The days grow darker for longer here and the clouds seem to hang lower everyday. My breath turns to smoke as I trudge through the grass on my way to work. I wear about five layers of clothing and avoid being outside as much as possible. People seem more cocooned in their trench coats and hoodies and eye contact, non existent. At work, things start to slow down. People wind down and I can feel the countdown to Christmas beginning.

This year has had me worried. Cuts, recession, job losses, these have actually become very real terms in my vocabulary. The meetings I Chair with a number of local charities is diminishing as more and more lose funding. Colleagues suddenly unemployed after 10, 15 years of setting up key organisations, their clients now lost for help. Ironically, I work closely enough to Canary Wharf to see the "suit march" on a regular basis. Armies of people in pinstripes, high heels and attitude trudging to work, marching so it seems, over the livelihoods of the less well off.

I hear the term benefit scrounger so often it seems passe. But actually, it really bothers me. It wasn't people on benefits that caused this recession, it was the most well off, the most successful, the greediest echelons of society. And now it is this very class of society that thinks depriving someone of 80 pounds a week will save the economy. I am saddened by the politics of the Coalition who won't be firmer with banks but will deprive people of incapacity benefit, housing benefit, raise university fees and dip into pension schemes.

Most of all, I am worried about the NHS. I see what happens to people who are prematurely taken off healthcare. Social care is fast becoming the same way with local authorities introducing drastic cuts to much needed services. Right now, where I am, on the grassroots, and at the front line, I feel right in the middle of it all. And yet, many people still have a view from their private offices, looking down on this city, completely unaware of the chaos.

It is right to fight for yourself, no doubt. But it is far nobler to fight for others, I just hope people start looking harder and further for people to serve and love.