Inconceivable

One thing that's inescapable in the big cities of the States is homeless people. It has been a little surprising that there aren't more here in New York this time seeing it's summer and the size of the place and all, it's definitely not as bad here as LA and San Fran. Not that that's any sort of justification, one is too many.

I remember that in the previous times I was here it always used to break my heart seeing them and all I wanted to do was give them all I had and little had really changed. The main difference is that then I was working and so had a slightly larger budget and it does feel kind of funny giving to people when quite often you are only eating once a day yourself. But then I always feel guilty about the extravagence of travelling, however cheaply, and who really misses a few coins anyway. I also can't get out of my head the idea that if it's bad here what is the reality of Africa.

The front page of today's paper was trumpeting the fact that B*sh has set aside $1.7bn to battle malaria in Africa which gives everyone a nice warm fuzzy for 12 pages until you hit the editorial and find that a couple of years ago he promised 5. Who the hell needs another aircraft carrier/submarine/war - other news says that the Taliban is back on the rise so that incursion has obviously worked well giving full value for money. Try, try, try again and one day you may succeed. The diplomatic equivalent of trying to reach the playground of Peace and Posterity by banging your head against the wall while the rest of the class goes hungry.