21. December 2021
Winter Solstice is here! We traditionally greet this shortest day with joy and hope for the future, as we speak of the light returning with the lengthening days. We send words in paper cards, soon forgotten and discarded, wishing peace and love for the year ahead. But it feels like we are perpetually at war. With each other in our communities, divided by the fears placed in our minds by the media we consume. With other humans all over the globe, as we close our borders and our hearts to those...
13. February 2021
Fishes experience their existence differently from us. How could they not? They live and breathe in water! But like us they DO feel, they make choices, they care for each other. And they communicate in extraordinary and sophisticated ways which we can’t even imagine. Yet recently it seems every time I switch on the tv I see them being literally brutalised and murdered on film, in ways we would never tolerate were they mammals or birds. Whether old re-runs of Dexter, a cool art house movie, or...
30. December 2020
Paulie Walnuts 30th December 2020 Paulie Walnuts (white) and Silvio Dante (black) came to live with us in August this year. They were rejects, victims of a common mindset: buy chicks to use their eggs – chicks grow up to be male – decree male chicks must die as they are of “no use” to you. We had neither the room nor the set-up for two young boys but we made it happen, and it has been heart warming watching them grow and enjoy their lives. What lively, explosive little individuals they...
21. December 2020
We are so fortunate in the UK and other economically advantaged countries to have supermarkets full of "vegan-friendly" products. Eating plant-based, with a plethora of off-the-shelf alternatives to most of our favourite dishes, has never been so easy. The market for "vegan" foods has grown at a phenomenal rate in a few very short years, and that market shows signs of massive continuing growth. This "trend" has not escaped the notice of the biggest food producers in the world, who have been...
05. December 2019
On social media this week I read a comment, relating to a plant-based burger currently on sale at a well known fast food outlet, stating that availability and convenience of plant-based foods was a positive move for animal liberation. This was just one individual, yet I find it a common theme recently, with the current boom in the market for 'vegan-friendly options'. There is a very widely held misconception that the rise in availability of these options means less animals are being bred,...
23. September 2019
My presentation on 'Art, Propaganda and Personal Stories', given on September 6th 2019.