LOOKING for the latest offering to Hereford Times letters from my friend Amelia Washbourne, I noticed the March article ‘Robert Owen Society providing humanitarian aid to Hereford refugees’ with its associated comments.

As one whose own offerings have frequently met with very negative comments on the HT website and, moreover, given the nature of the subject matter, I was not surprised by the negative comments but also heartened by the humanitarian replies.

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A number of my friends are very much involved in teaching English to asylum seekers at Three Counties Hotel, Hereford, and I myself are involved in other humanitarian campaigning, rooted largely in my experience as a person with an invisible disability.

The contrast between my experience of humanitarian campaigning and the spite of negativity reminds me of something I heard around 1978, in my 25th year, “When people are lonely, it may often be because they have built walls rather than bridges.”

And there is also Soren Kierkegaard’s observation: “The door to happiness opens outward.” So, too, with becoming more knowledgeable about newcomers.

ALAN WHEATLEY

Hereford

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