Preparing for homesickness

I have never been homesick in my life. I remember going on holidays with friends, school trips abroad, living up in Leeds for a year and not getting homesick at all. However I'm willing to bet that living in a country with a different culture, language and alphabet with no friends coming with me is going to be a lot more challenging than anything I have previously experienced.

I came across this article on the Oxford seminars website on what the stages of homesickness are and how you can overcome them. It started of sounds pretty normal and not too shocking until it states that it usually takes "4-5 months after living in a new culture" to adapt and that "some people take longer"! Oh dear!

Lukily I have already been given a little helping hand from Luke Bozier to help remind me of home.

Anyway lots more packing to do.

Human trafficking and Brothels

Recently there have been several stories reported that have once again highlighted the fact that slavery does still exist in our societies today.

The first was the use of trafficked children to work on an illegal cannabis farm in the UK. 

Then there was the report that 1 in 10 prostitutes in the UK's brothels are migrant victims of human trafficking who mainly come from Asia (according to a report from the Association of Chief Police Officers). [it should be noted that this report doesn't list the victims of trafficking who come from the UK.]

It has been interesting to see that there have been a couple of responses to these with some saying that if these were legalised then it would reduce the amount of trafficking involved (and even possibly eliminate it completely) and then others saying that actually the only correct response is to come down even harder. With regard to the last case I have heard someone argue that the only way to stop human trafficking in the sex industry is to ban all pornography which leads people to prostitutes. 

I'm sure many people will argue one way or the other as to what is the best way to deal with trafficking. However one thing that is certain a key step is to raise peoples awareness of trafficking so that they can identify people who have been trafficked and assist them to escape trafficking. 

Paths out of Poverty

This morning Conservative Home ran a piece looking at welfare reform and briefly hinting at there "3 paths out of poverty" personally to me this sounds like a potential title for a self help book. However it is an important issue and one definitely worth discussing.




The three options offered by Conservative Home are Education, Family and Work but there is no explanation in the article as to why/how these are the paths out of poverty and even less detail given to what poverty actually is. The only sentence I can find that relates to the, very nice, picture is

...it is every individual's responsibility to escape poverty by acquiring a basic education, providing for his or her family and by taking work.



Tim Montgomerie does mention that the government has a responsibility to help the individual achieve these goals but ultimately it is up to them. The reality of this statement is that actually what Tim is arguing is that working and making sure you spend money on your family for their essential needs is what helps people escape poverty. Education is a means to ensure that you get work, providing for your family ensure that child poverty doesn't exist, that money isn't flittered away on gambling or alcohol whilst not buying essential items for the family. Work provides money, motivation, purpose and betters your own life and those around you.



The problem is that not everyone can be in work without job creation or as they have been described by some "non-jobs". There seams to be a truth that in every economy there is a point where no more jobs are created. In some cases those in who are unemployed can quickly find new employment and there is a high turn around in the job market, in other cases this can be a near permanent state through personal and environmental factors.



There are some other factors that are necessary for gaining employment. Lack of housing can be a trap that can be easy to enter and extremely difficult to escape. Without an address to put on an application form then you can't get a bank account or a job. Only when there is an act of grace or state provision of housing can this cycle be broken and a life of hand out be ended.



Fair wages at work are also very important to end poverty, after all if you are paid so little that you can not afford the basic provisions then you can not provide for your family no matter if you are educated and have a job.



Access to provisions such as water, sanitation, health care and food services are fortunately issues that don't have to be contemplated in Britain due to their universal availability. Admittedly in some cases lack of shelter and money can provide obstacles in these areas but if someone has shelter and a job with a fair wage then these other resources should be available.



So far I have only looked at a very small definition of poverty that address basic human resource needs such as water, health services etc. However in reality poverty is about much more than just money and if we used a definition of wholeness of life it would be much more appropriate. There are many very rich people who suffer from sever depression due to the lack of social needs being met. The effect of loneliness and feelings of isolation of people can not be underestimated, it can cause health issues, addictions, losing work, not doing essential tasks and many other factors.



