look who's back!

Nope, it's not Arnold Schwarzenegger or, in fact, Jesus. It is me, Mr Timothy of Magic, re-entering the world of blog. And do you notice the date? 15th October 2008.

What is so special about 15/10/08? Is it the day that the United States government announced a $250,000,000,000 plan to rescue American banks from the midst of the credit crunch? Or the day that Somali pirates demand a £12m ransom for the safe return of a Ukrainian ship? What about the day that consumer inflation in the United Kingdom hit a sixteen year high of 5.2%? Or a German government report discovered that the German economy will grow by just 0.2% in the next 12 months?

Well, yes. It is all of those days. But it's also the same day that 1,800,000,000 people have to walk up to half a mile to collect 20 litres of water to live on. That's about half what the average Briton uses to flush the toilet in a day.

It's the day that 30,000 children died because they couldn't afford to eat.

It's the day that 72,000,000 children aged 5-11 didn't go to school because they couldn't.

It's the day that 800,000 children in one country couldn't afford to eat. Any guesses what country that was? India? South Africa? Some small war torn country you only know of from the news? A famine ridden African nation?

No. It was Canada.

15th October 2008 is also Blog Action Day. This year's theme is Poverty.

The issues of poverty are global issues, but also local issues. It is something that seems to be on everyone's minds during the present financial turmoil the world is facing. But the credit crunch doesn't matter to the child who has to walk to fetch water, or to the HIV orphan whose parents couldn't afford retro viral treatment. It doesn't matter to the Canadian child or the British homeless man as they have to queue up for their handouts of unwanted food and tepid soup.

Whoever you may be reading this, I beg you - do something. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, do something sponsored for a charity, donate money, tell you friends about the issues of poverty, take a stand. Don't just sit on the Internet, reading blogs and playing inane games. Don't hassle your friends if they aren't on Facebook for a day or two, or if they don't answer text messages or, worst of all, they don't update their blog.

Take that energy, that passion, and do something with it!

Timmy "Poverty Poster" Magic