Evil corporation does amazing thing

Argh. I try to be good, really I do, but as Tammy Wynette nearly sang, sometimes it's hard to be a liberal. After the recent big business letter went round, supporting the ConDem cuts, I was all geared up to boycott every single one of those horrible, moneygrabbing companies like Gap, Next and Asda, but then I saw that Marks & Spencer was on the list, and if I boycotted them I'd be naked and without iced hot cross buns, a miserable situation if ever I've heard one. It was a tricksy little fella, ain't no mistake. And then I struggled again.

One of the stalwarts of any liberal boycotting list, just down from Nestlé, is Nike. First there's all the sweatshop hideousness, meaning that it is basically a certainty that your Air Max trainers were made by blind toddlers at 4am, who are paid a single lentil for each 1000 pairs produced, using materials and chemical processes that kill lemurs and are single-handedly responsible for 46% of all global warming. Then they ship the shoes back to the West and charge £100 for them, a mark-up of six quadrillion percent, which they spend on maintaining the champagne fountains in each of their global HQs and on advertising that makes fat people feel guilty. Also they sponsor Tiger Woods, the evil philandering golfer, which literally means they approve of adultery.

So a boycott should be easy, right? I can certainly resist their trainers - I love my Asics ones - but on the technology front, they've made something so irresistable that my liberal leanings have gone all panicky, a bit like they did when I found out that Nestlé make Nobbly Bobblies. I hereby confess: I am in love with the Nike+ sensor.

A small capsule, you put it in the custom-designed niche in your Nike shoe (or sellotape it onto the top of your Asics one). Then you press the Nike swoosh logo on your iPhone - for yes, this is sanctioned by Steve Jobs - and follow the instructions like the Matrix character you are. "Walk around to activate your sensor," says the nice American woman. You walk. Then you select your workout: time, distance or calories. You choose 30 minutes. You choose the music you want. And you start running. Every five minutes, the nice lady says, "Five minutes completed" or similar. For the final five, she counts down minute by minute. At the end, you get a "Congratulations, goal attained," and a rundown of how far you've run and how many calories you've burned. Then when you plug in your iPhone, it sends the data to the Nike site, where you can track your workouts on a graph and see if you're getting faster or not. For anyone who might drift towards the geek segment of life's Venn diagram, it is addictive. And anything that can make me actually want not just to run, but to run faster, is clearly suspicious.

Then this morning, it got even more extraordinary. I finished my run, desperately pleased with myself for going outside at all given that it had been a) cold, b) raining, c) gusty and d) the morning. I pressed "End workout', the nice woman summarised my goal and I was about to remove my headphones when all of a sudden a suprise male voice interrupted. "Hi!" It said. "This is Lance Armstrong. Congratulations - that was your fastest run yet!" I couldn't have been more thrilled if he'd cycled up and handed me an actual gold medal. I don't even LIKE Lance Armstrong although I can't quite remember why not - I've just been Googling him and found nothing. Was he using drugs to aid his performance? Did he cheat on Sheryl Cole? Either way, all is forgiven. From now on I MUST HEAR LANCE OR A. N. OTHER FAMOUS SPORTSPERSON CONGRATULATING ME AFTER EVERY SINGLE RUN.

And Nike, you evil genii, you can sit their stroking your big white cats, but hear this: I'm not fooled. I still don't approve of you one tiny bit. Well, OK, your sensor rocks and your Just Do It slogan is pretty amazing, but other than that you are big bad meanies and I encourage everyone wholeheartedly to buy all their sportswear items from other more ethical retailers. Except the sensor. Buy the sensor. As long as you resist all their other products, what could possibly be the harm in us all having things in our shoes that sends details of where we are going and how fast to a multinational corporation with a background in corruption? Sennnnnnssssorrrrrrrrr.