The US authorities have allowed Formosa Plastics and other chemicals corporations to poison the waterways of the Texas Gulf Coast for decades. When local shrimp-boat operator Diane Wilson found out what was going on she single-handedly set about forcing Formosa to clean up its act.
‘He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.’ Friedrich Nietzsche
'I can no longer sit back and allow terrorist infiltration, terrorist indoctrination, terrorist subversion, and the international terrorist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.' Commander George the Ripper Bush at Madison Square Garden
She entwined my whole arm in her trunk, held it there as she breathed deeply several times, and then put the tip of her trunk in her mouth and sighed. I came a little closer and let her explore my face and neck freely until I could hear a soft growl of pure delight: the elephant equivalent of purring.
In the past 50 years the global economy has grown by over 500 per cent... the richest fifth of the world now earn 86 per cent of global income… the poorest fifth earn just 1.3 per cent… life expectancy in the world’s most ‘developed’ countries is 79 years… in the least ‘developed’ it is still just 42… we consume 22 million tonnes of oil every day… chop down 1 per cent of the world’s forests every year… and have killed 90 per cent of the world’s big fish. Has the time come to give up on globalisation?
I had always wondered what it was like to work at a supermarket checkout. So when I stumbled upon an article about a Tesco scheme called Twist – short for Tesco Week In Store Together – I took my chance.
No European country is as reliant on supermarkets for its food shopping as Britain. It is no coincidence that the UK also has the worst eating habits in Europe.
The most successful celebrity endorsement ever, Prunella Scales’ TV ads have added more than £2.2 billion to Tesco’s profts. And yet she says she really cares about the environment.
Are you a ‘premium loyal’, a ‘loyal low spender’, a ‘can’t stay away’… or don’t you care? Tesco does, and uses the data collected from your loyalty card to dictate what you buy, when you buy and how much you buy.
As the supermarket doors glide open there they are – cosmetically perfect, irresistibly firm, brilliantly coloured fruit and vegetables. And yet, when you get them home, they taste of nothing. Is it the way you cooked them, or have you just selected badly? No, you’ve been conned.
Lying on tilted beds of glistening ice, fish from around the world gaze unblinkingly at bored supermarket shoppers. Red snappers, ‘air freighted for freshness’ from the Indian Ocean; Chilean seabass ‘previously frozen’ from the Southern Atlantic; Farmed salmon from the Isles of Scotland; exotic, seemingly abundant fresh fish.
