Trust Me, I'm a Scientist

Science and the telly is a very heady mixture. Programmes about, or referring to, science are surprisingly popular. The general viewing public has about as much understanding of the scientific method as a lawyer has about the truth. Science-related programmes are commissioned and produced by people who aren't scientists. They're put together by the flakiest folk of all; television producers.

A television producer is mostly concerned with viewing statistics and maximum audiences. When it comes to science they think that it has to be displayed in a way that is relevant to the 'average viewer'. The average viewer is a mythical figure whose attention span and intellectual capacity is assumed to be roughly equivalent to that of a two-year-old rabbit.

Scientists (in broadcasting applications) are usually 'Professors' of something, or other, who are on the payroll of a university that is desperate for cash. These scientists have to justify their existence to the institutions that employ them by attracting funding from either commercial companies or politicians.

On a typical programme about astronomical matters, such as 'Gamma-Ray Bursts', or the 'Death of Our Sun', we are always treated to the spectacle of a 'Scientist' talking about the implications for 'Us' (meaning the survival of mankind). When we consider gamma-ray bursts, we are told that they all occur over ten billion light years away. Non have been detected in our galaxy, probably because they stopped occurring about ten billion years ago. We are not going to be wiped out by a gamma-ray burst, but we are told by a Professor (who knows better), that such an event (if close enough) would wipe us out. When we consider the death of the sun, we are told that this will happen in about 4.5 billion years' time, and we might survive by 'moving to Mars'. Mankind has been on this planet for (at most) half a million years. Life on this planet is about 3 billion years old. We know that evolution shows that our species will probably not be around (or, at least, recognisable as 'Us') in less then another half a million years. In fact, the way we are going, our survival beyond the next few hundred years is highly doubtful. Talk about us 'escaping to Mars' in billions of years' time is just rubbish. The scientists are talking utter bollocks, They must know that they're talking utter bollocks, but they do it anyway. Could that be because there's a pay-check involved?

We also often hear scientists saying that they 'believe' this or that theory. A scientist should never 'believe' anything. It is their role to always question any hypothesis. The scientific method is to suggest an 'Hypothesis' (which is only ever a 'best guess') and then to test and explore that hypothesis in an attempt to prove or disprove that guess. No proper scientist should ever assume an outcome of such enquiry, or be committed to one outcome over another. The facts are the facts and that's all a scientist should be interested in. In the field of physics, so many 'beliefs' have been exploded in the last few decades, and doubtless that process will continue. The history of science shows, time and time again, how 'established' science has rejected and vilified those who challenge that establishment. Time and time again, the 'established view' has been overthrown, only after an ugly and un-edifying public battle in which egos and 'reputations' made sure that the truth always took a back-seat to individual belief and ambition.

Scientists are like any other group of people, but they lay claim to something others groups do not lay claim to: Scientific Objectivity. Rarely do we see this in public practice.

Trust the scientists?

Why Did The Good Samaritan Cross The Road?

About a year ago, feeling the need to re-charge my batteries, I spent a few very enjoyable days at a Buddhist centre on the other side of the county. It must have been well over thirty years since I had been in an 'Ashram' or monastic institution. Buddhism is an offshoot of Hinduism, just as Christianity and Islam are offshoots of Judaism. My monastic background was in the Kashmiri Shavite tradition of Hinduism, but the way the whole place was set up and run, and the disciplines observed, were instantly familiar. Here was a group of bright people from a wide variety of backgrounds, covering a wide age-range and of both genders. They were all, in a determined and disciplined way, in pursuit of spiritual fulfilment and enlightenment.

I never was one to do well in, or around, institutions of any type. So my visit was never going to be more than a few days in a conducive environment, to do some meditation and to connect with the spiritual pursuits of others. I took the opportunity to read some of the literature on offer. There was the usual explanation of the nature of the self, and the usual claim that this particular Buddhist path is the only path that will get you to your spiritual goal. One thing I learned a long time ago is that nobody has a monopoly in this arena.

