Dear Simon,
Following your appearance on the Andrew Marr Show and your interview in The Times yesterday I wanted to register some concerns about some of your comments.
You are right to encourage all parties, including the food industry, to play an active role in tackling obesity. However, we believe obesity is a complex problem which cannot be reduced to the demonisation of one ingredient, nor can it be right that an everyday ingredient such as sugar is characterised as a poison.
We welcome the Prime Minister's commitment that all parties should have an active role in tackling the problem. For many years, FDF members have taken a responsible, proactive and collaborative approach to public health. We are fully committed to working with government to ensure that industry is part of...
Politics
Dear Premier Wynne:
I am writing to ask your government to bring accountability and transparency to Ontario chicken prices. Under supply management, producers have full control over the price, but refuse to divulge their secret pricing formula.
In a recent Globe and Mail article entitled “It’s time to ensure Canada’s food pricing formulas are transparent, fair,” Mr. Geri Kamenz of the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission characterized the province’s current chicken pricing formula as “a black box that few people understand,” adding “this is just not good enough for the 21st century.” He also revealed the commission has attempted “to prod farmers for three years now to come up with a fair and transparent pricing scheme.” This outdated production framework harms business and...
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Dear Premier and the Victorian Government,
We are writing to you today to call for a commitment to improving the health and wellbeing of all Victorians, and preventing avoidable causes of illness, through a continued investment in state-wide preventive health strategies in the 2015 state budget.
Obesity and ‘lost wellbeing’ from obesity are estimated to cost Australia around $58.2 billion a year1, and poor nutrition and high body mass have overtaken tobacco use as the greatest burden of disease in Australia. Nearly two thirds of Australian adults and one quarter of children are considered overweight or obese2. Yet only 6% of Australian adults eat the recommend amount of fruits and vegetables each day3, and more than one third of our daily energy intake comes from energy dense,...
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The never-ending austerity that Europe is force-feeding the Greek people is simply not working. Now Greece has loudly said no more.
Global campaign group Avaaz organized this open letter to Angela Merkel on the back of a petition, signed by over half a million Europeans, demanding an end to the failed austerity program in Greece.
As most of the world knew it would, the financial demands made by Europe have crushed the Greek economy, led to mass unemployment, a collapse of the banking system, made the external debt crisis far worse, with the debt problem escalating to an unpayable 175 percent of GDP. The economy now lies broken with tax receipts nose-diving, output and employment depressed, and businesses starved of capital.
The humanitarian impact has been colossal—40 percent of...
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Mrs Theresa May,
It is unfortunate that you have such disgust for bright and talented foreign students. Not only do they pay extortionate fees already to study here, but you are threatening to deport them as soon as they finish their studies. This will put off many bright students from studying here, or from carrying out pioneering research here, and our universities will be worse off as a direct result of your incompetence.
A research paper from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (June 2011) reported that in 2008-09, overseas tuition fee income was £2.4 billion, and this figure is expected to rise over the next 10 years. If you continue to demonise hard-working foreign students, they will not invest their tuition fees here. Can we really afford to lose such...
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Dear Mr. President,
This letter is not written in a spirit of hate, disrespect, nor is it motivated in any way by racial bias and is written with respect due the office and the awesome tasks that have been laid on your shoulders.
I write this letter because I am a tax paying American citizen who has experienced the American Dream and wants his children and grandchildren to have the same advantages and opportunities that he has had.
And no, Mr. President, I was not born into a one-percenter family, I come from a blue collar background, never went to college, have made a living doing manual labor and went into my chosen profession at ground level, worked hard and sacrificed to achieve success.
On April 13, 1967 I arrived in Nashville, Tennessee with a wife, a two-year-old baby,...
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Dear Mr. President,
First, I wish to express my deep condolences over the killing of innocent citizens in the recent terror attacks in Paris.
Second, I want to apologize to Your Excellency for not revealing my true identity. After you read my letter, you will realize why people like me are afraid to reveal their real identity.
I decided to write to you this letter after hearing my president, Mahmoud Abbas, declare that you had invited him to attend the anti-terror rally in Paris earlier this week.
Like many Palestinians, I see President Abbas's participation in a rally against terrorism and assaults on freedom of speech as an act of hypocrisy -- a condition that is not alien to Palestinian Authority leaders.
In fact, many Palestinians nearly fell off their chairs upon...
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Dear Prime Minister,
We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, call for the immediate and unconditional dismissal of Bill C-51: Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015. We are extremely concerned by the potential impact of this legislation, which fails to strike the balance between protecting Canadians and safeguarding our cherished rights and freedoms as protected in the Charter.
Bill C-51 has been widely criticized by experts and Canadians across the country as being irresponsible, dangerous, and ineffective. This law will detrimentally impact our social frameworks, democratic values and fundamental rights. Our security agencies currently possess wide-ranging powers to address security threats, and the need for this broad legislation has not been demonstrated. While minor amendments to...
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Dear Prime Minister,
We, the undersigned members of the National Research Alliance are writing to alert you to the damage being caused to significant public infrastructure by the continued uncertainty over operational funding for the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
Since 2004, NCRIS and its predecessor program has sensibly and successfully guided Australia's national research infrastructure investment; committing over $2 billion of taxpayer money to 27 major research facilities. Together, these facilities:
allow Australia's scientists to undertake world-class research;
enable significant science industry linkage, including the capacity for innovative Australian companies to access high-tech infrastructure; and
facilitate international research...
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Today the Border Force Act comes into force. It includes provision for a two-year jail sentence for “entrusted persons” such as ourselves if we continue to speak out about the deplorable state of human rights in immigration detention without the express permission of the minister for immigration and border protection. This strengthens the wall of secrecy which prevents proper public scrutiny.
We have advocated, and will continue to advocate, for the health of those for whom we have a duty of care, despite the threats of imprisonment, because standing by and watching sub-standard and harmful care, child abuse and gross violations of human rights is not ethically justifiable.
If we witness child abuse in Australia we are legally obliged to report it to child protection authorities. If...
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