The Critical Commentator

  Whitewashing John Lavery (1856-1941) Photo Credit: Glasgow Museums Resource Centre [CC BY-NC-ND] Plastic recycling is a scam. You diligently sort your rubbish, you dutifully wash your plastic containers, then everything gets tossed in landfill or thrown in the ocean anyway. OK, maybe not everything  - but the vast majority of it. According to one analysis, only 9% of all plastic ever made has likely been recycled. Here's the kicker: the companies making all that plastic have spent millions on advertising campaigns lecturing us about recycling while knowing full well that most plastic will never be recycled. A new investigation by NPR (National Public Radio) and PBS Frontline (Public Broadcasting Service) reports that the large oil and gas companies that manufacture plastics have known for decades that recycling plastic was unlikely to ever happen on a broad scale because of the high costs involved. "They were not interested in putting any real money or effort into recycling ...

The Golden Stairs Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) Photo Credit: Tate Britain [CC BY-NC-ND] "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character."  Martin Luther King's dream is not shared by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Organisers of the Oscars have decided that they do in fact want to judge artists by the colour of their skin. A new rule decrees that the best picture award will only go to films that meet strict diversity criteria; films with at least one significant character played by someone of an ethnic minority, films with at least 30 per cent of the secondary cast being female, LGBTQ+, disabled or racially diverse; films with at least a third of the crew being from under-represented groups. ... In the hotly contested field of politically correct madness this reaches new heights of lunacy, and it is perfectly illustrative of the way...

  Water Drinking Fountain unknown artist Photo Credit: Tony Bennett/Art UK [CC BY-NC] Despite costing 500 times more per glass than tap water, there is no evidence whatsoever that bottled water is any better for our health (it actually contains less calcium and magnesium, on average, than tap). And yet, unfathomably, some 8 million plastic bottles of mineral water are bought each year in the UK, many of them on the baseless and marketing driven assumption that when it comes to simple hydration, you get what you pay for. Truly, future generations will think we lost our damn minds. Indeed, won't the future generations be right? Washing-up liquid A Young Woman Washing Dishes Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) Photo Credit: The Fitzwilliam Museum [ CC BY-NC-ND] What is the point of poncy perfumes for plates? You're paying for either a costly but ephemeral hit of scent, or for your dinners to taste like lavender. Washing-up liquid should smell as God intended: either of pungent lemon, Ori...

Charity (The Seven Acts of Mercy) Bartolomeo Schedoni (1578-1615) (copy after) Photo Credit: Blairs Museum [CC BY-NC-ND]  ... Britain is a country where food poverty is an almost invisible national scandal. Although we see the food bank boxes at the end of the supermarket checkouts, the people who are going hungry tend to tuck themselves away. The shame of not being able to afford to feed yourself and your family means that people sometimes don't seek help and don't talk about their situation. ... In Britain right now it's about to get a whole lot worse. Figures released last week have trumpeted falling shopping prices but these are entirely based on non-food items. Fresh food prices are creeping up slowly and "ambient foods" - the stuff we put in our cupboards - are going up between two and three times the rate of inflation, jumping 2.8% in August. It may not sound much, but to anyone already struggling to feed themselves or their family, that 2.8% means one thin...

 Michael Sandel is a philosopher and professor at Harvard University Law School. His latest book is The Tyranny of Merit which argues that the liberal left's uncritical pursuit of meritocracy has left the working-classes humiliated and betrayed. He would like a politics centred on dignity and the common good. ...The Covid-19 pandemic, and in particular the new appreciation of the value of supposedly unskilled, low paid work, offers a starting point for renewal.  Admiration Walter Langley (1852-1922) Photo Credit: Victoria Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND] "This is a moment to begin a debate about the dignity of work; about the rewards of work both in terms of pay but also in terms of esteem. We now realise how deeply dependent we are, not just on doctors and nurses, but delivery workers, grocery store clerks, warehouse workers, lorry drivers, home healthcare providers and childcare workers, many of them in the gig economy. We call them key workers and yet these are oftentimes not the...

 ...In this crisis, all that "I dress for myself - I don't care what other people think" malarkey has been shown up as delusional. It turns out that when people dress for themselves they hardly bother getting dressed at all. How many colleagues only attend to their top half on Zoom and are in trackie bottoms the rest of the day? All of which is causing a fashion crisis, or, more pertinently, a retail one. Fast fashion looks less and less sustainable with its "must haves" changing every three months. It is not that people have forgotten the pleasure of dressing up, it's just that as we hit a recession, so much "fashion" - especially for younger people - looks increasingly daft and unaffordable, even when it's cheaply knocked off. Clothes on the Grass Georges Seurat (1859-1891) Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] Oxfam's Second Hand September is just starting, asking us to pledge to buy secondhand for 30 days. "Every week, 13m items of clot...

  Proserpine Dante Gabriel Rossetti ( 1828-1882) Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND] A third of girls and young women will not post selfies online without using a filter or app to change their appearance, while a similar proportion have deleted photos with too few "likes" or comments, research has found. About half regularly alter their photos to enhance their appearance online and "find acceptance", Girlguiding's  annual Girls' Attitudes survey found. ...One respondent said: "I find it hard to go through Insta because everyone looks perfect and it lowers my self-confidence." Phoebe Kent, a Girlguiding advocate from Reading, said she felt influencer culture was one of the most damaging phenomena on social media. The 20-year old...said "I think now because I'm older I'm able to critique the things I see online and overcome it, but for the younger girls and young women it just absolutely knocks your self-esteem. I know  so many people that ...