I am introducing a new word to describe a new problem – Vaugism. It means being deliberately vaugue in order to lead someone on. It is happening more and more and normally I can spot it, but some times, only after I commit.

It happened to me first when I went to a dating agency. This was some time ago, before computers. It was the first and last time I considered using such a service. I met the proprietor who took my details and then handed me a list of suitable suitors. Against each name was a space with a description of that person. The words filled only one third of the space available and immediately I saw what was going on. The less information I am given about the prospective partner, the more likely I am going to want to meet them. Why, after all, would you not want to fill that space? Most people could fill an A4 sheet of paper about themselves. Some would go a lot further. But once you have the detail, are you going to like them more or less? Well, obviously the more detail, the less likely you are going to want to meet them and less likely to pay a fee. The company was in this for fees, not to make people happy, and therefore, best business practice is ‘vaugism’. I spotted the business strategy, decided not to waste my time and others and left without paying a bean.

But with the coming of computers, vaugism is on the rampage. I bought a bike on e-bay. I was keen to buy an aluminium bike and this bike was described as ‘an aluminium bike’ in the heading. What could go wrong? Well after I won the bid it emerged that this was a steel bike, not an aluminium bike. The lady said she was selling it for a friend. She argued that if I had read the questions and responses I would have seen that it was steel. I argued that I had no reason to read the Q and A’s as all I wanted was an aluminium bike. I did the honourable thing and refunded her advertising costs, which made her think I was admitting guilt and she kept being annoyed at my ebay style. I replied that I had never submitted a false selling description on ebay, and she shut up.

I went into a restaurant with a list of meals on a chalk board. I chose one. The waiter said that was not available. As I continued through the menu it became apparent he had very little on offer at all. Instead of creating a new menu, they prefer to get customers in, sell them a drink and then disapoint them.

Artificial intelligence is based on algorithms. A restaurant menu is just a small algorithm with yes, no answers in respect to availability. That is fine for websites and business models designed to get the money, before disappointing the customer. Algorithms have no shades of grey, no ‘maybe’, ‘perhaps’, ‘sometimes’, ‘subject to this and that’. It either is or is not. Artificially vaugue.

So when I booked a hotel for this weekend, I knew that above all else, I wanted to be able to park at the hotel. I selected the search filter for hotels that offered parking. I chose rooms in a hotel out of the busy city centre because most hotels in town had no parking. I paid my money. All booked and happy. Then along comes a confirmation email saying that I need to pay extra for parking and book it in advance. This was suprise! Ok, I will pay anything to park, so book it. Then comes the reply email, ‘please ask at reception on arrival who will see if a space is available.’

I have been cleverly moved through a series of options from ‘parking available’ to ‘maybe parking available’. If the second option had been presented at the begining, then I would have chosen somewhere else. Well done vaugism, you just caught another unsuspecting customer.

Friends rented a house claiming, accurately, to sleep nine people. It omitted to state how many bedrooms there were. Yes, that hits the ‘vaugism’ alarm! It turns out four of the beds are in one room. It’s a three bedroom house, not four, cleverly disguised by ommision. I slept on a mattress in the living room.

I have health insurance as I live in Europe. It says that the health insurance covers the cost of an ambulance. So on the day when I think I am dying and call an ambulance using 112 the european emergency number, an ambulance came. But later, when it thankfully emerged to be a scare only, the health insurance people refuse to pay for the cost of the ambulance. Why? Because they know something you don’t. In this country there is a system of private and public ambulances. I didn’t read that in the policy summary? Even if the public ambulance is three kilometers away and the private ambulance is twenty, you have to wait for the private ambulance and take your chances on not dying in the meantime. If you are unconscious, and an ambulance is called on your behalf, no one is going to know or ask if you need a private ambulance.

I find it hard to believe that such an unethical and unfair system exists in any European country, but it does in Spain. If you are selling health insurance, you need to keep this information under wraps, which means write it ‘terms and conditions’. To draw customers into buying a policy, be vaugue in the summary and just say, ‘ambulance included.’

Vauguism is sometimes unconcealed stupidity, sometimes concealed cunning. It is down to the customer to read the small print in every contract. If the contract is vaugue, and new information comes along after you have paid, reach for the feedback button. Let all the other unsuspecting customers that the vaugism virus is endemic.

