“A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” ~ Mahatma Ghandi

I’ve been watching the furore about the upcoming public services reforms and have been signing petitions to try to help stop the gutting of our public services.  To be honest, I can see us being steered towards a system of private health insurance, with all that this entails.  In addition to this, we’re looking at cuts to the availability of legal aid and also cuts to the assistance given to sick and disabled people.

Now, I don’t believe for a minute that the money can’t be found to preserve these things and this whole thing makes me wonder about the commentary this provides on the people running the show in this country.  Let’s be clear, these reforms will hit the poor and sick the hardest and we all know the old maxim that a society should be judged by how it treats the weak and vulnerable.  There are many variations on this theme and in my opinion, the most apt quote is the one above from Ghandi.

We must understand that the presence of these things shows our compassion for others in action, to just slash them would be a betrayal of this compassion for others and would also ignore the very real Karmic consequences of this act.  All of our actions have very real consequences, Karma is not a mystical thing and it can be readily observed in action.  The cumulative and ongoing negative effects of these shortsighted decisions will cause an enormous amount of harm to the life of our nation.  It’s not just the person who is refused treatment who suffers, it’s the family and friends, it’s the carers who have to take up the slack.  These effects ripple outward, in the same way that the closure of a large factory (e.g. the Rover plant at Longbridge) has an effect on the local community and the supply chain.

Let’s hope common sense prevails, before we all suffer.