Following the crowd.

If Cameron ‘didn’t realise’ that Andy Coulson knew about phone hacking and believed what are obviously lies, then he is a completely stupid man and he shouldn’t be running the country anyway. Why he is still in office when he spent Christmas with one criminal, employed another and mixed with many at lavish parties goes beyond me and angers me.

What do you read?

I don’t like writing on this blog unless I feel I have something worthwhile to say, which is why I don’t use it often. Right now though, I think pretty much everyone has something worthwhile to say and I want to add my voice to the very tall pile..

It feels, in many ways that the society we thought we had is just collapsing around us. The media, the police and the government are all pretty connected and this is a massive problem which people just don’t seem to be able to deal with..the public are in uproar.. condemning the news of the world, Rebecca Brooks and all the other journalists and private detectives who have been caught up in this scandal. Yet no one is recognising that it is our fault too. We, the public love scandal. It is what sells. Whether its scandal in soaps on the TV or scandal in the form of real people, we just lap it up.  And, as business people, if there is demand and you are good at business: you supply. Its simple. If we didn’t want scandals and we didn’t buy the paper with the most juicy story, they wouldn’t have to break the law to get that story.

I have not heard of anyone boycotting Sky or The Times or The Sun. So many people like to demonstrate just how intellectual they are by reading The Times, yet The Times have been implicated in phone hacking, and you are still funding the Murdoch empire. People love to be in uproar about how awful everything is. But, if you truly do believe what has happened is wrong, you should act on your words. You should make a stand and make a difference. Boycott the Murdoch empire and start looking at newspapers in different ways. Question the front page. How could the journalist have got that information? And, if the answer is probably illegally.. don’t buy the paper! We are the ones who have to change society, not money makers. 

Majorie

One little girl, Majorie, basically defined the trip for me.

I met her whilst building the steps as the steps finished at her house. She is 10 and so so lovely :) We couldn’t really speak to each other much because I can’t speak any spanish but we could just hold hands and hug and burst into laughter and use sign language and we developed a friendship. I think the best way to describe her is by describing a time when I was really exhausted and had to carry a cement bucket up the hill.. I was obviously struggling and she took my bucket off me and took my hand and helped me back up the hill. She was just so generous and lovely:)

Anyway, a few days in I found out that her father was in Prison..having just gone in for 4 years for drugs and firearms. We spoke to her mum and her neighbour, she lived in a shack the size of my living room with her 2 brothers and sister and mum and 3 other people. Her neighbour expressed concern that as the eldest child (remember, she is 10) she is at serious risk of abuse. She can earn 5 cords (25 cents or 17p) by having sex with a man who brings rubbish to the rubbish tip. She is 10.

A day or two later I was walking up to site, and she was walking towards me with a rucksack on.. she asked me to go with her somewhere and naiively I thought she was going to school so I said I would see her later. I watched her walk down the street, barefoot with her little rucksack on. I found out a few minutes later she was going to see her Dad in prison. Which is on the other side of Bluefields.. quite a big place and definitely very dangerous for a tiny 10 year old. I was so so worried for her, it was just horrible. We finished on site and started walking home, I so badly wanted to see her return safely and then I saw her and I was so so relieved. She ran up to me and we hugged for ages and then I walked her home and then she walked me home!

I saw her everyday after that and took her to the kids club for the first time. I really struggled that I would have to leave her, and when I did have to leave her and say goodbye it was absolutely heart breaking. I don’t think I have ever felt so upset and I know that sounds stupid.. but it felt like I was leaving her in this horrible world where her childhood was being taken away from her and she would lose her beautiful smile and was at risk of abuse and I was off back to my lovely world where I am safe in my home and there are people around to protect me and look out for me. I felt so guilty and I still do. 

Certain things really get to me now because I just think of her and other girls who are in similar situations (of which there are way too many on the rubbish tip) such as Anna. Excessive drinking, the damage it does is immense. I know we live in a different country, but alcohol is what causes so many problems both in our country and in Nica and other countries. Women and girls live with men who are constantly drunk, drinking away the money and sometimes being violent towards their families. And another thing is the way girls in the UK throw themselves at guys, desperate for attention. They don’t seem to realise that they have the choice not to do this! Girls like Majorie get unwanted male attention and cannot do anything about it.. they don’t have a choice in many respects in selling themselves, partly because they are too young to understand what it all means. We do have a choice in this country, we don’t have to sell ourselves and we do understand what it means because we are older. I’m sorry that this makes me sound all miserable, but I just hope that maybe you can feel some of what I feel now and maybe have some perspective on how lucky we are and the choices we have. 

