I was watching the evening news today – which these days seems like an incredible mistake, but I do it. They were, of course, talking about the appalling disaster in South East Asia. There were the predictable pictures of walls of water, of devastated streets and distraught people. What I didn’t expect, and what sickened me, was video footage of tourists attending their aquarobics sessions and continuing with their holidays as though the devastation mere metres away didn’t exist. I don’t understand. There may be some explanation – pictures don’t lie, they just don’t tell the whole story – but I can’t imagine it. Have we really reached that point in Western civilization? If so, things are bleak indeed.