Dis - Ease

I am not infected with a disease. I am infected with Dis - Ease. 

There is so much happening in my world & the wider world that I do not understand & cannot tolerate. I cannot sit back & ignore it all. I cannot be at ease. 

I have little to complain about in my current life. I am really fortunate. I can afford the cost of living & I have a comfortable home, a lovely family & good friends. 

In a wider sense there are events in the UK that concern me & make me question if my birthplace bears any resemblance to the place I remember from my teens & twenties. Politics & politicians are not respected in the way they were, for good reason. Respect has to be earned through action in the best interests of the country & it's people. 

We seem to have had years of poor decision making in the interests of anyone but the people who vote. Currently I am incensed at our stance on the Israeli war. Keir Starmer defended Israel's "right" to totally cut power and water supplies to Palestinians in Gaza. He didn't explain how collective punishment methods, such as the withdrawal of water & aid supplies to a large urban area, could be done within international law - Completely indefensible collective punishment. I'm also appalled at the whole privatisation mess we are in with the Water companies, Justice system, NHS, Transport.....There has been profligate waste of public money & now the public are literally paying the price. So many special enquiries into lying & obfuscation over the years. So much compensation due to people who were completely let down & deceived.

I'm really not sure I'm proud to be British. However there are worse places to live. Syria for one. The latest in a long line of countries devastated by despotic, greedy, rulers who killed & maimed their own populations & who we failed. Failed because we did not speak out enough & we certainly didn't do much to stop the killing & devastation - Mealy mouthed words & not enough action. There are so many countries where the populations live in dreadful conditions & unsurprisingly want to escape. Our record on refugees & migrants isn't edifying. Suella Braverman called them an "invasion". Where is our humanity?

We don't have effective international organisations to deal with the complex & universal threats to peace & stability. We certainly don't have international organisations to deal with the existential threat of the Climate Emergency. Consensus is prevented by self interested vetos. Compromise is the name of the game.

The only way forward  is to mobilise the power of the people to do the right thing & force good decision making. I'm just not sure that we are able to do that. Human beings are inherently selfish.