"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" Edmund Burke.




A colleague of mine arrived at work yesterday and asked me if she'd done the right thing.

For those of you who don't know I am currently employed doing what I'm told the socialists call "Working for the Man", in the city of London.

The man is, or rather are, huge international corporations which make there living by sucking the life blood out of the rest of us.

The thing is the man pays me better than anyone else I've ever worked for, and now I have completely sold out, I have done it properly. Enough of my blood has been sucked and I need some pumped back in. 

Right now I work for a bank. Worse still, I work for the lawyers in a bank.

My colleague is a lawyer. She is also petite, pretty, white, English and very middle class. She works for the man too, however it seems even those of us working for the evil ones still have some decency left.

So picture the scene. "Rowena", lets call her was on the train, on the way to work. Next to her were sitting two very glamorous looking ladies from the south of America.


The ladies were talking loudly about how America was being too influenced, and was trading too much with the rest of the world, and how that was causing all of Americas problems. America should just bring it all back home, not worry about anyone else, (if only they would), and it was all the foreigners causing the problem. Obviously with themselves being in what they clearly thought of as the 51st state, they kind of misjudged their passive audience.

They then proceeded on to a passionate conversation about Indian people, the racism of which Rowena explained "went off the scale."

Now, it has always amazed me that people will be willing to stand by and do nothing while things ceratin events are taking place. No one wants to get involved and when things are really bad people assume that someone else will "do something". However not many people will.  

People have stood by and watched serious assaults taking place because they all thought someone else had called the police, in America it is legal for the KKK to hold meetings, another colleague of mine fell over recently on some stairs, she was badly hurt, and people actually stepped over her to walk on by regardless of her evident pain, while she was lying in a heap on the floor!

Fortunately there are some people out there who are still willing to "Do something". I for my sins am one of them, and I have also been grateful of help from some others at times. What Rowena did, I told her, is simply something that separates her, and other people with the intelligence and enough good sense to "do something", from the rest of the common herd.

Loudly expressing strongly racist views in public is not on, but I guess they felt safe enough doing this even though the two ladies surely knew it is offensive.  As they continued on and on, little Rowena carried on reading her novel, but steam was starting to escape from her ears.

Just imagine those two American ladies surprise when after quite some time during which they further proclaimed the advantages of the white race over the asian, 5"2 Rowena finally looked up at them, being able to take no more, took a deep breath, and snapped in a very clipped English accent....


"Excuse me, but I find what you are saying extremely offensive and if you want to carry on with your isolationist and racist drivel, I suggest you go and do it somewhere else!"



They looked at each other, visibly extremely confused, and then moved. 












Read here, (or not!) for more on "not doing anything".

http://www.engr.wisc.edu/wiscengr/november04/bystander.shtml