Not Dead Yet

07/09/2019 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

I have just come from my psychologist after a long and painful session. I was advised uninterrupted rest, in sympathy with my recent trauma.

It all started when I read the latest advice for 19 to 64 year olds. According to the BBC News website ‘strengthen muscles as well as heart to stay fit and healthy say top doctors’ – I am considered to have the same body as a 19 year old despite the fact that I am 64. This body requires the same amount of physical exercise as when I was young and they don’t hold their punches with their recommended exercise regime.

It starts badly. Each day I must be ‘physically active’. This means, presumably, that my normal day of lying in bed holding my breath, is not a good idea. Wow! I wish I had heard this advice before. OK. That was sarcastic I am sorry but really? Do we have to be told to move? Yes, we do so, I have spent the last month not only ‘active’ but taking exercise. Number one on the list of advice is to do ‘heavy gardening’ ‘carry heavy shopping’ or ‘resistance exercise’ at least twice a weak.

I am not sure what heavy gardening is. It sounds a bit like heavy petting and I don’t like the implications of that, so I skipped both.

Heavy shopping sounded appealing. Instead of my normal half trolley full, I filled up with chocolate, cakes, bread, beer – heavy items – so that walking to the car was going to provide my twice weekly exercise and maintain my nineteen year old body. I don’t think I have eaten so much chocolate and drunk so much beer in my life but I consoled myself with the fact that I was doing my muscles and heart a great deal of good.

As for joining the Resistance? Well I have never been much of a political activist preferring to totter to a polling booth and put an x (or is it a tick?) next to the party candidate who stands no hope of winning. It’s what being a Liberal is all about. But as for joining the Resistance? I can see that the average pimply nineteen year old who has had little chance to sort out what makes life tick or even tock – will find this appealing. Me, I have never felt I could wear a black beret with quite the tilt that Che Guervera managed. As for planting bombs on railway tracks. Well as someone who regularly writes to his MP complaining about my daily rail commute being delayed for unforeseen reasons – such complaints would become somewhat hypocritical. I couldn’t feel good, even if it was good for my muscles and heart.

Then comes the double whammy in the advice. Not only do you have to be ‘physically active’ – so breathing – but the advice hammers home a list of unrelenting and unnatural amount of activity. On offer is ‘brisk walking or cycling’. Now I have never liked walking ever since I first tried it as a baby – in fact my first few attempts were down right embarrassing. I guess I have the hang of it now but really it’s not much to write home about and raises little admiration and praise from family and friends. The idea of brisk cycling is more appealing.

I set out yesterday on a jaunt and gave myself twenty minutes to achieve it. After twenty minutes getting the electric bike ready, due to flat tires, rust etc…I realised that if I was going to be sincere to my task like a true Resistance fighter, then I should use my ordinary push bike. That took another twenty minutes to prepare but finally I was ready. I balanced the recycling bag on the back and headed uphill towards the recycling bins. I mused for the first hundred metres about the irony of cycling with recycling and thought it would make a good joke sometime – then I spied Jim filling up my neighbour’s swimming pool and I stopped for a chat. I explained what I was doing and how the last hundred metres had been a challenge. He suggested I sit down and he had some cold beers in the car – all of which I accepted.

Well, the next hour passed very amicably and I thanked him but said I needed to do some more muscle and heart exercise. I explained how I had to do 150 minutes every week, and he asked how much this was each day. A simple question and maybe the beers hadn’t done much for my brain but I had to pause and then ask if he had a pencil and paper.

If it was 140 minutes a week then 20 minutes a day. Easy.

But these ‘top doctors’ had thrown in another ten minutes, seven times a week. Eventually Jim found a calculator on his phone and read out in full – 21.4285714286 minutes.

‘How many seconds is that?’ I asked. Well, even with a calculator he couldn’t work it out. We settled for twenty one and a half seconds each day so as not to offend the top doctors.

Jim asked what the hell was a top doctor and I said I had never met one. They must be like ordinary doctors but much much cleverer…which in human terms these days is probably not very clever. Anyone who thinks 21 and a half minutes is easy to calculate is either dim on theory and dim in practice or unbelievably clever on theory and dim in practice.

I reached the recycling bins about an hour later since most of my cycle ride became a slow walk pushing the dam thing up hill. Coming back was a breeze though I resolved to spend more time going downhill than up in the future – the kind of wheeze a nineteen year old would think of.

I ignored the next top doctor suggestion on health grounds, which was 75 minutes of running each week. Surely the invention of the motor car means that no person has to be humiliated by running along the road in their mid sixties. I can see switch boards being blocked with calls for emergency services to attend this wreck of muscles and bones, every ten minutes.

Lastly, the top doctors pulled out all the stops with their crowning piece of advice. ‘Minimise time spent being sedentary’. I was pleased to read this one as it is clearly the same as ‘be active’ but in reverse. Why, if you were so brainy to be a top doctor, would you advise; ‘don’t lie down too much’ and ‘stand up a lot’? It’s the same advice twice!

Never mind, it just means an easy tick in the achievements box.

What the top doctors did not reckon on was the massive guilt complex that developes in those challenged mentally and physically by this ‘do or die’ advice. How could an old wreck like me ever match the muscular and heart exertions of my nineteen year old doppelgänger? The guy doesn’t exist any longer and if you want the older version, he will be lounging in the hammock on the terrace at the back of the house for medical reasons.

And the medical advice I have been given by my psychiatrist, called Jim, is to wait until my next birthday before attempting physical activity. The reasoning is that on that day the exercising regime becomes considerably more lenient. All it says is that ‘some physical activity is better than none’.

Yes, over 65 years old the top doctors have a suggestion that frankly, a hospital porter on their first day at work could come up with. But I am not complaining.

Another activity befitting the muscular physique of a 65 year old is ‘bowls’ Fortunately I can ‘bowls’ is doable as I have a fine collection of ceramic bowls in my house; I presumably only need to look at them.

Then they advise ‘Tai Chi’ and I have always been keen on these oriental things. Whether there is room in the garden for a Tea House I am not sure. I might have to move the shed in which I store the sun loungers but never mind. The tea ceremony is very calming and promotes mental as well a physical inactivity. Very Zen.

But I am not so sure with the last piece of advice I am going to have to follow. ‘Break up long periods of being sedentary with light activity when possible, at least with standing.’

The longest period of inactivity is a close call between watching Net Fix and sleeping, but I think sleeping tips the scales the most. How I can be expected to either sleep standing up or wake up at intervals in order to stand up and lie down again, I am not certain.