It was also instructive to see that this community (with its rather privileged lifestyle), in a fantastic huge property in wonderful surroundings, was seeking to justify it's monastic isolation. The argument was that by leaving society and concentrating on achieving their own enlightenment, they were enriching the spiritual capital of the world and, thereby, helping the rest of mankind. That seemed to me to be a bit of a stretch and to display a naive fear of appearing to be selfish.

All spiritual pursuits are, by their very nature, selfish. We follow these paths and practices to make sense of our own lives and to find internal peace for ourselves. There is no need to pretend that we do this for the benefit of others, even though others may end up benefiting from our efforts. We seek spiritual peace out of self-interest.

There are two kinds of self interest. Greed and disregard for others characterise one kind. Care and loving for others (because it aids our own well being) characterise the other. This second kind of self interest is Enlightened Self Interest.

The Good Samaritan crossed the road because, if he had passed by on the other side, he would have felt terrible. He crossed the road because it made him feel better and contributed to his happiness by helping his fellow man.

Bang On

David and I were watching an article on the local news television.

An old guy from Rushden (where we live!) who, at eighty-odd years old, is retiring from running Working Mens' Clubs. He's talking about life and society:

"When people were poor, we were much better off."

Touche.

HOW WE LOVE A GOOD DISASTER

Nothing gets us going like a good disaster, does it? Let me see, the Boxing Day Tsunami, The Pakistan Earthquake, The Turkish Earthquakes and now poor little Haiti.

The news coverage never varies. There's the initial shock and horror, followed by the much criticised Relief Effort which is always (according to the media) disorganised and much too slow. Then there are the few dozen people rescued from the rubble, days after the event, followed by the 'miracle' of babies being born, followed by the whole thing disappearing from the news as soon as our multi-millionaire celebreties get finished with their record releases and telethons.

We weren't in the least interested in helping the poor and desperate populations of these places before the disaster, and we won't be interested in their plight when the dramatic footage disappears from our television screens.

Mugabe can carry on making life unbearable in Zimbabwe, the poor and starving aids-ridden children of Africa, will go on suffering, while we return to our self-indulgent 'way of life'.

Are we going to be opening our doors to all these poor human beings? Are we going to start seriously spreading the wealth around the planet? Of course not.

Thousands of children live desperate and impoverished lives right here in the UK, but a 'plane crashing somewhere in Northern Mongolia makes much better news. The good thing about disasters is that they go away almost as quickly as they happen. The reality of suffering on a global scale doesn't make good news and certainly is not something we should consider disturbing our comfort levels for, in order to make a real difference.

Haiti was a disaster for many decades before the earthquake. It will continue to be a disaster for the foreseeable future.

Me? Disaster fatigue!!

Time for the DDT?

If we were travelling around this corner of the galaxy with the local Galactic Quadrant Public Health Inspectors, we would possibly spot a badly infested planet. One of those cases where things are so out of hand, that the exterminators have to be called in. As with any good exterminator, their methods would probably be quite well targeted and specific for the species that is causing the damage. Some special agent, or disease organism that only kills the problem species.

The control tool of choice would probably be an extremely virulent disease that kills only the species in question, leaving all the other species intact and giving them a chance to recover. On the other hand, it may be deemed expedient to simply sterilise the place altogether as the risk of allowing the infestation to spread throughout the galaxy may be just too horrific to consider.

The infestation we may have spotted is on a pretty blue planet called Earth, and the organism that has reproduced out of control, is a particularly nasty one: 'Homo Sapiens'. Let it get off the planet, and there's no telling how much damage it could do to the rest of the galaxy.

When I was a teenager, there was plenty of international debate and calls for action on 'Population Control'. The increasing population was already being seen as unsustainable. Now we worry about 'Climate Change' and 'Deforestation'. The sad fact is that both these phenomena are driven by population pressure. There are too many people on this planet. That is an inescapable fact, and a fact that is at the root of all our other global problems.

Any debate about other global matters that does not address population growth is an exercise in verbal masturbation.