There is a regular piece in a local magazine called ‘Useless Facts’. To indulge you, here is a taster; ‘The collective noun for a group of Wombats is a wisdom’.

We live in an age of abundant trivia. Our desire for it appears in the game ‘Trivial Pursuit‘, crossword puzzles and game shows on TV. We strain our memories for obscure facts as ageing weight lifters reaching for one more cerebral lift. The sight is rarely inspiring. So why are facts so useless?

I was inspired by T.S. Eliot many years ago when I read the following lines in his poem ‘The Rock’;

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

He was perhaps one of the first thinkers to formulate these distinctions, back in the 1930’s.

Later, an extra level was added which is ‘data’ and is a subdivision of information. He might have written; Where is the data we have lost in information? This idea is sometimes abbreviated to DIKW – just in case you ever get asked what this means a quiz.

I am personally less interested in ‘data’ because it is the same as my definition of information; ‘the smallest subdivision of thought’.

So I shall start considering information. We know that it is fundamental to every thought process. With bad information, we make bad decisions. Science depends on being able to measure and repeat experiments until the information is correct.

With the unimaginable amounts of information being collected now in the Information Age, it is fundamental that it is processed rationally. We need to see the wood for the trees. Processing is the step we take to find knowledge. The process is analogous to the game of ‘joining the dots’ to allow an unseen picture emerge.

The military have always been good at finding ‘intelligence’ (knowledge) in the maelstrom of information. They grade it on a continuum between that which is not likely to be true and that which is. Not only that but the source is graded between ‘reliable’ and ‘unknown’. In this way any picture emerging from the dots can be graded as likely of unlikely to be true.

Police Forces use a similar process in order to target their resources. They need to know what is going on and who is doing it, where and when. The computer has been the answer to a prayer for the police. The information comes streaming in to their computers every second of everyday and is stored there, for a rainy day. The day comes when someone, somewhere wants to know everything about a particular villain. His favourite brand of cigarettes matching a packet found at a murder scene is not significant, but adds another dot in the process of knowing what happened.

Just as information forms a picture, so does knowledge. When you begin to piece together some knowledge of life as you age, you might be regarded as becoming wise. Wise because you are seen to connect different areas of knowledge to form a bigger picture. This picture has a certain ‘universality’ about it. The patterns, the laws, the philosophy, the truths, the traditions, the ‘old wives tales’ – are true for this time and place in a way that almost goes beyond time and place. They are so true that even when the facts change and the knowledge on which they are based changes – even then, wisdom does not decree another course. It is so broad, that it can maintain a course, a straight path, to achieve an aim. And it knows what that aim is – whilst those who process information may have no idea.

Those facts you learnt in school cease to mean anything as you get older, for the world becomes a larger place and wisdom operates in a totally different way. Facts cannot change by definition. If they do they become a new fact. Wisdom has the option to self evolve; to set a new aim and method of achieving it. It can be subtle or radical because it never digs itself into so deep a hole that it is reluctant to dig somewhere else. Wisdom is liquid, like an ocean and operates in the way that tides flow this way and that.

So when you watch a world leader who cannot change their mind or cannot make up their mind, or know their mind – you are watching someone engrossed in facts and knowledge. Even when they glimpse an aim or voice once someone else suggested, they have no idea how to achieve it. They have forgotten, as T.S. Elliot so elegantly puts it, wisdom.

Do you remember those maps in school history lessons showing how sailing ships used the trade winds to deliver human cargoes from Africa to North America, American to Liverpool and then back to Africa? The Slave Triangle.

Looking today at weary eyes in a photograph of black Africans crowding a fishing boat bound for Europe, I was reminded of the inhumane and cramped conditions on the slave sailing boats in history. Then they were forced on board, now they are desperate to get on board. Ironic.

After the abolition of the slave trade, many stayed on in the Caribbean and North America. Even in modern America, this once cheap labour force is now a thorn in it’s side, demanding not unreasonably, equal rights. They were, after all, a driving force in making the United States of America. The America Civil War dead might have made the victors value what they fought for more.

Odd too, that after the slave trade, the European nation states, carved up Africa for their own. Instead of being transported, which was clearly wrong, Africans became slaves in their own countries. On the positive side, the Colonial powers replaced the mineral wealth they stole, with roads, railways, schools, hospitals, churches, law, government. Even today, some Africans recognise the old colonial state boundaries rather than tribal or other delineations, when voting.

