Responsibility Requires Some Room to Choose
It is easy to praise someone for taking responsibility when they have enough money to make a mistake. A missed bus is an irritation if you can afford a taxi. Without that option, the…
Read article →Articles & Writing
Essays, observations and ideas to explore.
Compensation Must Leave People With Somewhere to Live
A payment can be made in a day. Finding somewhere to live is a different undertaking, especially for someone who has already had to leave home. There is the money, certainly, but also the…
Read article →Nobody Should Have to Prove They Are Your Neighbour
A person can live next door to you for years and still be turned into a stranger by a word. Call their presence an “invasion” and the ordinary details of their life disappear. Whatever…
Read article →Fair Treatment Should Not Require a Second Job
There is a peculiar unfairness in expecting someone who has been treated unfairly to become an expert in getting it put right. They already have a life to lead. Work to get to, perhaps…
Read article →Ordinary Life Should Never Have to Earn Our Concern
A person should be able to want an uneventful afternoon. To finish work, get home and be mildly irritated by something that will scarcely matter tomorrow. There is a freedom in that which is…
Read article →Being Heard Means Little If Nothing Can Be Changed
There is a particular frustration in being invited to explain your life to people who retain the power to decide how you should live it. You may be listened to patiently, thanked for your…
Read article →The purchase that includes another job
The price of a possession includes the time, work and responsibility required to keep it usable.
Read article →When a friendship needs a different shape
A friendship can remain valuable while needing arrangements that suit the lives both people now have.
Read article →Concern Should Not Depend on Whose Side Someone Takes
A person who says they have been abused should not have to pass a test of political agreement before being taken seriously. Yet when suffering enters a conflict, sympathy can become strangely conditional. Before…
Read article →Families Should Not Have to Earn Our Attention
When someone is missing, what is a family supposed to do with an ordinary day? There is still food to buy, work to attend to, a birthday approaching. Making plans may feel necessary and…
Read article →Stepping Back Does Not Put Us Outside the Consequences
It is difficult to make a life when decisions taken elsewhere can overturn whatever you plan. Work, a home, the possibility of bringing up children somewhere safe: these require some confidence that tomorrow will…
Read article →The Cost of Making Belonging Conditional on Silence
An invitation to a family gathering can carry a question that nobody has put into words: how much of yourself are you allowed to bring? For someone whose sexuality or identity is unwelcome, even…
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