Sarah Skilton

picture of Sarah Skilton

Sarah Skilton has extensive experience in homelessness, both in the UK and abroad including work with Palestinian refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Lebanon. In the UK she previously worked as a Homelessness Caseworker for many years. She is a regular freelance editor of the Housing Monthly Diary and Legal Update, both online at www.uk-housing.co.uk.

Massacre in Gaza

I live in Spain, and in Spain the papers are calling the latest violence in Gaza for what it is: another Israeli massacre. In the UK the media is terrified to call this monopoly on death by its proper name.
In January alone, the Israeli army killed over 80 people living in Gaza. On […]

March 3rd, 2008 by Sarah Skilton

The Moral Case for GM Crops

Last week, Sir David King, the government’s chief science adviser, touted the “moral case” for GM technology in feeding the global population, which is due to exceed 9 billion by 2050.
The implication is that by refusing to eat GM products we are threatening the poor world with starvation. But this ignores the fact of a […]

December 2nd, 2007 by Sarah Skilton

Army turns bank robbery into war zone

The Palestinian civilians of the Naher al-Bared refugee camp, near Tripoli, in North Lebanon, are under heavy bombardment. Fires are raging, smoke is billowing, and people are dying. Palestinian blood is drip dripping in Lebanon again; and life is leaving this world.
There are thousands of people including children and women still in the camp, […]

June 5th, 2007 by Sarah Skilton

Urban Regeneration: Who Really Benefits?

For a long time now, mainstream media has served as a platform for people in power.  Increasingly, the same article regurgitated appears over and over.  Prime Minister Tony Blair and people like him in positions of power, and their lackeys and press releases, are always quoted foremost and last.  The realities on the ground are […]

January 26th, 2007 by Sarah Skilton

Jack Straw Turns Fashion Fascist

Jack Straw doesn't think women should sport the veil, at least not in the UK where this "visual statement of separation and difference" is unwanted.
Straw, ensconced in authority on his comfy chair, not only asks women attending his constituency surgery to uncover their faces, he'd rather veils weren't worn at all.
Certainly the extent of […]

October 9th, 2006 by Sarah Skilton

Injustice in the Middle East Denies a Land For All People

When Israeli soldiers re-enter Lebanon, the people share a common dread, but, as is the global norm, there is a hierarchy: the privileged rich will probably be saved while the poorest risk exposure to the greatest horrors.
Former Israeli Defence Minister, the war criminal known as the Butcher of Beirut who later became an Israeli Prime […]

September 11th, 2006 by Sarah Skilton

As small as the fear we feel - as big as the enemy we choose

In defence of the defenceless, isn’t the targeting of a soldier of the brutal occupying army a legitimate target for Palestinian resistance fighters?
Irrespective of this inconvenient truth, the targeting of civilians is unjustifiable. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, like Ariel Sharon before him, is openly and primitively contravening standards of humanity in the modern era […]

July 27th, 2006 by Sarah Skilton

Why two homes are sacred - for some

The journalist, author, and environmental and political activist George Monbiot wrote for the Guardian on May 23: “Every purchase of a second house deprives someone else of a first one.”  He was discussing the possibility that people seeking to buy second homes in desirable rural areas might have to pay an ‘impact tax’ and apply […]

June 14th, 2006 by Sarah Skilton