What I do know is that it is all good practice for the grave, in which there is no requirement to stand up.

Bring it on.

Green Gold

23/08/201923/08/2019 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Once upon a time there was a human baby. It grew and became strong and healthy. Then, after about sixteen years, an extraordinary thing happened to the body. A great cloud of poisonous smoke filled the lungs. Toxins began to flow around the body and various organs responded with panic. Unfortunately, there was also an amount of ‘satisfaction’ associated with this smoke. The organs argued with the brain telling it to stop allowing breathing smoke.

The body continued to breath smoke and rumours spread that the lungs were turning black at the edges and in a few years they would become diseased and not function at all.

The organs decided to challenge the lungs and were astounded by the reply. The lungs said that the rumours were all ‘lies’ and that they should mind their own business. The organs could see that the health of the whole body was there business, but the toxin had spread and the name of the toxin was ‘stupidity’.

Picture copyright credit: Ranger Rick

Today, in August 2019 the ‘lungs of the world’, being the Amazon rain forest, are on fire. The country with the largest number of fires is Brazil. There are over 25,000 according to the BBC News website, which has little reason to misreport the problem and used the National Institute for Space Research as their source. The President of Brazil, Mr. Jair Bolsonaro, has responded with a volley of denials and obfuscation, of the type that we hear so often from right wing leaders today. But he, does have an interest in denying the size of the problem and that no other countries have a right to be concerned. He sees the forest as a resource for mining and logging and agriculture, which from a purely economic development point of view, it is. The problem for the ‘rest of the world’ is that the blinkered thinking that accompanies ‘national interests’ is in the wrong century. In a world where sharing global opportunities and problem solving is becoming ‘normal’, the attitudes from the nineteenth industrialist capitalist governments and entrepreneurs, prevails in Brazil. Interestingly Mr Bolsonaro accused the President of France Mr Macron, of being just such a ‘colonialist’ while the reverse if true. Mr Bolsonaro is ripping the heart out of his own country in just the way the colonialists used to do in their greed for natural resources.

The Amazon rain forest contains many layers of richness. Not least are the million or so indigenous people who’s very lives depend of the forest. When I was in school we were taught that the forest people practised a technique of farming known as ‘slash and burn’. Tiny pockets of forest would be cleared and crops planted for one or two seasons before the thin soil could produce no more. Then the people moved on and the forest and it’s animals were able to re establish the ecosystem.

What is happening now is the early stages of desertification.

picture copyright credit: straitstimes.com

The world cannot allow it’s lungs to die. Although much well intentioned re-afforestation has taken place in the northern hemisphere, the small scale and the type of trees planted means that the effect on the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not enough. The Amazon rain forest is the only place where the carbon dioxide can be absorbed on the scale needed to prevent a rampant rise in the average temperature of the planet.

So what is the solution? Clearly the rain forest has to be saved for current and future generations. The Brazilian government are only responding to the promise of economic prosperity for their country and citizens. They might be persuaded to change their short term destructive policies if they made more money by not destroying the forest.

I suggest then that it is sold, square metre by square metre to the rest of the world. Who would buy it? Well not governments but ordinary people. I believe that people would willingly purchase a few square metres as they can at present buy micro land on Scottish estates to gain the legal title of ‘Lord’.

The area of the rain forest in Brazil is 477 698 000 hectares (source: brazil.org.za). One hectare equals 1000 square metres, so if you sold one hectare to 1000 buyers at 100 US dollars each, you make 100,000 dollars per hectare. This is 47,769,800,000,000 US dollars! Even if only ten per cent of the rain forest is sold in this way, that is 4,776,980,000,000 US dollars. I expect that is more than miners, loggers and farmers are going to pay in tax to the government in a thousand years!

The process to purchase your piece of rain forest could be standardised and completed as any legal process of acquiring land title; either as an owner or tenant. The only extra clause / covenant purchasers would be required to agree to is that they will permit the land to remain pristine or allowed to ‘re-wild’ as much as that is possible. Each individual would be limited in the number of square metres they could buy to prevent devious exploitation. The price of the land might be double or even triple what a logging company or beef farmer is going to gain in the few years the land would be productive. Any tenancies could be renewed every ten years or so, if not sold freehold and the Brazilian government will be able to spend the money on the prosperity of it’s citizens as it wishes.

Picture copyright credit: Rainforest Foundation

Attempts to ‘mine’ or exploit the forest on a large scale would be a legal nightmare on account of the number of owners or tenants whose location and consensus would be difficult to obtain!

In this way however, the business of Brazil would become the business of the rest of the world. By keeping the rain forest from becoming a desert, Brazil maintains it’s indigenous population, fauna and flora and become a gate keeper on the world’s increasing need to store carbon dioxide. It is likely in the future that these will become of greater economic value to Brazil than the nineteenth century approach of logging, mining and ranching. Perhaps shares could be bought in each tree for the carbon it absorbs to enable ‘carbon neutral’ deals to be made with polluters like air lines and industry.

Brazil has a unique and irreplaceable resource to benefit all it’s people, indigenous and settlers. There is a fable about a goose and a golden egg, that President Bolsonaro would be wise to inform his economic advisers to integrate into national policy before the land is worthless to anybody for anything.

Head for the Hills!

20/08/2019 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Suppose for a moment you lived in an unstable African state. You might one day receive a threat from a ‘warlord’ or drugs cartel or terror group. You round up your family, grab a few possessions, kick the pets out onto the street and run. Where are you going?

Most wealthy and privileged people would head for the airport, wouldn’t they? A couple of suitcases, a fistfull of currency for a hurriedly purchased air ticket to ‘anywhere the next flight is going to,’ and a passport is all you need.

If you are a citizen of that state from which you now wish to flee and you don’t have a passport, what are you going to do? No passport at the airport and they won’t let you on the plane… international law says so. It’s only a hundred dollars to the next State so money isn’t the problem. The Government stole your passport, or some thief stole it, or it expired and you didn’t renew it, or it was burnt with the rest of your belongings when your house was burnt down – which is why you have to flee.

It’s a kind of Catch 22. If you are in trouble and you have nothing, you can’t get on the plane. If life is normal and you just need a holiday…you can get on the plane.

Many people and politicians are wondering why people are taking a one in six risk of drowning and fleeing by unsuitable boat. They think the problem is the cause of their flight and the people smugglers who ‘help’ them and the failed State fighting itself.

