I am in Oman. Oman is a hot and sunny country. It is day time, and it must be thirty Celsius in the shade. But I am shivering. You see, I am inside. I am sat in an office. I am sat at a desk that looks like pretty much any other desk in any other office any where in the world. It is the top floor of this building, but because the windows are small, I, like everybody else on this floor, depends on fluorescent strip lighting, like you might find anywhere in the world, in order to see what I am working on. The fluorescent strips are a lot less bright than the sunshine outside. And I am shivering. The air conditioning is on, and for whatever reason it must be aimed at my seat, so I am shivering. I could walk over to the wall and turn the air conditioning down, but you can guarantee that within ten minutes somebody from the other side of the floor will come along and turn it up again. So I just go outside now and then to warm up. I am in a hot sunny country and I have to go outside to warm up and get some natural light. And they say the world is running out of energy. Work that one out.

By all rights, I should be the last person on this floor that feels the cold. One way you can tell this office is in Muscat, the capital of Oman, and not Brisbane or Grimsby, is by looking at what people are wearing. Omani outfits have, over hundreds of years, been perfected to keep people cool. They are long and airy. I, in contrast, am wearing the usual boring Western long-sleeved shirt and trousers combo. So my clothing should be warmer than the local outfits. Perhaps, though, they have a critical edge on me, what with wearing hats. The Omanis all wear hats or scarves, so perhaps they are saving a lot of the heat from their heads in their hats, whilst all the heat from my head does is try to defeat the air conditioning’s thermostat in a futile battle. My head, hot as it may be will never win in a straight contest with the air conditioning, unless they run out of oil in Oman, which will not be for a while yet.

I often think the world is just wrong. Not “wrong, but we can understand why”. Not “wrong, but there is a reason why we do things like that”. Not “wrong, but there are mitigating circumstances”. Just wrong. Take, as an example, when Brits go on holidays abroad. Britain is nice in summer, or at least nicer. It is awful the rest of the time. British people go to other countries at exactly the time of year when Britain is the nicest it will be. One of the disadvantages of living in Britain is that you cannot enjoy outdoor activities in Britain all that much. There is nothing better than a bit of fun with friends when the weather is nice, having a picnic or enjoying a kickabout in the park. If only your friends were not on holiday. So instead of Brits going out, enjoying the summer, and being sociable with friends, we hang out with strangers in a foreign country.

Why do we all have to work during the day? A lot of jobs are better done during the day, when you can see what you are doing. Why do all the jobs where people sit in offices, bathed in artificial light, have to happen during the day? Today, I will be going home at the same time as everybody else in this office. Taking the traffic jam home, I will see the sun set. I will have spent the whole day in artificial light, and then, in my private time, rely upon artificial light. If I enjoyed myself during the day, and worked only at night, then I could get natural light for half of the time, instead of none of it. That would save energy, as well as making me happy. It would not make any difference to my work, except that there would be nobody else around to work with (unless people start thinking like me).

If people did not go to work at the same time, there would be less traffic congestion, less time wasted, and less fuel burned whilst going nowhere. We would need fewer roads and fewer ugly car parks. If people took their holidays at different times, the airlines could make a more reliable profit all the year around, instead of needing to charge a fortune in summer in order to cover their losses during the rest of the year. Beautiful countries would not need to be scarred by so many concrete hotels, and people working in tourism would have a more consistent source of income the whole year around. When I was young, my teachers said everybody is a unique individual. It does not seem to be working out like that.

Thinking the way I do, I thought I might set up yet another website, just dedicated to observations, called ‘What Is Wrong With The World’. It would basically be a list of what is wrong with the world, but perhaps you guessed at that already. It does not matter if anyone takes notice. I am not pretending to be Martin Luther, pinning my theses somewhere everybody can read them. It would just be nice to know if there is anyone who thinks like me, or whether I really do live in a world where everyone else thinks there is no way to improve on working during the day or taking your holidays during summer.

There is a Harry Hill joke which I often think about but find hard to tell in a funny way. I was in hysterics when I heard it, but I think you had to be there when Harry told it. The joke involves Harry’s father opening up a bed shop, called ‘Beds Beds Beds’. There is a guy with a shop around the corner already called ‘Beds Beds Beds’ so Harry’s dad changes the name to ‘Beds Beds Beds Beds’ instead. The guy around the corner sees his dad’s shop, and did not like his competitor getting one up on him, so he changes the name of his shop to ‘Beds Beds Beds Beds Beds’. Harry’s dad then changes his shop to ‘Beds Beds Beds Beds Beds Beds’. That is pretty much the gag except it goes on a lot longer – to the point where you either holding your aching sides and the tears rolling down your cheeks, or you left a half hour ago, wondering why anyone thinks Harry Hill is funny. I think I like it because it makes a point about people being the same no matter how silly the consequences are.

