Companies with Russian links to boycott

[Tulipomania]

I haven't seen another thread on this.

Can we compile a list of companies to boycott who are refusing to withdraw business from Russia?

I'll take a start with Coca-Cola, and Costa Coffee, which is owned by Coke.

Absolutely nothing. You can't punish every Russian person just because their prime minister is an evil bastard.

@Lookingforphev

A local asda isn't allowed to make the decision to remove things from their shelves, because they want.

Either Asda has made that decision, in which case all Asda's will be doing it (can't see that happening without a big media announcement) or your local asda just has a stock problem.

I worked for Asda head office. All storrs are heavily monitored and decisions to stock mainstream products isn't made in store.

Asda sent down the stock lists to the stores Thursday of what stock needs removing from shelves and made a public announcement yesterday that they would be removing products from shelves. Although they haven't publicly released the list of stock as far as I'm aware.

My neighbours are a nice Russian man and his Chinese wife in their little end of terrace... should I stop talking to them?? Would Putin then halt the invasion? Would the Uighurs be saved? Hmm.... no.

Meanwhile I'd better return all my Coke Zero to Tesco. And we'll all boycott Costa up the road. Too bad if the lads who work there lose their jobs.

Whatever. I'm sure doing all that boycotting, sanctioning etc won't make any difference because it never does when you have a crazy authoritarian leader in charge.
What we really need is someone close to Putin who isn't afraid to use a bit of polonium on him....

@Im2022

Don’t be so deliberately obtuse *@Keladrythesaviour*

There have been plenty of world atrocities in your adulthood that you should know about and could do something about too. Do you know what’s happening in Yemen? Palestine? Afghanistan? Or do you only see war in Europe?
Do you know about the Bosnian genocide when you were little? This isn’t the first war in Europe where people have died and have had to flee their homes in recent history.

A little bit of education and learning won’t do you any harm instead of making catty comments on a public forum.

Sorry but you are being deliberately obtuse @Im2022. I am in my early 50s and haven’t kept up to speed with politics and wars …wasn’t on internet even 10 years ago and had young children…so yes am more educated now ..so am entitled to have more of an opinion now..hope that is ok with you 🙄

This thread reminds me a little of the hysterica of ww1 when it was considered very unpatriotic to have German dogs such as daschunds and the German shepherd was renamed the Alsatian.. the Royal family anglicised their name and even my own family had to change their name as it was considered too foreign.

Boycotts and sanctions are all well and good but when will the Russia Report be published now?

Most pension funds have investments in Russia as do many councils.
A quick Google will tell you that.

Are we to remove our pension money?

Pension funds are used to disinvesting from certain areas,

apple.news/AsBymK7BcSyyluCJEyeLzsA

This article highlights the conversations in the USA about this issue. It seems likely that some pension money will be removed, partly due to risk issues and financial outlook.

Costa is often run by a franchise, our local one is a local family and they're lovely. If I went in Costa regularly (I tend not to go out for coffee), then I would continue to support what is on the surface mostly a very local businesses - they pay Costa a %.

I think we're all going to be better off trying to cut our power consumption by 10%. Then we won't need to import power (gas & oil, which could be used for electricity generation) from Russia, we'll save money on our bills to counteract the higher costs at the same time. That alone would be a massive help, far more than boycotting Costa. We can also cut the amount of loo roll by 1 square a time - and perhaps look at washable loo roll at least for wees - we import a lot of wood product from Russia. We can avoid barbeques in the summer other than using British charcoal.

The top ten imports coming from Russia to the UK are:

Pearls, precious stones, metals, coins: $17.42 billion (£13.07 billion)
Mineral fuels, oils, distillation products: $6.03 billion (£4.53 billion)
Wood and articles of wood, wood charcoal: $354.80 million (£265 million)
Inorganic chemicals, precious metal compound, isotope: $149.91 million (£111 million)

@Im2022 I'm actually an historian and very very aware of both past and current political climates. I do what I can for many, where I think I can have impact.
I wasn't being obtuse. I was actually pointing out that those complaining on this thread about people taking action when they previously haven't have absolutely not idea about the age or background of the people they are complaining about. You don't know how much money I donate to charity, my stance on Palestine or who I boycott, so how can you claim that myself - or others - are only virtue signalling or showing western bias?

@Im2022 I would turn off my heating entirely but I have my sickly and arthritic mother with dementia living in my spare room and she wouldn’t cope with no heat. I am doing what I can! What are you ACTUALLY doing other than stirring things up online?

You should be ashamed to laugh whilst people are dying by the minute.

@Fiefofum

Thanks OP, this was a useful thread until the whataboutery tossers piled in. Just bugger off if this isn’t your thing and some of us just want to do all we can and our only real power is as consumers!

I will be boycotting what I can (I don’t tend to buy soft drinks, costa or unilever stuff anyway), trying to use less gas by turning down the thermostat and thankfully we don’t use petrol as we have an electric car anyhow (charged solely on a 100% renewables tariff for the smart arses out there).

lol

lol
Really.
I have Ukrainian friends with families hiding out in bunkers. Scared of dying. Or having to flee the country.
Russian friends whose income has dropped 40% overnight with currency fluctuations.
Trapped in an unstable country, aware of the growing anger and feeling awful.
The last thing any of this is is lol wherever you are in the situation.