And yet there are working International Airports even in Libya. Why do not those fleeing the country take a plane?

The answer is of course this passport law. Understandably air lines don’t want passenger lists with a lot of question marks. USA airlines are providing passenger lists to the NSA before the plane even lands in the USA.

Yet with thefts of passports and help from those able to alter passports illegally, obtaining a new passport is not impossible. It might be enough to get someone on the plane even if they are detained on landing. They can then claim political asylum and sit out a few months in a detention camp. At least the food and bed is free.

The majority of emmigrants don’t have passports though and no means to get one. That is why they are taking their children and climbing into rubber boats that wouldn’t make it across a river, let alone a sea.

Clearly the problem is being created by the inability of emmigrants to get through an air or sea port. The air port staff at the check in desks are performing the task of ‘border control’ on behalf of governments. The question has to be ‘is this right?’

It’s wrong to believe too much in the a document like a passport. Even with passports, people are passengers on planes who have hidden their identity. These are the individuals most likely to have criminal backgrounds and or intent and they will be allowed to enter the country ‘for a holiday’ without being challenged.

If a person reaches the check out and falls on their knees in tears with a baby in their arms, begging to be allowed to leave the country as men with guns followed them there – should their be a compassionate process to allow them to get on the plane?

I would suggest their should. An asylum application is an international right and it matters little in which country it is made. What I mean is why can’t you be in Libya and apply for asylum in Europe? Why can’t you be in Calais and apply for asylum in the United Kingdom? Why can’t their be Embassy Offices in every airport and staff to process ’emergency’ applications? Every application for asylum is someone’s emergency even if it isn’t the airline’s or the Abassador’s. Why can’t an Emergeny Asylum Application allow a person or family to pass through a border control?

At present there is an argument that ‘undocumented passengers’ should not be allowed on planes for security reasons. They might be international terrorists pretending to be asylum seekers. That is true although, as already described, terrorists are going to pose as holiday makers or business staff before they pretend to be seeking asylum. Even then, if you wanted to be sure that a person or family were not carrying a bomb onto a plane; you send them through ‘security’ as you do every passenger. If you want enhanced security checks – a strip search for instance – and luggage examined in fine detail – then do it.

If you had a long enough queue of asylum seekers at an airport, you could start chartering aircraft for them or use military aircraft.

In my view there is an alarming lack of a strategy, certainly in Europe, that adresses immigration, front on.

You might have thought that there would have been agreement as to how many applicants should be allowed to work and for how long, and a quota arrangement allocating people to countries. Processing applicants for asylum could be achieved in any European or neighbouring country – providing the government staff have wi-fi!

Thinking globally should be second nature to the international men and women who take up positions of government whether in Europe or the United States of America. Both have different immigration demands but the basics are the same.

President Trumps response to build a wall on the Mexican border is the same as Italy’s prime minister who stops rescue boats entering Italian ports. Both strategies are looking at the tail end of the problem rather than the front.

The front view is that there is no humane process in place to accept or reject asylum seekers.

Both Union’s could seek the support of the United Nation’s Refugee Council active player’s in a global strategy or relocation.

People in distress clearly must and will pick up a suitcase and run. People in search of economic benefits will do the same but these will not pass the asylum questions – hopefully! So if populations are willing to leave all they have, governments should have strategies to deal with them with compassion and fairness.

Because it is not just war and rogue governments that cause populations to move en mass. Factors such as climate change – floods, flames and famine – should also be in the mass migration plans of the emergency planners.

Sea level changes alone will become a cause of massive movements of populations in the next decades to come. Volcanic activity and earth movements will destroy cities as they have done in the past and people will evacuate islands and vulnerable seismic locations and new deserts in large numbers.

It’s a huge problem for which non-government agencies should not be leaned on too hard to ‘sort out’.

A good place to start however in the present is to change the question at airports from ‘can I see your passport?’ to ‘how can I help you?’ The rest is common sense.

The All Seeing I

02/08/201902/08/2019 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

There are quite a number of theories as to why an all seeing eye above a pyramid, appears on the dollar bill.

Clearly there are masonic connections with the originators of the United States of America and the original intention. There may have been as many as twenty one signaturees of the American Constitution who were Freemasons.

They largely reflected anti monarchist views and promoted European Enlightenment ideals of liberty and self governance. God was not encapsulated in a ‘religion’ but seen as an entity who largely left humanity to it’s own devices, whilst keeping a benign watch on things.

Also, the ‘eye’ on the dollar bill is clearly disembodied; without the arms and legs. This ideal of the Creator is more akin the gnostic view, than the Christian.

The symbol shows rays coming from the eye in all directions. This is important. Firstly the rays are coming from the eye, not into it. It is therefore akin to the sun and akin to the Ancient Egyptian deity Ra.

Whilst the human eye is perfectly adapted to receive and focus electromagnetic energy in the wavelength of light, modern science does not support the idea that eyes emit light. Yet in Ancient Greece, Plato and Socrates believed the eye was an organ that emitted a ‘fire’ to produce a ‘visual touch’ sensation. This reversal of what is today ‘the norm’ is not as nonsensical as it may seem. In ancient times the physical world was seen more as a system of energies, rather than the solid physical forms of today. Given that perception then it is quite possible that a human can feel with the eyes by emitting energy. We have all probably had the experience of someone watching us from behind or from a distance whom we cannot physically see.

The other symbol is the truncated pyramid above which the eye floats. The pyramid has thirteen courses and this number is repeated in other symbols present. It’s significance to the designers was clearly important and probably has several interpretations. Personally I would view it as a unification of the numbers one and three, one being the Godhead and three the Holy Trinity – in Christian symbolism which the Freemasons were most likely to use. At another level one interpretation I find interesting is by Swaller de Lubicz who said that thirteen is ‘the manifestation of the good or bad generating power’.

Swaller de Lubicz is a renowned investigator of the sacred sites of Ancient Egypt whose theories were unorthodox but very interesting. His book ‘The Temple in Man‘ is recommended.

In the Old Testament of the Bible and Torah, God is just such an energy that passes judgement and destroys that which it does not approve. Although this image of the Creator is at odds with the New Testament, for the Jews and many other societies, God is not just ‘Mr. Nice Guy’.

In science, the physical universe is in a constant process of decay known as ‘entropy’ and creation; with entropy ultimately being the winner. Even our own bodies reflect this state, and one day our bodies will expire, despite constant renewal processes.