I thought ‘What Is Wrong With The World’ lends itself to quite a snappy URL, so I looked to see if www.www.com or www.wwww.com had been taken. They had. So has www.wwwww.com. So has www.wwwwww.com. So has www.wwwwwww.com. So has www.wwwwwwww.com. So has www.wwwwwwwww.com. By this point, I was thinking it was getting ridiculous. I mean, who wants a website where the URL is nine consecutive w’s? Like nobody is ever going to mistype it and end up at www.wwwwwwww.com instead, and you nobody is going to get confused when hearing it over the telephone…

“The phone crackled. I missed that last bit.”
“W”
“And what was before that?”
“W”
“Instead of just reading out a lot of w’s, why didn’t you just tell me it was nine w’s?”
“Because I thought you might type www.9doubleyous.com by mistake”
“That’s what I said, nine w’s”
“No, I meant 9 double yous”
“That’s what I said”
“Forget it”

Of course, nobody does want a website called www.wwwwwwwww.com or www.wwwwwwww.com or even plain www.www.com. They all got bought by people who want to make money from spam links or by selling the domain to somebody else who really wants the name. Yup, the ticket touts of the internet world, who register a domain just so they can sell it on to somebody else, had the creative juices flowing on that day…

“You know what, we should register the sequence from three w’s dot com to nine w’s dot com.”
“Why would anyone want a URL like 9doubleyous.com? Is it supposed to be some kind of gambling site?”
“I meant www.wwwwwwwww.com”
“Why didn’t you just say so?”

These internet tout parasites think the world owes them a living because they have the time and resources to mindlessly drive up the price for anyone who wants to do something useful before they die. There are so many parasites in the world today, sucking blood out of anyone they can find, that it is hard to find anyone who just does a hard and honest day’s work. It sure is not me. Remember, I am the guy who wandered around outside to warm up. Arguably I should warm up by typing faster. Wandering outside, instead of working, I was thinking of this blog, and not what I was paid to think about. But it worked out even as I inadvertently thought about work the previous evening. As I was wandering outside, enjoying the Omani sunshine (note to self: bring sunglasses to work tomorrow) I started wondering why did the domain touts stopped at nine. Why not ten w’s? Perhaps they missed a trick. Perhaps I had better buy it before someone else does. Or maybe I will get 3doubleyous.com instead.

The ‘reimagined’ Battlestar Galactica, a dark jazz riff on the 1970’s space opera for children, is nearing the end of its final run. By popular acclaim, and by most any other measure too, it ranks amongst the best television of this decade. But whilst the new Battlestar Galactica has been a revelation, it also carries a heavy responsibility. In the wake of its success, the idea of revamping old television shows has taken on a life of its own. The straightforward trick of taking a kitschy show and amping up the grit, grime, adult content and seriousness levels is a perfect reflection of the obsessions of our age, and a pretty good idea if you want an immediate boost to the ratings of a new show. Since Battlestar, we have seen Bionic Woman get the full makeover, and Ian McKellan is lined up tp be in the cast of the new version of The Prisoner. Like rap music - which so often samples classic tunes of the past and builds a song around them - taking themes from old TV and splicing them into a new product introduces the risk of creating ugly frankenstein works that tarnish what was good about past creations, and overlay little that is new or of value. They introduce some danger: the danger of spoiling our memories of what was once great. Nevertheless, the temptation is bound to be too great, and the fashion for reimagining will probably stay with us for at least another decade before the world of creative media goes back to coming up with good original ideas. In the interim, expect a lot of weird reinventing of the television wheel. Here are a few of my own speculations of shows that could soon get the reimagination treatment.

Scooby Ski-Doo

Scooby Doo, bitter about the endless stream of caretakers with their absurd monster-oriented plots, and tired of a life of endless and aimless wandering, splits from the rest of the Mystery Machine team. He travels to Alaska in a quest for peace and quiet, and to find himself. He settles amongst great unspoiled natural beauty in a tiny community. It appears Scooby may have finally found happiness and true love with Lady Lightning, the leader of a huskie pack. Cue many shots of magnificent snow-covered landscape, with Lady Lightning frolicking with Scooby, who has taken to riding a ski-doo. Scooby’s happy days are short-lived, however. As the winter draws in, and the days grow short, Scooby finds himself assailed by terrible foreboding nightmares. In an ironic twist, after spending his life fighting fake monsters, Scooby’s sleeptime visitations are a terrifying premonition of an attack by real vampires and werewolves on the town. Scooby and Lady Lightning fight fiercely to protect the towndwellers, but Scooby is ill-prepared to find that the leader of one of the warring monster factions is a zombie Scrappy-Doo.

El Dorado: Return to the New World

A British ex-pat community goes about their ordinary lives in a pleasant, if bland, tourist trap on the coast of Spain. Their lives rotate around tales of love and heartbreak, petty crime, and family intrigues. Bunny, at last happily settled with her fifth husband, has opened a scuba-diving training school. One afternoon, on a regular dive with her pupils, they discover a sunken Spanish galleon. Exploring the ship, they find a tremendous treasure trove, and carry some of the precious artefacts back to the town. Deciphering the ornate script on their find, they realize it had been looted by Spanish adventurers from Montezuma, and it carries an ancient Mayan curse (according to Wikipedia). The ex-pats party all night, revelling in what they suppose will be their untold wealth, but they awake the next morning to much worse than a hangover. The curse has transported their entire community back to the Mexican Yucatan Penninsula of the 16th Century. Assailed by Mayan warriors, they have to learn to fight and defend themselves, whilst desperately searching for a medicine man who can undo the curse and help them return to their own time.

