I am heartened by seeing, pretty much everywhere I look, collection buckets for tsunami appeals. On every till in the supermarket I ducked into this evening, for example.
There seems to be a real penetration of the idea that our sacrifices, however small, can make a real difference.
I’m hopeful that this marks something of a sea-change in how we in the developed and wealthy west regard our wealth, as something bringing great responsibility as well as opportunity. Something of a re-emergence and re-legitimisation of the UN may take place as well, to the good of us all.
But, as has been frequently pointed out, the disaster in Bam a year ago – an order of magnitude less than the tsunami but still a level of destruction almost beyond comprehension – is still far from healed, and aid from the west didn’t all come through. Let us keep that disaster in mind as we look toward renewal from this one – the lesson, if we are to learn it, comes from the earthquake as well as the tsunami.