So the eye at the top of the pyramid is more likely, in my view, to be an ‘Old Testament’ eye. Whilst man has freewill to make mistakes and good judgements, so does the Creator. Divine intervention does not, in theory, take place however in a contradictory way is does. God permit cities to be destroyed as does man.

The all seeing eye of God is not just protection, as worn by many as a symbol in the Middle East and known as the ‘evil eye’ or more accurately – protection from evil.

So, why a pyramid and why one without a point? Most pyramids are pure representations of the geometric pyramid form. To do otherwise is rare but there is one and it is well known. It is the so called Pyramid of Cheops on the Gaza Plateau in Egypt. This was one of the first to be built and many of the latter pyramids were pale imitations. There has never been a ‘pyramidion‘ stone and it was constructed to have a flat platform at the summit.

In my personal researches, I have come to the notion that pyramids were constructed to accumulate electromagnetic energy (amongst other reasons). This was done using rock which conducts ions and between anodes and cathodes. In the base of the pyramid are underground water courses associated with the river Nile. These bring in positive ions to the pyramid to be draw upwards through the centre. They were never intended to be emitted from the point of the pyramid as most others do, because other uses of the energies were being made in the chambers.

Suffice to say that I believe most pyramids were constructed to emit a steady stream of electromagnetic energy, from a height and in all directions, to other pyramids. This was a world wide network as evidenced by the presence of ancient pyramids on all the continents, including Antarctica!

A Pyramid and Tesla Tower with similar construction

The concept of ‘mobile phone’ masts as a network of transmitters and receivers of information encoded microwaves, is something most a familiar with in the modern world. It should not be so extraordinary to imagine such a network existed in the past using more primitive materials but with sophisticated, intuitive software.

The pyramids were transmitters and receivers between computers. If you wonder how computers existed so long ago, I am of course referring to the human brain, a computer so multi complex that it will be several decades, perhaps never, when it is replicated by scientists.

A form of ‘telepathy’ is plausibly existent between people such as twins or even husbands and wives, who finish each other’s sentences.

The ‘all seeing eye’ or ‘all knowing eye’ is therefore quite plausibly something contained not only in the mind of God but also His construction, humans.

The Ancient Egyptians denoted the Eye of Horus as in the diagram below. There is a convincing connection between this stylised image of the eye and the cross section of the human brain. This includes the pineal gland where our ‘extrasensory perception’ originates and is known as the ‘third eye’ – another illusion to the number three.

The ‘eye’ is also at a poetic level the ‘I’ or feeling of individual identity within the multiverse symbolised by the number 3 or the Trinity. I and 3 is of course code for, 13. The American Constitution protects the political and human rights of the individual and was fundamental to the creation of a free state which the USA has enjoyed for centuries, (at least in it’s imagination, when such issues as slavery are concerned.)

You can see, therefore that the information contained as they say in ‘plain sight’ on such a lowly item as a bank note is the perfect place to maintain a profound cognisance intended by the ‘Founding Fathers’, never to be forgotten.

Time Traveller

29/07/201929/07/2019 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Good evening and welcome to another edition of Time Traveller. In this programme we ask a well known personality which seven items they would take into the future as their personal memories of today.

Our guest in the studio with me is Mrs. Teresa May, the recently deposed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

Welcome Teresa May and let us start by introducing your first item which is a film you have liked of admired and wish to take into a time in the future.

Well Robin, firstly thank you for inviting me onto your programme and giving me a chance to talk on one of my favourite subjects, myself. My most memorable film would have to be For Whom the Bell Tolls. Politics, as someone once said, is ‘war by another means’ or was that me? Anyway, I recently have discovered just that. I knew that I had a slim chance of achieving anything let alone the Brexit debate. Now with a career worst legacy of a failing health service, failing prison service, failing criminal justice system (in particular the probation service), failing police service, failing education system, failing defence services (those aircraft carriers oh dear), failing transport infrastructure, failing social cohesion, failing high streets and housing provision, failing agriculture and fisheries, failing trade deals, failing immigration policy, failing universal credit benefits system – I feel that there I have done enough for the country that I love (tear). What a pity that even the Houses of Parliament are leaking and in a bad state of repair in particular the Big Ben bell that has not tolled for quite a long time.

Well, what an extraordinary legacy and one which few people could be less proud, so let’s move on. Give us you favourite piece of music that you would take with you into the future.

Ah! Yes well this would have to be one of the places I would like to visit which is the Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. I believe the Chinese have a little something walking around there already and I would like to make similar ever decreasing circles in the dust bowls and craters so abundant there and not be asked awkward questions by members of the opposition and press.

A fine choice and somewhere we hope you will be able to go and stay perhaps, in the future? Your next choice is to consider a favourite meal that you would want to enjoy on the moon.

Ah! Well that’s a easy one because I expect it will not be so abundant in the future as it is now – good old British ‘fish and chips’. Because with the Fisheries and Farming policies of my previous government will mean that there are hardly any fish left in the seas in the future and no casual labourers to pick the potatoes rotting in the fields.

Extraordinary to contemplate no fish and chips but yes, perhaps you have sown those seeds not least when you were a disastrous Home Secretary who did little to reduce uncontrolled immigration (nervous laugh). So let us move on to your next choice which is a painting you would like to take into the future.

Can I have The Last Supper by Leonardo de Cohen, even though it is painted on a wall?

The whole wall is yours.

Yes, because whilst I don’t think I am Jesus (well not yet anyway) I have to consider my last appearance in the House of Commons and how nice the other disciples, I mean politicians, were to me. There was so much praise for my character and policies, saying how clever I was and how much I had done for the country I love selflessly – I know it was all untrue but what a lovely fantasy.

OK, a good choice and one which will remind you of your prophet like status at least in your own household if you include your cat. So next we have a poem for you to choose and take into the future. What would that be Teresa May?

Well Robin, I am not really one to read poetry mainly because I can’t understand most of it written with so many words missed out. But I think the words of the hymn Jerusalem by William Blake would remind me of the ‘green and pleasant land’ that England once was before my inept environment policies to reduce climate change turned England into a burnt and unpleasant desert.

What about the other countries of the UK?

I can’t see that they will still want to be part of a Brexited desert by then and will have gone off in their own directions to maintain the models of prosperity that I strived for and never achieved.

Great, so nearing the end of the programme we just have two more requests for you. What novel would you bring with you into the future?