The Slayer’s Daughter

Christina, raised in a strict evangelical family on a remote farm in Colorado, struggles to come to terms with the revelation that her beloved mother and father are not her biological parents. She was adopted at an early age, and has no memory of her real mother and father. A mysterious Englishman calls at her house one day, offering to tell Christina about her roots. Christina was in fact the lovechild of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Though they loved their daughter, Buffy and Angel realized that their beloved daughter would always be in danger if her identity were known to the demons they constantly fight. They decide to place her for adoption in order to protect her. Christina, shocked by this story, which she considers to be pagan and tantamount to devil-worship, rejects it, throws the still unnamed Englishman out of her house and continues to adhere to the strict fundamentalist Christian principles she was schooled in. The plot develops with the ongoing story of Christina’s devout religious practices, her finding work as a shop assistant at the local drug store, her abstinence from sex before marriage despite the advances of willing suitors, and the day-to-day trivialities of a miserable, joyless life of hating gay people and regularly masturbating with a giant plastic cucumber interspersed with intense bouts of shame and remorse. In a twist, we discover the demons do locate Christina and plan to kill her, but seeing what a truly unpleasant and despondent person she is, they change their minds and decide to just let her be.

Quantum Leap of Solace

Scott Bakula reprises his role as time-travelling scientist Sam Beckett, with Dean Stockwell playing the holographic assistant Al, a character that only Sam can see. Still trapped in the temporal rift caused by his ill-conceived experiment, Sam has by now helped literally thousands of people to right a string of wrongs and get their lives back on track, including reversing a mistaken vasectomy and successfully saving an anoerexic by getting her hooked on greasy bacon butties. Even so, Sam seems no closer to his own escape and redemption, and starts to lose faith that he will ever return to his own life and time. Worse still, being caught in the rift means that Sam never ages, and he faces the terrifying prospect of spending eternity jumping from one corny period drama to another. Meanwhile, the elderly Al now uses a wheelchair, and faces the delicate challenge of grooming Todd, his grandson and an assistant at the military laboratory, to take on his mantle of Beckett’s only link to his original life.

Leaping into the body of J.F. Kennedy shortly before his assassination in Dallas, Sam initially decides to crouch down and cower in the back seat of the convertible limo. This elicits boos from the thronged spectators, so instead Sam leaps from the vehicle, rushing his would-be murderer on the grassy knoll and punching him out with a solid right upper cut. At the subsequent trial, Sam speaks up for the patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald, and secures his release from prison. According to calculations, this should prompt Sam to leap, but nothing happens. Further reflection shows that the person Sam was sent to help was not Oswald, but Jackie Kennedy, who has been driven to deep depression by her husband’s philandering. Confronted with the opportunity to shag Marilyn Monroe, Sam does what any man would, and merrily humps away without a second thought for poor Jackie. Opening his eyes to the opportunity to live a life of gratutitous sexual excess, Sam decides not to do the right thing and instead exploits his power, popularity and position to the maximum, not only continuing his affair with Monroe, but instigating additional affairs with many other leading Hollywood starlets of the era, including Janet Leigh and Audrey Hepburn. Meanwhile, his Presidency grows in popularity, with Sam not only winning a second term in office in the guise of JFK, but leaving office with a record popularity rating after the use of biological weapons secures victory over the Vietcong in the summer of 1968.

Moving into the early 70’s, Sam-Kennedy’s lasciviousness shows no signs of abating. To further his opportunities to meet glamourous women, loyal nationalist Sam sets up a charitable foundation which acts as a front for Sam-JFK to perform key diplomatic and mediatory roles in conflicts worldwide. This frequently intertwines with espionage intrigue and he meets and beds a string of gorgeous women of all races. Spending an increasing time apart from her husband, and distraught at his continuing infidelities, Jackie commits suicide. Sam rationalizes that after Jackie’s death leaping will be impossible, and he consoles himself by spending the rest of Kennedy’s natural life enjoying endless sport sex with many willing women of all walks of life, which is graphically portrayed at least twice per episode. Despite the extreme physical stress, Kennedy’s body lives to the age of 97, dying of a mid-coitus heart-attack whilst enjoying a three-in-a-bed session with Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. Sam then gets the opportunity to make amends, by leaping into the bodies of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears in turn. He helps them both by turning them into well-adjusted people, both of whom turn their backs on fame to settle down into happy lifelong marriages.

Found

This one-off special begins with Russian premier Vladimir Putin ordering a nuclear submarine on a special mercy mission to find the island in Lost. Through montage sequences and flashbacks, we see the lives of the crack crew of submariners aboard the submarine, and their former lives at home with their families. Their relentless search for the island lasts a supposed three years. They find it, causing jubilation as the crew realizes their mission is near its end and they will soon return to their homes and families. Ten seconds later, they nuke the island, obliterating it from the face of the planet and leaving no evidence that it ever existed. The show concludes with Putin, still sweating after an intense judo work out with an FSB colleague, explaining how sorry he felt for all the island’s inhabitants, and for any viewers that have wasted their time watching their absurd adventures. He hence felt compelled to put them all out of their collective misery with this giant act of kindness.

Would you believe that I get fan mail? Today, I am turning over Halfthoughts to a fellow who regularly sends me very interesting letters. He is Prince Karl Zeis, and he is a member of the deposed Royal Family of Delfthia, which he tells me was a small country snuggled between Macedonia and Bulgaria. These days he resides at 7 Hoey’s Court, Bidlun. His letter begins:

Dear Eric,

As a diligent follower of topical affairs, you will not have failed to notice the weekly outpouring of terrible stories about what is happening to the youth of our nation, about how they are treated shabbily by their parents, and about how, in turn, they often become woeful and immature parents themselves. Our newspapers are filled with reports of young souls, abused and neglected beyond the point of normal human compassion by their mothers and fathers, who should be their providers and protectors, not their persecutors. Many of these parents seem scarcely old enough to take care of themselves, never mind an infant. Whether they are simply too childish to properly bear the responsibilities that come with bringing new life in the world, or whether their natures are fundamentally rotten and uncaring, these individuals are giving birth to generations of despair that in turn give birth to further generations of despair. Despite the humane policies our caring society and its agents, the government, their numbers seem to be flourishing, not receding. It were as if countless interventions by our Social Services can do nothing to improve the lot of what has been called an ‘under-class’, though I would say the issue has rather less to do with class and rather more to do with breeding, so that we might better describe them as an ‘under-breed’.