Nature has a way of dealing with imbalances. Perhaps the Galactic Pest Controller will not have to act. Perhaps Mother Nature will come up with a solution of her own. Whatever - the correction will not be a pleasant experience.

One thing is as sure as eggs: Mankind is utterly incapable of coming up with an answer before something cataclysmic kicks off.

THE PURSUIT OF STUFF

Western society has been sold a bill of goods. We've been sold on the idea that 'Stuff Will Make You Happy'. It won't. It doesn't. It never has.

Let's be clear; poverty sucks. There is a certain minimal level of affluence that will make you happy. That level is: An absence of debt, a roof over your head , clothes on your back and food in your stomach. Go beyond that, as a reason for living, and you're going to get in trouble. The recent world-wide recession was a result of debt-financed consumerism getting out of control. The politicians' answer? More of the same. Rebuilding consumer demand seems to be the mantra for a better life for everybody.

On the run-up to Christmas, all we heard, in the news, was how important it was that the retailers had a good season. This would be the key to unlocking 'growth'. Immediately after Christmas, the same broadcasters are reporting that 30% of people borrowed to finance Christmas, and many of those were still paying off last year's excess. We also hear of a new service to help people with the 'stress and depression', that always seems to prevail 'at this time of year'.

I stand in line at the corner shop and watch pensioners, who must be struggling to live to a basic decent standard, blowing ten pounds on the lottery. Statistics say that they will lose their money - yet they still do it week in, week out.

Then there are the family break-ups caused by people having more house and more car than they can afford. Both parents working full-time 'because they have no choice'. Of course they have a choice. They could live a simpler life. They can stop measuring their achievements by the yardstick of a 'social status' based on conspicuous displays of possessions.

If we all stopped chasing 'stuff', the economic recovery would be in trouble. Who cares? If recovery means being forever doomed to live out an endless cycle of excess followed by misery, perhaps we can do without the 'recovery'.

Fulfilling your potential, taking care of the well-being of those around you, having the time to enjoy your children. These things will make you happy.

Stuff won't ever make you happy. The pursuit of 'stuff' can only bring misery, disappointment and serious damage to the planet.

ANOTHER UN-WINNABLE WAR

THE WAR ON DRUGS

Drugs! What an emotive subject drugs are. Everyone has a view, an opinion, an ‘answer’ to the the problem of ‘drugs’.

What constitutes a drug? Is it a mood altering substance that is disapproved of by society? Is it anything which is ‘addictive’? Is it any medication so strong that it should be controlled by the prescription of a doctor?

Recently the British Government fired a Scientific Advisor who put forward the observation that tobacco and alcohol are more dangerous than heroin or ecstasy. They fired him because the subject is so emotive it has become impossible to have an objective public discussion of the matter.

So, let's try and define what a drug is.

A drug is any substance that may be introduced into the human metabolic system that has an observable effect? A drug is any substance that may be ingested that is both addictive and bad for the health of the body? A drug is?

It would appear that the word ‘drug’ is a very woolly word indeed. It seems that a drug is anything we want to call a ‘drug’. Insulin, morphine, penicillin, alcohol, aspirin, sugar, sex, gambling??

So, we are fighting a war on something so ethereal it defies definition.

One may say , that a useful definition of an undesirable drug is: ‘any substance whose repeated ingestion has a deleterious effect on society’. A useful drug is one that improves the quality of life. Does this get us anywhere? Cannabis is illegal, can cause psychosis, and should’t be used while driving or operating machinery. A glaucoma sufferer can benefit greatly from a good spliff. Where does the judgement come down? That depends on where you’re placed and your own experience of life.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, all drugs were legal and could be purchased from the local apothecary. For some, one had to sign the Poisons Register, but they were all ‘legal’. Nowadays, many of us define a ‘drug’ by its legality. If you think about it, what’s ‘legal’ or not, is quite accidental. Opiates and cocaine (the original active ingredient in 'Coca-Cola') were made illegal, tobacco and alcohol (both undoubted killers) were not. In the nineteen-twenties, the United States decided that alcohol should be illegal. Prohibiting alcohol proved to be unworkable as it was too easy to make and too easy to pour down one’s throat. One legacy of this particular prohibition was the rise of the American Mafia and organised crime. Prohibition was temporary. The organised crime it spawned is still with us.

