Some things will never add up

[silver_notebook]

Over the last few days numbers have fallen at me from the media causing confusion, indignation and all sorts of unease in this normally numerate head of mine, as they too regularly are want to in this world we live in:-

·       The Israeli government plans to give $9 billion1 compensation to the 8-9000 people who will be forced to evacuate disputed

Comments

[metrocentric]

Was the prawn material from Radio 4 too? I think I heard it the other night. It was strange to hear that annoying woman from 'The Food Programme' talking about something that mattered for a change.

[silver_notebook]

Indeed; I imagine there was only one Bangladeshi king prawn story in the British media this week. It was quite strange hearing it, as they were talking about Noakhali, the region that my friend's family is from, and where we spent Christmas. It's quite beautiful: lush greenness, crazy paved with drying ponds and paddy fields, themselves striped with almost iridescent rice shoots; and swaying coconut palms in clusters around the homesteads breaking up the flatness of the skyline. The shear density of humanity there is incredible, and there is no unfilled space for displaced people to move to (there's already river gypsies and colourful tent encampments), so that story hurt to be heard.