Recent years have brought forth the most shocking string of stories, though it must be noted that the roots of such events grow not in the space of a few years, but in the slightly less than two decades it takes to gestate these emergent adults, who whilst sexually mature are under-developed in seemingly all other regards of being able to fend and provide for themselves and their own offspring. This very week, we heard about the newborn arrival of a fifteen year old mother, and thirteen year old father. The new baby was conceived whilst the father was merely twelve. In The Sun, the pint-sized pater of Eastbourne was said to have naively expressed, no doubt in exchange for an interview fee, his intention to be a ‘great’ father to his child, though he was unable to account for how his pocket money would cover the costs of nappies. A few months earlier, we read of the imprisonment of one dam, a Ms. Matthews of Dewsbury, mother to seven children by five different fathers. Ms. Matthews plotted the kidnap of her nine year old daughter in order to gain a reward of £50,000 from a national newspaper, and of another £500 from a kind and generous neighbour who had been taken in by her deception. Ms. Matthews repeatedly lied and connived, playing on the sympathies of anyone who would listen, and causing the police force to waste £3.2m searching for a daughter which the mother knew had been drugged and hidden at an accomplice’s house. There are, of course, many more, and some far more wretched stories of abuse and neglect of our nation’s young, which range in their awfulness from battery to incest, and in which common themes are the absence of a reliable head of the family and other authority figures, the dependence on benefits as a source of income, the irresponsibility of parents to take care of their children and the pressure placed on welfare agencies to occupy the vacuum created without resorting to the drastic tactic of removing child from parent. I have no need to recount them all, as you will be familiar with them already. Instead, I would like to share with you a new proposal I have for preventing the children of irresponsible parents in Britain from becoming an intolerable burden to their parents or country, but instead will give them a life that will benefit the child, the parents, and the general public.

The astute reader will have noticed here some similarities between Prince Zeis’ letter, and a well-known work of 1729, sometimes referred to as ‘A Modest Proposal‘. I congratulate those readers who spotted the connection. However, any suggestion that the letter is a satire in the same vein was dispelled when Prince Zeis goes on to write:

Reflecting on the challenges faced in this day and age, my thoughts turned to the genius of a pamphlet commonly known as ‘A Modest Proposal’, which was published anonymously in the 18th Century and which concerned the treatment of similarly distressed children in Ireland at that time. Though it was published anonymously, ‘A Modest Proposal’ has since been attributed to the satirist Jonathan Swift, but I think this connection is unfortunate. Though Swift was an eloquent man of letters, I doubt the real author of ‘A Modest Proposal’ wrote in jest. I rather believe that it was convenient to dismiss it as satire, rather than embrace the conclusions of this radical but worthy manifesto for improving the lot of the Irish people in general, and its children in particular. Let me assure you that my new proposal, whilst far less barbarous than that given in ‘A Modest Proposal’, is every bit as serious.

Today, there is only one job available in our society that requires no interview, needs no qualifications, necessitates no prior experience, has no minimum age limit other than that stipulated by our own biological clocks, permits no mechanism for being dismissed, and which guarantees a lifetime of pay and lodging to anybody who applies. That is the job of bringing a child into the world. In an inversion of our values, we entrust this solemn responsibility to people we would not trust with the most menial roles in our workforce. The consequence is that it becomes the preferred career path for anyone unable to countenance the hardships and sacrifice taken on by those of us who first make a living for ourselves, and having done so, only then look to share it by raising a family. In the cruelest irony of all, those that work first, and parent second, find themselves getting older and older before they can afford to start a family, not least because of the burdens of paying a share of their income to feed the mouths brought into this world by those who are less temperate, disciplined and restrained. Sex education is folly, as our young adults are perfectly versed in the knowledge they really need to survive and prosper, which is not one of abstinence, strong relationships, or even of using contraception when enjoying the pleasures of the flesh, but which is instead an understanding of how to wring wealth from the welfare society will provide more for them, and which increases the rewards for every newborn dependent that suckles from it.

We cannot undo what has been done. Children once born cannot be unborn. We, as a communty, must take care and cherish every life, even if the parents are unable to do their fit and proper part. However, we must find a way to break the cycle of dependency, whereby the child learns their values from the parent, and in turn mimics their ambition of spending a life idling and enjoying the comforts gifted by the state. We must find something productive for these children to do, instead of just growing up to emulate their parents, breed more children, and expect that somebody else will pay for their health care and education, so that when they too reach adolescence, they will also line up for the guaranteed job of becoming a parent. Of course, there are people in Britain that want to work, so this proposal is by no means meant to cover all of them. Nevertheless, the recent reports of an increase in employment by foreigners living in Britain, and a similar decrease in jobs done by Brits during the same period, tells its own story that there are jobs but that many Brits lack the skills and motivation to get them. This should be little wonder, that jobs are going to hardworking foreigners whilst we educate a slice of our own people to take it for granted that its needs will be catered for. I use the words ‘our people’, for although my ancestors were the rulers of the country of Delfthia, and I still live in hope of the resurrection of this lost zion, I now consider Britain to be my home, and I wish to share some of the wisdom that my forebears used when they governed their tiny but unspoiled kingdom.