That’s an important lesson: When things are illegal, bad people see there’s money to be made and evil empires get built. The illegality of cocaine has built the Colombian Cartels, whose wealth and power are now crossing over into other areas of nastiness. The heroin trade finances the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Prohibition is a very good thing for crime and criminals.

The other thing one may observe about outlawing the trade in drugs, is that the trade does not stop. In fact it tends to flourish. Illegality fosters drug-taking. Oh dear!

I’m not a proponent of drug taking. Nor am I an opponent. It is none of my business how you care to pollute your body, and none of your business how I care to pollute mine. There are very, very few who do not pollute themselves in some way. The Tory lady, wearing the obligatory silk scarf and holding forth in the media about the ‘dangers of drugs’ almost certainly goes home to a stiff gin and tonic. The hypocrisy lies in approving her own drug-taking while condemning the drug-taking of others. She will, of course, maintain that what she does is legal. We have already established that the legality or otherwise, of any drug is an historical accident.

The problem with illegal drugs is the undoubted social consequence of their illegality. Illegal drugs pass through the hands of many greedy, dangerous and unscrupulous people. This inflates the price, reduces the purity and gives rise to crimes of theft and violence.

If all of these drugs were legal, the bandits would be out of business. The quality and purity could be assured by responsible providers, and they could be taxed quite heavily (just like alcohol and tobacco). The junkie would no longer need to commit an endless succession of petty crimes to feed his ‘habit’. A massive part of any country’s gross national product would no longer be disappearing into a black-hole of organised crime.

Those who want to be junkies will still be junkies. Those who don’t, wont. Alcoholism in America went up when prohibition came in and went down when it went out. Why? Because the life-style and subculture of a drug-driven illegal activity has a strange attraction. Many junkies are as addicted to the junkie life-style as they are addicted to the junk itself. Remove the law-breaking and you remove the romance.

There is no single example in history of a prohibition ever working. The war on drugs is unwinnable. Let’s face it, we have never won so much as skirmish in this war, let alone a battle. The whole idea is futile and doomed to fail.

Legalise everything, tax the hell out of it all, put the gangsters out of business and life will be much better for everybody.

Every parent has experienced the horror of a child bombed-out on sugar. It’s a drug! Sugar does a lot of harm, perhaps it should be banned? Or, perhaps, we should learn to live with the fact that, sometimes, drugs cause bad behaviour and there’s nothing we can do about it.

BAH HUMBUG

I hate going to the supermarket. I don’t find it a pleasant place to be, but it’s a place I have to go in order to discharge my wifely duty and keep the household fed and cleaned.

To minimize the emotional damage, my method is to get in, round, and out, as quickly as possible. That’s why I learn the whereabouts of all the things I may want to buy, and which parts of the place I can avoid completely.

Around this time of year my Supermarket-Tactical-Survival-Plan is thrown into total disarray. The shelves have been re-arranged and many of my regular purchases have disappeared to make way for the plethora of brightly coloured and cheaply made TAT that is the Christmas marketing bonanza.

I don’t do Christmas. To put it more accurately, I don’t get involved in that commercial and cultural abomination known as ‘Xmas’. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got absolutely no quarrel with those who wish to celebrate the religious festival which observes the birth of Jesus Christ. From what I can tell, he was a pretty cool dude who had some very good things to say. But ‘Xmas’! Really, what is this all about?

‘Xmas’ is an exercise in mass cultural and commercial arm-twisting to get us to buy stuff we would never normally buy, or at the very least, only buy occasionally, when we absolutely need it. Just watch the telly. At this time of year the advertising turns to perfumes, electric shavers and toothbrushes and all sorts of other silly kit that make up the bulk of the stuff that we buy to give to others.

