A First

Well, today I was watching the news, and something happened that has never happened before. I was embarressed to be British. Never happened before, because I've never seen our country as that bad, but today I was. Why you may ask. Well, there was a news broadcast about how Tony Blair had pledged to build a memorial for the British victims of the Tsunami. Now, perhaps it's how they emphaised 'British' whenever talking about it, but this really got to me. This was a tragedy that gripped the world over, and we are selfish enough to create a memorial JUST to the British? We should be creating a memorial to everybody who died, no matter where they came from. Are there really still such barriers between countries that ours will only remember our own victims? In a book I recently read, a certain pessimist described the world as being like a sinking ship, we're all in it together. I actually felt embarressed to be grouped as belonging to a country that was appearing so short sighted we were only remebering ourselves, and not the others.

Of course our officals have given out the kind words, but when it comes to building a memorial it should be everyone, you can't just exclude victims because of their nationality. And to add to that soarness, afterwards Tony Blair came on carefully reading from a page about how much he cared. Reading. Can't he say it himself?

Maybe I'm overreacting. At least we're making some kind of way of remembering the victims, but we're only caring about the British victims. I wonder, if there were no British people in that disaster, how would the goverment have reacted? Would they have cared? I have no doubt in the general public to respond, but I can't see the goverment making a memorial if nobody of our nationality was involved.

And here I was thinking we were past all this.