It is no wonder British children are in the mess that they are. If their parents were not bad enough, take a look at their role models. A young lady who goes by the remarkable name of Peaches Geldof was in the public eye recently because of her marraige, and then soon after because of her divorce. Ms. Geldof is not yet twenty years of age, but can already claim a failed marriage. The trivialization of a sacred institution diminishes us all. Thankfully, the union was without progeny, but it still sets a terrible example to our young, especially as Ms. Geldof has been held up as an example and spokesperson for her age group. Her father Bob should smack her legs, except that would probably lead to his punishment in this topsy-turvy world. Part of the reason for our young lacking ambition is that everything is presented to them as being available, no matter how ridiculous or unrealistic that might seem. Take a look at all the extraordinarily ordinary “celebrities” whose only virtue seems to be being just like any other oik, except they somehow have become well-connected by virtue of birth or being randomly chosen for so-called “reality” television. None of them seem to have ever done a proper job, but they are paraded everywhere, fueling the unrealistic ambitions of our youth who imagine that they, too, will somehow land careers as singers and fashion models, and it is just a matter of time until they are ‘discovered’. There are many examples…

For the sake of brevity, I have not republished the next twelve pages of Prince Zeis’ letter, which contains an exhaustive A to Z list of every person in the public eye that the Prince considers to have attained a lucrative job in the absence of any talent. As a summary, the list included such people as Keith Allan, Lilly Allan, Tim Allen, and Alex Zane. I only skim-read the names between A and Z, but I think perhaps Gary Lineker and Prince Harry were in the litany.

At the same time we are facing a unprecedented array of crises. There is a housing crisis, with fewer and fewer homes being built to house our ever-larger population and too few able to afford the houses that have been built; a financial crisis during which we must also borrow from ‘our’ children (whose children? not the ones trained to live on benefits!) to create jobs whilst continuing to pay benefits to the workshy; and an environmental crisis as we burn the last of our fossil fuels, and turn more and more of this green and pleasant land into brown and ugly housing estates. There is a solution. Unlike the anonymous author of ‘A Modest Proposal’, I am not advocating the eating of babies. Though brilliant, his policy could be considered rather unethical in our day and age, and was not taken seriously enough even in his own. However, I did wonder if there was a productive use to which our children could be put. Whilst mulling this over, I by chance found myself watching a rather entertaining fantasy movie on the television. This film is known by the name of ‘The Matrix’. I gather it is very well known, but if you are not familiar with the plot, let me summarize for it you. In the future, the human race are hypnotized by machines into thinking they are living ordinary lives, when in fact everybody sits in a warm bath of goo, has their food and waste supplied and removed by tubes, and spend all their time playing one big video game. The game is so realistic, and the people have played it since such an early age, that they believe the game is reality and have no idea what the reality of their situation is. In the story, one character discovers he is in the game, and decides to rebel, swapping a life in which he had a successful IT career, and all the advantages that come with it in terms of housing, recreation, social life, fashionable clothes etc, for a life of wearing rags and serving as crew on some ghastly floating ’ship’ which roams a barren ugly Earth and where the only food is snot. Another, rather more rational crew member on his ship decides he would rather be back playing the game, and the story unfolds accordingly as the protagonist and antagonist conspire to fulfill their respective ambitions. In this fictional future, the reason given for why the machines, who rule the world, should choose to keep the humans alive in a game-playing alternative reality is that they use these people as a source of energy. Whilst watching this movie, and thinking about ‘The Modest Proposal’, a solution came to me in a moment like that when Achimedes shouted “Eureka”! What do we have too much of? People. What do we have too little of? Energy. It appears to me that now, uniquely in history, we have an opportunity to solve our environmental difficulties by utilizing the most renewable resource of all, which is our own ever-climbing livestock of human beings.

People are a wonderful resource, and deeply underexploited, as can be seen from the growing numbers of unemployed. It is cheap, easy and enjoyable to make new people, which is why individuals of even extremely limited ambition and accomplishment continue to do so in large numbers. Unlike most jobs, making children requires no education, as proven by the failure of so much education designed to discourage baby-making. We have six billion people on the planet already, and the number keeps rising every moment. There can be no doubt that of all the commodities, the one least likely to be in short supply is the supply of new people.

Of course, we could not all live in a world of an alternate reality. There are still many roles that can only be performed by people in the real world. Not everybody would be willing to live their life in a fantasy. However, as is evident from so much of our culture, many others already do live a life of total fantasy. My proposal has the merit of being purely voluntary in nature. It will give people, and most especially the children who are likeliest to see the advantages compared to being ill-treated at home, the option, if they desire, to swap their life of meaningless diversions and, quite often, drug addiction, and replace it with one of simple, responsibility-free enjoyment, whilst making a real contribution to the bid to reduce global warming.

Where I disagree with the author of ‘The Modest Proposal’ is that his proposal, for breeding the children of the poor to be sold as food, left the children with no say in how their lives turned out. I believe my proposal could be made to work on a purely voluntary basis, as agreed to by both parents and children. Parents would receive a one-off financial reward for permitting the children to join the programme. Children would enjoy a lifetime of bliss, never needing to grow up or take on adult responsibilities, and having all their most compelling needs taken care of. I also believe my proposal can be realized with technology currently available today.