When the colonial powers left Africa in the middle of the nineteenth century, new national flags fluttered proudly above public parties that went on for several nights. And yet, and yet, in the decades leading up to the present day, Africa and African States have failed in most respects to bring prosperity to Africans. That’s a generalisation I know, but the impact of the colonialists and their status as an easy focus for blame when things go wrong, has allowed African politicians to not try too hard. That last phrase is instead of saying what they have really done since. Even where brutal and unlawful white regimes have been replaced by black majority governments, such as the African National Congress in South Africa, during their decades of government, living conditions have hardly moved on, promises forgotten.

And all of this in a land mass bigger than Europe, the United States of America and China. Why is not Africa the wealthiest and healthiest continent? It even avoided communism – and has had so much free money donated by the rest of the world that a new phrase of ‘donor fatigue’ is being heard.

Whatever has been going on, the stretched out lines of bodies in the rubber boats heading for Europe, show that some Africans are desperate enough to leave their homelands and risk their lives in that attempt.

It’s a continent consisting of diverse nation states, diverse tribal loyalties, unworthy leaders, disease, extreme weather and environments, all inhibiting it’s human and animal populations to prosper. And yet it has so much potential, natural wealth, rich farming, education and emerging liberating technologies, that it’s future has to be good.

 

 

The world is not democratic. I apologise if I shock you but I have just seen the figures, that globally there are 52% females to 48% males (respectfully ignoring the imbetweens). This means that technically, the world should be ruled by women. We all know it is, on the whole, not. Perhaps the news today that gender equality is expected in 217 years time will not make women feel empowered by their majority status.

Democracy has brought so much peace and cooperation to countries that have adopted it, that it should not be mocked. And I think most of us are aware that it is one of those systems that although flawed, it’s hard to think of anything better. But how flawed has it become?

Most democratic countries in the world have a two party system, like the democrats and republicans in the United States. First you vote for one party, who mess up in their term of office, so next time you vote for the others. So it swings and each time, ‘the government gets in’ as they say. Sometimes their policies are so similar, you wonder what is the point anyway. And all the policies are short term, designed to cajole the voter to ‘vote for us’ next time. Few policies are designed for the benefit of the grand children of the voters, like global issues of over population and climate change.

Introduce the power of today’s social media sites to influence voters with information that may or may not be correct and Socrates worst fears about the ignorance of voters materialise. Introduce the potential for foreign governments to influence elections in another country to futher their preferred candidate, and the world is in a whirl.

After all the fuss, it is strange to think that not all voters vote, except in those countries where they are obliged to by law. If you are a prisoner in the UK you are not allowed to vote (except if you at the extreme low end of offending and in for a short term). So how does that serve to rehabilitate prisoners into society? Not much of a withdrawal of privilege to those who prefer not to vote anyway.

And then there are the rules. Fundamentally, the majority wins. But what is a majority? A majority of voters with strong feelings drives a coach and horses over the feelings of those who don’t vote. Surely, the views of a person not voting are just the views that need to be heard? The often quoted ‘silent majority’ lacks the ‘get up and go’ of political activists. Active voting favours the activist. In extreme circumstances where people are frightened to vote because of intimidation at the polling stations, such as recently seen in Barcelona, democracy is not being represented. May the system of voting from the comfort of your living room come quickly. If it’s good enough for Strictly Come Dancing contestants, it must be good enough to more important matters.

Then, do we really believe that a majority of one, is a majority? Is not the logic of the arithmetic leading us astray from common sense? Think of a majority more as a substantial quorum, a large proportion who wholly over shadow the few with opposite views. That, it seems to me, is what a majority should be. Enter the concept of the ‘double majority’. In order for a vote to be passed, there must firstly be a majority of voters turning out to vote. Then the question is asked, ‘did votes in favour outnumber votes against by a required margin?’

And there is yet another rub. What is a required margin? For issues of national importance you would like to think that it would be substantial, at least 66%. Anything less and you risk the dissenters having too strong a voice in the following years. This is called a ‘super majority’ and varies between 66%, 60% and 55% depending on the country, parliamentary system and processes of law. My point here is the super majority is an arbitrary figure but clearly intends to require a substantial majority in order to carry dissenters after the vote.

