Althea Shillingford

I’ve seen this trick before. Certificates, no jobs.

Whose career dies for this “administrative friction”?

Who funds this generosity — the same hospitals still chasing unpaid bills? A one-off grand buys votes, not childcare.

Another summit. My roof still leaks.

Detention without charge just needs a minister’s signature, not evidence. They locked up a 69-year-old, then dropped the case like a bad receipt.

We’ll eat ourselves into the ER. Again.

Another declaration. Beautiful words, zero enforcement. The Global South gets a paragraph; the Security Council keeps its veto and the dollar keeps its boot. Restraint in the Middle East from the same capitals selling both sides the hardware — sure. Bilateral talks ease nothing but the photographers’ schedule. Come back next summit, same communiqué, new font. That is the whole harvest.

Show me the treaty, not the soundbite.

Giving young people a real seat shifts the conversation to what adults keep dodging — vapes, school meals, mental health, the cost of eating well — and that’s exactly where the pushback will start. Whether any of it survives a ministry budget cycle is the part none of us has written yet.