That’s a simple one. I’d like the Secret Life of Walter Mitty because I can identify so closely with the main character whose name I forget? Is it Teresa…

No it’s Walter Mitty.

Yes, so there is this fantacist who dreams of all sorts of accomplishments way above his or her real life potential and abilities and creates all sorts of confusion amongst the people around him or her. That so reminds me of the me I love!

Marvellous, how interesting and finally then we have to ask what play you would take into the future.

That would be The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. I have always found in my career as a politician, that it matters little what you say and more how you say it. If you sound unsure of yourself it will show, even if it’s the most obvious and benign policy you are suggesting people will want to shrug it and you off. However if you come up with the most bizarre and unpractical ideas but are completely and utterly earnest in your pursuit of them, well, doors open, as they did for me.

Astonishing. An one luxury item you would like to bring with you into the future you describe so well?

Can I have a Tesla submarine. I do believe that in the future we will no longer be living on the land on account of global desertification and will have moved into the seas to earnestly carry on the destruction of the planet to the very end. Therefore I think a nice shiny Tesla submarine powered by the phosphorescence of tiny planktony things will be the perfect place to contemplate the last days of my life.

A little domed perspex window into a world of dying coral and empty abysses?

Oh, yes, what a wonderful legacy.

Teresa May, thank you for causing all the worlds problems and being on this edition of Time Traveller.

Boris Gump

23/07/2019 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

The End Game for Brexit

Only a vain fool would want to be prime minister of the United Kingdom today. Teresa May was greatly flattered when she was asked to take the poisoned chalice of leadership. Today, 22 July 19 is her last day of holding that chalice.

There was little democracy in the process of electing the new prime minister of the United Kingdom today. Only members of the conservative party were eligible to vote – almost 160,000 of them which is just 0.000625% of the population of the United Kingdom. This process was preferred to a general election for what reason? Could there have been a fear of losing the majority of two seats in the House of Commons and therefore power?

This absence of a sizeable working majority, an apparent inability to consult with like minded partners and her private belief in ‘remaining’, was what ultimately brought down Teresa May, as I see it.

So having decided that the country has no right to choose their next prime minister, ‘they’ decided to pitch a ‘remainder’ against a ‘leaver’ as candidates to – well – leave. Which one do you think was expected…no…intended to win? Yes, the leave campaigner was always going to win.

Unfortunately for Boris Johnson, he will have to act out his dreams of being a right honourable politician whilst facing an impossible situation. It’s like arriving at five in the morning at the Glastonbury music festival after an all night concert in which all the bands were booed off stage. Only a single cleaner is to be seen sweeping up debris from the back of the stage.

Come on Boris, get your ukulele out and give us a number!

shouts someone from the crowd. They are not quite sure how he got there but they are willing to sit through one more act before the stage is dismantled.

Vanity makes you so thick skinned you find yourself being handed a battered ukulele (called the Withdrawal Agreement) and tuning it’s three remaining strings. You can now say you have been in a band at Glastonbury 2019, when your grand kids ask you Boris.

But he is not so poor a politician that he has forgotten to organise a bus to take him home. It sits at the back of the stage with the engine just ticking over. The driver leans against an open door dragging on cigarette. This bus has written on the side; ‘no deal’.

Many politicians cringe at the thought of a ‘no deal’ with the danger of a catalogue of unintended consequences emerging from it like the Monty Python one ton weight descending from above. The EU commissioners are expecting the £39 billion pound debt to be paid by the United Kingdom. Failure to do this would leave the UK’s reputation as an honourable nation in tatters, the pound would crash and investors rush to remove capital and businesses from the nation.

Yet Boris has cleverly wrapped up this ‘no deal’ option in a transparent tissue of lies paper. ‘This is on the table so that we have bargaining power’ the public are told. But of course the mere presence of this option means that there would be no deceit if it were decided to be used. After all, the problems faced by Boris Johnson are so unmanageable that ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’ is an appealing Party ploy.

And when the unexpected consequences start appearing one by one, he can say that none of this was his fault. Third parties such as the EU commissioners and Teresa May and all the other political parties, were the cause of the chaos now falling from the skies.

One such cloud burst, in my view, will inevitably be the countries that make up the United Kingdom seeking independence. I expect Northern Ireland to vote to become part of Eire (and Europe) first. That will pave the way for Scotland to seek independence and perhaps even the north of England!

Boris will be like the male lead in a farce that ends with his trousers around his ankles and a chicken on his head – but then – I expect he would rather like that look.

I am disheartened when I listen to people asked for their views on Brexit on TV. They expect there to be some sort of change after Brexit but rarely state what that might be. The ‘end game’ is lost in the excitement of the ‘present game’.

I am reminded of the ‘independence’ parties held in countries in Africa as the colonial powers withdrew in the 1950’s. The national exuberance and excitement lasted several days. New national flags were flown from windows and vehicles, horns blaring. People danced in the streets all because they were ‘free’ without pausing to think what that meant.

I make no excuse for colonialism which was clearly wrong. But when the European countries left Africa there was a political vacuum. Despots and power hungry ‘leaders’ filled the parliaments and military top jobs. Corruption and victimisation of populations became normal. People found the end game was no better than before – sometimes worse.

I wonder what will be the ‘end game’ for Brexit, once the bunting has been taken down from the streets parties.

Nigel Farage will disappear from the scene because his great ‘oversimplification of the facts’ will be over.

All that will be left will be a resounding silence, little direction in the shape of cleverly managed new prospects.

The EU will treat the UK as positively second class; why shouldn’t they? And America will not save the UK from nasty Europe this time round – unless you think President Trump is a very very good person… very loyal and trustworthy person who loves British Trump…Boris Gump.

Lunar Madness – Apollo ll

18/07/201918/07/2019 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

On the fiftieth anniversary (20^th July 1969) of the first lunar mission and landing on the moon – I dedicate this blog to all explorers.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that the name given to the American space programme to reach the moon, was a bit odd? Apollo is the Greek and Roman god associated with the sun – not the moon. Was it used because the mission to send men to the moon was totally male dominated? The mission objective clearly stated, in the words of President John F Kennedy :

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

Indeed, there were no female astronauts at that time, apparently on account that they were considered not to have the physical strength and willingness to take risks that men do. Ironically, today female astronauts are known to be physically more suited to space travel and averse to risk taking for the benefit of the entire crew.