I cannot discuss this subject without a sideways look at the United Kingdom referendum in June 2016.

Once a referendum has taken place in the UK, does parliament have to take notice?

I am going to use a qoute from Wikipedia here; ‘Legally, Parliament at any point in future could reverse legislation approved by referendum, because the concept of parliamentary sovereignty means no Parliament can prevent a future Parliament from amending or repealing legislation. However, reversing legislation approved by referendum would be unprecedented.’

And then there are two types of referendum. Those before legislation is passed and those after. Historically there have been three referendums in the UK in 1975, 2011 and 2016. The first two were post-legislative. The most recent in 2016 had no ‘deal on the table’ for voters to consider so now some commentators are demanding a second referendum after a deal has been brokered with the European Union. This would at least bring some clarity and detail, which we know is where the devil often resides!

Interestingly, and lastly, the British, historically, had an aversion to referendums. Mrs Thatcher quoted Clement Atlee when she said referendums were “a device of dictators and demagogues” as Napoleon, Mussolini and Hitler had exploited their use in the past. And in the present times when nationalism is raising it’s flags in many parts of Europe and the United States of America, should we not be worried of the power of the misuse of the democractic rules which predetermine who is going to win, before the election or referendum even takes place?

I used to be really concerned. I read that since I was born fifty years ago, the population of the planet earth had doubled from three billion to six billion. I am talking about human beings of course, not flies or ants.

So many of the world’s problems can be traced back to overpopulation; loss of animals species and habitat, hunger and disease, scarcity or resources leading to wars, climate change…the list goes on.

Solve the population growth and you increase the chances of more people enjoying a peaceful and plentiful life. Apart from China, few governments appeared to be interested in governing family size. The Catholic church have never shown any interest in changing it’s rules on the use of contraception.

The world’s population appeared to be on a skyrocket trajectory. Until I heard about a certain Swedish statistician called Hans Roslin. He is held in high regard by fellow statisticians because he had (alas he is now passed on) a gift for presentation. You can watch his lectures on Ted Talks on You Tube. He uses Ikea storage boxes to create graphs. More importantly his message to all those souls with an overpopulation anxiety complex like myself, told me not to worry. By 2050 the world’s population will stabilise at ten billion.

And he proves his extrapolation by creating comparison graphs of health, wealth and family size. He argues that as non-industrialised countries get better health care, the size of their families reduces. Fewer children die in child birth and in the early stages of life. Fewer mouths to feed means families can afford a better standard of living.

Not everyone will be enjoying a ‘western lifestyle’ by 2050, but more will.

It’s generally great news, for all those troubles which I partially listed earlier will also peak and level off. Perhaps the Great Barrier Reef will begin to grow back? Perhaps there will be fewer neighbours fighting over natural resources? It gives reason for optomisim but, and it’s a big but, what if my opening paragraphs are incorrect?

What if there is a power (political, industrial, military- all of those) which is and has been keeping a very close watch on global population growth? It would be absurd if there was not. But who are they and what is their plan?

They are not democratically elected and have no prescence on the world stage. But behind the scenery there might be some plotters. According to posts on You Tube by Kevin Galalae, there is a one hundred and fifty year plan. He sounds plausable as does the length of the plan, because global change is never going to be slow to bring about, much slower than the comings and goings of those who are apparently in power.

By 2050 it is planned that the world population will level off. Exactly as Hans Roslin predicts. But here comes the scary bit. After that, various factors which are already in place, like genetically modified food, will begin to reduce the global population. Eventually, it reaches a sustainable level and the environment will be able to recover from the human virus. But at what price? How much personal freedom will have been taken away?

‘Read it and weep’ as they say, for Gorge Orwell’s world may not have reached us in 1984, it just is coming more slowly than he predicted.

We use artificial intelligence (AI) when we make a search on the internet, draw out cash or use talking devices like Amazon’s ‘Alexa’. A talking assistant is not new technology and was forseen by science fiction writers long ago. It appeared in the film 2001 Space Oddessey in which the space ship’s computer takes command. The question in 2017 is; ‘is the computer going to take over earth?’ Not such an outlandish question I suggest. If you accept the definintion of AI as – ‘a programme capable of replicating itself’ – such programmes are here now. If you search for ‘lethal autonomous weapons’ on You Tube, you will be aware of one of the directions AI has inevitably taken.

In Issac Assimov’s ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ the presevation of the humans is paramount. So are similar inhibiting rules being adopted by those programming robots now?

Consider the story of Genesis and the account where a creator God has trouble with some angels, in particular one called ‘Satan’. This angel sees an opening where he might become more powerful than his creator. Fortunately, by definintion, God is all powerful and Satan and his followers are banished. The Ancient Greeks told of similar minor deities called Titans challenging a dominant deity and such myths appear across Europe and the Near East.

By changing the word ‘deity’ for ‘programme’ you can see that the story is cruelly topical. Are we about to create robots which will become powerful minor deities, capable of destroying towns with one burst from their weapons?

There is another modern myth in which earth is attacked by aliens who intend to destroy humanity. Personally I would like to challenge this myth. Firstly I do not see what aliens have to gain by getting involved with a world population which is armed and fights to solve problems. If you haven’t noticed the stars are in a state of perpetual peace, ‘Star Wars’ is a myth – a projection of our weakest human failing, fighting.

Secondly warrior robots may destroy humanity first. Have you read a United Nations report on this existing threat to human populations? What do governments say about it? Any investigative journalists on the story? There is a big silence because each country is gaurding it’s secrets. This particular genii is already out of the bottle and it is not obeying our every command so we had better stop chasing aliens and start worrying about what is on the other side of the horizon.

 ‘Alexa, who is going to win?’

‘All generalisations are wrong, including this one.’ This quotation attributed to Mark Twain, is an intriguing logic puzzle. Perhaps it hints, generalisations are sometimes correct? Of course they can be. If I said, ‘I am alive,’ that is true. So what’s wrong with generalisations? Can they trap our thinking into making statements that sound reasonable but are not?

Take the word, ‘immigrant’ as a current example. Are immigrants to a county going to bring problems or solutions? The more detailed the questions you ask the more complexity of thinking is needed. Are economic migrants desirable in a country not needing extra workers? Is an economy held back by losing skilled workers originally from other countries? Who enforces migration? Where are immigrants from? The questions are practically unlimited and yet a bigot will simplify matters to ‘immigrants go home’ or ‘no Muslims allowed into our country’. At worst it is absurd and at best it is unmanageable, simply because it will fail in the detail.

Think of the infamous Brexit question. Was anyone invited to discuss why this question was being asked? Did anyone debate how referendums should be run and what proportion of the vote constitutes clear public opinion? Did anyone present facts in the debate prior to the vote, which are now known? Governance is by definition simplifying complexity to enable broad decisions to be made. However without a debate and consequent understanding of important details, the question is flawed because the answer will not have been probed in depth. Socrates believed voters should be educated and informed otherwise the democratic process will reach an uninformed conclusion.

In Japan there is a tradition of producing elegant design solutions. However the designer and craftsman will have spent years learning details not apparent in the product.

Let us not be fooled by our conviction that we understanding things. We generally don’t and that, unfortunately, is a generalisation which is true.

‘All generalisations are wrong, including this one.’ This quotation attributed to Mark Twain, is an intriguing logic puzzle. Perhaps it hints, generalisations are sometimes correct? Of course they can be. If I said, ‘I am alive,’ that is true. So what’s wrong with generalisations? Can they trap our thinking into making statements that sound reasonable but are not?

Take the word, ‘immigrant’ as a current example. Are immigrants to a county going to bring problems or solutions? The more detailed the questions you ask the more complexity of thinking is needed. Are economic migrants desirable in a country not needing extra workers? Is an economy held back by losing skilled workers originally from other countries? Who enforces migration? Where are immigrants from? The questions are practically unlimited and yet a bigot will simplify matters to ‘immigrants go home’ or ‘no Muslims allowed into our country’. At worst it is absurd and at best it is unmanageable, simply because it will fail in the detail.

Think of the infamous Brexit question. Was anyone invited to discuss why this question was being asked? Did anyone debate how referendums should be run and what proportion of the vote constitutes clear public opinion? Did anyone present facts in the debate prior to the vote, which are now known? Governance is by definition simplifying complexity to enable broad decisions to be made. However without a debate and consequent understanding of important details, the question is flawed because the answer will not have been probed in depth. Socrates believed voters should be educated and informed otherwise the democratic process will reach an uninformed conclusion.

In Japan there is a tradition of producing elegant design solutions. However the designer and craftsman will have spent years learning details not apparent in the product.

Let us not be fooled by our conviction that we understanding things. We generally don’t and that, unfortunately, is a generalisation which is true.

A small boy prayed in church, ‘Dear Lord, if you can’t make me a better boy, don’t worry. I am having a great time as I am.’

Who is in control? What do I mean? Well, you either think you are in total control, or some supreme ‘intelligence’ is in control or something in between.

A child could be forgiven for being confused. We don’t really promote the idea of ‘free will’ too much in the West any longer. If you want something to change you ask God. God the big fixer. But I have things broken in the house that God has never fixed, which makes me more inclined towards the idea of free will. We have all been let loose and spilled out of the Garden of Eden with part of the forbidden fruit in our hand. Free will was the deal / punishment. Remember?

I hope this idea doesn’t upset Christians because it’s there in the Bible. We are in charge. It’s not total emersion in cold water like Leonardo de Caprio’s character in the film ‘Titanic’. We have been placed in a life boat from where we watched the Garden of Eden point it’s propellers into the air and sink. Not such a bad life boat either. There are lots of things to keep us comfortable. We should be okay for a while.

Being in charge of our small universes is analogous to the supreme intelligence. He or she organised the big scientific rules and then set the thing in motion. We organise the house, the car, the kids and then set the thing in motion. In our organisational skills we are also, ‘in the image of God’.

Every so often our small world gets so tough we ask for a miracle. I was pushing a guys car off a dangerous bend once. It wasn’t easy because I was on my own and it was uphill and anyone who has ever pushed cars knows the rule to always push a car downhill. But in this case I had no option. Things in the universe were about to collide any moment and God wasn’t interested. Not his problem. Well I was praying like crazy as I pushed and this guy who was quite elderly looked on. At the point when I realised I had run out of strength another man just appeared next to me and started pushing. Together we pushed the car to safety.

So was that a minor miracle? If so, who caused it? I believe we also have the same power as the supreme intelligence to make miracles happen, to make plants that have never had flowers jump an evolutionary barrier and bloom. When we really, really, really want something, it happens. God is happy for us but doesn’t take the credit.

So, you have made an unsinkable ship? Why the lifeboats?

This philosophy explains why bad things happen to good people. In a universe set to spin in certain directions and speeds within which random things happen, there is plenty of space junk. Earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami all happen and although insurance companies put the blame on the Almighty, personally I prefer the geophysical explanations.

In such a random game shouldn’t we all be quaking in our boots? No, because bad stuff doesn’t happen very often and when it does, we have the power of miracles. Just read the stories of ‘lucky escapes’ from disasters. Sure the victims who lost their lives don’t get included in miracle stories but we all have our chances and the ability to increase our chances of staying alive. We don’t choose a house on a flood plain, and we don’t get flooded. That is free will, use it wisely.

The Arab countries who follow Islam are often depicted as being ‘fatalist’ but I often quote a saying they have, ‘trust in God, but tie up your camel first’. If you life in a desert, your life boat is your camel. Be nice to it.

 

 

We ignore the happenings in Catalonia at our peril, ‘we’ meaning the citizens of Europe. The first question an observer wants to know is ‘what do the Catalonians want?’. Well, we know they want independence from Spain, but that begs the question why?

I suspect that as with Brexit, there are multiple reasons. Some go back hundreds of years into the origins of the Spanish state as it is today. Some are about money, ‘why should we pay into the system more than we get out?’, some are about national pride, some see themselves as defending democracy, and there some facists in there as well.

The actions of the Spanish government during the referendum, placed the Catalan cause firmly on the high moral ground through it’s use of excessive and unecessary force.

So where will Catalonia go from here? Perhaps stepping back and taking a world view would introduce some clarity. We have seen the rise of shall we say, nationalism; a pride in one’s country, normally reserved for sports, song contests and the occasional war.

In North Korea we see national pride operating at almost every level of society, even into primary schools. At this extreme, nationalism becomes a powder keg that explodes into war, as seen in the Spanish Civil War in the last century, or WWII that followed. But I would love to read an essay by a physciatrist on what brings about national pride in an individual. Humans are well known for their loyalty to ‘the tribe’ whether in the football stadium, a school sports day (come on reds!), or an irrational obessession with symbols of national identity, like a flag. Follow the flag! Really?

