Over the past century, humans have come far in fighting discrimination, whether in the movement for civil rights or female suffrage. These battles aren’t won, but they give us reason to be optimistic that we are making moral progress. But there are further prejudices that need to be challenged. One thing racism and sexism have in common is that they discriminate based on morally irrelevant information: the colour of one’s skin or one’s gender. In this piece, I argue in favour of rejecting another form of discrimination which is based on similarly irrelevant information, namely, species membership.

What is Speciesism?

Speciesism is discrimination based solely on species membership. That’s not to say anti-speciesists should ignore differences between different species, just that membership of a particular species doesn’t automatically give one individual a higher or lower moral status than any other. For instance, we wouldn’t want to treat a potato and a human equally. But that’s not because the potato is of a “lesser” species. Anti-speciesism means treating equal interests of all individuals equally. Since potatoes don’t have interests, we needn’t treat them as equals to humans. And whilst a pig doesn’t have an interest in voting in an election (so it would not be wrong to deny one a vote), she does have an interest in not being harmed, just as much as a dog does. Yet we often find ourselves cuddling one whilst eating the other.

The implications of anti-speciesism

Many animals are sentient: having the capacity for subjective experience. This means they are able to suffer and have interests in not suffering. However, each year, 70 billion land animals and over a trillion fish are killed for human consumption. And these animals often live lives of extreme suffering – two thirds of them are reared on factory farms. Many animals live in pens so cramped they do not have enough space to turn around, others die from diseases encouraged by squalid conditions, none are capable of carrying out their natural behaviours. Broiler chickens, bred selectively for fast weight, grow so fast that many are unable to support themselves. With their legs crushed they are left unable to stand; and a slow death due to starvation follows. The life of each factory farmed animal presents a similar horror story.

Therefore the crucial question has to be: do human interests in consuming animal-based products outweigh the farmed animals’ interests in not suffering? Considering these animals are often literally tortured in order to give us a comparatively small amount of pleasure, and seeing as a balanced plant-based diet is perfectly healthy (according to the NHS, as well as many other organisations), the anti-speciesist’s response is a definitive “no”. Anti-speciesism implies ending factory farming, and hence, moving towards a plant-based diet.

Some words on intelligence

Often, as justification for our speciesist views we cite our intelligence. We admit suffering on factory farms is bad, but claim that as we’re more intelligent, our interests are more important, so they outweigh those of other animals.

Whilst intelligence is of some relevance to this discussion, it is far from the whole story. In order to have some interests, a high level of intelligence is required, such as an interest in freedom of speech. But that doesn’t mean our interests are necessarily stronger than those of less intelligent animals and that we can neglect all interests of other animals. We just have a broader range of interests. Certainly we would not dream of treating newborn and severely mentally disabled humans the same way we treat animals on factory farms.

Working towards an anti-speciesist world

To live in an anti-speciesist world, we’ve noted that easy steps individuals can take include adopting a plant-based diet. But we can do more than that: we should think carefully about how to use our limited resources to help as many animals as we can. Animal Charity Evaluators estimates that their recommended charities save as many as 11,000 animals per $1000 donated, whereas a vegetarian diet saves roughly 400 animals a year, implying we should be generous with our donations as well as with our diet.

Ultimately, anti-speciesism comes down to equality, treating equal interests equally. And who can argue with that? If we are to continue along the path of moral progress, speciesism must be left behind.

Homelessness is a multi-faceted  issue without a panacea. That being said, this article posits that imagining homeless individuals as victims of systemic problems only entrenches their disempowered status.  The counter-narrative that should be adopted is one in which homeless individuals are seen as people  every member of the public can help, without requiring grand structural shifts. It should be noted that it is perfectly legitimate and valid to hold that homelessness  is the result, to a greater or lesser extent, of socioeconomic factors. Yet it is non-conducive to dwell on structural sources of the problem, as opposed to the potential for individual agency to combat the issue.

Firstly, an excessively structural framing of the problem engenders defeatism, and discourages attempts to solve it. The connotations of a structural problem are clear: such problems  are fundamental, macroscopic, and require political or social capital on a scale inaccessible for 99.9% of society. Charity, aid, donations etc. are unhelpfully framed as “temporary, unsustainable strategies”, which in turn allows the average individual on the street to shirk away from contributing and providing immediate assistance that is often necessary. By reducing the problem to manageable sizes, the public can be made to recognise the difference they can make regardless of their lack of structural political and economic power. In a world where individual acts of kindness are emphasised as a key component of resolving the problem, the average citizen is far more likely to feel motivated to extend a helping hand towards the homeless. Problem identification does not equate problem resolution.

Secondly, it must be noted that political capital for the homeless has failed to increase over the past decade for a number of structural reasons:

1. Political elites respond primarily to votes and secondarily to lobbying power; homeless individuals, have neither.
2. Politicians prioritise more “visible” problems – so long as the public could not “see” the homeless (consider the exclusion of the homeless from public spaces through the installation of “defensive architecture” – e.g. spikes and barriers lining expensive shops), the problem becomes far easier to dismiss
3. Issue prioritisation within social welfare has predominantly been centred on “universal” issues – e.g. retirement pensions and healthcare, less so around “local” issues that affect only particular subgroups of individuals.

All of these phenomena suggest that the claim that a structural framing of the problem of the problem of homelessness better enables a solution  is – at best – an assertion; at worst – an excuse. Given these constraints and the above reasoning regarding why citizens are far less likely to care about an issue when they perceive their they cannot change it, we ought to abandon the illusion that politicians can be depended upon to help homeless individuals – and take matters into our own hands. Problem resolution will not occur so long as the public adopts a passive, “wait-and-see” approach.

