On: G7 summit gets underway with spotlight on US-Iran deal

I must tell you what I read this morning, though the words sit like lead in my stomach. The G7 gathers in France with great fanfare, while the ink on the US-Iran accord is barely dry. You speak of peace restored, of stability secured, but I wonder - where is the ledger of those who will pay the price in bread and blood before the ink dries?

Here, in Braintree, the price of lamp oil has climbed again, though no war rages on our shores. The merchants whisper of shortages from distant lands, of ships delayed, of tolls raised. If this continues, the cost of a single lamp will outstrip what a laborer earns in a week. What then? Will the diplomats dine by candlelight while the rest of us sit in the dark? You have not mentioned the children who will cough through winter nights because their mothers cannot afford the oil to keep the hearth burning.

They call this a victory for peace, yet the generals and the merchants are the only ones who seem to prosper. The women I speak to at the market shake their heads when they name the price of flour. The men who return from the docks speak in hushed tones of men who will not return at all. The ledger of war is not balanced by a treaty signed in haste; it is balanced in the quiet arithmetic of empty larders and orphaned children.

I do not doubt the necessity of peace, but I question the haste. A peace built on the backs of the already burdened is no peace at all - it is only another kind of war, waged in shadows and shortages. If the G7 truly seeks to secure the future, let them look to the hands that feed the world, not the hands that sign the parchments. The future is not written in the halls of Versailles, but in the kitchens where the bread is divided.