Sunday 31 December 2017

And I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more: wild Hogmanay rant.

In this last year, 2017, I walked 1000 miles. I completed it today by walking along the seafront at Paignton in Devon.  Most of you, who energetically move to and fro in your homes, who regularly walk  - unless you're on a zero hours contract  - to work and back and who partake in active hobbies will have achieved this feat easily in this year, but I'm getting old, slow and inactive so I am happy with my hike.

I was lucky that I could do it for many disabled people suffer so much that it would be impossible for them. Their struggle to survive and keep living is courageous and humbles me. Yet our government denies them the practical and financial resources they need. 

In other places there are defenceless children who are attacked by cruel foes armed with deadly weapons made in the UK. Their family homes and lives are destroyed and surely, at the very least, if this means they have no other place to live we must welcome them to our shores. It may also be a time to stop making deadly weapons and to design and manufacture products which will sustain our planet.

As I suggested this cruelty is not exercised solely upon people from other lands. There are those who are homeless and poor in our country, who have a government that does not wish to welcome our poor and our homeless to their own comfortable shores yet will shore up the wealthy. Oh! dearie, dearie me, I just despair.

It's difficult to believe sometimes that we are each members of a human community with a desire to belong to each other. It has been and is, for the time being, so good to feel that one belongs to Europe and to be in a wider community of human beings. Yet in the campaign to 'remain' or "leave' the EU referendum,  "politicians" lied to us about the benefits of leaving the European community with the consequence that soon each one of us is to be denied a place in a great community of human beings. 

We can still stop Brexit if we let it be known that most of us don't want exile and have a desire to belong to the whole world and not "Little England." If we can't stop this now then how can we call the United Kingdom a democracy?  I've been telling you things you already know. It's been a trite read for you but if in principle you agree, I humbly urge you to become active in anyway you can.  Walk an extra mile or kilometre for it and then walk another one.


____________