Hello and a very happy 1st December to all our readers! It is always hard to believe that we have arrived here again, coming to the close of another year. I always experience a sense of festive disconnect at this point too – not quite onboard with all the decorations and lights that are adorning the villages and shops. Then I wondered, maybe a December issue of the Voice for Arran will help to focus me on the festive spirit? But with so many things taking my attention there is little time for Christmas just yet. And what I find instead in the following pages is perhaps not so much festive spirit but something more reflective.
So we have a full issue for you as we go from Belém to Palestine, and from Britain’s colonial Empire back to North Ayrshire again. Perhaps far too much for a wee issue of the Voice. Or maybe it feels like that amid the ongoing disorientation that so much of the news has recently been bringing. Off the back of a week which saw the delivery of a Budget that skirts around any commitment to meaningful change, and the end of another fudged COP in Brazil, I realise my disorientation is due largely to the lack of strong ethical leadership in our public spaces. Or at least any that is consistently reported in the mainstream media.
The UK governments are certainly not providing this. As one commentator in The Conversation noted, “The budget itself did little to salve the feeling that this Labour government is sorely lacking a uniting narrative – a reason why we should all get behind higher taxes to rescue our stagnating public services.” Filling out the North Ayrshire Council’s budget consultation last week was an uncomfortable reminder of just this. The lack of vision and courage of our leaders means already underserved communities are landed with impossible decisions and further disadvantage which shouldn’t be ours to carry.
NAC want to know whether we will accept additional cuts to an already overstretched education service. When all around we hear of the energy companies, media groups and billionaire (or is that trillionaire these days) tech individuals who are raking in enormous profits, I wonder why these are presented as questions for us at all. Surely these people and this wealth could be solving the world’s problems! A parallel situation plays out at the COP meetings where wealthy countries are not providing enough support for the Global south in the face of climate breakdown.
In her piece ‘Thoughts on these dark autumn evenings’ Sally Campbell contemplates similar themes. She reminds us of the history of the Welfare State in the UK, “a form of government in which the state…protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth and public responsibility for citizens…” And cites the current Reith Lecturer, also an advocate of high and fair taxation, Rutger Bregman. While higher taxes for the rich seem to be essential, it is perhaps Bregman’s apparent readiness to say so and to billionaires at the World Economic Forum in Davos that I find so reassuring. The sense of relief in Sally’s observation, “I am not alone in despair about the present trajectory,” is palpable, and a sentiment I fully share.
It is Read Palestine Week, and over the next few days Publishers for Palestine are offering a free reading list by Palestinian writers both in and evacuated from Gaza. There are collections of poetry, memoirs, and political anthologies to explore, unfiltered views of the lived experience of genocide and displacement. And though it might be only a small act of resistance and another of solidarity, I realised that to read the words of these authors, and to share in some way what they have endured, may be the truest kind of festive spirit of all.
From all of us at the Voice we wish you much health and happiness over this Christmas time and look forward to joining you again in 2026, Elsa
