January and the New Year is here, scuttling along at a pace that seems to quicken each year we get older. But what is our new? Resolutions: lose ten pounds and only gain back five? Follow the wars? Or maybe we just get to keep the old ones? Ukraine, Belarus, Israel, Gaza and Palestine seem to be all I can carry, though God knows there are more states of anguish all over the world. And these holiday months seem to be a time where ‘things’ can get slipped through Government, like jokes and laws passed.

Did you hear the one about Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko signing a new law giving him life-time immunity from criminal prosecution – from what crimes is he thinking about, one wonders? Were Lukashenko to leave power, that is, resign “he cannot be held accountable for actions committed in connection with exercising his presidential powers. And also – just for safety’s sake –  the law stops opposition leaders in exile returning to Belarus and running as a candidate for president against him. The last leader of the opposition, who fled to Lithuania in 2020, said the new law was Lukashenko’s response to his “fear of an inevitable future”. He’s been on the job – as president of Belarus – for 30 years, and maybe he’s getting a little weary and wants some kind of a state pension.

Lukashenko is not the only politician to be seen juggling a little law here and another one under the table, there. The UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has his hands full with Junior Doctors walking out for a full six-day strike, and the Royal College of Nursing still in formal discussions over nurses’s pay. Someone somewhere is calculating how many extra lives have been lost beyond Covid due to the stand-offs between the NHS and the government. Despite this and the increase in cancellations of routine surgeries – a friend’s gall-bladder surgery has been repeatedly canceled – and the lack of diagnostic screenings for heart disease and cancer, the public remains mostly supportive of the NHS blaming the government for this impasse once again. It is a gamble for this Tory government. If they keep the disputes brewing until after a general election, and win that election, then the blame falls squarely back on their shoulders. If the Tories lose to Labour then Sir Keir Starmer has to rise to the challenge. Will he raise taxes and have the public pay for these services we still hold dear? Rishi is looking for lollypops to hand out and may have found one in the Post Office Scandal that left hundreds of workers wrongly accused of fraud when it turned out to be a faulty computer program. The heartache, broken lives and even deaths of postal workers, and their families, have saddened the country. But Rishi is ready with photo opportunities and sound bites. “People should know we are on it and want to make it right for all those affected.” A new government minister is in charge and getting the right compensation to the right people could earn Rishi some much needed brownie points. But England, like other countries, continues to have miscarriages of justice that remain mis-carried, left lying in government boxes and portfolios like stickie-notes to be eventually scrunched up and tossed away.

Sir Keir also has a stickie note on his desk. On New Year’s Eve, 16-year-old Harry Pitman came to Primrose Hill with his chums, joining the crowds watching the New Year’s fireworks light up the city of London. Maybe it was a scuffle, a push, or a taunting word which left him stabbed to death. Always a popular destination, Primrose Hill took on new significance during the Covid lockdown as the only Royal Park that remained open and illuminated after dark. Groups, friends, dealers and small gangs came from all over London changing the tenor of the park from safe, friendly and joyful, to edgy, loud, mercenary and dangerous. We were all frightened that something like this would eventually happen, and as community groups tried to tone down and stop the changes they became inevitable as, like rats crowded in a cage, groups of friends become crowds of strangers and quickly fearful of each other. This deep sadness is felt as a community loss, and failure for Primrose Hill, which is within Sir Keir Starmer’s constituency. We look to see if he could show some leadership in this ‘small’ matter and pony up, installing the park gates that have been requested for years and putting the police presence in the park and on the streets on the weekend evening shifts, rather than having them stroll down the High street on a mid-week afternoon. 

Sometimes, when I can see the maps, I get it. It is harder from this distance, the ‘other’ side of North America, and many people are better than I in understanding the European and Middle Eastern conflicts. Those who have a knowledge of history, and apply that memory can see further forward than most of us. Reading Archie Bland in the Guardian trying to grapple with, and present, the number of Palestinian deaths, displacements, and destruction coming out of Gaza remains beyond me. It is when I look at the maps, alongside the photographs, and see the flattened buildings and communities, that I begin to grasp the seeming purpose behind such destruction. Simon Tisdall, also for the Guardian, writes chillingly of the similarities of the behaviors of Putin and Netanyahu. I get the scale of it all – I think I do – but it is with the stories that hold the slimmest degrees of separation that I carry. We have friends who are housing Israeli refugees in Paris; another young woman who fled Russia and now lives with her mother as refugees in Tel Aviv; a Palestinian artist who has been silent since reaching out in the beginning of October. Our 8-year-old grandson’s best friend is from Ukraine, living with his grandmother in The Netherlands. These are the stories I can hold in my heart. 

This has been a Letter from A. Broad. Written and read for you by Muriel Murch