Don't panic Mr Mainwaring

Saturday evening we were sat chatting about deep and meaningful (frivolous) topics when Ian announced that Standard & Poor’s have downgraded American debt to AA+. It was a chill down the spine moment. In itself it is not unexpected or significant; it is simply a marker, a label on the downward trend. But, goodness, a downgrade for America!

After wobbling for a little while we inevitably came back to a discussion of what, if any, SF books model this situation for us. We have so many apocalyptical books and so few about living through the dull, anxious days of a slow motion resource led collapse. People tend to be excellent at dealing with big obvious emergencies. In the UK we still look back with nostalgia at the way we dealt with World War II. We are, however, rubbish at even noticing the long emergencies despite the fact that these will have a far more lasting and devastating effect on how we live our lives.

I foresee decades of bickering, occasionally escalating into full-scale fights, as we slowly descend into real poverty with no one in power making any effort to make any of the radical changes needed to ameliorate the distress. Already there is the fear that there will be another generation that will never be able to reach their potential, who will languish on scraps of work, permanently dependent on handouts of one sort or another.  This is not a recipe for a settled world. We’ve seen how this has played out in Saudi Arabia.

At the same time, we older people still in work, will almost certainly not receive the benefits that our parents did. There was a golden age embedded somewhere in the latter half of the 20^th Century, though we didn’t notice it at the time. Free healthcare, free education, safe sex, liveable pensions, even, for a short time in the late 60s/early 70s, an optimism that love and peace could actually be achieved here on earth. How those things have decayed.

When I look to what our politicians are doing to lead us out of this difficult situation I see nothing other than a few banal clichés about the Big Society and a refusal to see that we are at a pivotal point where the old solutions of deregulation, growth and controlled inflation will only worsen the situation. Business as usual at any cost appears to be how this government (I include the loyal opposition and the media) fiddles.

One of my least favourite ‘fixes’ that the local council has put in place has been to automate the library. I know people cost money to employ but surely when enough council workers and private sector workers are unemployed the council tax revenues will disappear too. I feel quite strongly that sharing the paid work around so we all have some access to cash would be a better solution. Of course the government has set our system up so that the cost of employing two people part time is much more than the cost of employing one person. This is something that could change. The Netherlands did this some years ago. One of the worst things that could happen to us as a society is polarisation. As the wealth gap increases the safety of us all decreases. All of us being somewhat poorer is much better than a few being wealthy and the rest living off ever decreasing benefits. That way lies tent cities and social unrest. That way lies ‘Shockwave Rider’.

Julian suggested that Bruce Sterling’s ‘Distraction’ was one of the few books that gave us some idea of what might be coming. I suggested Gibbon’s ‘Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire’. This time there’s no outside, no other empires keeping the flame alight.


(The picture of apocalypse is just a storm brewing over Sheffield in July but so evocative I couldn't resist.)

Going Out

I’ve been out for two evenings this week and they’ve both been enlightening and, to different extents, quite entertaining. The first, surprisingly fascinating, was an hour and a half in Lecture Theatre Two in the University of Sheffield’s Hicks Building where One, The Global Poverty Project and Christian Aid presented the case for combating extreme poverty. I hadn’t realised what good progress had been made but I’m well aware of some of the things that still stand in the way. Corruption, inequality, ill health due to malnutrition and preventable diseases, lack of adequate sanitation, rising food and fuel prices and climate change. Many of these issues are ones where we in the developed world are implicated. We accept and sometime encourage corruption because a corrupt government is easier for us to manipulate. We, or at least the richest among us, are the ones benefiting from speculation in commodities, we are the ones primarily causing climate change. We watched the Living Proof roadshow which is full of inspiring stories of what has been achieved so far, then we each sat and wrote a letter to our MP asking them to support the call for investment in diarrhoea and pneumonia vaccinations, major killers of children throughout the world.

My second big evening out was at the EICC in Edinburgh where we saw Monkeys Uncaged. What a fabulous evening! Robin Ince is my hero, both a marvellous (grumpy old) comic and a relentless populariser of science and clear thinking, here holding together a wonderful show comprising entertainment and important insights into the way the world works.

He presented the irresistibly enthusiastic Helen Keen who gave a shortened version of the show we saw at the Fringe some years ago, ‘It Is Rocket Science’, sadly without the puppet show splendid props.

From Helen to Ben Goldacre who was relentlessly entertaining at top speed about the design of clinical trials for drugs. You can get a flavour of his work by reading the Bad Science Blog but for the full-on authentic experience you really should listen to him talk.

The next ‘act’ and the one I was looking forward to least was Professor Brian Cox. I will confess to having a quite pronounced prejudice against his TV programmes. I will not suggest that he doesn’t know his stuff; he seems very knowledgeable. It’s probably more that I don’t like today’s style of science programme, which seems to assume we are all stupid with the attention span ascribed to goldfish. It irritates me so much that I can’t watch. And then the heroic poses; against a lonely seascape, against a range of mountains, against the desolation of a desert, hair blowing, nobly gaze into the distance; make me mildly nauseous. Well this evening was a revelation. Not only is the man amusing and self-deprecating, he has a talent for explaining difficult things clearly without either patronising or sinking into dullness. I was completely won over.

After the break Helen Arney graced the stage with her ukulele and a couple of lovely songs about sex. We really ought to see more of her. She’s bright and funny and produces great songs. Lets make love like animals. Well perhaps not like Angler Fish. I’d sort of not like a pair of genitals left attached to my body for me to use later.

Simon Singh was dependably interesting, with an understandable description of the Doppler effect, a sodium emitting gherkin and proof of the Big Bang. Even though I’d seen the talk before it was worth listening to again.

Perhaps the nicest thing about the evening, along with the gustatory brilliance of the Home Bistro, was the feeling of being part of a crowd of people getting their kicks from learning from and being entertained by some very bright people. I just wish a similar number of people had been drawn to Thursday’s discussion of ending extreme poverty.