Yuletide was a pagan feast, celebrated by Druids in ancient England. It was a time for collecting together and feasting: a time of the Winter Solstice when the world stood still in slumber, gathering its breath for a renewal and another Springtime awakening.
 
The New Year heralds days lengthening in Northern climes: the dark days of Winter are almost done.
 
At New Year it is traditional to make resolutions.
 
At this special family time, let us pause and remember all our brothers and sisters in struggle: those oppressed by tyrannical forces of evil: those who are cruelly incarcerated: those tortured for their beliefs: those persecuted simply because they hold different political desires, focus and objectives.
 
Let us at this special time remember the hundreds of thousands killed in Iraq on the pretext of a moral cause: those being killed right now in Afghanistan simply because they desire freedom in their own land and stand in the way of venal Western oil barons.
 
Let us at this special time remember those in Palestine, whose country has been taken from them by force.
 
Those starving and dying in Zimbabwe, once the most verdant and self-supporting nation state in Africa: and all because British politicians were too stupid, lazy and egotistical to manage a fair transition.
 
The Amazonian Rain Forest Indians, a rapidly shrinking group, persecuted, despised, destroyed, neglected in the subtle siren’s call of progress.
 
Those families in both America and Britain, destroyed and perhaps homeless, by corrupt and greedy bankers and the laissez faire politicians who failed in their sovereign duties of regulation.
 
Those in the nation state which vainly boasts of being the wealthiest nation in this World who are starving; deprived; excluded and unwanted.
 
As we enter the New Year, let us make a special resolution for 2009: let us redouble our efforts to regain control of our countries from the hands of venal and self-serving politicians, in order that the dream of activists, moral reformers and social philosophers, human equity, might come to pass.