All mums should have access to decent maternal care

Sounds like a no-brainer to me, so followed Oxfam's suggestion and mailed Gordon Brown:

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/campaign/actions/maternal_emergency.html

In pictures: All mums should have access to decent maternal care. Watch Oxfam's photo slideshow and find out how some poor countries have managed to turn their health systems around.
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get_involved/campaign/health_and_education/maternal_mortality_slideshow.html

Can a bar of soap change the world?

Probably not in itself, though I guess enough of it would certainly make the world a cleaner place.

However, the question has a serious point. We were staying with some relatives over the summer and while in the shower, I couldn’t help noticing how many plastic bottles there were on the bathroom shelf, probably about 30 bottles of various gels, shampoos, conditioners, de-tanglers etc etc for a fairly small household. All of those bottles (apart from maybe the Body Shop ones) were destined to be thrown away once empty. And I thought, what’s wrong with an old-fashioned bar of soap?

So, one personal, small-scale commitment - no more plastic bottles of shower gel. I’m gonna stick with the humble bar of soap from now on.

And recycle the cardboard box it comes in!

The barbarians at the gates

As is so often the case, I'm reading about five books at once.  Today's entertainment was Heat by George Monbiot.  In it he asserts that he was once giving a presentation somewhere and was asked what the UK would look like if it cut carbon by 80%.  he didn't have the answer, but a colleague of his did.  The colleague suggested that the UK would look like a poor third world country!  A scary thought.  He goes on to suggest that we are the few generations that lived in luxury (in the west) and that our ancestors & our descendents would not be able to believe the lifestyle we live in (in the same way that, I guess the Anglo-Saxons thought about the Romans who had left the shores of Britain generations before).  However...  Not to be too gloomy (and I'm only there on chapter one) he does claim that if we take his advice on board, we can keep our standard of living and reduce carbon emissions enough to avoid disastrous climate change.  I for one, will carry on reading!

Making a difference

Just after my last post, got a note from my favourite campaign website - pressureworks - to say that it's closing down, but that it's gonna carry on under the Christian Aid "Act Now!" banner. Will have to check that out - my social justice alert mechanism seems to be on overdrive at the moment.

We live in strange and interesting times. With wars in ex-Soviet republics, trouble in Zimbabwe and starvation and poverty all over the world, it sometimes seems that the whole scope of it is beyond us. What can any of us do to change the world? And then it struck me. Everything is a choice. Poverty and injustice isn't just something that happens, out there, beyond us. It's something that we all make an active choice to allow or deny. We, each of us, choose in our daily lives to allow poverty, to allow injustice, to survive and thrive. So, what would be my list of top things that we can each do to make a difference.

1. Be informed. Ignorance is the greatest breeder of injustice I can think of. So much goes on without our knowledge of consent. Knowing, understanding how the world works is the first step to changing that. Read, listen, look around you.
2. Act - don't put off making a difference - see what other people are doing and copy it. Strike out on your own and bring people with you.
3. Write letters and take up campaigns - there are so many websites that help you - try Oxfam, CAFOD, Amnesty International, Save the Children, WWF. Whatever takes your fancy, use that as a starting point. Tell other people what you're doing.
4. Buy Fair Trade. A little thing that makes an enormous difference. Every time you choose not to (and I'm guilty of doing this) you choose to support unfair trade. By definition, if it isn't fair, it's unfair.
5. Remember how powerful you are. We are all powerful - we spend money, we invest money, we vote, we have a voice. All of these things can make a tremendous difference.

Friday at last

Today was fairly mad at work, relentless!  Still, could have been worse - the Beijing Olympics began today (8th of the 8th, 2008!) as 8 is a lucky number for the Chinese.  Not so lucky if you happen to live in Georgia (Russia, not Alabama!) as Russia invaded today.  Nightmare; according to the BBC they reckon it'll develop into a full-scale war.  Not what anyone needs right now (except perhaps the various companies supplying arms and possibly post-war services!)  Or am I just getting way too cynical.  I've ordered a couple of books from the library by George Monbiot, who's a famous (originally) anti-globalisation guru, but seems to have got to grips with the global-warming thing - he's apparently a great polemicist, so I'm looking forward to reading that. 

Was watching the Extras disc from Planet Earth yesterday and crikey, it was bleak stuff - all about species extinction.  There was one comment, by, I think James Lovelock (of Gaia fame) who suggested that after one and a half centuries of unrivalled growth, what we actually need is to go backwards!  Actually contract our lifestyles.  There was also quite a bit of discussion about the role of poverty relief - ie that it's no use talking to desperately poor people in the third world about saving species when all they're concerned about, quite rightly, is saving themselves.  Goes back to my idea a while back about the value of providing pensions for people in poor countries so that they didn't have to struggle so desperately as they got older, and also didn't feel they had to have ten kids each (unless I guess they actually wanted ten kids!) in order to support themselves when they couldn't work any more.  Might have to come back to that one sometime.

Oh and possibly the end of the world will come tomorrow as CERN will be turning on the Large Hadron Collider tomorrow sometime!  In theory (well, nutter-theory, apparently) it could create a black hole that will implode the earth and destroy everything in the solar system.  I don't suppose any of us will actually experience it as, should it happen, I guess it'll be instantaneous!  See you tomorrow!

Shock Induced Insomnia

Did get quite a lot of reading done and read loads of The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. It was certainly scary and very exciting too (bizarre for a book that's essentially about economics!) but it really opened my eyes to all the things that had been happening in the world over the last twenty to thirty years. I'd always had this view as a kid that history pretty much ended at the end of the second world war - that after that, there wasn't anything else interesting that happened. Then it turns out that war in itself never really stopped, it's just that the front line shifted. As NK says in the book - this is a new war - one with no specific enemy, no specific place of engagement, and no end in sight. The enemy could be anyone, even me! Anyone that stands in the way of profit. There was actually one point last week where I'd (perhaps foolishly) read before going to bed and I was so wired from the experience that I couldn't sleep until after 1am! It's a long time since that happened

Trucks and Carbon Emissions

The European Space Truck made its second test docking today. I'm very much a futurist and feel that this is really important for mankind; especially since reading some really good science fiction recently. I like to think that someday we really will travel to the stars, or at least have the option.

And because I'm also a humanist, I was pleased to get a mail from Christian Aid, following up on a campaign they've been running to ensure that companies report all their carbon emissions. Fairness and transparency ought to be the hallmarks of a decent and civilised society, and this is one small step along the way.