Human Life

  • UN rights need updating with new responsibilities

    Francesca Albanese has only been a Special Rapporteur for the UN since 2022 and yet her critical outlook on State-led aims in particular is coming through in everything she says. In defence of the UN’s position that she now serves in, as such a prominent capacity and in particular a sensitive context as the Gaza conflict is, the import of her thinking is going to have ramifications.

    It cannot be that a State in itself is just a figure of hate, and used by groups to calculate cold desires and intentions against us. The top-line word isn’t a separate definition of other things. It incorporates all legitimate activity.

    Francesca Albanese speaking as UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (Credit: APT_NEWS/YouTube).

    The death of children is going to be a fact of the matter for reasons separate to a genocide-level of intense military activity – showing, not proving – that the human situation is tight there. The no-rules tactic of Hamas is a daily incitement of its manifestation there.

    Horrible pictures and endless doctor reports have to be left aside for legitimate work to be done to spread knowledge and increase a coherent awareness. The existence of nations is at stake and the arguments of some can be forfeited.

  • Life is a story of how it doesn’t work

    The UK is a fraught place. We have fears over a lot of things. Every day stories emerge of it going badly wrong. For some of us this only confirms our worst fears. It highlights the fragility of life.

    A ‘Lime’ bike lying in a London river.

    The stocks go down. The bottom line takes a beating. The investment proposal is sunk. The bank transfer doesn’t come through. The pay isn’t as good as we hoped. They’re just some of our anxieties.