In the beginning

Words begin with ideas and ideas, in my opinion, begin with education and experience. Neither one is more important than the other. I'm educated, yes, but my experience of life has shaped my opinion more than my university education could ever hope to. To have experience is to have empathy. To have suffered and experienced the worst that life can throw at you can give you enormous empathy for others. Formal education is just a leg up to be able to do something positive with that empathy.

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To help others you have to be able to help yourself and my life has been a learning curve into helping myself and enabling independence around chronic illness. I am fortunate that I have managed to avoid some of the many curve balls but I am not so self-absorbed to not see that people cope with different stressors in different ways.

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There have been stages in my life where I have not been able to physically help others but I am able to advocate on their behalf, which is now what I am working towards. Writing also helps bring areas of darkness into the light. Writing helps to organise my thoughts and pull into focus issues that are systemically corrosive in society.

 

My continued frustration with our political system has led me to become outspoken on social media and become involved in political campaigning in my local area. I continue to see and experience the maliciousness of unfetted corruption and power in politics and what a friend described to me as "the arrogance of the unacountable" time and again.

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So here is an idea. Why should we not hold them accountable? If they are not held accountable by our disappointing and often complicit media, then it falls to us. I will endeavour to research and bring together articles and opinion in an effort to influence more learned opinion. I am, of course, only one person but it has to begin somewhere.

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