My Lib Dem colleague, Councillor Richard Oglethorpe, is determined to keep hammering away at the issue of the pension fund and investment in arms.
The Merseyside Pension Fund is responsible for pensions for local authority staff all over Merseyside.
But many people have been concerned for some time that not all the investments made could be described as "ethical". Liverpool City Council has made a number of attempts to change this, which so far have not succeeded.
Richard's latest motion is calling for a ballot of the Pension Fund Members. The motion, which is going to the City Council meeting, has been accepted by the other political parties. This means it will definitely be passed and we can move on to the next stage.
Interestingly the Pension Fund clearly does make decisions based on ethical criteria as only the other day we discovered it had been invovled in a recent campaign to persuade Tesco to raise the welfare standards of the chickens it sells. Now if it can take action on chickens.... it should be able to take action on the arms trade too!
3 comments:
People should know that by investing ethically they do not have to sacrifice returns. In fact the opposite can be true. On my site I list many studies that show ethical investing can provide returns usually equal to or better than 'conventional' investing.
I believe that if everyone invests according to their personal values, then, since so many of our core values are alike -- and are supportive of higher ideals -- that in the long run, only companies employing these higher values will truly prosper. And evidence of this seems now to be occurring.
I've been following ethical investing for forty years. My site is at www.investingforthesoul.com
Best wishes, Ron Robins
Thanks.. this is helpful
Paula
Who defines "ethical"?
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