This morning I spoke to the family. “We must use less water, shorter showers, less energy, turn the lights off…” The empty crunching of honey nut cornflakes and the soft chew of a banana met my concerns. The only thing made in England here is my mug and breakfast bowl… Good old English clay. The rest, even the wooden table, had all travelled many thousands of miles to get here. Gazing at the long list of nutrients on the cornflakes packet and the labels on the non fair trade tea, I try to imagine there is a list of energy consumption, carbon emissions and person hours put into getting it to my table, perhaps the wage, the number of children the family could send to school and whether they could ever get to a hospital.
Teenagers, even those in the twenties, have a way of pointing out things; the need for shorter showers seemed trivial given every other abomination in our lifestyles
And then there is the war in Iraq. Is this the greatest act of immorality? Have 35,000 people or 150,000 people been killed in a horrible gut wrenching manner. Am I supposed to be relieved that it is less than the quarter of a million who perished in Yugoslavia, the 3 million in the Congo or the 20 million in WW2. And is Iraq a precursor to a war against Iran. Is there anything I can do to stop it? Are we on the steady slide to WW3?
Next on my list was the morning’s news that Tony B is exhorting the need for nuclear power to protect us from the insecurities of gas and oil. And was it 10,000 or 50,000 people who died or will die, mainly from cancer, by and large a slow and horrible death, (is there a nice death?) from the Chernobyl disaster. What does he think is round the corner and where are we going to get our nuclear fuel from? Not for the Trident warheads because the chances are they will be reused for the next generation of nuclear weapons being produced at Aldermaston.
And then there are the Millennium Development Goals, targets for the poorer countries to develop their education and health services. Well, they are already slipping like the Alma Ata declaration in 1986 of Health for All by the year 2000 which faded away completely. Whilst we demand ever better targets, no waiting for an operation for more than six weeks, some people are waiting more than sixty years for the hospital.
And then there are the failed asylum seekers, the new face of destitution on our streets. It is over sixty years since we have had people with no rights to food, shelter or health care amongst us. Many failing their asylum because of stringent Home Office rules, but coming from countries it is not safe to send them back to, or countries that don’t want them back. And if they do succeed and become refugees where do they get housed? Into badly run housing estates where the local white population feel neglected and forgotten, stirring up racial prejudices, promoting fascism.
But what to do about all this; stiff upper lip, denial and get on with it? What political process will sort this out; the Euston manifesto of liberal democracy? If not liberal democracy what then; illiberal autocracy?
Answers on the blog please ‘cos I don’t have them. In the meantime, have fewer showers, turn the power off when you can, use bicycles and public transport. Press for a proper evaluation of the health impact of the war in Iraq. Tell everyone that war against Iran would be madness. Join the call for a long-term UN examination of the Chernobyl disaster and lobby for more renewable energy provision and against nuclear power. Press for fairtrade and proper funding of a global health and education service. Demand that local councils look after their housing estates and that strangers placed there have proper inductions, language courses and mentoring. Support asylum seekers until they leave and if they can’t, then surely they deserve asylum.
Above all, work out what would be a fair share of the resources for all the human beings on the globe and ask yourself, when is plenty enough?
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