Earlier this year, I did a blog entry attacking Body Shop founder Anita Roddick when she called for a consumer boycott of nestle products, despite the fact that Nestle was a major shareholder in French cosmetic outfit L'Oreal which bought the Body Shop for £652 million ($US1.2 billion) back in March. As far as I was concerned, to take the money from L'Oreal and then to assume the moral high ground smacked of hypocrisy.

Roddick explains her position more in this interview in the Guardian. She describes herself here as a "trojan horse" who by selling her business to a huge firm, claims she will be able to influence the decisions it makes.

"I'm not an apologist for them, I'm just excited that I can be like a trojan horse and go into that huge business and talk about how we can buy ingredients like cocoa butter from Ghana and sesame oil from Nicaraguan farmers and how we can do that in a kindly, joyful way and that is happening."

Put another way, Roddick is in effect saying she is infiltrating, not selling out.

If I was less cynical, I would accept that as a fair point. The fairest thing one can say is let's just wait and see what impact Roddick will have on L'Oreal.