

Teenagers can go and meet with friends there, hordes of mums who stay at home looking after their children go for a treat and a chat with mates, to set them up for a day of household duties. Local writers pitch up with lap-tops and at the weekends you'll see plenty of dads taking the kids out, giving mum a well-deserved lie-in.

This isn't to eulogise Starbucks, it's just to say that people are so bombarded with ethical questions these days that I wonder if it isn't all going to become a turn-off, or, whether big businesses will just pay lip service to the demands of consumers by putting labels and certifications on products that have not been thoroughly checked out by independent sources in order to keep people quiet.

I don't feel 'eco-guilt' because I try to do what I can and I also feel that a lot of policy change needs to come from government and big business (although that is not to say there isn't room for improvement by me).

But there is also the wider question of what it actually means to live an 'ethical life', which has nothing to do with responsible consumerism.

My parents passed on to me (and I try to instill the same in my own children) the philosophy of 'do no harm'.

You can try to do no harm to the environment but there is still the question that we are social beings: Are we good neighbours, do we offer to help older people around us? Do we help our family with good grace when they ask? Would our workmates say that we are a generous colleague or team player? Do we give back anything to the community we live in by finding time for even the smallest bit of 'one-off ' voluntary work?

Those are the wider ethical questions I occasionally ask of myself when I'm swigging my 'unethical' coffee.