The other day we watched a film about a Jew, living in America, who had escaped Austria when the Nazis took over. Before she left Austria, the Nazis stole all the family possessions, including a famous work of art worth millions of dollars. Sixty years later the painting was displayed in an art gallery in Vienna and the film describes her, eventually successful, efforts to restore the painting to its rightful owner.
In a sub-plot there are flashbacks in the film, to the period when Austria was taken over by the Nazis. We see scenes where the population was stirred up in hatred for the Jews. Jewish families were humiliated by ordinary people on the street, and of course they were eventually led away to their deaths. Continue reading “Who should we blame?”
Apparently, George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith have decided to cut benefits to people of working age. This will include tax credits payable to people in work and which support families on a very low income. They claim this is a part of, “making work pay“! Many of those affected will be on the minimum wage. It seems crazy to me that the government (or the taxpayer, you and me) should subsidise companies which do not pay enough to their staff to enable them to look after their families. The answer must be to increase the minimum wage sufficiently to make work really pay.
It’s general election time! It is our opportunity to change the way the our country is governed. But as individual voters, how do we decide who to vote for? If we know some of the candidates, we can vote for the person, but most of us have never met any of the candidates. We could vote for the party with the leader we like, but that is dangerous because a party can change its leader at any time. We will probably vote for the party which most closely aligns with our own personal ethos.
Compassion and Justice 