‘Xmas’ is a time when everything must be ‘perfect’. Every year the news is filled with tragic stories of how some peoples’ ‘Xmas’ dream has be ruined by some company going out of business or some tragedy happening at this ‘time of year’. It is built up into an impossible web of commercial greed and sentimental expectation that, in the end, can only leave us let down and emotionally and financially exhausted.

Consider this:
At ‘Xmas’ the divorce rate and the suicide rate both soar. Many people go into debt to fund this extravaganza, and haven’t yet paid off the left-over debt from the year before. ‘Xmas’ is the busiest time of year for loan-sharks, and we know the misery and intimidation that comes from dealing with those characters.

In the Knight household, we observe the feast and enjoy Christmas Day. We do not exchange gifts, send cards or cover the place with tinsel. We really enjoy our Christmases. Rather than splash out on tat we can’t really afford, in order to let our loved ones know we care. We take great pains to observe their Birthdays instead.

It’s a little ironic that ‘Xmas’ is supposed to celebrate the birth of the guy who threw the money-lenders out of Solomon’s Temple. One suspects that Jesus would be pretty appalled to see the commercial mess we have made of his birthday celebrations.

The retail trade has come to rely very heavily on ‘Xmas’. For many in that trade, it represents over 80% of their annual turnover. One wonders how they would fare, if this annual distortion of the market didn’t happen. I suspect that we consumers would spread the same amount of spending throughout the year, buying stuff we actually want or need. The result would be a much smoother trading cycle for the retailers, and lower overheads, as they wouldn’t need the expanded and distorted warehousing and distribution facilities that are needed to deal with the annual ‘Xmas’ bulge.

I’m reminded of the joke told to me by a Jewish friend whose father was in the trade supplying wholesale Tat to retailers. Every boxing day his dad would go to the warehouse, look at the empty shelves and say:
“Thank you Jesus”.

Christmas? Right-on! Happy birthday Jesus!

‘Xmas’?

BAH HUMBUG!!

CHANGING TIMES

Today came a report from the top of the world. The Arctic Ice-Cap is disappearing much faster than was expected. Instead of disappearing (in summer) in fifty years’ time, we are now looking at ten to fifteen years. Boy, are the polar bears in trouble!

This is yet more evidence of a climate-change event we call ‘Global Warming’. There is a large body of evidence to say that this is a man-made event. There are those, in scientific circles who maintain that it’s mostly a natural, cyclical, event. Either way, the planet is getting warmer.

When we look at the long-term history of climate-change events, both cooling and warming, we can tell (from studying ancient ice-cores and geology) that major climate change has never been gradual. It seems that the climate has a habit of ‘tipping’ from one state to another in a few decades. This is because the climate is a very delicate interwoven structure where relatively small changes cause ‘cascades’ of events.

This is where we seem to be now. The loss of thousands of square miles of floating ice won’t have a huge effect on sea levels. It’s when the ice that sits on land melts and adds to the volume of the oceans that levels will be radically affected. However that huge expanse of floating ice (which is also disappearing in the Antarctic) reflects a huge amount of sunlight back into space. The result is a lot more solar energy staying in the atmosphere. The earth warms a little more, the oceans heat up a little more (liquids, by the way, expand when heated) and the sea levels rise a little more.

As the Northern climate heats up, just a little, and as the winters get milder, the Northern Tundra is retreating. On the positive side, releasing vast expanses of relatively unproductive land for agricultural use, on the negative side, causing the permafrost to melt.

The permafrost is a deep layer of surface soil that, just a metre or so from the surface, stays frozen all year round. If you live far enough north, you can freeze your food by digging a hole and putting it in. Free refrigeration! This layer of earth is full of vegetable matter that has never fully broken down, because its frozen state prevents the bacteria in the soil from going to work. As the soil melts, the vegetable matter starts to rot and break down. This process releases methane gas. Methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. Methane makes carbon dioxide look like pretty tame stuff, when it comes to greenhouse gasses. Kilo for kilo, methane has between twenty and twenty five times the climate effect of CO2. The more methane is released, the faster the permafrost melts, and the methane release accelerates. This is already happening. If you take a look at the globe, the Northern Tundra (and therefore the permafrost) is huge. The amount of methane about to be released is enormous.

