Ready to be bored to death?

[Kris]

Hi all! i have a very exciting question about pensions for anyone in the know!

At the tender young age of 29 I finally sorted out a pension yesterday, with the choice to stick 100% of my money into "Ethical Funds".

Now, I would very much like to keep track of where my money is being invested and then investigate where those companies are indeed what I would describe as ethical.

Anyone got any ideas as to a good website that tracks the ethics of companies?

Thanks, and also, sorry.

Krissssssssss
x
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"fashioned by the blade of a world that doesn't care,
feeling so removed, drifting thru stealing air then...
pause and think about it, try to move and shift the pain, but it's there you feel it kicking and you scream and feel alive."

[CiaranMac]

sounds very difficult and not worth the hassle. There is little room for ethics in getting a good return on your pension. Try living ethically in other parts of your life (i'm sure you do already).

To go off on a tangent that's got nothing to do with you kinkster There's alot of this ethical living and products and stuff in the guardian of late, and I think it is complete bullshit, just more crap for smug wankers to drone on about over fair-trade coffee. Don't get me wrong, I agree with being ethical in principle, but rather tahn thinking it's just about buying overpriced products that you read about in observer food monthly, try just being a good genuine person first. I think it's all rather dubious, and I wonder how much of it stands up to scrutiny, most organic foods are a joke for starter, overpriced and quite often no different from supermarket mass-produced entities in any way apart from price. Everyone wants to be seen as right on these days, but they also want it to be in as lazy a way as possible i.e. buying fair-trade stuff and talking shite about it afterwards. Ultimately it's the smugness what gets me. Almost a feeling that only the middle classes can afford to be ethically minded in terms of the produce they purchase, which is bollocks, anyone can be ethically minded but it's about more than buying over-priced shite with a fair-trade sticker.
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[Kris]

I can understand where you are coming from, but I can't fully agree with you there Ciaran.

Surely part of living ethically involves buying ethically?

I'm far from smug or middle-class (the two not being mutually exclusive) but I do my best to buy fair trade / fsc / organic where I can and I do feel better about myself for doing it. Is that so wrong?

x
_________________
"fashioned by the blade of a world that doesn't care,
feeling so removed, drifting thru stealing air then...
pause and think about it, try to move and shift the pain, but it's there you feel it kicking and you scream and feel alive."

[CiaranMac]

[Dave w.]

if a fund is advertising itself as "ethical" there should be some conditions for which companies it will consider investing in (eg no oil companies, no companies that don't respect human rights for workers etc) and you should be able to get hold a copy of these. i'd have thought that it would be easier to check that and see if it meets your idea of ethical (provided it's specific enough) than to try to track the actions of all the companies the fund invests in over time. then, if you decide to go for it, you can leave it to the fund managers to enforce their stated criteria.

it's easy to be cynical about this stuff, but you can only do what you think is right as an individual. surely anything that makes thing a little better for the world's poorest people is worth doing, though.

[gillworm]

I applaude your intentions but as someone with a non-ethical pension that appears to be making no money whatsoever I suspect that your biggest problem will be whether you get a good return for your money - ie, something to live on when you retire!

perhaps an independent financial adviser is your best option, they'll know what's available.
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(and gillworm! she's so funny!)

[John Mc]

Is a non-ethical pension one which specifically invests in sweatshops and funding James Bond-style baddies? I haven't got a pension either which would be a problem if I wasn't so damn sure I'll be rich someday. I'd imagine it would be a nightmare trying to check up on your pension fund to ensure that it really was investing in ethical companies, it would depend on how many companies they'd invested in and how often they change their holdings. Like Dave W says an ethical fund will generally have some blanket statements such as "we won't invest in sweatshops and James Bond-style baddies" so I think the best you could do is check that that list meets your requirements and trust them that they're doing the research.

Alternatively you could invest in individual companies yourself but thats even more of a hassle and your company might not contribute and you wouldn't ahve a diversified portfolio and....i don't actually know what I'm talking about. I'll get back to writing about Robbie Fowler.

[CiaranMac]

I also suspect there could be several PhD's written on what constitutes an ethical company. Even if they gave me a list of them, I would be hard pushed to figure out if they were indeed 'ethical' if I even knew how to define that in regard to a company. Just out of interest, could you guys list some ethical companies here (excluding out and out charities of course)?
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[Kris]

I would list some ethical companies, but as you say, I'd more than likely fall flat on my face when it's pointed out that such a company sponsors North Korean arms development, or make blue smarties or something.

Here's the overview of my fund:

"The Fund will invest via the AXA UK Investment Company ICVC Ethical Fund in a range of
companies whose products, services or method of operation are considered not to be detrimental to
the global community, based on research conducted by EIRIS." http://www.eiris.org/


Obviously the first question there is, how ethical are AXA?!
_________________
"fashioned by the blade of a world that doesn't care,
feeling so removed, drifting thru stealing air then...
pause and think about it, try to move and shift the pain, but it's there you feel it kicking and you scream and feel alive."

[mixedcasesspaces]

I really want some Smarties now.
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www.mixedcasesspaces.co.uk

[Dave w.]

the research areas are quite wide-ranging:
http://www.eiris.org/pages/top%20menu/about%20eiris%20and%20its%20research/research%20philosophy.htm

but it's all relative. how do they make a judgment about a company is or isn't detrimental to the global community based on a mass of information? maybe it's enough that these issues are being considered when the decisions are made. even if there's no such thing as an out-and-out ethical company, this should weed out sweat-shops and james bond-style baddies!

i guess axa can't be that ethical if they have an ethical fund, rather than being an ethical company with only ethical funds. hard to say whether it's a marketing gimmick or giving ethical investors access to a fund. but i'm in no position to criticise as my company pension scheme doesn't offer an ethical option, and i still joined to get the company contributions.

[John Mc]

It's really wide ranging isn't it: alcohol, pornography, tobacco - all human life is there. Although "It should be stressed that EIRIS does NOT take a view on whether any of these are ‘bad’". EIRIS sounds like a great company to have a night out with.