I have a friend called Irma, and she is, understandably, appalled at what her hurricane namesake has wrought in the Caribbean region. Hurricane Irma is one of the worst ever. The suffering and the damage are pitiful.
Giving hurricanes a human name is unfortunate for those who share the name, yet it helps to identify these natural disasters in a way we can all understand.
These recent weather catastrophes have focused on the issue of whether they are linked to climate change. On this vexed question, I await guidance by the experts. But they should also cause those of us who dwell in more moderate climes profound gratitude for the natural benefits we enjoy.
Western Europe (and much of North America) has been a noted beneficiary of climate – and geography. In his informative book, Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall writes that geography has often been the determining factor in the fate of nations. Europe’s prominence in developing civilisation is inextricably linked to Europe’s climatic and geographical advantages.
By contrast, Africa, though containing rich natural resources, has had to contend with a tropical climate that brought many more diseases and troubles: the tsetse fly has been one of the greatest afflictions to Africa and has influenced its development.
As for the Caribbean and Latin America, mosquitoes and disease have marked their interiors: the Panama Canal was little more than a swamp: jungles and wastelands characterise vast tracts of Central and South America. And now, the area is the object of so many hurricanes and tornadoes.
We certainly should show compassion for the victims of these natural disasters. And show thankfulness for the temperate zone in which we dwell.
…….
I encountered a woman on a train who had just returned from the Cayman Islands, which had a lucky escape from destruction. “Are they British?” I asked, being unsure of the political allegiance. “Well,” she said. “They’ve got the Queen.” The British monarchy is a world brand, whatever the politics may be.
Dr Leo Varadkar, the new Taoiseach in Dublin, has been much fêted throughout the world as a new image for modern Ireland, being liberal, openly gay and of mixed race – and religion. His father is an Indian Hindu, his mother an Irish Catholic. He is still a member of the Catholic Church, but is only a very episodic church-attender.
Now Leo has given a sensitive and nuanced interview to Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. Abortion, he said, was a very different issue from same-sex marriage. “As a doctor, I would perform pregnancy scans and while I don’t accept the view that the unborn child, the foetus, if you prefer … should have equal rights to an adult woman, to the mother, I don’t share this view that the baby in the womb, the foetus, whatever term you want to use, should have no rights at all.”
He didn’t agree with the claim that human rights only begin after birth and that “a child in the womb with a beating heart, the ability to hear, the ability to feel pain, should have no rights whatsoever”.
The key to Leo’s thinking is not religious: it draws on his medical experience doing ultrasound scans. Significant.
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It’s said that teachers will soon be replaced by robots, but there’s always a place for the charismatic teacher figure. I recommend an Irish film, just out on DVD (and available via Netflix) called Handsome Devil, directed by John Butler. It’s a beguiling, funny story of school life, with a theme not unlike that of Dead Poets Society. Here, the gifted Andrew Scott plays the teacher who can quell a classroom full of disruptive adolescents with sheer charisma.
The school portrayed is clearly based on an Irish boys’ private boarding school, such as Blackrock College, run by the Holy Ghost Fathers (alma mater of Sir Bob Geldof and former president Eamon de Valera). It’s evidently a Catholic school as a priest in clerical collar is glimpsed, as is a statue of Our Lady, but somewhat in the background. What is very much in the foreground is rugby, rugby, rugby.
Faith is a focal part of the curriculum in such schools, but rugby comes close to a religion too.
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