And so it goes, one small event triggers a slightly larger one. Then that event triggers others. This is what’s known as a ‘cascade’. Cascades have a habit of starting slow and small then accelerating, at an ever increasing rate, until they become huge. The cascade has begun. The climate is going to tip, and tip very quickly. I’m nearly 60 and I will see it unfold before I pop my clogs. My children’s generation will experience the consequences, and the flora and fauna of the planet are headed for a mass-extinction event.

Of course, the planet will survive. Mass extinctions are nothing new. The long –term result will be the same old planet, populated by a plethora of new species. So why worry?

I worry because when countries drown, huge shifts occur in agricultural production and coastlines change, massive geo-political pressures will doubtless be generated. There will be a whole new balance of ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-Nots’. There will be big winners and big losers. This is the kind of event that starts wars. World wars.

We’ve lived for many decades in a world where global cataclysms haven’t occurred. My parents’ and grandparents’ generations lived through two of them. We seem to think it can’t happen to us. I think it most certainly can, and probably will. My offspring are going to go through some extreme times. They will need to learn to be survivors, fighters and many things they have not been brought up to be, if their off-spring are to survive and floursish.

There are many things we could do to slow-down, and eventually reverse, climate change (man-made or not). All of these things we could have started thirty or forty years ago, but we didn’t. There will now be no way of avoiding the cascade, it has already begun.

The planet will survive. The human race will survive. Many creatures won’t survive. In the meantime, things are going to get very dodgy indeed.

MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO

Children are impressionable, young children, very much so. Basic patterns of behaviour are picked up almost subliminally and often parents do not realise exactly what their youngsters are picking up on.

Nowadays children spend a lot of time in cars, driven by their parents. What do they witness? Mum double-parking at the school gates or perhaps Dad cursing at some other driver, a grown-up talking on the phone while driving, or Dad complaining about being caught by a speed camera. They witness many, many small examples of their parents, their role models, breaking the law. They know from eavesdropping on adult conversation that their parents regularly break the law and think little of it. In some families, they witness other crimes, such as shoplifting and violent acts. Even in families where the big laws are properly respected, little violations are common.

What do they learn from this? They learn that it’s correct to pick and choose which laws they obey. They learn that legal behaviour is optional and that it’s alright to disregard the law if it is convenient to do so. Little wonder that many children grow up having no respect for, or fear of the law. We are teaching them, in little everyday ways, that it’s how people should behave.

The heavier traffic becomes and the more stressed drivers become, children see behaviours that, for, most people happen only inside vehicles. Shouting and cursing at total strangers is not something most of us would do in the street, but it is something most of us do in cars. Deadly aggressive driving is also terribly common. Tailgating another car at speed (to get the other driver to move over) is, to my mind, a threat with a deadly weapon. Many people do this every day, and many more witness others doing it. One cannot make a motorway journey without seeing what, in any other mode of life, would be considered heinous criminal behaviour. The vast majority of people would instantly report a threat with a deadly weapon in any other circumstance to the police, and would expect and get a swift response, and yet if the weapon is a car, one would not bother to report it, and the police would certainly not take any action.

So in a major part of our daily lives, which children are part of, criminal and anti-social behaviour has become an accepted norm. Do we seriously expect a four-year-old to discriminate between behaviour in, or outside the car? Perhaps some do make this distinction, and perhaps many more do not. What they all certainly do learn is that one can pick and choose the circumstances in which it acceptable to behave in seriously anti-social and criminal ways.

I have chosen the car as an obvious and pervasive arena in which we are teaching bad things to our offspring. Unfortunately illegal behaviour by ‘law abiding citizens’ is all about us. From dropping litter in the street, to stealing by finding, knowingly buying counterfeit and stolen goods or perhaps a bit of cheating on the benefit claim, the example being set is consistent: It is up to you whether or not you respect the law.

