There doesn’t seem to be much progress in making peace, even temporary peace, in Gaza. And they’re having difficulty with the proposed new way of getting aid into Gaza. A ship full of supplies has been held up in Cyprus because of “technical difficulties”. They might get it moving today. Fingers crossed!
Then there is the problem of there really being nowhere for it to dock on Gaza’s shallow shoreline. Even distribution once (if) the ship delivers aid is complicated. I saw a report that the only organisation with the know-how and the manpower to do it is UNRWA but Israel doesn’t trust that organisation, still claiming that it has strong ties to Hamas. In the meantime people are starving. How much simpler it would be if the lorries queued up in Egypt could just drive through. How much easier if we could just go back in time, with today’s knowledge of course, and arrange things differently.
Elsewhere, the Pope has been criticised for his suggestion that in the other big ongoing conflict Ukraine should just raise the white flag and accept defeat. That’s not gone down well. And Haiti is in turmoil. The world is crazy!
We in our British isolation have a tendency to think that the world has been going along peacefully for decades. No doubt small-town America feels the same way - apart from their own home-grown min-wars when gunmen turn on schools and shopping malls and sporting victory parades. Most of us just concentrate on the everyday business of living and paying our way. And yet in various parts of the world wars are going on, many unreported because they are overshadowed by other, possibly more dramatic, events. It’s quite depressing really.
But still, yesterday we were all (supposedly) uplifted and cheered by the release of the first photo of the Princess of Wales (still also often referred to as Kate Middleton, by the way) since her abdominal surgery. Even better, even more cheering and uplifting, was the fact that it was William, Prince of Wales, who had taken the delightful photo. I gather we are meant to be pleased that Kate/Catherine/Her Royal Highness was continuing a tradition she has established of publishing a family photo every year for Mothering Sunday. After all, lots of ordinary folk do that on Facebook!
Today the first story in the Guardian online, ahead of all the conflict stories, was all about that photo, which had to be withdrawn because it had apparently been manipulated. The manipulation, it turns out, was done by the Princess of Wales herself. She likes to experiment with photoshop from time to time. How nice! Just an ordinary couple: he takes the family photos, she photoshops them, they send them out to the media, all from their ordinary home on the royal estate. I feel stirrings of Marie Antoinette and her model farm.
The best “manipulation” of the aforementioned photo that I have seen had a ghostly Queen Elizabeth II looking out of the window at the mother and children group in the garden.
I can’t say I envy the members of the royal family living in the public eye. I can quite understand Kate’s reticence on the details of her operation. Why should she reveal intimate details. It’s surely enough that her every appearance is scrutinised for possible cracks and faults. Mind you, she seems to made of strong stuff and is playing her part well.
Someone else being observed and criticised for his looks is Kier Starmer. It’s his waistline, apparently. He doesn’t compare well with the diminutive, not say skinny, Rishi Sunak. And he gets some stick for his skinny suits. What is he supposed to do? Wear bulky clothes? Anyway it seems that Peter Mandelson said clothes and appearance were “not unimportant” in politics, noting on the Times Radio podcast How to Win an Election that “Starmer needs to shed a few pounds and that would be an improvement”. Oh dear! And now he’s had his knuckles lightly rapped for “fat shaming” the Labour Party leader.
And here we were, thinking that the important thing was the ideology!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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