In ‘The Matrix’, the machines that ruled the world went to great trouble to fool people into thinking the virtual reality they inhabited was real. I see no reason why they should have done that. Given the choice of eating snot and knowing about it, and eating snot through a tube but being given the sensation of eating lobster, I think a great many people would gladly aid and abet the creation of a delusion that would help them to escape a grim reality. It must be just the same for many inhabitants of council houses up and down our country. Is not the rise of reality television, proof, if any were needed, that people live their lives in a fantasy, escaping their wretched reality by imagining themselves as stars and celebrities, irrespective of their complete lack of talent, the vacancy in place of where their self-discipline and dedication should be, and, in short, their total unwillingness to do a hard day’s work? I say we should just give a great many of these people what they want. My programme would involve running a roadshow, going up and down the country, offering to enroll anybody who is willing in special green energy programme. Once in the programme, the participants would spend every day lying in a bath, entertained by a full package of satellite television channels and all the latest video games, being fed through a tube and able to email and text their mates without ever needing to leave home, do a day’s work, sign on, lie in order to claim benefits or, in short, anything else. That offer would be topped up a guarantee of limitless drugs of any description: alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, temazepam, nicotine or any narcotic cocktail that is imaginable, all of which would be fed intravenously through the feeding tube for a guaranteed effective high. This is an offer that I believe would have very many willing takers. Once those people have been locked away in their entertainment cells, which would be roughly the same size as prison cells, but so much better occupied because there would be no need to first commit a crime, we would use the same technology as described in ‘The Matrix’ to extract the occupant’s body heat and hence provide cheap and plentiful power for the reduced population living outside. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance.

Firstly, the plan will give young people a purpose in life which currently they lack, alleviate them from the burden of going to schools when they see no value in education and hence will not prosper from it, and consequently reduce the problem of truancy.

Secondly, the parents who so willingly breed, but otherwise have little interest in their offspring, will receive the financial rewards they desire without the need to care for their little ones.

Thirdly, human beings being plentiful, whereas our fuel reserves are dwindling, we shall have a sustainable long-term source of power which is not dependent on the willingness of other nations to provide it to us and which we can ably provide more of as needed.

Fourthly, by giving drug takers a simple and happy solution of how to provide for their addictions, we will reduce their stress and discomfort, remove them from places where they might be a bad influence for others, and greatly diminish the extent of robbery and theft used to finance their drug-taking and which currently fuels organized crime.

Fifthly, by sanctioning and controlling the production and import of drugs for the purpose of this programme, the government will be able to establish long-term and beneficial relations with drug-producers at home and overseas, and thus use this new economic footing to combat and diminish the vital connections between the illicit drugs trade and terrorism. The government will also be able to reduce the overall cost of drugs manufacture and importation, as borne by the economy as a whole, by negotiating bulk purchasing rates in a similar fashion to that used to procure pharmaceuticals for the National Health Service.

Sixthly, by keeping a large segment of the population happy and occupied on a permanent basis, whilst housed in only relatively small blocks by virtue of the narcotic and audio-visual entertainment options offered, the pressure on many other aspects of life will be reduced for the remainder of the populous. Challenges to public transport, pollution levels, greenbelt preservation, food production, the supply of quality housing and even providing for our energy needs will be diminished in line with the increase of residents in the programme’s virtual-reality cells.

Seventhly, although I expect that medical science will face some challenges in maintaining the health of the programme’s inhabitants, who will be denied the opportunity to leave the cells and hence to gain ordinary exercise, I believe there will be a number of trade-offs that will more than compensate overall. Providing an exercise bike in the cellrooms might afford an additional mechanism of generating electricity, whilst offering a secondary form of entertainment analogous to a hamster’s wheel. With that in mind, it might be better to give the occupants wheels they can run inside instead of bikes, but I am not sure if constraints on the dimensions of each room would preclude this. What is certain is that limiting the calorie intake fed to the programme’s occupants, as supplied through their individual feeding tubes, will solve the problem of the propensity to obesity, whilst also making it easier for the nutritional needs of the rest of the population to be sourced from local, organic farms.

Many other advantages might be enumerated. For example, if the population thus occupied starts to outgrow our needs, we may be able to sell the energy they produce to other nations, or better still, just export a number of the programme’s inhabitants to other countries and allow them to perform the same energy-generating role overseas. This export might be particularly lucrative when focused on colder nations like Canada or Scandinavia, where instead of using body heat to generate energy, it might be more suitable to build commercial apartment blocks with narrow cells in the walls between each residence, and use the combined bodyheat to keep the whole building warm.

In the words of ‘The Modest Proposal’, let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of stopping the practice of rewarding the parents for the creation of the child: Of turning the right to reproduce into the privilege it should be: Of licensing and of taxing mothers for every birth beyond the first two or three: Of terminating pregnancies in very young mothers for the good of society, if not their health: Of sterilizing the serial breeders who cannot exercise self-control: Of re-balancing the rights of a parent to have children with the rights of everyone else not to be mandated to feed, clothe, educate and protect those children when the parents will not or cannot: Of teaching our young adults that creating new life is itself a lifelong pleasure, commitment and responsibility, not the byproduct of a momentary thrill and a fast track to lifelong economic security and indolence. Lastly, of putting a spirit of fortitude, self-reliance and purpose into the wastrel dependents who ask not how society should provide for them, but only that society should provide for them. Such plans would be outlandish and incredible, and we sorely need to be practical if the rising under-breed is not to get out of control.

