Page 16 w Human Trafficking.


Imagine the hope that you may have as an individual or as the head of a family to be offered the chance to escape from a war torn repressive country where freedom and a belief in the future are not part of the everyday living agenda. You pay what little you have to a human trafficker and hope that at long last your family will know the meaning and security of the word future. Now imagine the absolute despair of being placed on an overloaded rust bucket of a ship and sent out into the unknown to find that promised future. The horror of the trade in human beings is being carried out along the very shores of the beautiful sea that I sometime spend walking and eating alongside. Imagine, whilst enjoying lunch at one of the eateries on the Guardamar beach front line, your lunch was disturbed by the sight of bodies being washed ashore on the incoming flow. This terrible scenario has not unfolded for us living our Spanish dream as yet, and hopefully it never will, but consider what the Italian and Greek authorities are going through when boats of every shape and size are putting to sea from the Libyan coast and its environs with the express purpose of finding refuge in Italy and or Greece. The latest disaster has seen hundreds of people of all ages perish at sea in what is becoming a tragedy of epidemic proportions. What I find really disturbing is that when I ask myself the question … “why do these people risk all for these dangerous journeys?” I already know the answer...They simply want a share of the world’s cake! And they are being ruthlessly exploited by criminals and political fundamentalists who promise that over the horizon lies the European dream. What the solution is I do not really know… however what I do know is that action must be taken to both stop the human traffickers and more importantly stop the terrible waste of human life. I have avoided ranting about the past meddling in other countries affairs and this sadness being a natural consequence of such meddling, that was then …this is now. Come on World do something.


The Top


A View From


Welcome to my monthly column “A view from the top”. Hopefully you will find my rambling readable maybe even enjoyable. You may agree or you may disagree with my views, I care not. These are my views long held and forged over a life time of work, travel and experience. Now that’s over let’s have a look at what is really winding me up.


QF Focus Magazine


What happened to Childhood? Been reading in a British newspaper that I found (cannot afford to buy one) that British children spend on average less than an hour a day doing what I used to know as “playing out”, and are in danger of becoming insular and unworldly as a consequence of being internet driven and always on the phone. My childhood did not have such things as the internet and as for a phone I was fifteen before the magic of the telling bone entered our house. (Catweazle if you must know). My days were spent playing truant from school, being caught and taken back to school by my Mum and playing truant again. After school myself and my mates used to play Please Mr. Crocodile across our street or go case carrying in Victoria station to earn a few bob, always mindful that the legal porters were on the lookout for us pinching their living. An American lady once gave me a ten bob note for carrying her case a couple of hundred yards to a hotel… a ten bob note - can you imagine a nine year old with a ten bob note. I rushed to boots the chemist and bought a brand new torch and batteries so I could sit in our house downstairs meter cupboard and light up my world. In the school summer holidays, when truant was not an option, I simply got up said to my mum I am going out and when she said where? I would always answer, just out. Out for me was the joys of the London Underground system …no ticket barriers in those days although I never actually had a ticket to show. I used to travel far and wide and by the time I was ten my knowledge


extended to


both The Natural History Museum and the Tower of London. Indeed


the


Natural History Museum and the Science Museum became my places of refuge whilst playing truant. Nowadays they would call it learning on the job. Learning to swim became another route into the outside world… My bike would take me and my mates to the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park where we would swim all day before heading home in time for tea. Before leaving the Serps however one of us would keep doggo while a couple of us undid all the new combination bike locks and moved them around the assorted bikes locked to the Serps outside railings. Naughty yes but harmless fun unless one of the bikes was yours…sorry. To this day I can still crack the cylinder style combination bike lock. The library also had a place in my young heart… I loved the “Churchill Gardens Children’s library”… the books of choice were Herges adventures of Tintin and the Alan Garner fantasy books Elidor and the Weirdstone of Brisingmen. The library was where you could keep warm and always be safe. Life was full and mostly life was fun as a street kid in Central London… with Battersea Park as my garden and the Serpentine Lake as my swimming pool… kids today - get a life.


Quesada Boulevard. All Quesada locals must have seen the giant hole that has been dug in the main Quesada high street to accommodate “Quesada Boulevard”. This new commercial venture will house shops and a variety of outlets to serve what is an already congested Quesada. Whilst I welcome facilities to Quesada I must ask the question how will an already congested main street cope with all the required car parking? At present Quesada Main Street is a nightmare and is nigh on impossible to drive up or down. Cars are parked at an angle one side with the larger cars having their rear ends poking out into the road so you have to swerve around the bloody things just to progress up the road. Some proper considered thinking needs to be carried out in terms of car parking and traffic management… watch this space!


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