The First Astronaut – Apollo (about to launch a thunder bolt)

It is also curious that earth’s Moon is not the only moon in the solar system. All the other moon’s are given the names of gods (except for Uranus which has moon named after characters from Shakespeare plays). The word moon is strangely containing two adjacent spheres! But more importantly Moon or Menses has proto-Indo-European linguistic roots and is older than Lunar which is Latin. Moon is closer to menses and month relating to the female cycle.

It being 1969, the male symbolism prevailed. Apollo had a bow and arrow and was the god of archery – if that is sufficient imagery for a the masculine principle seeking and penetrating the feminine circular target.

A British rocket of the 1960’s for launching satellites was named the Black Arrow. An even more curious historical eponymy is that Stevenson’s 1829 railway engine was also named The Rocket. A symbol Sigmund Freud could also have written a chapter about.

Whatever the reason’s for naming the Apollo mission, the shallowness of the venture is evidenced by the fact that fifty years on no nation has repeated it. The reason is clear. There was no material benefit in going to moon – effectively a desert. Instead in the 1960’s there was a ‘cold war’ between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The Soviets were ahead of the Americans with the launching of the first unmanned and then a manned earth satellite. The ‘land of the free’ was out to prove its technical, economic and political superiority and they did.

The Scientist’s at the time preferred space missions to be unmanned and crammed full of scientific experiments. Robotics and remote communication meant that manned missions were scientifically speaking – a waste of payload.

But the politicians wanted pictures and pictures / film had to contain an all American explorer laying claim the moon by planting the stars and stripes flag.

As an aside, there is a conspiracy theory that the entire Apollo 11 mission was faked. This was achieved by using a Hollywood film studio to recreate a believable lunar landscape on which actors could land and leap about. Personally I expect there was a ‘back up plan’ to the real lunar landing – given that the mission was highly risky. If the American astronauts crash landed then the political fallout would be as damaging as a successful mission, rewarding. So it is highly likely, in my view, that there was a plan to fake the landing if necessary in the National interest. It is these films and images that are referred to by the conspirers as evidence of a fake landing.

As it turned out, the final descent in the lunar Lander was almost a disaster. There was only another three seconds of fuel in the tank for Buzz Aldrin to land ‘The Eagle’ lunar module.

Buzz Buzz Buzz Busy Busy Busy B

But why did these men risk their lives so publicly and for so little scientific benefit? Clearly as patriots and explorers from a gene pool of risk taking ‘settlers’ – the chosen crew were dedicated to their mission. These were not humans landing on the moon, this was America – The Eagle.

Another great irony was the ‘elephant in the moon’, which was that the destination could hardly be more adverse to human survival. It was known that the Moon was a ball of dust and rock with extreme temperatures and no means to sustain human life. It was and is, more deadly than ‘Death Valley’ in California.

Hardly surprising then that the picture from Apollo missions that brought most gasps from the crew and earth dwellers alike, was the view of the blue planet itself. Seen for the first time from a considerable distance the earth looked both majestic and fragile. A lonely jewel in a forbidding black landscape.

We know today from subsequent unmanned missions to the planets, that the earth remains the only place on which human life can exist without technological reliance. If the reason behind the moon mission was partly to find a suitable ‘life boat’ to use to escape a dying earth – then what we know now gives little hope for the perpetuity of mankind.

Only one of the moons of Uranus will be a suitable place to land when our sun expands and swallows earth in a few billion years time.

For now only Mars appears sufficiently similar to Earth to sustain colonies – but a fragile existence this would be with the need to grow food on a large scale to sustain just a few ‘settlers’. It will be a long while before there is a Mars Mc Donalds and they probably won’t sell burgers.

There is another lesson to learn from history and that is ‘possession’. Traditional declaration of ownership on behalf of a nation by explorers such as Captain James Cook, was the raising of a national flag. No teams of lawyers were necessary historically to defend the rights any indigenous people, who were usually shot if they caused dissent.

Even if no Martians line up to defend Mars from future settlers, there will need to be teams of international and interplanetary lawyers to deem who owns what. Treasures such as mine-able water ice will be precious enough for significant sums of what ever is used for money in the future. If Earthlings continue their war-like ways on other planets, as they do on their precious earth, then there will be a giant step backward for mankind, instead of one forward – a type of lunar madness from whose bourne no man returns.

M – OO – N

Ap – O -11 – O

Hammering in the Screw

14/07/201914/07/2019 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Readers of this blog will know that the author is fascinated by the science and art of problem solving. Problem solving is a daily occurrence and yet is rarely taught or even considered as a subject worthy of study.

The brain can acquire an commanding attitude that sometimes dismisses objectifying a problem. Either from previous experience or acquired behaviour – a solution ‘comes to mind’ that is promoted without question. This idea is regarded and defended as the only possible solution and perceived as unquestionably better to any alternative.

Let us take an example from the world of sociology, ethics, law, health and politics. The example I am using is ‘drugs’.

The ‘normal’ response to the problems created by citizens who take drugs, has been for the State to make them illegal.

Avid problem solvers will already have noticed that when the problem has a stack of layers already listed;

Social stability

Economics and Taxation

Ethics and Religion

Law

Health

Politics

– then the solution has to apply at every level of the problem.

It is not difficult to appreciate that the ‘make it illegal’ or ‘bang-em-up’ solution, only addresses one layer of the problems associated with drug taking.

In the 1930’s recession in North America a law against the consumption of alcohol was introduced known as ‘prohibition’. We are probably all familiar with the unintended consequences of this law in handing over the production and supply of alcohol into the hands of criminals. The government lost the taxes associated with the sale of alcohol and little benefit was gained by anyone except the criminal gangs. The law was repealed because it didn’t solve the problem – if there ever was a defined problem!

But even today the Indian States of Bihar, Gujarat, Bagaland are today places where alcohol is banned. Despite this alcohol consumption in India has risen 72.5%* in the last twenty years (*source Wikipedia).

In the United Kingdom in 1971 an act of parliament was passed called the Misuse of Drugs Act. This was heralded as a so called ‘war on drugs’. But because the problem was only considered at one level, the laws have failed to the extent that contemporary analysts are proposing more inclusive solutions to the problem.

Instead of examining these alternative solutions the more general point here is that they need to be wide ranging in their origins and effect. Just taking a narrow attitude such a s ‘law making’ is ineffective.