This, then, is the case for zero tolerance. All laws must be enforced, big or small, in or out of the car, and the consequences for breaking the law must be visible and obvious. Children need to understand that the law is not a bin of pick-and mix sweeties, but an immoveable object that bites when you try to shift it. If one does not like a law, get it changed. In the meantime the law is the law, it is all that holds society together and it must be respected and obeyed, simply because it is the law.

Every day, in so many ways, we are undermining future society by our own adult pick-and-mix attitude to the law, which we are teaching our children to emulate.

If we want to mend the ‘broken society’, we must mend our attitude to the law. Otherwise generation after generation will grow up with an ever-lessening regard for the law and an ever-growing perception that obeying the law is a matter of personal preference.

MAKING PARENTS RESPONSIBLE

The most dangerous animal on the planet is a juvenile human being and yet parents carry no responsibility for the control and behaviour of their juveniles. If my dog bites someone, I am liable for the damage. If my child trashes my neighbour’s car, I am not. This is a state of affairs that makes no sense. There is a simple solution to re-establishing parental responsibility and to inculcating respect for authority in children. It is to make parents civilly liable for the damage done by their children. When I mooted this idea to a group comprising police and social workers, their response was to point out how difficult enforcement would be. They entirely missed the point. Civilly liable does not mean criminally liable. If your child trashes my car, I sue you for the damage. I don’t present the criminal justice system with an extra burden of prosecuting a difficult matter. I go after the parent, in civil court, for the child’s behaviour.

There is much public angst about out-of-control children, anti-social behaviour and lack of respect for authority. One suspects that every generation of adults has thought the next generation to be that way. In the last three decades however, something has changed, and that is the child’s lack of fear of consequences. Many children under ten years old are fully aware that the law can’t touch them and many older children have no fear of the feeble public response to criminal behaviour. An ASBO has rapidly become a badge of honour.

Any experienced teacher will tell you that many children arrive at school already beyond control and the same teacher can spot the future problem children as early as five or six years old. This indicates that the damage has been done, and is being done in the home. Once upon a time, a policeman bringing a child to the parents’ door would be welcomed, thanked, and the child would be punished for bringing the police home. Now the response is, depressingly often, a vigorous defence of the child to the police, the parental attitude varies from ‘why are you picking on my kid?’ to ‘haven’t you got anything better to do?’

It would not take too long before parents, who realise that they will be hit heavily in their pockets, to start teaching their children to behave properly when out of the house. The children will know, soon enough, that home is no longer a haven from the consequences of their public behaviour. Parents will not long tolerate their children costing them time and money involved in being on the wrong end of an action for damages.

This means that respect for the law and behaving properly in public would be enforced, where it should be enforced, in the home, not in the criminal courts.

For this to work, one other thing must change in the law. Evidence gathered by the authorities, identification of children in a civil action, and the provision of past public records regarding a child’s behaviour, must be made available to the party bringing an action for damages caused by a child. Restrictions on publication of this information, outside the civil court, could be imposed if that is thought desirable. This information is essential to allow the Judge to assess the degree of parental negligence and to bring a properly constructed action.

This is a step that would, in a very few years, restore the education in, and enforcement of, acceptable standards of behaviour, in the home environment. This is the only place where such education and enforcement is effective.

There will be many who feel that this is draconian and that we might be treating children badly. They would be misguided in thinking that. The many failed attempts to deal with anti-social behaviour in the public arena, show the limitations of legislation in tackling the problem. The civil courts cost the tax payer very little, as they are funded by court fees, and are relatively swift in their action. It would take only a few years for sufficient precedent to be set, for most cases to be settled out of court. Enforcement would be as in any other civil judgement: failure to pay up will bring the Bailiff.

Simple isn’t it? With out a doubt it would be workable and it deals with the core problem of returning such basic child education and control back to where it truly belongs: In the home.

KNUT, THE CLOCKS AND ME

It’s October. In the UK, it’s the start of autumn, the season of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’. Unfortunately, it’s also the most depressing month of the year, because October is the month when the effects of the most absurd attempt at social engineering ever foisted on the world are most keenly felt.

