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Several news stories coincided recently to graphically illustrate the terrible inequalities in our global village.
In London, and in other rich cities around the world, people queued for days to be the first to buy the new Apple iPhone 5. Not everybody was queuing to buy for themselves. Some people (plebs?) were being paid hundreds of pounds to stand in line for days on behalf of other, presumably richer individuals, who had better things to do with their time.
“Even the burial of his body in the Abbey was a species of theft when you come to think of it”. George Orwell's words came into my mind as I watched the ceremonies surrounding today's 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens.
“It's aw a muddle, lass. Aw a muddle.” This was the dying lament of Stephen Blackpool, the power-loom operator of Hard Times who was driven to physical and emotional ruin by the ruthless economic and industrial system of his day.
A few weeks ago I had a holiday in India. I used to live there and so I might be one of the few foreigners who actually loves arriving in Delhi, stepping out of the airport into the cruel heat, sooty air and architecture of the perpetually half-built.
Travelling around as a comparatively prosperous person in a country marked by significant poverty and inequality is not easy - unless you are largely insensitive to these things, which sadly, some Westerners seem to be, just reckoning that "this is simply the way things are" and revelling in how much their overvalued dollar can buy.