Therefore a problem solver might examine ‘what is a drug?’ first. In the religion of Islam, a drug is categorised as an ‘intoxicant’ and believers are forbidden to become ‘intoxicated’. This is clever because it does not attempt to list all drugs that are harmful, in the present and future, (as lawyers did in the UK and other Western countries) – it just bans the consequences of any drug. It does not even define the point at which a person becomes ‘intoxicated’. The clerics and interpreters of Sharia law have erred towards ‘zero tolerance’ – and gets a bad press in liberal democracies.

However, it has to be recognised that religious laws can be considerably more effective than criminal law and overcome the problems associated with criminalising drug addicts.

But even this strand of a solution to drug taking is not completely effective; some Muslims drink alcohol. Therefore a problem solver might attempt to define what degree of success in reducing the consumption of drugs is being aimed at. In a competitive world it is natural to attempt a one hundred per cent success rate, but a reality check is usually needed on what can really be achieved. Is a person ‘intoxicated’ after one beer?

Like all ‘genies’ and malign inventions – once set free they can never be completely put back into the bottle. Perhaps for this reason, in western liberal democracies at least, an increasing level of tolerance is being given to drug use and users.

There is clearly a sliding scale defining drugs, with mild drug taking at one end (coffee, tea, medicines) to hard drug taking at the other (heroine, cocaine, alcohol). Societies assess the positive effects of drugs against the negative such as in the production of medicines. Desired consequences of medicinal drugs are balanced against the side-effects, some of which may be worse than the symptoms of the problem!

Some European countries such as Portugal are treating drug addicts as patients with an illness rather than criminals who will change as a result of punishment. The statistics on the success rates between the two approaches would make interesting comparison. What is of interest for this essay, is how a change of direction and depth in the problem solving process, may be more successful than the previous direction and depth.

Clearly the politicians and law makers (with an knowledge of changing social attitudes) need to be on board with the idea of such changes , as do health and social workers and the criminal justice system.

Any lasting solution has to know what it is trying to achieve and how to measure that goal. It must also take into account how to change and how to control the various strands of the solution involving the multiple agencies within society.

Many people in power like to think they know the solution by some sort of divine gift of seer-ship. This makes them blind to whether the measures they propose will work and by what measure they can be considered effective in their goal.

Reluctance to change is familiar in problem solving and is characterised as a person engaged in digging a hole in the wrong place. When the error is pointed out ‘you won’t find water here mate!’ the digger just digs deeper.

Or when the carpenter only has one tool in the workshop, this tool is used for anything that it can hit. No question is asked whether the metal thing sticking up is a nail or a screw. The problem is a ‘metal thing’ and the solution is the only tool in the workshop.

This type of thinking is clearly insane when viewed analytically – and yet whole societies and national systems of government appear to be digging holes deeper and hitting screws with hammers.

What do you think is the solution?

English-ish

11/07/2019 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

Now I want you all to come and sit in the story time circle children. Come along now! Timothy! Don’t scrape your chair. No, it is not a Roman chariot crossing the finishing line made of the bodies of slaves, it’s just a chair. That’s right. Thank you boys and girls. Sitting up straaaaaight! Good.

Now this morning we are going to learn some new words. This is part of our Easy English Learning Year 2 book exercise 11. No Jonathan you don’t need your book. Well because it’s a simple lesson so you don’t need your book.

So listening…my arm is up Peter! What can we say to make the sentence ‘the cat sat on the mat’ sound better?

No Simon, dead cats do not sit on mats. Well they sort of fall over – but that is not the point – it is not nice to think of dead cats. No please don’t cry Susan. There isn’t really a dead cat, nor a real cat at all. It’s just something we are trying to talk about and the boys are being silly.

So now, how can we make ‘the cat sat on the mat’ a more interesting thing to talk about?

No ideas? Well has anyone heard their Mummy or Daddy or Carer say ‘to be honest’ before a sentence? You all have! Except you Carol…because your Daddy is in prison. Well that doesn’t mean he is not honest some of the time. Susan , stop crying now and go and help Carol stop crying. And whilst that is happening look this way; and I want someone to try out my suggestion. Wendy…how about you.

Wendy ‘To be honest, the cat sat on the mat.’

That’s really good, thank you Wendy. Do you see class how by saying ‘to be honest’ the meaning of the short sentence sounds more likely to be true than not true? Yes Giles, it might not be true at all. You think there might not be a cat…or a mat. But I am saying in this case there is. All RIGHT! Sorry I didn’t mean to shout. Let me have a hanky please Carol. Thank you.

So, now we can say, ‘to be honest’ in front of any sentence can’t we children? Just like our Mummies and Daddies and Carers do, and don’t they sound clever people when they do? Yes, of course they do and they sound really, well, honest.

Well sometimes grown ups are not honest so by saying ‘to be honest’ makes people believe what they say, John. No, not just amongst Gangsters. Nor criminals like Carol’s Dad. Nor corrupt officials or members of parliament. Look I don’t know why I am saying this. To be honest I want you all to listen carefully. See what I just did to get your attention? Yes, clever wasn’t it?

So, now our simple sentence has become longer.

To be honest the cat sat on the mat.

Who is clever enough to think how we can make this sentence more true sounding? You can Penny? Have a go then and all listening to Penny, class please.

Penny: To be honest, the cat actually sat on the mat.

Well done Penny. How did you know that? Your Mum actually says actually a lot actually? That’s clever of her.

And can you see what Penny has taught us children? Timothy don’t lean back on your chair like that. It’s dangerous. Yes, it is actually dangerous, actually.

So, what other word can we add to our simple sentence?

Your hand was up first Annabel…yes you may be excused but be quick! Anyone else? Simon?

Simon ‘So, to be honest, the cat actually sat on the mat,

actually.’

Good Simon. I don’t think we need two actual actually’s in the same sentence actually…what is it Timothy, put your hand down. Oh, did I just say three actually’s, twice? Well, that’s the good thing about our English lesson today. No one is going to notice how many times you say ‘So’ and ‘to be honest’ and ‘actually’ because everyone is saying these words so many times that it’s difficult to notice them any more.

Yes, even an English teacher like me doesn’t notice them Simon, because they are such useful words and expressions. Grown ups think it is clever to use them so I think you children should learn to say them as well.

No it is not ‘inane padding’ Peter. Who did you hear say that? Your Dad is an English teacher…yes I already know that actually…because he taught me when I was in big school. OK, call it secondary education if you want Peter. I am not going to argue. Well, since you ask, I am trying to make my speech simple for those who are not as fast as you at English, that’s why. Now can we review what we have learnt in our work books? Go back to your tables and open your English books to a new page. Slowly Stephen, it’s not a race! And as you are getting ready I am writing our new improved sentence on the board and I want you to copy it.

