What horrible times we live in. In Europe people are fleeing war and persecution and meeting more persecution, often from those claiming some moral high ground. Some are dying in the attempt. There are photos of drowned children wherever you turn. Good people are doing good things to help, of course, but the cold-hearted indifference to suffering shown by some politicians beggars belief. The language being used is identical to that used to describe Jews fleeing Hitler. One of our MPs tweeted about a dead child: "The little Syrian boy was well clothed and well fed. He died because his parents were greedy for the good life in Europe. Queue jumping costs."

I think I may have written here before about the need for the international community to come to the aid of Britain's poor - well, this is happening. The UN are going to investigate Britain's treatment of our sick and disabled. I am both glad and utterly crushed by the news. That we have come to this. In the days of Thatcher and all that talk of a return to "Victorian values", I remember worrying how far back they wanted to go, and now we know. To save a few hundred quid, the govt now routinely withholds money due to the terminally ill, unless they actively seek work in their dying weeks and days. This is who we are. Not so great now, eh, Britain?

Meanwhile in America, 'my team' (ie those who believe in equality for all) are uniting self-righteously to pour venom and vitriol all over the internet on some woman who should have just been sacked for not doing her job. Why has it escalated like this? In case you missed it, she's a clerk who refused to marry a gay couple on religious grounds, thereby provoking people I thought were decent to say unconscionably vile things about her. Now she's been taken into custody. What I can't bear is the amount of hatred swirling about all over the place. Her religion is full of hatred and judgement, which seems a pretty scary set of shit to try and live with. I mean, imagine what it must be like to believe in a god who will wreak vengeance for non-compliance with rules such as this. I'm not supporting her actions at all - the fact that I feel I have to write that down is disappointing; I do feel disappointed - that it's all got so nasty, that people I respected can be so vicious. We're meant to be the good guys here, kind, tolerant.

Instead of crawling into a hole and hiding my head in shame and sorrow, I will force myself to end with some gratitude. Today I am grateful for: yoga; Mary Berry's lemon drizzle cake recipe; the kindness and patience I've witnessed in YD as she supports a friend who came off her meds for OCD after four years without incident, only to spiral quickly into a dark, mad place (she's back on the meds now, but they take a while to kick in - people use the term OCD so glibly, when they mean 'fussy' or 'a bit particular', the reality is orders of magnitude worse); being able to buy books on a whim, and read them at once, via those evil bastards at amazon; art group tomorrow (yay)

Sleep tight, sweet dreams