Colin Firth and Lucy Siegle present the Observer ethical awards, where Sir David Attenborough was honoured with a lifetime achievement award

I dunno how to embed this clip in my blog so you have to go there if you want to watch it. But I love what Colin Firth had to say at the end:

"Millions of people living on less than a dollar a day who are in affect, I know it sounds like a deductive thing to say, but you can actually make a case that they're bankrolling our lifestyles with their own poverty.. by virtue of the trade rules, by virtue of the fact that we control their economies, you know.. in a way, we've got a lot of nerves to say that someone's playing the system and skimming off few ..(I can't get this one).. when we're actually doing something very similar ourselves."

I was like.. Thank you, Colin! For saying it so matter-of-factly without beating about the bush like some people (read: politicians) are wont to do.

If anyone from the "developed" nations are in denial about the fact that their leaders control the economies in developing nations (or the so-called 'Third World' countries. God, I hate it when they lump my country under that category. I always have the urge to ask: so which ones are the First and Second Worlds then??) ...look at what the currency scare did (and is still doing) to world trade. Every time America experiences recession, the whole universe runs amuk in a panic. Thousands of people in my country, especially factory workers, are being laid off during the current recession.

It's really frustrating to hear your friend talks about how her brother's got laid off along with his wife (coz they work in the same plant) and not being able to do anything about it coz it's happening across the board and you're just as helpless as the rest of them. And all because of housing property issues in a country half a world away from us. I hate being vulnerable, but even trying to break away from our dependency on the US currency means that we're gonna have to shack it up with the Euro. You can't escape these two western giants when you're living in a small country like ours. No matter how big our leaders think we are (with all those "Malaysia Can" campaigns on TV), we're still gonna get hurt when the goliaths do their thing at the stock exchange on any given day.