Hope Springs Eternal

Easter, much like the start of the year, tends to give rise to renewed hope. Hope that, whatever the contortions experienced over the first three months of a year, things may settle a little and, once more hopefully, get better.

So far 2019 has not been a vintage year. It has seen the hopes of over 17 million people dashed as Brexit never happened; it has seen the political classes continue to wrangle and fight among themselves, continue to behave as if those who gave them their jobs – the voters of the UK – don’t exist.

Is it too much to hope for that, from somewhere, Members of Parliament might find some common sense and start to really represent the people who elected them? That some of those same MPs will indulge in less confrontational behaviour; that people generally might start to be more tolerant?

Perhaps it is too much. As mourning takes place for the victims of another terrorist attack, it seems so. But at a time when a great symbol of what humankind can achieve lies wounded in Paris, yet a determination to rebuild it is apparent, perhaps the renewal of Notre Dame might point us in the right direction.