Woke up last Thursday to be told flight to Birmingham was cancelled. Because of a strike, I assumed. No, volcanic ash. Erhm, we've had April's Fool already.... Nope. It was no joke.

It's exhausting to think of all the natural occurrences of recent months. Blizzards and snowdrifts beyond living memory, earthquakes on three continents, now volcanic eruptions in Iceland. Seems relentless. Yet each time, we find ways to cope. The fighting human spirit, the dogged determination to get through, to get by, to get up and out.

Oh the effort of it! And for what. Make way for the next natural disaster.

But what if we bring all that good training, that instinct for survival, to bear on the un-natural economic 'crunch'. I suspect the seismic debt could succumb under sheer human will.

It seems to easy a 'way'.

Rights and Reasons

Seems such a simple thing to do -- believe that human rights or a human rights-based approach is the core value to live by. So why is it so hard? And why do groups, organisations or institutions find it so hard to uphold such a fundamental principle?

When my thoughts filter down to "It's the human condition", I can just hear scientists pooh-poohing my 'evidence base'. It has become crucial in 21st century World to have verifiable answers to everything, but the necessity of burden of proof means we can still fall foul of self-made rules when we conjure them into boxes whether they fit or not.

I guess the tension between my rights and your rights will always be the sticking point. Can there ever be such as thing as (unqualified) freedom? What happens when mine meets yours head on? It's the sort of encounter that brings on and perpetuates The Other as the undesirable, the problem.

So.

How do we as a civil society get to the point of truly valuing each individual for exactly what she or he is?

I think it is a tricky question. But one that has a first solution in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Surely.