Earthquake

The earthquake in Kashmir is an immense human disaster, and we must do all we can to help. Presumably the Americans could do without a few of the helicopters it is now using in Afghanistan, just to help these poor people.

Help is extremely difficult to contemplate at this remove. What can I do to help? Money is one obvious answer, and I'll donate what I can, but beyond that we need to sit down and think it all out again.

Pakistan's population is growing rapidly, doubling every 33 years at present, and already half its population are under 15 years of age. There's a time bomb waiting to devastate not just that country but much of the rest of the world.

We now have an estimated 700,000 people from Kashmir living in Great Britain, too many in ghettos in our cities but generally they are welcomed as valuable additions to our family. They are industrious, work hard, and contribute to the larger society in many ways. As integration proceeds they will, in years to come, become indistinguishable from their neighbours.

There is a problem with their living in this country. These good people tend to be the cream of Pakistan. They include doctors, nurses, architects, lawyers, accountant and entrepreneurs. All do an immensely valuable job in this country but they should be doing those jobs back in Kashmir. What they have left behind are the poor, and the poorly equipped. Buildings crash to the ground, killing most, trapping too many beneath the rubble who will now face a lingering death. If those experts had been in the country of their birth many of those deaths may have been prevented. Not just because medical skills would have been immediately at hand but the buildings would have been built to withstand earthquakes, the lawyers and accountants would have helped to reduce corruption, to impose standards.

Part of our task should be to provide the training so that people from other lands may return, and be there to train and to work within their own cultures. To allow so many Kashmiris to remain in this country is a crime. It is wasting resources that should be used to improve the lot of the majority. It's easy to understand why an individual Kashmiri wants to live in England, they have opportunities not easily available in their homeland but that short-term gain does the world no good at all.