Unicef, Fashion Nonsense, NHS, Iran, Letters, Wisdom

 Unicef has launched a domestic emergency response in the UK for the first time in its 70-plus-year history to help feed children hit by the coronavirus crisis.

The Seven Works of Mercy
Frans Francken 11 (1581-1642)
Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [CC BY -NC-ND]

The UN agency, which is responsible for providing humanitarian aid to children worldwide, said the Covid-19 pandemic was the most urgent crisis affecting children since the second world war.

A YouGov poll in May, commissioned by the charity Food Foundation, found that 2.4 million children were living in food-insecure households. By October an extra 900,000 children had been registered for free school meals.

Unicef has pledged a grant of £25,000 to the community project School Food Matters, which will use the money to supply 18,000 nutritious breakfasts to 25 schools over the two week Christmas holiday and February half-term, feeding vulnerable children and families in Southwark, south London, who have been severely impacted by the pandemic...

(Rhi Storer, The Guardian, 2020)

How has it come to this? We know what the long-term solutions to the root causes of child hunger are. 

(See Food Poverty, Nov 17, 2020, Food Banks, June 26, 2020) 

*Jacob Rees-Mogg (leader of the House of Commons) is embroiled in a row with Unicef after saying the agency "should be ashamed of itself" for sending food parcels to children in deprived areas of London...

"I think it is a real scandal that Unicef should be playing politics in this way when it is meant to be looking after people in the poorest, the most deprived, countries in the world ... They make cheap political points of this kind, giving, I think, £25,000 to one council. It is a political stunt of the lowest order. Unicef should be ashamed of itself.

Lord Patten of Barnes, the former chairman of the Conservative Party, described his remarks as "shameful". Speaking to John Pienaar on Times Radio, he said:

"Unicef is a wonderful organisation. It does great good around the world. You shouldn't be denouncing it if you're a British minister for the fact that it actually finds it necessary to give some help in this country."

One in six children has had to skip meals, make do with smaller portions or go a day without eating during the pandemic, according to an Opinium survey conducted on behalf of the Social Market Foundation. There are 1.7 million children in Britain who face "very low" levels of food security...

(George Grylls, The Times, 2020)

Fashion Nonsense

A Singer  with a Donkey
Giuseppe Maria Crespi (1665-1747)
Photo Credit: Manchester Art Gallery [ CC BY-NC-ND]

...The pandemic has changed consumers' fashion perspectives.

"The pandemic has undeniably blurred the lines between style and comfort more than ever," says Nick Strickland, the executive creative director at the ODD agency, who has worked with Nike and Dr Martens. "And created the perfect hotbed for [these products] to flourish."

Prof Carolyn Mair, author of The Psychology of Fashion, says soft clothes feel good against the body.

"They envelop us like a second skin without restricting and limiting movement or comfort. The relationship between body and mind, physiology and psychology is well documented and so feeling good physically impacts how we feel psychologically."

"There is a general sense of unease and uncertainty about where our world is headed so it is no surprise that we are all seeking comfort," says fashion historian Laura Mclaws Helms. "Nostalgia never remembers the negatives of a period," she says, "so every revival becomes a sanitised version of the past: safe, comfortable and stable."

(Priya Elan, The Guardian, 2020) 

Some more gibberish uttered by the fashion quacks.

NHS Treatments

A Hospital Ward for Insomniacs
George Ernest Studdy (1878-1948) (possibly)
Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain]

The NHS treated patients with crocodile bites and people injured during volcanic eruptions in 2019-20, new figures show.

The health service in England also cared for three patients who were the "victim of lightning"...

According to the hospital patient care activity statistics, there were also 490 injuries related to lawnmowers.

Meanwhile, more than 1,000 people were treated after slipping on ice or snow.

There were 4,489 falls involving ice-skates, skis, roller-skates or skate-boards serious enough to warrant hospital treatment.

More than 8,100 people - presumably mostly children - were treated after falling from playground equipment, according to the NHS Digital figures...

Medics treated 10 people who were "bitten or struck by crocodile or alligator". Rat bites were responsible for for 48 hospital episodes in England, and 47 people were treated after incidents involving venomous snakes and lizards...

Three people were admitted to hospital after being the "victim of lightning" and another three because of earthquakes Five people were treated for injuries from "volcanic eruption"...

(Ella Pickover, The i, 2020)

Iran

Persian Encampment
Ovid Curtovitch (b. 1855)
Photo Credit: Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum [CC BY-NC-ND]

Britain "is beginning to look weak" over a failure to protect its citizens imprisoned by Iran, the former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned.

The government has failed to demonstrate any consequences for the imprisonment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe nearly two years after the case was formally elevated to a diplomatic dispute between London and Tehran, he said...

Mr Hunt also suggests that sanctions on Iran are no barrier to the repayment of a historical £400 million debt Britain owes to Tehran and that the money could be repaid in medicines or other humanitarian supplies.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe...was arrested in Iran in 2016 and sentenced to five years in prison on charges of trying to topple the regime, which she denies...

"We must also be nimble about the separate dispute with Iran over the debt involving tanks after the toppling of the Shah. When a court has ruled that the money is legally owed to Iran, why have we dithered in sorting it out? Why do we not pay them in medicines instead of cash if we need to comply with sanctions?"

The FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) says that ways to explore repayment are under examination.

(Catherine Philip, The Times, 2020)

Jeremy Hunt, you knew all about the money that is legally owed to Iran ages ago, when you were foreign secretary. You say "we must be nimble" about the debt and "why have we dithered in sorting it out?" You must surely take some responsibility for this. When was the Shah of Iran toppled and our debt incurred? 1979!

(See Iran - April 28, 2019, Oct 11, 2019, Oct 23, 2020) 

*Sir, It is bad enough that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is being detained at length in Iran, but worse still that our government and its lawyers could resolve the impasse simply by facing up to its obligations and paying a debt that the International Court of Arbitration has ordered us to pay. It is difficult for our government to demonise Iran when we know we are in the wrong. Time to pay up.

(Hugh Millar, Amersham, Bucks, The Times, 2020)

Letters

Once widowed, there was hoovering, changing sheets, washing the kitchen floor, only to find they all had to be done again six months later!

(Roy Arnold, Tenterden, Kent, The Guardian, 2020)

Wisdom

...Dr Morgan said that by March there should be light in the pandemic darkness.

"The vaccine is safe," he said. "We aren't in The Game of Thrones. Winter will not last forever. The three most important words in life are 'I love you'. The three most important in medicine are 'I don't know'. If government and others had said 'I don't know' more often, we'd be in a better place than we are now. The truth is, I don't know."

(Andrew Billen, The Times, 2021)