Oh, the injustice of it all!
By Tony Watts - Editor - 08/05/2008
Of all the things that irk, injustice rankles most of all. Our sense of what's fair and unfair cuts in at an early age - I can clearly remember the stinging pain of getting the blame at infants' school for someone else's minor misdemeanours. It stays with you throughout life when you see dishonest people prosper or decent people cut down by illness.
A couple of stories currently on the lead pages on our website come into that category this time around.
The two elderly sisters who have lived together all their lives who find themselves unable to pass on their property to the other when one dies without paying huge sums of inheritance tax... and forcing them to sell their home...
Gurkhas who have put their lives on their line for Britain - and unable to move here when container loads of immigrants from other countries are setting up home in our towns and cities...
And on a much smaller scale, but still annoying, the inability of councils to pursue litter louts who choose to chuck their fast food rubbish out of their car windows. I live in a very pleasant country area on the edge of the city and a rising tide of filth from these idiots now encrusts our hedgerows, who obviously enjoy the country enough to come out here to eat their food - but not enough to keep it looking nice.
There are dozens of these sorts of injustices, major and minor, that blight our daily lives - from unfair council taxes and inadequate pensions through to the postcode lottery that dictates whether or not you receive medicines which could save your eyesight or even your life.
One reader in our May newspaper said he was fed up of hearing his fellow pensioners moaning, and that's a fair point. There is so much to be grateful for in our society today, and you only have to look back a few decades in our own country or across the water to others still today to recognise that - all in all - things could be a lot worse for most of us.
But that doesn't mean to say that we can't fight injustice - in the many forms in which it manifests itself. To me it's the mark of a society that is not complacent, that recognises that we all deserve an even break in life, and that is still trying to evolve.
Tony Watts, Editor