Freedom big and small

Freedom sounds big, freedom sounds impressive, freedom sounds huge.

However, sometimes freedom is simple, freedom is humble and freedom is modest.

This is not in any way to belittle freedom, but sometimes you are exercising freedom and enhancing freedom with very small, but significant actions.

For the people in Ukraine right now it is some of the simplest freedoms that are under threat.

Not the freedom to go to a wild party, to put on a scandalous dress or to get wildly drunk, but rather the freedom to speak and write the truth.

Sadly Russia, the country that saw fit to call a newspaper boldly: Pravda or Truth has undermined the freedom to tell the truth about the world its citizen’s inhabit.

In a world where jaded people insist that everyone lies, Russian journalists have died for the simple reason that they had the courage to tell the truth about the reality they were experiencing in a supposedly democratic state.

The extent of Russian falsehood has reached such a peak that Russian TV anchors are stepping down from their positions because the Russian people are not being told the truth of what is happening in Ukraine by its main news sources.

I will not pretend that I live in a perfect, honest, incorruptible democracy, but we do have a free press that even when skewed by political bias tells us truths, sometimes uncomfortable ones about the world we live in.

Russian journalists that tell the uncomfortable truths about Russia face risks I have rarely had to face and they are exercising a simple, humble and modest freedom.

The freedom to tell an honest story, the freedom to write without censorship and it is a freedom so humble we often don’t really realise we exercise and enhance it everyday we put opinionated pen to paper.

Being honest is not an easy freedom, it comes with costs even in a free community and I will not claim to be a saint in this regard.

However, where journalism is concerned I strive to tell truths sincerely to my audience to the best of my ability and on days like today don’t I wish my abilities were greater.

For people in Ukraine are risking their lives to preserve a land that is more open than Russia in this regard, a land that should have been respected by all global powers, but which Putin holds in scant regard.

I am neither of Russian or Ukrainian heritage, but I am saddened by what is unfolding.

The Ukrainian freedom to live as a peaceful independent nation is being disregarded, a freedom that does sound big, impressive, even huge.

However, this big freedom is upheld by that small, humble and modest freedom to tell the truth about the situation you experience.

Ukraine is exercising the freedom of truth more faithfully than the Russian state right now and in this respect I support them and their right to peaceful self determinism.

I exercise my small freedom to write truthfully about how simple some freedom can be, in the hope that they preserve all of their freedoms and Russians learn to defend those among them still exercising their freedom to tell the truth about Russia.

In the spirit of this honesty, I am far from the fighting, I am in Britain and I am not hungry, thirsty or cold.

However, I hope my words touch someone with a greater power to make a difference to freedom, in Ukraine and around the world.

Organisers said 150,000 people massed in London last weekend in support of Ukraine, in a free country and seeing it with my own eyes, I believe those numbers.

This is today’s piece of truth.