Flags are all over Barcelona. I know because I was there the week before the referendum.

The North American Native people have a saying; ‘it is easy to be brave from a distance’. How true this is. We all fantasise about how we would do something against a protagonist, but rarely do when we get close.

That’s the thing with Catalonia. On it’s borders are benign European countries, unlikely to take up arms against them. But supposing France was Russia. Russia, who so ably moves into those ‘Russian speaking’ micro-states which were once Soviet satellites; Eastern Ukraine, Crimea. Where next? Estonia, Latvia? The People’s Republic of China has been playing the same game for decades, as we all saw by the varied national costumes in the opening parade to the Chinese hosted Olympic Games.

With a big bad wolf next door, I doubt Catalonia would be so keen to leave Spain and Europe, because in the end, war is a consumation devoutly not to be wished. Especially if you have no military forces. Would it still be part of NATO if independent? Lawyers please!

Somalia wished for and obtained indepence but has quickly been consumed by hostile neighbours.

This was one of the considerations not voiced very loudly if at all, in the debates prior to the Brexit vote. ‘What about National Security?’ Does Britain really want to lived next door to a divided or at worst disintegrating Europe? Do the Catalans?

There is an old adage, ‘united we stand, divided we fall.’ It’s so old it’s in Aesop’s Fables, only there it’s a bunch of sticks which are stronger than individual sticks. Corny, well used, old fashioned, yes, all of the above, but also true. And such an ‘inconvenient truth’ has been ignored because waving a flag and putting on uniforms are so much better at rousing emotion; emotions such as national pride. If you don’t believe me, watch footage of the Games of the XIth Olympiad in 1936. You might recognise someone on the podium, Chancellor Hitler I think was his name.

I wonder what happened to him?

 

North and South Korea are at war. They have been for decades now and appear to have learnt to live with it.

Then along came Mr Trump. He is right that previous administrations in his country have failed to solve matters in the Korean peninsula. Being an ally of South Korea makes it America’s business, but does it need to be America’s business? ‘America first’ was Mr Trumps borrowed election slogan so should he feel embarrassed if he backed out of previous administrations continued allying with South Korea? Do we really fear Communist China any longer? I would hope not. Yes, they are expanding into the South China sea, but wouldn’t you?

That’s not the unspoken option. It’s about nuclear weapons. I wonder who in the world is responsible for keeping this genie in the bottle? Non-proliferation is a great idea in principle but is it practical? Is it reasonable to assume all states that wish to acquire and then do acquire nuclear weapons, will play by international rules?

If there is any policing of non-proliferation to be done then I would say it should be done by the United Nations and not an individual state. If an individual state puts it’s head above the parapet and starts telling another what to do, an argument is going to start. Surprise! That is exactly what has happened.

Being well intentioned is not enough Mr President. You have to have the skill to bring about your intentions and so far the only option you appear to have followed is ‘intervene because no one else is’ and then ‘be ready for war’.

There are many other options and here is the one I recommend. Withdraw your navy, withdraw your air force. Consider withdrawing troops from South Korea. Back right off!

That way you will completely make a fool of Mr Kim. He uses other countries by provoking them into a reaction. That reaction he then uses to justify his building of military power to his people. He wants a nuclear bomb to defend his county. More or less the same reason all the countries with nuclear weapons want them, so is that unreasonable?

Make him look a fool Mr President. Leave him standing there with his war machine around his ankles and no enemy to point his rocket at. That is how bullies are overcome in the school playground, and that’s exactly how I would deal with the Korean Kid.

If it doesn’t work what’s the worst that can happen? He commits an act of war against another country. That would justify the country to defend itself and be justified in doing so. At the moment, the worst that can happen is America starting a war with North Korea and that will take away the moral high ground from America. If Mr Trump wants to learn from previous administrations, then he could learn the lesson they have shown by getting it wrong, not to invade other countries. It only ends with a power vacuum and horrors for civilians worse than they endure already e.g. Libya, Iraq. The Chinese will have said that to him.

Another way of controlling the spread of nuclear weapons? I would suggest putting a United Nations guard around every uranium mine in the world. It’s not going to prevent  thefts completely but it’s a more peaceful step than threatening to start a nuclear war with this, and the next and the next country to acquire nuclear weapons..