We are all part of a greater whole – let’s stick together

SOME days, whether it’s the international news, or great anniversaries, or new government policies, or the results of elections, or just living our lives, it's important to remember the facts.

- Hilton Dawson

Of course, we all have opinions, but science is generally our best guide to whatever the facts may be.

Science is humble, while it serves us with rigour it is always provisional, it always stands up to be dis proved. When, and only when, something is scientifically demonstrated, that’s when the facts change.

Of course, every great scientific formula is only man’s attempt to impose order upon the world, science isn’t something out there to be discovered.

However, science can be seen to work in all the myriad ways it helps us to manage our daily lives, so there is good sense in following its precepts.

Even when it confounds what might be convenient to believe, when it goes against what powerful people want to do, when it raises questions about our own moral and political choices.

On this beautiful spring morning in Northumberland, I’ve been thinking of the people I’ve met and know from Ukraine and Russia, from Palestine and Israel, from our Parliament and our County Council and from America, of so many people I know, living peacefully and happily right here.

Of how borders and barriers and boundaries are encroaching on our whole wide world and threatening to make us small.

I was once so thrilled to read the words of Walt Whitman - 'I am large, I contain multitudes. I agree, so are we all.

We're all family; brothers and sisters under the skin.