As footballer Marcus Rashford found when he campaigned against child food poverty, and called for universal free school meals, he was demonised by the press and denounced by Tory politicians. Why? Because he challenged power and questioned the structures that make and keep people poor. Similarly, Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camara asked why, “when I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist”. Better a communist than a saint. Solidarity, not charity (even with the royal seal of approval) is the only way to rid us of poverty.
Andrew Fisher, ‘Royal visits to baby banks are a dangerous normalisation of poverty’, iNews
All you will ever need to know about the 2024 London elections
With the London elections, and two Croydon ward by-elections, just weeks away, our latest episode of the Croydon Insider, our monthly news podcast, discusses what your vote counts for, how the voting system has changed for London Mayor, which parts of Croydon will voters be getting four ballot papers, and what you should be looking for in a good local councillor.
And back by popular demand is our…
California flooding reveals an unexpected solution to endless droughts How can California hold onto some of that water it desperately needs? Put those flood waters back in the ground. https://www.inverse.com/innovation/california-flooding-water-drought-solution
The year was 1814, and Gen. Andrew Jackson had a problem. He and his American forces were engaged in a pitched fight for New Orleans against the might of the British Empire. The city’s defenses were severely lacking, as was the supply of men who could engage with the legendary British Navy in these waters. He needed someone who really knew the bayou, and knew how to use it to their advantage. Luckily, he knew where to find them.
There were few who knew the waters around New Orleans better than Jean and Pierre Lafitte. They’d operated a very successful import and marine salvage business here for years - in other words, they were smugglers and pirates. Good ones, too, who had amassed a small fortune and assembled a small fleet. But they’d also broken the first rule of piracy - they got caught. And were now sitting in a cell.
So Jackson arranged for Jean Lafitte to meet him on the second floor of the Old Absinthe House, to try and convince him to work for the Americans in the upcoming battle. Lafitte made the general an offer - they’d fight in exchange for Presidential pardons for himself, his brother and all their men, as well as the return of their fleet. Jackson readily agreed, and the rest, as they say, is history!
Today the Old Absinthe House still operates as a bar and event space in the heart of the French Quarter. It welcomes thousands of guests each year - including, it seems, Jean Lafitte! Many people have seen him in the bar, sharing a beer with none other than Andrew Jackson, while others have heard and even walked in on Lafitte and his men throwing a wild party on the second floor.
The Old Absinthe House is located directly across the street from the Royal Sonesta Hotel. Who knows, we just might run into some pirates during Miss Fisher Con 2024!
A few weeks ago, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) found that 3.8 million people in the UK – more than one in 20 of us – had experienced “destitution”. For most of my lifetime, I had regarded the word “destitution” as something of an historical artefact, a relic of Dickensian novels and the Great Depression of the inter-war years. Poverty has always been with us – I grew up in the 1980s in a single parent family and was on free school meals. But deep, grinding poverty is back. Decades of progress are being unravelled. The JRF defines destitution as “when people cannot afford to meet their most basic physical needs to stay warm, dry, clean and fed”. Think about that for a minute: one in every 20 of us, and approximately one in 15 children (two in every classroom), are struggling to stay warm, dry, clean and fed.
Andrew Fisher, ‘Royal visits to baby banks are a dangerous normalisation of poverty’, iNews
How myth of shared ownership has made housing crisis worse
Six years ago, one of Inside Croydon’s loyal readers reported on the sheer unaffordability of the shared ownership homes being built in the borough by Brick by Brick. Now, as ANDREW FISHER explains, a parliamentary select committee has published a report that suggests our reader was right all along…
The UK has a housing crisis – it is a crisis of rough sleeping, homelessness and widespread…
So I've started to think recently that I might be attracted to women. I've thought about things I used to do when I was in denial and becoming obsessed with certain actress for certain periods of time might tie into that. Being obsessed and searching out all of their content was probably not because I just really respected these women. It's interesting to think about how I've been like this for years without realizing or without anyone telling me that I'm probably gay. It's rough being a helpless- bisexual?, lesbian? I'm not sure yet.