I have also sent similar letters to my MP, the Prime Minister, the EU and the Secretary-General of the UN. Whilst I anticipate some scepticism, I am hoping that with the support of prominent individuals like yourself, it will be only a matter of time before public sympathy is won over to the cause and the government institutes a nationwide plan of the type I suppose. I hope I can count on your backing in raising awareness of this bold but very necessary plan to your readers. If this plan is not accepted, I should be very glad so long as some other plan, with as realistic a hope of success, is offered instead. There may be other proposals, like mine, but superior to it, but which lie disregarded or unpronounced because good men fear that they will be held to ridicule, that they will suffer scorn for raising them and expounding their merits, and because self-serving and narrow groups find greater advantage in raping the majority of our nation, and making many pay the price, than in tackling the problems of the minority, and thus reducing the cost to our society. These are the new proposals that we need, else the present conditions will merely continue to encourage a growth in the number of dependents, the number of suffering children brought into the world by uncaring or ill-equipped parents, and the burden placed on the remainder of us, so that if tackled later, the solutions must necessarily be more pronounced and more radical in order to redress the balance and restore equity amongst our people.

I can assure you, from my heart, that I have nothing to gain from making this proposal. It is meant only for the good of my fellow citizens, except in so much as I am a citizen, and would hence benefit equally as much as everyone else. My children are grown up and live productive lives, and my wife is beyond her child-bearing years, so I would never be a beneficiary of the incentive payments outlined above.

Yours Sincerely,

Prince Karl Zeis of the Royal House of Delfthia

As Prince Zeis did ask, I felt obliged to publish his letter, though I must now admit I noticed several flaws in the argument. In particular, I am not sure that we have a useful technology for recycling body heat. For example, I am not sure how body heat could be effectively used for making a cup of tea. Nevertheless, it might be that ingenious architects can find ways to include small room-cells within the design of new houses, perhaps located in basements or roofs, and hence provide under-floor heating or enhanced loft insulation. I also imagine some programme entrants might have second thoughts and ask to be released. Perhaps if they were handcuffed to their Playstation controller, so they could never put it down, and had the screen strapped to their eyes like googles, this might help them to better forget about the outside world completely. Nevertheless, despite the flaws in his proposal, at least the Prince is trying to come up with solutions to the problems our society face. If people do not come up with sensible solutions now, I dread to think what proposals the Prince might promote in future…

British politics was shaken by a ‘leak’ from a BBC employee this week. Notable BBC bigmouth Jeremy Clarkson, presenter of a television programme about cars, was caught making outrageous (and accurate) comments about a national leader. Clarkson has been touring Australia with a stage version of the BBC driving show Top Gear (the mind boggles - does Stig test drive hot hatchbacks up and down the aisles in a partial recreation of scenes from the Italian Job?). Whilst on stage, the outspoken celebrity had the ill grace to comment about Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister. In an unrehearsed outburst, he openly and unashamedly implied that Rudd was an honest politician. This has caused a furore, though seemingly not in the outback.

Ooops, I got confused there. Nobody is upset about what Clarkson said about Kevin Rudd. At least, I cannot find any newspapers saying people were upset about that. In fact I cannot find any newspapers saying anybody who was actually there was upset about that or anything else. But I can find plenty of British newspapers (The Mirror, The Sun, The Guardian and plenty more) reporting how plenty of British politicians (none of whom were at the event) were very upset with what Clarkson said about the British Prime Minister.

The funny thing is, when you compare two things, if one is treated favourably, the other must come off less well. Put simply, Jeremy Clarkson said that Gordon Brown, British PM, was not as trustworthy as Kevin Rudd, at least when it comes to explaining how bad the world’s economic mess is. And that is what has caused the upset, perhaps…

Part of the job of politics is to communicate. Jeremy Clarkson should know all about that. He is a very effective communicator, and his success depends entirely on his ability to amuse audiences by saying things they think are true, but do not hear other people say. There are a lot of politicians who could learn a valuable lesson from how Clarkson builds empathy with an audience by playing the part of the plain-speaker. Politicians do not talk plainly. They say the word ‘rhubarb’ over and over, as if it has some meaning (say it to yourself a few times without pausing - you will get the idea). As of today, whilst we know that a lot of Gordon Brown’s political supporters are upset, it is not very clear what they are upset about. Brown has steered clear of the topic. Brown’s office wisely decided not to pour fuel on the fire and simply said that Clarkson “is entitled to his own interpretation of the economic circumstances”. Last time I checked, in the British democracy, people were entitled to have negative opinions about politicians, as well as positive ones. Democracy would not work well otherwise. Imagine if Clarkson, and everyone else, was mandated to say: “Gordon Brown is as honest as Kevin Rudd who is as honest as David Cameron who is as honest as Nick Clegg who is as honest as George W. Bush who is as honest Tony Blair who is as honest as Barack Obama who is as honest as Ehud Olmert who is as honest as Vladimir Putin who is honest as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who is as honest as Josef Stalin who is as honest as Gandhi who is as honest any other politician or world leader you can think of.” Not everybody is as honest as everybody else. If we cannot voice opinions that say Mr. A is better than Mrs. B at such-and-such, you might as well not bother having a democracy.

For all that, commenting on Brown’s honesty has only been a peripheral cause of complaint. After talking about Kevin Rudd, this is the exact phrase which described Brown and caused all the trouble:

“We’ve got this one-eyed Scottish idiot.”

