The Philippines, already wobbling like a poorly balanced washing machine, is now experiencing what geologists politely call a 'seismic swarm.' Hundreds of aftershocks. Imagine a bull in a china shop, but the china shop is an archipelago and the bull is the Earth’s tectonic plates.
The death toll, as always, is the only number that gets the suits in Whitehall to look up from their afternoon gin. UK aid teams are on standby, which in Whitehallese means they are sitting in a room watching the clock until it is time to put the kettle on. Meanwhile, the ground continues to dance a jig that nobody asked for.
Survivors cling to rubble as if it were a lifebuoy, while bureaucrats ask for 'impact assessments.' The horror is real, the response is theatre. But fear not, the Foreign Office has issued a statement: 'We stand ready to help.
' Which is diplomatic for 'We will think about sending a cheque once we have finished our biscuits.' Still, as the aftershocks count passes 200, one cannot help but notice the cosmic irony: the Earth moves, and the British government shuffles its feet.
