Changing the world

This evening, I settled down on my comfortable couch in my cosy pyjamas to watch a group of children describe the indescribable. For those of you who can't guess what I'm talking about (and that certainly includes anybody not in the UK), I watched a television documentary that interviewed some of the children of Beslan, survivors of the Russian school siege of a year ago. Part of me is angry that someone came up with the idea of creating a TV programme, using the kids to provide entertainment for the likes of me in our safe environments - sitting watching with horror and the odd tear, maybe it'll be talked about for a few days, the odd line quoted. And then we'll move on.
There's the other part that thinks yes, okay, it is important to talk about these events, make them known. There is the argument that we can't change otherwise. But dear God, if we haven't changed as a result of all the films of all the atrocities that have taken place already, one more painful hour of footage isn't going to make the difference.
Take the American high school shootings. Would there have been more than one if the first had never been reported? Take England at the moment - there seems to me to be a bizarre spate of horrendous killings: we have people being killed by axes, by knives, by guns in the hands of children. Is this just that for some reason the media are suddenly picking up on these occurences more, or because it is actually happening with alarming frequency?
What - we have to ask - is wrong with our world??
I remember a line I heard once: 'We have not inherited this world from our grandparents, rather borrowed it from our grandchildren'. If everyone were not so intent on getting more, having more, principally because 'others have it so I should too', we'd be fine. It is the greed of a few that cause the suffering of many. Did you know, and this is true, that the eight richest INDIVIDUALS (i.e. single people) have more wealth than the forty-six poorest COUNTRIES put together? Read that a few times and tell me there isn't something wrong.
But then there is the inherent corruption in the Aid agencies. The BBC recently published some figures for how aid money in Malawi has been consumed in contractors fees, entertaining bills, hotel stays. The people who desperately need the food that money could have bought get a little bit hungrier and the supposedly 'good' people of the agencies get a little bit plumper. I loathe this attitude, and I despise anyone who works under the shadow of an Aid agency and brings them into disrepute - particularly those major ones, such as the UN, WFP, MSF. People DIE, they literally give their lives, to alleviate in some part the suffering of others. And other people who barely deserve a place on the same planet, mean that those who die have done so for politically motivated aid efforts, or because the people at the top simply didn't care enough. This angers me and simultaneously terrifies me: it is the area of work I hope to go into, and to be surrounded by hypocrites would be suffocating. And evidently pretty damn dangerous.
There are various people out there - some of you reading this, you'll know who I mean - who make comments along the lines of, there is no point my trying to make a difference in the world. I argue that however futile my efforts, however apparently insignificant any changes I procure, I would rather come to the end of my life and know that hell, at least I tried. I didn't give in at the first hurdle.
I have met people who will never have any opportunities in their lives and I have sworn to them and to myself that I will do what I can. And no cynical, snide comments from anybody are going to alter my view that it is the duty of those who have more to help those who have less. We live in a world of bitterness, revenge, anger and mistrust. Those of you who just accept this: how, and I don't ask flippantly, do you sleep at night?

Back by popular demand...

Well - I didn't realise until I stopped posting just how many people actually bothered to hop on here from time to time with the intent of reading through my woes, rants and general complaints.
I'll just give you a brief summation then of my recent few days in Oxford. Seeking desperately for some form of accommodation that is acceptable at least to the point that I'll not want to kill myself each evening upon heading home. There are some seriously depressing houses with rooms available: Oxford seems to specialise in dark, pokey terraces that in all honesty I never dared enter to check out the rooms, but then my soul would have been destroyed within days if I had to go into one of these places on a regular basis so it would have been a pointless exercise.
After a day of trudging around the streets becoming increasingly disillusioned with the world, the option became available - never mind how - that perhaps I would be able to get a one bedroom apartment. All to myself. Me. Just me. Nobody else's hairs in the shower, nobody else's dishes in the sink. In other words, what I'm used to and - frankly - what I'm sure you'll all agree I need. A further day's searching, starting out with bounding enthusiasm and ending in crushed drunkenness, resulted in total failure.
I am currently clinging to the hope that the nice lady in my college wasn't lying through her teeth when she said there was the remotest of remote possibilities that I could still live in Linacre accommodation.
On the other hand... I do rather fancy living on a narrowboat. Remember reading an article in National Geographic years ago about a Cambridge student doing this, which proved that what I'd thought of years before that was feasible. I've just spent the evening getting overly enthusiastic about some beautiful little numbers with my Mum and the aim of tomorrow is to convince my lunatic of an aunt that she wants to invest in one of these. Mooring fees seem to be cheaper than paying rent anyway - and come on, who wouldn't live on a houseboat given the chance??
Currently having lovely images of being moored right by the college boat house; someone can just give the porthole a tap when they've arrived and are ready to row and I'll ease my way out of a suitably snuggly bed and set off in an eight.
Not entirely sure about car parking for narrowboat owners... Hmm...