I refer to Daylight Savings Time. Woolly-minded politicians all over the world decided in 1916 that it would be a great idea to mess around with our clocks. The concept was to add an extra hour of ‘useful daylight’ to our day in winter. Some genius decided that the way to do this was to change the clocks in summer, when daylight is plentiful. The idea that the basic astronomical facts of life can be changed by legislation is weird indeed. King Knut would have been amused and very irritated by such a preposterous proposal. This Great Dane, decided to disprove the overstated claims as to his divine power by going to the beach and proving that the tide would not obey his command, contrary to the claims of the local spin-doctors of the day.

One third of people in the UK suffer (to a greater or lesser degree) from a condition known as Seasonal Affective Disorder, so named to produce the acronym ‘S.A.D.’ Acronyms are something I generally loathe, but I do have to admit that this one is particularly apt. S.A.D. plunges many of us into deep depression and is a recognized pathological condition. The NHS spends millions on treating its victims and the economy ships huge damage each year as the victims of this condition are unable to work normally. SAD is the result of insufficient daylight during winter months. The short daylight hours mess with our body-clocks and the lack of light affects serotonin levels in our brains.

There is nothing we can do, short of sitting under bright lights for a couple of hours a day, to lengthen daylight hours. So we just have to grin and bear it. If nature were left to her normal course, we could, at least, get used to the shortening winter day gradually and thereby become conditioned to it. Instead, we wake up one morning in October with the dread knowledge that it will, all of a sudden, be dark when we leave work. This plunges me (and my fellow sufferers) into a depression that can last for months.

This is one of the most devastating examples of ill thought-out knee-jerk legislation and the lasting damage such inane law-making can do. It’s also living proof that, as we pile on law after law onto our statute-book, we just never get round to repealing the redundant or truly inane laws that we’re already stuck with.

So here’s a piece of legislative tom-foolery that really should be repealed. Remember – it’s British Summer Time that is the adjustment to the clocks, not Greenwich Mean Time, which prevails during the winter. If we do away with British Summer Time, there is no re-organisation of our winter time-table required. All we do is: get rid of that awful shock to our body-clocks that is inflicted every October.

It would save huge amounts of money for the economy if we simply left the clocks alone in the spring (which is when the damage is actually done).

Of course, our political masters are far to busy legislating as fast as they can to get around to doing something so simple, so obvious, so beneficial and so easy.

PISSING OUR MONEY AWAY

Whenever it’s time for the country to cut costs, the politicians always want to convince us that they can make huge savings by ‘cutting waste and inefficiencies’ rather than own up to taking the knife to popular public services. These savings are promised at every general election, yet we never see the actual savings get made. This is mostly because all governments are absolutely useless at actually running things with any kind of efficiency.

This is hardly surprising as the people who run government have never actually run a business or had any experience that would qualify them to do anything, but climb greasy poles and say anything that might get them elected.

In our little town there is a move afoot to replace a twenty-year old swimming facility (one that is quite modern and pleasant to use) that is located right in the heart of town with one on a green-field site at the outskirts. Nobody I know wants this new pool, and many certainly don’t agree with the inconvenient location. The council is pressing ahead. Why? Because, if they don’t spend the several millions that central government has allocated for this by the end of the financial year, they’ll lose the money. Futhermore, the equivalent amount will be lost from next year’s allocation. Looking into this, I discover that this silliness applies to just about everything; every council, quango, educational facility and health provider in the country. If they want to preserve their budget for next year, they must spend the lot (whether the spending is needed or not) or lose out in the long term.

Our little swimming pool project is a few million pounds of stupid spending in one little town. Add to this all the other stupid spending that must also be going on locally for the same reason, and it must be tens of millions being pissed away on silly ideas.

If we then multiply that by every town in the country, billions and billions are being pissed away by the most inane system for handing out government cash that could possibly be devised.

If the politicians truly want to save some dosh, this could be stopped. All they have to do is break the link between this year’s spending and next year’s allocation. Let the locals spend what they need without fear of losing out in the future.

This, of course, is pure common sense that any business person would comprehend. Alas, it’d probably be far too radical and idea for the politicians to grasp.