{"id":90775,"date":"2026-03-11T08:43:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T08:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=90775"},"modified":"2026-03-11T08:43:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T08:43:25","slug":"unless-we-care-we-cannot-change-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/03\/11\/unless-we-care-we-cannot-change-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Unless we care, we cannot change the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the New York Times<\/a> notes this morning:<\/p>\n

\n

Nearly 700,000 people have been driven from their homes in Lebanon, the United Nations said on Tuesday, as Israel\u2019s mass evacuation orders and bombing campaign against the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah transform the country into a major new front in the metastasizing Middle East war.<\/p>\n

The mass movement of people has prompted Lebanese leaders and international aid groups to warn of a mounting humanitarian crisis in a country\u00a0still recovering<\/a>\u00a0from the last war between Israel and Hezbollah that ended in 2024.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I read this and then wrote my piece about being tired of war<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I went to Lebanon a few years ago at the invitation of the United Nations. It is, at one level, a beautiful country, and historically a melting pot where the people of so many nations came together to talk and trade. Potentially, it is the same place now. It could be a place for trade, a place for tourism, a place for culture, a place for learning. However, hope is denied to it. Its neighbours seemingly give it no hope, and yet again, people within it are the victims of war, over which they have very little control at all.<\/p>\n

The consequences are, however, massive. Let's not pretend otherwise. Those migrants arriving in the UK as desperate refugees (because that is what most of them are) are part of that consequence. Our indifference to the plight of their home countries is what creates our domestic problem. Unless we care, we cannot change the world, including our own bit of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the New York Times notes this morning: Nearly 700,000 people have been driven from their homes in Lebanon, the United Nations said on Tuesday,
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics-of-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90775"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90785,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90775\/revisions\/90785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}