STRENGTH OF
CHARACTER

Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in E:\inetpub\vhosts\magtheweekly.com\httpdocs\10\london.php on line 72

Warning: include(http://www.magtheweekly.com/skymidpage.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in E:\inetpub\vhosts\magtheweekly.com\httpdocs\10\london.php on line 72

Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'http://www.magtheweekly.com/skymidpage.php' for inclusion (include_path='.;./includes;./pear') in E:\inetpub\vhosts\magtheweekly.com\httpdocs\10\london.php on line 72
I happen to live in a place called Swanley in Kent which calls itself a town but feels more like a village. Swanley is known in the county for two things mainly, the first being the beautiful flower that bloom all over the village. In fact, Swanley calls itself the home of flowers and there is a sign proclaiming this title as you enter the town. The other thing it is known for is a more modern concrete appendage, the big super store which attracts shoppers from Swanley and the villages around it who envy us for having this facility. This big store does virtually everything from clothes to groceries to electronic items and in fact, looks a bit incongruous in our rural setting. But it is a great convenience and has been known even to attract house hunters to Swanley.
Rural areas in England have old fashioned quaint railway stations where the luxury of an escalator is unknown. A few days ago I saw an old lady, well into her eighties, making her way down the stairs at Swanley station with a shopping trolley. The trolley was

empty but it was still not easy for her to manage it. I offered to help her with the trolley and she was very grateful for my help. A few days later I saw her on the platform and helped her on to the train for which again she thanked me profusely. This time she began taking to me and told me that she made the trip to Bromley, about 15 minutes on the train, to do her weekly shopping. I was quite surprised and wondered why it was that she did not go to our own Super store which is where all of Swanley shops and many even from surrounding villages.
“Oh no,” said the old lady, “I would never go to that store.” She told me that Super store was a part of an American chain – which I knew – and she would never shop in an American store. “Not after what they have done in Iraq,” she explained. “They have made orphans out of little children, children two, three, four years old and surely that cannot be right. I know that it probably doesn’t make much difference to them whether or not I shop there, but I could never justify it to my own conscience.”
She lives about a mile away from the station in Swanley and does not have a car, being too old to drive one even if she could afford it. Buses are infrequent in small towns and villages and so she walks the mile to the station; that, she said, was not half as bad as the walk back when her shopping trolley is full and heavy. She has to lift it up the stairs to the street level and then walk the mile back home. Even in Bromley the shops she has to visit are not immediately outside the station and she has to walk about half a mile to them and back to Bromley station. But she will not shop at an Amercian origin store where she can get everything she needs and which is about a ten-minute walk from her home. She lives alone, having been a widow for 17 years, and has no one to help her other than the casual passer-by. She told me that difficult as it is for her, she did not feel that there was anything that would ever make her change her mind on this.
It is difficult not to be moved by such strength of character and I could not help but contrast the old lady’s story to some of our own stalwart political leaders who vie with each other in castigating the US for its anti-Muslim and anti-Islam foreign policies but vie harder to get their children admitted into American universities and even harder to get a Green Card, the ultimate status symbol and ticket to Utopia. But perhaps all is not lost. The day after I spoke to the old lady, I read about a young Pakistani student, Samad Khurram, who refused to take his graduation certificate from the US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson, as a mark of protest against US attacks in Pakistan during the prize distribution ceremony of Roots College in Islamabad. So impressed was I by this young man that I put his picture on the front page of The News in London!
---------------------------------------
Pakistanis groaning under the yoke of the ever-increasing cost of living may take some comfort from the fact that they are not alone. Here in England, a recent research has shown that consumers have seen their monthly outgoings soar by 26% during the past two years driven by higher housing and energy costs. The amount people spend on bills and living costs has soared from an average of £945 in June 2006 to £1,281 now. Consumers are spending around a third more on rent and mortgages than they were two years ago, with rents rising by an average of 30% and mortgage repayments jumping by 33%. Households claim they are spending about 32% more on gas and electricity at an average of £90 a month, while other everyday bills such as television subscriptions and water rates have risen by 30%. Council tax has increased by 22% during the past two years to average £90 a month, while car running costs are 34% higher and spending on food has risen by 20%. Families with children have been particularly hard hit, with their average expenditure on child care soaring by 77% during the past two years, while other spending on children, such as clothes, has risen by 37%. In fact, the cost of living in Britain has risen to its highest in 16 years and could rise another 4% this year. In the US inflation is at 4.2% while the average in Europe is 3.7% although some countries like Bulgaria have inflation galloping away at 14%. Oil is said to be the culprit although economic factors alone cannot explain the steep and apparently unchecked rise in the price of oil. The Bank of England, rather more straightforward than the State Bank of Pakistan, has said that inflation will be high until well into 2009. The world as a whole will have to tighten its belt but in the developing world, the belt does not have many notches left to tighten.n