A new flavour of amenability for discrete semigroups is proposed that
generalises group amenability and follows from a \Folner-type condition. Some
examples are explored, to argue that this new notion better captures some
essential ideas of amenability. A semigroup S is left fairly amenable if, and
only if, it supports a mean m∈ℓ∞(S)∗ satisfying m(f)=m(s∗f) whenever s∗f∈ℓ∞(S), thus justifying the nomenclature
"fairly amenable''.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure