Currently suffering what appears to be my second relapse into the flu which started several days before we broadcast our last issue of KBzine before Christmas, I've had plenty of time to lie around over the break, reflect on things I never generally have time to think about and watch rubbishy TV programmes.

Unusually my New Year's Eve was spent alone, shivering and wrapped in blankets on the sofa, which meant that throughout the day I saw a number of news bulletins showing the different countries welcome in 2013 with incredible firework displays - even, for the first time, North Korea. Now I may sound rather Scrooge-like here but having become bored with London's offering at least five minutes before the end - spectacular as it all was - I started wondering what all the homeless people watching from sleeping bags in doorways, or cardboard boxes in London's parks, would be thinking as they looked up into the night's sky. Then I thought about the homeless throughout the world, and those who are sick but can't afford essential medicines, and those who are hungry or thirsty, or without sanitation, and wondered what they thought of it all.

If just half of what was spent on all the fireworks globally could have gone to good causes instead, just think what a difference it would have made to these people's lives!

Reading the item (below): ‘The state of water 2013’, brings home the fact that despite all the flooding experienced last year in the UK, Continental Europe, the US and beyond – water is still very scarce in some parts of the world and it’s going to become scarcer. We have to get to grips with conserving it while making sure it’s available to all those that need it.

I wish there was a way of persuading the various spendthrift governments to consider what’s really important in everyone’s lives and donate half of what they waste to something like WaterAid instead…

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Yours,

Jan Hobbs