“The genuinely poor are those robbed of the ability to make choices for themselves”

Sorry for the essay :)

My Summer

I’ve read lots of interesting blogs recently and for once, I have things to say, so I thought I might as well say them :)

As most people know, I have been in Nicaragua, which is in central America for 3 weeks. It was the most amazing life changing experience of my life and I seriously hope I never forget it. People ask me what the best thing was about the trip, and I say the smiles and I think they think I’m weird. But when you see a smile on the face of someone who has absolutely nothing because you are there.. not even doing anything.. just there, then its just inspiring. The fact they still have the capacity to smile is just incredible and so humbling. We were working in Bluefields which is a city plagued with drugs, gang violence and poverty. We were working with the rubbish tip community-the poorest of the poor, scavenging off the rubbish to make a living and living in tiny shacks. There was a pretty steep slope which was incredibly muddy and slippy which had to be walked up/down to get to a lot of houses, the school/church, the rubbish tip and the water pump, and the community had expressed a desire to have a path and steps so that they could get up and down the slope with ease. So that is what we did… but the amazing thing was, it wasn’t just us, the whole community helped :) It was this that made me realise how little physical work we do in the western world.. I know I am a weakling but I would really struggle with carrying a big rock and then a tiny malnourished 6 year old would come and take it off me with complete ease- it was amazing!

We also painted a school that the trust had built last year, ran a kids club for around 100 kids and planted around 500 bamboo plants at 3600 feet! It really was amazing and I would urge you to seriously consider going on some sort of trip with a charity.. you will not only change other people’s lives for the better, you will completely change yours.. and that it priceless :)

I think I’m going to do a few posts on different things to break it up a bit :) So, until next time.. Thanks for reading :)

Election

As the election is getting nearer and nearer, I thought I would express my views on the state of it and particular in light of todays events. As most people know, I am very much a lib dem/ green so this blog, will of course be biased:)

Firstly, I am shocked at the level the tories have gone to to victimise, as I see it, Nick Clegg. I have just finished reading the article Nick Clegg wrote which the daily mail so delightfully calls the ‘Nazi slur on Britain’ and I have to say, I am extremely worried at where the right wingers are going if they view this in that way. Nick Clegg was in no way at all defending Nazis, he was defending Germans and the fact they have every right to move on from their terrible past. They cannot make up for what Hitler did, and nor should they have to since they are not Hitler. Clegg talks of the UK’s obsession with the second world war, how we still make inappropriate jokes about it and in the process alienate Germans from jobs (he gives the example of two men who had to leave their job due to the amount of anti German jokes they suffered.) No doubt some believe they should learn to joke about it, but in the same way you wouldn’t dream about joking about the Holocaust to Jews, it is inappropriate to joke about Hitler to the Germans. Clegg also pointed out the way everything we do is still compared to Germany, as if we are still trying to win a war against them, though, lets us face it, Germany has won in economic and lifestyle terms. And so, the lows the tories have gone to have shocked me, and show me how desperate they are. Bringing up what I would argue as a very reasonable, interesting and truthful article and completely destroying both it and the Lib Dems.

My second, and luckily for you, final rant for today is the way voters act, and how this, in many ways provides a vicious circle for politicians to lie. Many voters seem so self absorbed, they only care about what will happen for themselves if they get in, not the most utilitarian approach. This annoys me, as there is absolutely no way the Govt. can please everyone in the UK. People will always lose out due to fiscal policy, but it must be taken, if the policy is the best for the economy. An example of this is students (me included in this) who feel they have a right to more money, even though this may not be the greatest expenditure of money. On question time 2 weeks ago this question came up: “If you get into Govt. will you guarantee to give me a job?” It is this sort of question which really pushes a politician into effectively lying! Of course they cannot guarantee a job.. and it is silly and naive of us to assume they can! And so, when you next hear of a policy you like, think of the negative affects on others that those policies will have, and decide whether the consequences for them will be worse than the benefits for you. (I’d advise you do this with getting rid of the rise in NI particularly.)

And the final thought for the day, a quote from a good friend: “If you split up the word Politics, you get Poly and Tics, meaning many blood sucking creatures.” I urge you to look at the debate tonight, and look for the person least like a Poly-tic… bet it wont be Cameron:)

xxx