@Amnotamug seriously? I was 20 when the Iraq invasion happened; you didn’t watch the news or pick up a newspaper? Palestine has been slowly eradicated by Israel since 1948; never come across it in 50 years of your life? Do you know about recent genocides that have occurred and are still happening in Myanmar and in China? Or do you only take interest when the humans dying look like you? Don’t use your children as an excuse for your lack of knowledge. I’ve had 3 myself: youngest 8.

@Keladrythesaviour you are being obtuse, because your age and background have nothing to do with whether you feel empathy or not. If you were 12 when the Iraq invasion happened, you must have been told about it by parents or teachers? So you build knowledge and become empathetic. If there are people who don’t acknowledge suffering of other humans because they’re too busy, then suddenly it’s on their doorstep and they get hysterical. It’s not a good look.

@ButtockUp

Most pension funds have investments in Russia as do many councils. A quick Google will tell you that.

Are we to remove our pension money?

Better action is to pressure the providers into changing the underlying ones. Ethical investment is a good thing.

I don't think anyone is saying sell what you've already bought. It's more of a consumer boycott, which of course needs accurate info on which goods and retailers are Russian (wholly or majority). Then people can act if they wish, but can do so with reasonable certainty that they targeting Russian items (not Russian themed ones, or companies from touch the Russians sold out some time ago)

I think thus thread was intended to be a place where that sort of information could be found.

Unfortunately it's been derailed multiple times

@Fiefofum I laughed at your post, because it was hysterical. To help you keep your heating and keep your ill mother comfortable, I’ll tell you that Russia only supply 4% of our gas. So there’s no need to put yourself in any stress about using gas. Why the hell would you “do what you can” and put yourself through all that? Look after yourself first.

What am I doing? Nothing. I already boycott Israeli goods in supermarkets, and companies that support apartheid.. seeing as they’re chummy with Russian oligarchs it may or may not help.

@TellMeMoreHellebore

Putin has now said he likens the sanctions against Russia as a declaration of war

so we are literally poking a bear doing this

Well... do we just let them do as they please?

A consumer boycott aren't part of formal sanctions, so Putin's statement isn't about the same thing.

It's a bottom-up action, not an actual policy.

Buttock up

There isn't usually much exposure to Russia at all actually.rhey have a very small economy.

China on the other hand is a hefty slice of many portfolios.

[quote Im2022]@Amnotamug seriously? I was 20 when the Iraq invasion happened; you didn’t watch the news or pick up a newspaper? Palestine has been slowly eradicated by Israel since 1948; never come across it in 50 years of your life? Do you know about recent genocides that have occurred and are still happening in Myanmar and in China? Or do you only take interest when the humans dying look like you? Don’t use your children as an excuse for your lack of knowledge. I’ve had 3 myself: youngest 8.[/quote]
this

That's not the point of the boycott. It's to stop Putin funding war. It's not to punish the ordinary people in their homes.
People are either very thick or just repeat what others say without giving it a second thought,
Have you seen how big Russia is ? Do you think that all Russians use Dove bars ,Eat Magnum and use Surf for laundry?
Russia produces all these products, ordinary Russians buy the Russian made version.

This hysteria needs to stop, there are millions of helpless Russians who have no say or power to change anything, they are all against the War . some are risking their lives going out in protests , why would anyone want to degrade them in this sort of way?

Nice thought, but a bigger problem is how we boycott our own government, our own oligarchs, and their desperation to grab big money wherever and however, selling all of us who have to live here out in the process. Londongrad has been playing WW2 Switzerland to the Nazis for ages, nor is it about to stop. They’ll just find someone slightly more palatable currently.

The Tory party

I’m going to boycott reading Dostoevsky and Tolstoy and not listen to Rachmaninov and Borodin. That’ll show them Russians

In all seriousness, the “economy” isn’t just the modern niceties like McD, Ikea floral duvet covers and Costa frappacinos... it’s fundamentally how we keep ourselves alive in a modern industrial civilisation. It’s food, and behind that, fertiliser, ag chemicals, tractor parts, tractor factories. Pharmaceuticals and their manufacturing plants and raw materials. Water processing plants with chemicals and energy to run. Roads and railways, requiring vast amounts of steel, tarmac, concrete and hardcore. Hardware and software engineering requiring masses of silicon chips and semi conductors. All industries powered by vast amounts of of coal, oil, gas, nuclear isotopes and rare earth metals for “renewables” turbines.

An economic system that ALL modern people depend on, unless you’re a reindeer herder in the Arctic or a peasant farmer in the Caucasian mountains with a herd of goats and spring water.

The collapsing Russian economy will make tens of millions destitute in a few weeks. It will be a humanitarian cataclysm worse than the Holodomor and Cultural Revolution. I put strong odds on there being full out civil war in Russia by late spring as the economy goes into freefall. Ordinary Russians can’t do anything about Putin... he was so paranoid about covid that anyone visiting him basically had to go through “human sheepdip” first (isolation for several days, then walk through a tunnel misted with disinfectant). There are pictures of him meeting his advisors where the table is about 25 metres long.

Boycotting your Costas will merely give the great bear a cute little tickle and leave the industrial infrastructure that produces the vast tranche of Russian GDP in place.