Fashion – Who Cares?

red silk dress

So apparently it’s London Fashion Week. Or LFW as those in the know seem to be calling it.

Now, I like to think of myself as a fairly open minded kind of person, with a broad range of interests. But when it comes to the F word, I struggle to count how many damns I do not give.

It really, truly, genuinely baffles me that otherwise quite sane people can go into raptures over a heeled shoe, a hat or handbag.

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A Guest Post from Indonesia

Yesterday I wrote a post about Save the Children’s new campaign on breastfeeding.

Today I’m absolutely thrilled to have a guest post on the blog from Tasya, an inspiring woman who works as the head of advocacy and legal division for an organisation in Indonesia called AIMI.

AIMI (the Indonesian Breastfeeding Mothers Assocation) is a group of mothers providing advice and support on breastfeeding through Facebook, Twitter and Blackberry Messenger. They provide a 24 hour hotline to support and educate women about the option of breastfeeding, and also use social media to gather evidence of marketing malpractices of breast milk substitutes, for example crowdsourcing photos of posters which break the breastfeeding marketing code of conduct.

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The Power of the First Hour

breastfeeding in the Philippines

When I started this blog, nearly two years ago, one of my very first posts was titled ‘Breast is Best, but there’s no need to keep shouting about it.’

I stand corrected.

Sometimes, it’s absolutely crucial to shout about it.

Not when you’re talking about the UK – where mothers can make an informed choice, and where babies are likely to grow up healthy and safe whatever choice they make – but in developing countries, where the choice can literally mean the difference between life and death.

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Student Journalism: Just Another Story

You know how some writers shove a manuscript in the back of a drawer, convinced that it’s worthless drivel, then return to it years later and discover that it’s actually bloody brilliant and it secures them a six figure advance with a major publisher…

Well…

I’ve just had the opposite happen. I’ve spent the last ten or so years convinced that my student journalism days were golden, that I had spent my time at university effortlessly churning our several charming and original pieces of writing every week; from hilarious reviews to insightful interviews and ground-breaking news stories.

Sadly, when I recently unearthed a box full of old Student papers and peeled apart the curling, yellowing pages to read my first attempts at a writing career, it turned out that they were nearly all crap.

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