Last updated 13:01, Sunday, 18 May 2008

MY NIECE had to rush to catch a train from Carlisle to Lockerbie the other day and did not realise, until she got on, that she had no cash.

She explained her predicament to the conductor and offered him her debit card. When he said they didn’t take cards she proffered all sorts of identification and said she would pay at Lockerbie or make whatever other arrangements he wished.

The conductor told her his solution was to have the police waiting to arrest her in Lockerbie. My niece is a gentle, shy young woman. She doesn’t dress outlandishly, there’s not a tattoo or piercing in sight, she’s not loud or threatening in any way.

She is a young girl who had been let down by a promised ride to Lockerbie, had to dash for the train and had no money.

The conductor’s hectoring, threatening attitude reduced my niece to tears and caused some consternation among other passengers. A group of four 30-somethings from Glasgow, sitting across the aisle, eventually protested to the conductor. They were immediately told that if they interfered they would be put off the train.

In the end the four travellers dipped into their own pockets and paid my niece’s fare which had to be reluctantly accepted by a conductor who appeared to have his own agenda - to make life as difficult as possible for his passengers.

My niece was so upset by her treatment that she forgot to get any contact details for the good Samaritans who had come to her aid, even when they themselves were threatened with eviction from the train.

We are not going to let this lie. We are going to be contacting the train company involved and there WILL be an apology from the conductor.

My niece’s family - her parents, grandparents, aunts and cousins - are all furious because we know what a lovely girl she is and how embarrassed, upset and frightened she would have been.

But something good came out of it. As my niece said, herself, she encountered one horrible man on that train and met four really good people.

This incident happened last week - the same week as the Burma cyclone which is estimated to have killed around 100,000 people and displaced 1.5 million.

This is tragedy on such a massive scale that it is almost impossible to comprehend.

It makes my niece’s experience a mere inconvenience not worth mentioning.

But it also occurred to me that we almost have the same set of characters in this larger drama. We have the victims, we have the people who are willing to help and we have the man in charge who only wants to impose his will and will not tolerate interference.

It seems the generals who run Burma are willing to stand back and see their own people die in their thousands rather than admit a loss of power - even if it is all the might of nature that has robbed them of that power.

We are told that, even in the midst of this indescribable tragedy, this unimaginable loss of human life, the government redirected its resources to hold a referendum on the constitution - a referendum designed to further tighten the military junta’s grip on a mineral wealthy country where the poor keep getting poorer.

The world, like the group travelling to Glasgow, is poised and waiting to help. Money has been given and aid packages are trickling in. But the people who most need help are not getting it because the generals will not allow outside aid workers into the country.

They want to show that they are in charge and that they can cope - and if that means millions die well, so be it!

This terrible pride, pride at any cost, could have other consequences, too. People will start to wonder if it is worthwhile giving much needed money to the aid agencies if there is no guarantee it is going to be used where it should.

But we have to risk it. We have to be like the Glasweigans on the train and give what we can, do what we can to help. The conductor on the train accepted the money from those travellers and the generals in Burma are accepting the food and shelter and clean water being sent from around the world, even if they are not letting the agency workers in to distribute it properly.

It would be easy to suggest that Burma is not our problem. The generals don’t want us so why should we bother? But we have to bother. The human race is all on this journey called life together and we have to look out for our fellow passengers - especially when they are powerless to look after themselves.