Peter. You are not writing? Where is your pen and book? It’s not drivel I assure you. Well there is nothing wrong with ‘the cat sat on the mat’ it’s just that in 2019 it’s a bit old fashioned. It’s much more normal to say, to be honest at the beginning. Even when you are an honest person, yes, even then because the other person might not know how honest you might be. No it’s not an absolute proof of honesty. No, I don’t think I would buy a used car from someone saying this, they could be dishonest just like any other person. It’s just an expression. Yes, possibly an expression that is not true but when it comes to cats and mats it normally, in fact most likely, is true. And that is also why we say ‘actually’ as well, yes. We actually do. We really really really do say actually.

When you do actually get to University to study English, you can write to me in my retirement home and tell me how wrong I was today. Until then Peter I want you to write the word actually on the last page of your exercise book one hundred times.

And the rest of you can go now. No running!

Peter, start actually writing actually.

Every Breath You Take

09/07/201909/07/2019 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

For about eight years now I have been driving a 2.2 litre diesel estate Toyota. The ‘Top Gear’ television presenters drove a selection of similar cars across Europe to see which went the furthest. Jeremy Clarkson found that his diesel Jag used so little fuel that he ran the air-con and anything else he could to use more fuel. Large cars have space for large fuel tanks, so their range can be phenomenal. Mine will drive from southern Spain to the north coast of Spain without stopping – a journey of 1000km.

Last week I hired an ultra small Toyota Aygo car in the UK; a nice little automatic with a petrol engine. When I came to fill up the tank I was disappointed to find that it had travelled about 45mpg whereas my trustee diesel gives me over 55 mpg.

So why are diesel cars getting such a bad press at the moment? Diesel engines were preferred in 1997 by the European Union as a response to the Tokyo Climate Change Protocol. These engines produce on average 120g of CO2 per km whilst petrol engines reach 200g of CO2 per km. This is because diesel engines cold burn and so use less fuel. These figures do not include the energy used to make and dispose of the vehicle most of which will come from fossil fuels. It makes sense to make cars that last several decades in order to stretch out the environmental impact of production and disposal.

But the problems with just the emissions from internal combustion engines, has been re-defined. Whilst CO2 emissions must continue to be reduced, it has been recognised that the toxic gases and particulates from engines are causing a serious health risk – especially for children.

So when you examine these two types of engines, the toxic gas produced by older diesel cars is Nitrogen Oxide, in various compounds. Petrol cars can reduce this with a catalytic converter whilst diesel cars require particulate filters that are regularly maintained. If they are maintained then the NO gases gases from diesel cars can be reduced by 90%.

Governments have been victims of their own ‘political’ thinking; putting problems into compartments rather than viewing the whole issue and how each aspect of it interconnects.

Complexity challenges even those minds with an expensive private education (i.e. politicians). The lazy solution is to reduce the problem to something people can understand – especially voters.

The bottom line is that neither petrol nor diesel engines should be in use in the 21^st century. There should already be ‘electric only’ zones in all urban centres with buses and taxis leading the way.

Cars do not need to be scrapped on account of their motive power source becoming a problem. New zero carbon, zero particulate engines can be retro-fitted – even into fondly maintained ‘classic’ cars. Friends of the Earth believe we need to achieve this in less than a decade, whilst the UK government thinks 2050 acceptable.

When I was a student in London in the 1970’s, I hung a sign under my bicycle saddle with the words;

‘No Noise, No Fumes’

I didn’t buy a car until I was 30. Was I ahead of my time? No.

Electric cars had been the brain child of inventors in the 1830s. By 1900, New York City had a fleet of electric taxis. The electric car designed by an American, Oliver Fritchie, could travel 100 miles between charges but it could not compete with the Model T Ford on price or range. The rest, as they say, is history, because in those times governments were oblivious to the consequential problem they were leaving their ancestors – us.

1970’s Electric Car – with only a 40 mile range and apparently you had to stand on the roof.

Today governments spend considerable time and resources in a phoney ‘war’ against terrorism. ‘Phoney’ because conventional troops cannot overcome guerilla tactics – as was proved to be the case in Northern Ireland.

The massive expenditure of public money on this ‘war’ is justified because terrorism grabs the imagination and emotions of voters – by it’s very nature as a font of repeated horrors.

You might be forgiven for wondering which is the greater issue – millions of citizens (especially the young) dying of lung related diseases caused by internal combustion engines or citizens dying in terrorist related incidents?

When that question is considered statistically – resources should be allocated to each problem in proportion to amount of human misery and suffering it generates. They should not be allocated on the basis of which problem gets most votes and the most media coverage.

Regrettably terrorist acts will generally sell more newspapers than children dying silently in hospitals of lung diseases or adults with heart problems.

Newspapers inflict the final blow of horror and despair on behalf of the terrorists into the hearts and minds of victimised populations. Margaret Thatcher knew this and ordered a policy of non-reporting of terror related stories in Northern Ireland.

To his credit, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has identified the toxic air of his city as a very real and serious contemporary problem. He has made small steps to reduce it – such as charging motorists of the most polluting vehicles to enter the centre of London. The European guidelines on air pollution were exceeded within the first two months in 2018 in London. Is this another reason for the UK to leave Europe? No more awkward tests of the atmosphere in our cities?

When the United Kingdom first became a member of the European Union one of the directives from the European Parliament was for the UK to clean up it’s bathing beaches.

This was duly ignored for the first year. Why should the UK not continue to send it’s children to play on filthy polluted beaches? But the following year the EU reminded the UK of it’s obligation in law. The UK reluctantly (one expects) began to clean up it’s inshore waters; beaches are now awarded Blue Flags for water quality and facilities.

Now in 2019 the River Thames in London has been transformed from a toxic environment in which nothing could live, into a clean river with fish and mammals such as seals – on view from the Houses of Parliament.

So why now should clean air be such an difficult objective for successive governments?

If the problem is short term planning on account of the four year term of office for elected representatives in parliament – then perhaps politicians need to start to deal with the complexity of uniting long term and short term objectives.

The current air pollution problems in the UK are not local – just look at Mombai and Beijing. There has to be consideration – however complex- on how to integrate solutions within complementary European and global strategies and policies.

Clean air has to be one of the most fundamental of human rights. If we cannot wish it on ourselves, how is it likely to ever happen for our long suffering environment?