Always Hope

It's a pleasure to support Blog Action Day 2010, even though Always Hope doesn't contribute many to the 30,000,000-plus readers covered by all the participating blogs. This year the theme is water, something which we should all care about, because it highlights something which simultaneously one of the great injustices of the modern world, and also one of its most "fix-able" problems. Put simply, millions of people are dying because the only water they have is killing them. By the time you have finished reading this, hundreds more people will have died because they have no access to clean drinking water, surely the most preventable of deaths. Water, that most basic of human needs, is denied to millions, unless they choose to drink from polluted and disease-ridden sources. At Kea we support Tear Fund , the international Christian charity, which has long campaigned on the issue of clean water. I can also recommend WaterAid , a non-religious charity w...

Apparently David Cameron has said that there should be no sympathy for Raoul Moat . His anger has been triggered by the way in which Moat has been idolised on facebook pages and roadside shrines, by people who seem him as a kind of hero. But I don't think Mr Cameron need worry too much about a minority expressing themselves in this way. Overall, public opinion is not sympathetic to criminals, particularly the likes of Moat. It will be difficult to find any news headlines bemoaning his death, even though he has evaded the justice of the courts. What he might consider, though, is the reaction of Moat's uncle . Understandably upset, he has said "what he has done is terrible, but he didn't deserve death". This also is unlikely to win many people over. Even those who tend to agree might want to add that he didn't deserve death, but neither did the man he killed, and the others he attempted to or intended to kill. But there is still some truth in what he says....