Pav’s Patch: Gestures leave me empty

NOT so long ago I was listening to a news bulletin about a camp the Americans have set up in California to prepare their troops for Iraq and Afghanistan.

A critic said the whole multi-million dollar enterprise was a waste of time, because nothing could prepare you for a war zone.

That set me thinking, because I believe the world to be big on gestures at the moment. Lots of things take place that look good but actually have zero effect.

Take the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu. He seems a very decent chap to me, but how does he think he improved the lot of the homeless by spending time in a tent in York Minster?

Or what about cutting up his dog collar? I’ll bet that had Robert Mugabe trembling in his shoes, stretching for the phone to make sure there was helicopter on stand-by.

And then of course the Archbishop, who I’m sure would be against non-essential air travel, went up in a plane to do a parachute jump for a bit more publicity.

I reckon myself to be fairly green, but when I was encouraged to take out one of my light bulbs for a month I thought the idea was mad.

First of all, I never turn on lights when I don’t have to. And secondly, taking out the bulb would have had minimal effect. My front room might have been a bit dimmer, but I was hardly going to try the stairs in the pitch black.

Of course the Government tells you to switch off something, but how does your single 60 watt bulb compare with the millions blazing away in office blocks every night?

A particular dislike of mine are sponsored fasts. I have never understood how 24 hours without food can help you understand what the starving are going through.

What’s the first thing you do when it’s all over? That’s right, you stuff yourself. Lent is followed by an orgy of Easter eggs.

My late mother starved in the war — in an Italian concentration camp on a tiny island called Ustica off northern Sicily. The lack of nutrition left her with TB and damaged eyesight.

She was the nicest woman you could have wished to meet but she once told me that she would happily have strangled any of the guards just to take one of the loaves of bread they were issued with daily.

How would a day without crisps or a bacon butty ever help me — or you — to feel something like that?