People still shop as though ethics were some kind of optional extra, relevant only to a few premium purchases. Consumers tend to operate according to a double-standard: they are outraged when companies do not ensure they source ethically but they do not often make much effort to source ethically themselves.
ReadDenis MacShane, Dolly Parton, Jamie Oliver, Ukip, the BNP and the sex-abuse scandal are connected by a failure of the political classes to deal with the problems faced by those left behind in post-industrial Britain. Political parties have not focused enough on society’s losers, finding it more expedient to chase the swing voter and morally easier to call for multiculturalism. What we are now seeing with the rise of Ukip, however, is that dodging the hard issues is socially corrosive and electorally dangerous.
ReadIt turns out that the more we understand how nutrition works and how complicated it is, the simpler the dietary advice we need to follow. In theory, any number of changes might make your diet healthier, but in practice diet is too complicated for us to be able to micromanage it. Too much is unknown about how the elements of diet interact for us to be able to change the variables to achieve the result we desire.
Read“All of existence is pestiferous, my own self most of all.” So wrote the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in his journal, a week after his 26th birthday. We may not envy Kierkegaard his gloom but it certainly did his reputation for profundity no harm. It is as though there is a law that states what is deep must also be dark…
ReadA hobby is an activity that doesn’t go anywhere, like the child’s hobby horse from which it takes its name. Little wonder, then, that hobbies have been considered trivial pastimes, diverting adjuncts to the serious business of life, best confined to our spare time. Perhaps this hierarchy of importance needs to be reversed…
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