Can you do?

"Them as can do, has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices."

If you would care to read that again to make sure you got it all I'd be much obliged:

"Them as can do, has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices."

So says Granny Aching in Terry Pratchett's The Wee Free Men. These two sentences seem to sum up how the world should be. You see, I can do some things, for example I can teach a child to add whereas some people cannot stand any children but theirs (in some cases). So I do the teaching for those that can't. It is probably those very same people who can't stand children that are able to make computers work. I can't do that. This blogging is the limit of my skills and once people start talking of gigabytes and hertz I struggle even to get the gist. So these people do computers for those (me) who can't. And so the world continues. It is when we get an imbalance that conflict begins.

An imbalance in gratefulness, an imbalance in wealth and an imbalance in power.

I am so pleased that the cleaners clean the street just as I am so pleased that the builders build houses. Likewise I am pleased that Gordon Brown, apparent buffoon that he is, is not a dictator and is not inherently evil (congratulations to those who noticed the use of the word 'inherently', I despise the idea of ID cards).

I am not so pleased that the cleaners who clean the street often live in shoddy housing, whereas the builders live in slightly better accommodation and the Prime Minister is allocated several mansions.

I am not so pleased that in South Africa people live in shedly squalor and sleep under polythene sheets.

But what do they do for us? What do they do for us?

Not a lot. Not very much at all. But that is because we have not yet spoken out for "them as has no voices" and we have not yet done for those that can't. It is when we begin to do this that we shall see what they can do for us. I would like to see, the question is, would you?