We need to talk

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Former Member

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The news has been pretty brutal over the last few months. I always read the news but I've found myself obsessively checking news sites since the EU referendum.

A couple of weeks after the result I went on holiday. Getting updates about the wider world was harder in a campsite in the middle of nowhere with rubbish phone signal and zero Wi-Fi. When I was able to read about what was going on I almost wished I hadn’t looked.

All of a sudden we had a new Prime Minister and a new Cabinet featuring some, shall we say, interesting characters. There was a terrorist attack in Nice, an attempted coup in Turkey and shootings in America.

Spending my vacation walking along beautiful coastline and lazing on (okay, only occasionally) sunny beaches, it was difficult to take in what was going on. Everything felt very far away.

Now I’m out of the holiday bubble; the bad news stories continue and have been much closer to home. A few weeks ago a friend of mine made national news for having an argument with her boyfriend at a train station, which resulted in four policemen tackling her boyfriend to the ground.

They weren't being violent and they tried to explain that they were just a couple having a row, but the police didn't listen. From this description it seems quite hard to understand why the police acted as they did, putting a young man in a cell for the night for falling out with his girlfriend. When you know that this young man is black, it’s still difficult to understand but sadly the story seems less surprising.

I’m angry about what happened to my friends. I’m angry about Brexit. I’m angry about the violence happening across the world, the upsetting stories we’re bombarded with in the media - and the stories we don’t hear. But anger creates greater divisions and it seems clear to me that we are divided enough as it is.

I’m ready to put my anger to one side and to start talking and listening in the hope that I can make the changes I want to see happen.

I hope you will share with us the issues that matter to you; we want to hear your voices.

Bryony, Peer Editor

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