The other problems is that poverty is always judged relatively to levels of wealth, considering that poverty is defined as lack of basic needs this definition can be highly inappropriate and plays into redistributive hands. I have no problems with the rhetoric of redistribution but to confuse the two isn't correct and the issue of poverty is a much more important issue to address than redistribution. In some cases using a, bottom 10% of society, bench mark is a great way to examine the level of poverty people are in, whether social mobility is present and many other factors and so we should still use it an examine it. However poverty needs to be assessed on those who don't even have the bare necessities.



So really when we talk about escaping poverty we need to talk not only about work, education and family but also addictions, housing, mental health and even community. This doesn't mean the state has to provide them (imagine a government forcing you to have kids so that you fulfilled the family quota) but it should at least enable and not prevent these.



Jorge Mortman recently said a quote that really challenged me and got me thinking

"The opposite of poverty isn't property, it's community."

Being a Christian I think he was drawing on reference to the book of Acts where it talks about the community of believes having everything in common and selling their possessions so that no one was in need. In communities like this we want to meet every need that a person has, both physical, mental and spiritual.

The Importance Of good leaders for International Development

One of the key factors in International development isn't the quantity or quality of the aid that is given to a country, but rather the leaders in a country and the amount of corruption that exits. If corruption is wide spread at the top of a government the Aid can be siphoned on. However if there is also corruption at local levels then Aid can also not be distributed amongst those it is intended for.

This is also true of emergence aid as well as development aid, where jobs can be handed out to the selected elite and contracts go not to the best company but to the most connected company.

The issue of tackling corruption is one that in some ways we are powerless to affect and yet we can try and stimulate a culture that is repulsed by corruption leading to it's decline.

The factors that can help this are NGO groups that encourage good leadership (such as the four pillars group that encourages leadership), globalised news that informs people of corruption, helping to train other states anti-corruption forces, promoting wide spread education and a whole host of other measures.

Some of these measures, such as promoting wider education, will help development in other ways as well and have merit in themselves. However there are a host of measures that may well appear to some to not offer direct benefits to our country or the country in question. Measure such as training other police and anti corruption forces, even although this may well help prevent fraud in our own country.

In many some cases corruption within the delivery of Aid has been linked to funding wars by non government actors. The long term impact of war can have a truly devastating affect on the prospects of a countries development.

For Further reading Here is a Transparancy International report on corruption within Humanitarian Aid.

Why does David Cameron really want Turkey to be in the EU?

Many have been praising David Cameron for his statements regarding pushing forward further plans for Turkey to join the EU based on the view point that this will help the EU to exert more pressure on Turkey to comply with human rights records and in addition it will help the image of many of these western countries in the Islamic world.

There is definitely a case for both these points and it is especially true that EU membership could be a very effective "carrot" to help Turkey improve it's human rights record. However the most important element behind a "carrot" is that it can only be given once certain achievements have been made. Camerons statements have seamed, to me, to suggest that compliance would only have to take place after membership has been achieved is a huge mistake. I am certain that there would be standards that Turkey would have to achieve but it is usual that standards are not met and yet EU procedures continue. The case in point being the financial standards for the Euro.

As such it is important to having strong rhetoric at the start of this process to ensure that meeting these standards is embedded into the thoughts of both the EU and Turkey.

However is there perhaps another less altruistic reason for Cameron seeking Turkey Integration? Does Cameron want Turkey to join the EU to slow down integration within the EU? Major has come out and said that he viewed Balklands integration as a way of slowing down further intergration of current EU members and hence he was such a strong supporter.


It worked as well! Since the Balkans states were granted membership there has been a decade of debates over what issues should be supra-national and intergovernmental. There have been arguments about keeping the veto, about how many votes in the parliament each state should have and many of these measures have been held up by various countries at different times. It's common sense that the more different partners involved the more varied the view points and the harder to get consensus.

As such we should be wary of Camerons statements, this is a great way to delay Europe integration (not that is necasserily a bad thing at the moment) and direct the focus of the EU soley on getting Turkey to comply with human rights standards. Considering his anti Europe stance it would seam to be a cleaver political move.