E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

A week or so after a startling election, which culminated in the collapse of Ms May's hubristic intentions for a hard Brexit, and ushered in a new, smiling, roseate Corbyn , PM in waiting, The Grenfell Towers inferno has struck London, and the UK, into a state of numbed horror. In the richest borough in all of the UK, it seems impossible that a 24-storey building with hundreds of families in it could, after one fridge caught fire, become entirely engulfed in flame like a roman candle within minutes. Anyone who has seen the footage will recognise instantly that this sort of disaster just isn't supposed to happen in a wealthy, industrialised nation anymore, one with fire safety laws - but somehow, cruelly and tellingly, the poorer members of UK society were ignored, their needs shelved, their reports and messages binned, and their homes made into a death-trap. If faulty cladding or improper safety measures are the fault, as appears likely, then this will be a case of manslaughte...

The recent disaster in The Philippines - which may be the result of man made global climate change on some deeper level - is also a nail in the coffin of an interventionist God.  My Catholic theology has wavered, and it now is blown over by yet another assault on my sensibilities.  No God I know would massacre thousands in a windstorm.  But then, I do not know God.  I can only know what he is not, so feeble is my human ken.  At any rate, the universe moves in remote, strange and often cruel ways.  All we can do as mortals is try to pick up the pieces when nature, in its broad brutal swathes of dumb action negates us.  We must gesture towards what a kind presence overbearing all would do.  We must try to be God in the curious absence of one. Those poor people!

The latest news from the BBC, that there is a nuclear meltdown  possibility in Japan, adds horror to the already humbling natural disaster of last week.  The people of Japan have endured much in their history - not least the atomic bombs the West dropped on them in 1945 - and they will come through this.  However, this is still a dreadful challenge for them - and an occasion of great national and international sorrow.  I wish Japan well at this terrible moment of crisis.

14 million people are affected.  Please donate to the DEC Pakistan Floods appeal if you can.