Berlin Hide and Seek

Grow season - part 2

Since the weather conditions in Ireland have been almost tropical ;-) in the past few days the plants are thriving, especially the strawberries in Mark's green house, in only a month they have more than doubled in size, which makes for a promising strawberry season... if we manage to get the greedy birds away... the runner beans are out (after lots of TLC) and seem to be creeping up the trellis quite nicely. And the slug population seems to be ignoring them, which is unusual but a very welcome development...

Irish unions launch Fair Hotels campaign

Today an interesting campaign was launched in Dublin. Supported by trade unions and some Irish hoteliers, the Fair Hotels Ireland initiative aims to be an ethical guideline to hotel customers booking rooms across Ireland. Similarly to Fair Trade stickers for products, those hotels complying with the Fair Hotels stamp (45 hotels listed on their newly launched website www.fairhotels.ie so far) will be allegedly offering ethical services, based on how they treat their employees.

Detractors might say there are many hotels left out of the list that treat their employees fairly but the hospitality sector is probably one of the industries, in Ireland and many other countries, where workers get some of the poorest working conditions. It was probably about time a 'quality' stamp was introduced to reward - or at least give some recognition - to those hoteliers treating their staff respectfully and complying with work legislation and workers rights.

To encourage customers, the site will also offer special deals in Fair Hotels.