Should we have an enforceable right to food? – Professor Geraldine van Bueren Q.C.

UK Human Rights Blog

People are going hungry in England because England, to the detriment of the poor, has forgotten its legal history.

Nearly eight hundred years ago, in 1216 English law first recognized a right to food. Yet between April and September this year over 350,000 people received three days’ emergency food from the Trussell Trust food banks, triple the numbers helped in the same period last year.

Although justifiable outrage has been expressed at this increasing hunger in 21st century England, such hunger has not been regarded as an issue of human rights law, but only of charity. The United Nations, however, has made clear that the right to adequate food is indivisibly linked to the inherent dignity of the human person and is indispensable for the fulfilment of other human rights.

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Demons.

Jody Neil Ruth

I make no apologies now for what I am about to tell you.

This is not one of my normal blogs filled with jokes, idiocy, and me being a tool. You may have as hard a time reading it as I did writing it…

I worked within the mental health world for 7 years, between the ages of 20 to 27. I enjoyed the job – especially in the

local psychiatric ward – and I met some remarkable, troubled people, and watched as they disappeared in a haze of medication as their demons dragged them down…

I felt sorry for those people.

In fact, I saw friends of mine enter the system and become faceless and mindless drones, pumped full of drugs… I pitied them, and I took solace in the fact that I was mentally strong enough to never be as weak as these people… and at the end of my…

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First Mail/Miliband, now Mail/Mehdi – don’t they know two wrongs won’t make them right?

That’s what happens when people who think a little too much of themselves overreact to criticism

Mike Sivier's blog

It was a virtuoso performance, and one that earned Mehdi Hasan congratulations from Vox Political, just as soon as I could get to a keyboard.

For those who missed it, the panel on BBC Question Time was discussing the Daily Mail‘s veiled attack on Ed Miliband, which cast suspicion on the Labour leader’s motives by questioning those of his late father. It’s about the lowest kind of attack a newspaper could possibly launch – the kind that one might have expected from the News of the World in its latter days.

The piece in question was headlined The man who hated Britain and referred to Ralph Miliband’s “evil legacy”.

Mehdi Hasan, political editor of the Huffington Post‘s UK edition, tussled with Quentin Letts, a political sketch-writer for the Mail – winning the argument (and thunderous applause) with the following:

“Let me ask you a question,” he said…

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“Calling your cuts a war, is an insult to my father, and to my brother, and the service they gave this country. This is not a war. It is a massacre.” Conservative Party address, Jack Monroe.

as the general sat, the lines on the map – moved from side to side. and the front rank died… (us and them, pink floyd)

COOKING ON A BOOTSTRAP

The question we were asked to answer today, was “are food banks a sign of hope or failure?” I think we all know the answer to that – or at least we think we do. Here’s my story. You might think you know it already, but listen carefully. Here it is without any media spin, without any internet commenters, without any details carefully left out by left wing or right wing newspapers that don’t want to upset their readers.

I’m a girl called Jack. I’m 25 years old, and I was unemployed for 18 months and claiming benefits. However, I had my first job at the age of 14 or 15, working as a waitress in a local restaurant owned by a family friend, earning myself some pocket money on a Saturday and Sunday. Before that, I had spent weekends at my grandfathers guest houses, folding sheets and making tea…

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59 Quick Slang Phrases From The 1920s We Should Start Using Again

Do Not Link allows you to ethically criticize bad content

Skeptical Software Tools

Be sure to check the update at the very end of the article.

I’ve written many times about how skeptics need to take care when linking to bad information that we intend to rebut. Because links are used by search engines to measure the importance of content, linking to a piece of pseudoscience or misinformation (in the process of rebutting or debunking it) might actually have the effect of making it more visible to others. That’s not desirable. I would even say it is unethical to increase the visibility of such content, insofar as it has the potential to cause harm.

If you doubt my thesis, read this New York Times article. It tells the story of how negative reviews of a particular business actually had the effect of catapulting that business to the top of the relevant search result, thereby bringing it more customers. Talk about a skeptic…

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