Thirdly, the premise that all issues pertaining to homelessness are necessarily a manifestation of socioeconomic problems should also be challenged. Discriminatory narratives that construct images of the homeless as “lazy”, “unwanted” dependents; the absence of psychological support and humanisation that has rendered the poor feeling powerless and deprived of normal social functions; or even just the lack of regular supplies of minimal security (i.e. no clothes, blankets, or food) are problems that do not require “grand, structural solutions”. Instead, these are problems that can be resolved through the mobilisation of the relatively affluent to act altruistically. These individuals are far more likely to respond to a paradigm which does not present the homeless as victims waiting for the state’s assistance, but as individual persons – with their own projects, ambitions, and dreams – who could benefit from a fellow citizen’s helping hand.

Perhaps it is true that homelessness is a consequence of capitalism. Yet insisting that it can only be solved through structural shifts is fruitless and counterproductive: change will never arrive through the sheer act of waiting. There is an imperative to act now – and act promptly.

The suggestion that France could invade Britain had been scoffed at by expert government analysts for centuries. “Surely,” ran their line of reasoning “a nation with such a famous reputation for cheese consumption and surrendering to German invasion would never consider, or indeed have the capacity to attempt an invasion of this Island”. How wrong they were.

In fact, the astoundingly successful invasion of 2018 had been coming for years. Francois Mitterand initiated the scheme in 1988 by beginning construction of an underground troop deployment passageway codenamed ‘The Channel Tunnel’. From this point a covert beach head was established on British soil and the French army began to prepare for an inevitable invasion.

The crisis which actually initiated the invasion came as a result of the attempts of the French government to find a solution to the ever growing migrant camps around Calais. Unfortunately, President Le Pen’s strategy of forced deportations drove increasing numbers of refugees to escape to England, by this point welcoming refugees with open arms after Tim Farron’s shock victory in the 2017 general election. With her popularity sliding and with whispers of incompetence flitting around Paris, President Le Pen decided that the embarrassment of what was occurring had to be stopped. Deciding to solve the problem at its source it made perfect sense for the French Army, nearly twice the size of their British counterparts, to invade.

French forces marched through the Tunnel and within a week had seized much of the South East, apart from Slough, which any sensible conqueror would naturally leave to its own devices. Tim Farron’s protestations that the French shouldn’t invade “because it’s 2015” were ignored because a) it wasn’t 2015 anymore and hadn’t been for three years, and b) because nobody ever bought the Trudeau comparison anyway. The Liberal Democrat Government was replaced with a puppet ‘national government’ led by Tony Blair (“I have one priority in government: Occupation, Occupation and Occupation…”) while French armies continued to advance. There were pockets of resistance: Somerset held out for months, and a sustained guerrilla campaign in Yorkshire saw that county become an independent state. Nicola Sturgeon’s hopes of a free Scotland were scotched when French ‘tourists’ in Edinburgh turned out to be agents in deep cover. Holyrood and Edinburgh Castle having been seized, the Tricolore was raised above Scotland as across much of the rest of the UK.

Life under the new regime was distinctly strange for the population. Both Lancashire and Cornwall were given over entirely to the production of garlic, while all aspects of the thriving sparkling wine industry were drowned in a wave of regulation and taxation.

Nonetheless, noble resistance continued: Theresa May was elected Prime Minister in exile and issued inflammatory speeches from the last British Military outpost in the Falkland Islands (Akrotiri and Dhekelia, coupled with the majority of the RAF, had been taken in the early days of the war). Nigel Farage was rumoured to be heading the resistance, although his following of pot-bellied older gentlemen never seemed to carry out attacks on anything other than the posh new wine bars opening up around the country. These ‘’Supply Runs’’ quickly came to be seen as even more of a nuisance than the roving French gourmands who would set up in small villages, insist large meals were cooked for them, and then snootily refuse to eat them.

One particular fan of the new order was Jeremy Corbyn. He retired from public life to pen pamphlets explaining that he was no longer needed in British politics; after all, the French invasion had brought strikes and grumbling workers to the nation in a way which he could never have dreamed, while the massive Foie Gras complexes springing up around every corner represented exactly the state lead investment which he espoused. Owen Smith agreed with him, but said he would be more electable.

President Trump, El Rey de Mexico, King of the 50 States and Protector of the Realm reasoned that the UK deserved it because they had paid for a wall to be built in Calais, rather than making the French pay for it. Didn’t the UK know that America had the biggest army and the best of all armies and they would have stopped the French on their own if they had been there? Perhaps regrettably, nobody could hear him say any of this because he had been locked in his own office several years ago for the general health and wellbeing of the World.

Yet as time wore on, the people of Britain endured the invasion with surprising equanimity. The motorway food had improved as a rule, and a thriving black market had opened up in newly prohibited items, from busts of Wellington, to copies of Jean Froissart’s History of the Hundred Years War. It did sting a bit when Nelson was removed from his column and Napoleon put in his place, and the guillotining of the Royal family was certainly regarded as a bit beyond the pale, but children could now smoke in schools, and the state retirement age had been reduced to 59. Furthermore, those parts of the population not wholly happy with the state of the nation were kept in line by the paramilitary ‘striped shirts’ armed with extremely stale baguettes. The best way of identifying yourself as a loyal supporter of the occupiers was to loudly and quickly sing the Marseillaise at all opportunities.

Alas, this state of affairs was not to last. From Free Yorkshire there eventually rose a leader who managed to ignite a patriotic fervour across the occupied territories. For it was Hilary Benn, after decades in the political wilderness, successfully reunited first the North, and then the South in a campaign to drive out the French occupiers, eventually rolling all the way to the gates of Paris. But that is a story for another day.