Love thy 'Nay'bour

       Strongly influenced by a Christian upbringing and believing in 'God' until I was about 45 years old, I consider I had a good start in life in that respect. Such a childlike belief warded off cynicism until a much later age. 

       Sadly my older sister Jill's fundamentalist belief in Jesus Christ the saviour caused a rift between us in latter years when she frequently used the words 'devil, sin and demons' whenever we spoke on the phone. I could never accept the notion we are all born dirty sinners before we even breath the first breath of life.  It was, however, on her death bed that she held my hand and said with her familiar loving smile 'I'll be waiting for you'.  It would indeed be an arrogant atheist not to consider the possibility that there is the 'other side' - heaven, spiritual unity, eternal union and peace, or whatever. I have no greater intellectual capacity to argue for or against a God and am always stuck at the point of how human suffering can be allowed by a so-called loving God, so in turn I refer back to the only thing I know - the human condition - the use of human language passed down through the ages to explain or bring some kind of order to our lives. I refer to the Holy Bible in which the Ten Commandments seem to be a pretty basic human code of conduct irrespective of the existence of God. 'Love thy neighbour' is a fundamental commandment and strategy for co-existence. And so too is 'Do unto others....'

     The shock that consumers have been duped into eating horse meat when they were told it was beef leads us to automatically blame others - first the Romanians who have a lot of horses and then the French and in no time at all the finger is pointed closer to home in a Yorkshire abbatoir. Of course Government ministers, the Food Standards Agency, Jimmy Saville and the ex-chief of the Royal Bank of Scotland are to blame, but what about the people working at the abbortoires, their wives and daughters, the van drivers.... did they not know or were they not party to a degree of the scam? Do they, do we not care what we do to others?  

      The word 'morality' has been firmly deleted from any public/media dialogue for decades and what is going on in the horse meat issue is the tip of the iceberg in a culture that has consciously allowed image (what is on the label) to override content, substance or truth. Switch on any television soap and the script is to swindle, cheat, outdo and make a fast buck out others. This is the daily sermon that replaced the church service many years ago! the staple diet. You could call it a fundamental lack of love for fellow human being and the drug is ....money, lotza money! Sad.

        And while the Government pushes out of work people to take up any job as a second option and become cheap labour for multi million pound employers, the Government find themselves in an illegal position, but has anyone asked the university graduate who won her case, who promised you a job with that meaningless degree in the first place? I recall being suspicious of the term 'gap year' as a ploy by universities to get bums on seats before youngsters left schools and travelled the world for fear they might not come back. 
     Someone told me many years ago that people don't like to face the truth. So there's no problem then, it doesn't matter if its horse or donkey meat as long as its fast and cheap!