Churchill’s British Restaurants, a chain of government-funded canteens offering nutritious price-capped meals, were intended to counter inflation in food and fuel prices related to the war, as well as to boost community spirit. At their peak, there were more British Restaurants across the UK than there are branches of McDonald’s or Wetherspoons today.
Now a new report is calling for the return of a “national restaurant service” in some form, as a way to tackle contemporary issues such as health inequality, food insecurity and even climate change in the UK. A forthcoming report entitled Public diners: the idea whose time has come, by food policy NGO Nourish Scotland, marks the beginning of a campaign to introduce restaurants as a new piece of national infrastructure, a call backed by politicians and experts.
Last year hospital data showed the number of patients in England and Wales being treated for nutritional deficiencies had tripled in a decade while a January 2024 survey by the Food Foundation found 20% of UK households with children reported experiencing food insecurity.
And, Nourish Scotland says, ingredients could be sourced from organic farms, reducing unsustainable food production practices and food waste, and stimulating local economies.
Public diners have already been realised elsewhere in the world. In Poland, government-funded “milk bars” (bar mleczny) gained popularity in the communist era as a way to serve traditional home-cooked food at low prices, and remain numerous today.
Singapore’s “hawker centres”, market-style community dining rooms, emerged as part of the nation’s urban redevelopment following independence, and bring an array of street sellers under one roof to ensure vendors’ access to ingredients and space, as well as food hygiene standards and choice for consumers.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/31/calls-for-return-of-churchills-national-restaurant-service-to-tackle-food-inequality
Now a new report is calling for the return of a “national restaurant service” in some form, as a way to tackle contemporary issues such as health inequality, food insecurity and even climate change in the UK. A forthcoming report entitled Public diners: the idea whose time has come, by food policy NGO Nourish Scotland, marks the beginning of a campaign to introduce restaurants as a new piece of national infrastructure, a call backed by politicians and experts.
Last year hospital data showed the number of patients in England and Wales being treated for nutritional deficiencies had tripled in a decade while a January 2024 survey by the Food Foundation found 20% of UK households with children reported experiencing food insecurity.
And, Nourish Scotland says, ingredients could be sourced from organic farms, reducing unsustainable food production practices and food waste, and stimulating local economies.
Public diners have already been realised elsewhere in the world. In Poland, government-funded “milk bars” (bar mleczny) gained popularity in the communist era as a way to serve traditional home-cooked food at low prices, and remain numerous today.
Singapore’s “hawker centres”, market-style community dining rooms, emerged as part of the nation’s urban redevelopment following independence, and bring an array of street sellers under one roof to ensure vendors’ access to ingredients and space, as well as food hygiene standards and choice for consumers.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/31/calls-for-return-of-churchills-national-restaurant-service-to-tackle-food-inequality
the Guardian
Calls for return of Churchill’s national restaurant service to tackle food inequality
Public diners as seen in 1940s Britain – offering nutritious meals at reasonable prices – should be everyday eating places, says MP-backed report
A ruling from the US Second Circuit against the Internet Archive and in favor of publisher Hachette has just thrown that promise of equality into doubt by limiting libraries’ access to digital lending.
To understand why this is so important to the future of libraries, you first have to understand the dire state of library e-book lending.
Libraries have traditionally operated on a basic premise: Once they purchase a book, they can lend it out to patrons as much (or as little) as they like. Library copies often come from publishers, but they can also come from donations, used book sales, or other libraries. However the library obtains the book, once the library legally owns it, it is theirs to lend as they see fit.
Not so for digital books. To make licensed e-books available to patrons, libraries have to pay publishers multiple times over. First, they must subscribe (for a fee) to aggregator platforms such as Overdrive. Aggregators, like streaming services such as HBO’s Max, have total control over adding or removing content from their catalogue. Content can be removed at any time, for any reason, without input from your local library. The decision happens not at the community level but at the corporate one, thousands of miles from the patrons affected.
Then libraries must purchase each individual copy of each individual title that they want to offer as an e-book. These e-book copies are not only priced at a steep markup—up to 300% over consumer retail—but are also time- and loan-limited, meaning the files self-destruct after a certain number of loans. The library then needs to repurchase the same book, at a new price, in order to keep it in stock.
This upending of the traditional order puts massive financial strain on libraries and the taxpayers that fund them. It also opens up a world of privacy concerns; while libraries are restricted in the reader data they can collect and share, private companies are under no such obligation.
______________
It doesn’t stop there. This decision also renders the fair use doctrine—legally crucial in everything from parody to education to news reporting—almost unusable. And while there were occasional moments of sanity (such as recognizing that a “Donate here” button does not magically turn a nonprofit into a commercial enterprise), this decision fractured, rather than clarified, the law.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/11/1103838/why-a-ruling-against-the-internet-archive-threatens-the-future-of-americas-libraries/
To understand why this is so important to the future of libraries, you first have to understand the dire state of library e-book lending.
Libraries have traditionally operated on a basic premise: Once they purchase a book, they can lend it out to patrons as much (or as little) as they like. Library copies often come from publishers, but they can also come from donations, used book sales, or other libraries. However the library obtains the book, once the library legally owns it, it is theirs to lend as they see fit.
Not so for digital books. To make licensed e-books available to patrons, libraries have to pay publishers multiple times over. First, they must subscribe (for a fee) to aggregator platforms such as Overdrive. Aggregators, like streaming services such as HBO’s Max, have total control over adding or removing content from their catalogue. Content can be removed at any time, for any reason, without input from your local library. The decision happens not at the community level but at the corporate one, thousands of miles from the patrons affected.
Then libraries must purchase each individual copy of each individual title that they want to offer as an e-book. These e-book copies are not only priced at a steep markup—up to 300% over consumer retail—but are also time- and loan-limited, meaning the files self-destruct after a certain number of loans. The library then needs to repurchase the same book, at a new price, in order to keep it in stock.
This upending of the traditional order puts massive financial strain on libraries and the taxpayers that fund them. It also opens up a world of privacy concerns; while libraries are restricted in the reader data they can collect and share, private companies are under no such obligation.
______________
It doesn’t stop there. This decision also renders the fair use doctrine—legally crucial in everything from parody to education to news reporting—almost unusable. And while there were occasional moments of sanity (such as recognizing that a “Donate here” button does not magically turn a nonprofit into a commercial enterprise), this decision fractured, rather than clarified, the law.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/09/11/1103838/why-a-ruling-against-the-internet-archive-threatens-the-future-of-americas-libraries/
MIT Technology Review
Why a ruling against the Internet Archive threatens the future of America’s libraries
The decision locks libraries into an ecosystem that is not in readers' interests. Congress must act.
"Voters and politicians whistling past the graveyard being prepared for our children may have neglected to consult a recent article in Nature which holds that “the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emissions choices” "
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/growth-degrowth-kohei-saito-susskind/
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/growth-degrowth-kohei-saito-susskind/
The Nation
The Intractable Puzzle of Growth
For more than a century, the key measure of a healthy economy has been its capacity to grow and yet if production and consumption continues to expand at their current rate we might risk the very health of the planet.
A large majority—88 percent—of Jewish Israelis polled in January believe the astounding number of Palestinian deaths, which had surpassed 25,000 at the time, is justified.
Further, in a February poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, around two-thirds of Jewish respondents (63 percent) said they oppose the proposal for Israel to agree in principle to the establishment of an independent, demilitarized Palestinian state.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/02/netanyahu-gaza-palestinians-war-israeli-society/