Why has this upset people? The number one reason, measured by the number of words in each newspaper, is that Clarkson described Gordon Brown as Scottish. The Scottish Labour leader, Iain Gray, responded by saying:

“Most people here are proud that the prime minister is a Scot and believe him to be the right person to get the UK through this global economic crisis.”

Hmmm. I presume Iain Grey is not so silly to believe that Gordon Brown is the right person because he is a Scot, so why he is worked up about the mentioning of something that was, in hindsight, irrelevant?

Coming in a poor second, the next most popular reason for upset was that Clarkson referred to the fact that Gordon Brown has a glass eye, a consequence of an accident whilst playing rugby. The chief executive for the Royal National Institute for Blind, Lesley-Anne Alexander, said:

“Any suggestion that equates disability with incompetence is totally unacceptable.”

Some combined disability and Scottishness into a hybrid cause for fury. Angus Robertson, the Scottish National Party’s leader at Westminster, said the comments were “totally inappropriate” and also said:

“Everyone should be upset about someone making jokes about someone else’s partial blindness and nationality, but knowing Jeremy Clarkson I don’t hold out a lot of hope that he will be apologetic.”

You should re-read that. Everyone should be upset about jokes about disability and nationality. Everyone. What a saint Angus Robertson must be. Perhaps we should follow him around the campaign trail, as he visits the homes of ordinary people, or chats with them in the pub. Because, by his admission, everyone should be upset by jokes about nationality, which includes Scots not making jokes about the English. Do you reckon Angus gets equally upset whenever one of his voters makes an uncouth comment linking their hatred of the English to their reasons for wanting Scottish independence?

The number three reason for alarm, hardly mentioned at all in any of the quotes in any of the newspapers, was that Clarkson implied Brown was not that honest. I could only find one quote that refers to it, and it comes from Lord Foulkes, a former Labour Scottish minister:

“He has insulted Gordon Brown three times over: accusing him of being a liar, having a go at him for having a physical handicap, and for his nationality.

“It is an absolute outrage of the worst kind. Disabled people will be up in arms about it, Scottish people will be angry – and it should concern all of us that the prime minister has been accused of lying.”

How interesting. Of all the multitudes of people who are upset, the vast majority are only worried by the implication that Gordon Brown is a one-eyed Scot. Only one politician spotted that implying he was dishonest was not very nice. Politicians are liars, so here is a quick fact-check in relation to Clarkson’s comment, which once again was:

“We’ve got this one-eyed Scottish idiot.”

1. Does Gordon Brown have only one eye?

Yes. Unless you count his glass eye as an eye, which it is not, then Brown has precisely one eye.

2. Is Gordon Brown Scottish?

Yes. He was born in Glasgow, was brought up in Kirkcaldy, went to University in Edinburgh and has been an MP for a Scottish constituency for over 20 years. I doubt anyone would question his Scottishness.

3. Is Gordon Brown an idiot?

You can decide that for yourselves. But in the reporting of this fuss and nonsense, I can see plenty of other politicians who seem like idiots to me. They could speak more plainly, like Clarkson. For all the fuss and bother about Brown being a one-eyed Scot (which he is) nobody thought to defend him on the really important point of whether he is an idiot. Calling somebody one-eyed is not an insult, if they have one eye. Despite all the clamour over Clarkson saying Brown is Scottish, there is no reason to believe that Clarkson considered that bit to be the insulting part of his comment. The insulting part of Clarkson’s quote was calling Brown an idiot. However, not one of this mob who so desperately leaped aboard the press quote bandwagon felt it necessary to mention whether they thought Brown was an idiot or not.

All in all, it seems the vast majority believe Clarkson’s mistake was to call Brown a one-eyed Scottish idiot. If Clarkson had simply said ‘Brown is an idiot’, presumably nobody would have had any reason to complain.

An interesting update to the story was that Clarkson issued an apology. However, the apology only covers the ‘one-eyed’ bit of the comment. What an absurd world that a man who makes his living from saying provocative things feels compelled to say sorry for calling a one-eyed man a one-eyed man. At least he did not turn his humour in the direction of farce, and rejected any demands that he say sorry for calling Brown Scottish, as if being Scottish was something that cannot be discussed in polite society. Of course, what the rhubarb crowd who (mis-)manage the country want is for him to say sorry for calling Brown an idiot, but they know they will never get that, and nor should they.

Britain is a democracy, at least on the surface. Our Prime Minister is a one-eyed Scot, and thankfully, nobody thinks that should be a state secret. It is a plain fact. There is no reason to deny it or prevent people saying so openly. Clarkson could call Brown a one-eyed Scot ten thousand times over, and it still would not be an insult. Calling him an idiot in an insult, and implying he is liar is an insult. The chief executive of the RNIB gave the game away with her comment about equating disability with incompetence. If Clarkson called Brown a one-eyed Scottish hero you would not get someone from the RNIB moaning that the reference to the partial blindness of a hero, or somebody from the Scottish Parliament crying fowl that the hero’s nationality was referred to. Everyone caught defending Brown’s disability, or Scottishness, should have a hard think about what they want from this world. Is it unfair to call a Scot an idiot, as if there could be no idiots in Scotland? Is it wrong to point out that a man has both one eye and is an idiot, implying that losing an eye guarantees an above average intellect? Calling somebody one-eyed is not an insult, unless you link it to their also being an idiot. For all this nonsense, Clarkson’s only sin is to have called somebody an idiot at the same time as the other things, but in a PC world gone topsy-turvy, nobody asks him to retract the ‘idiot’ comment…

After all the uproar, hardly anyone thought to defend Brown’s competence, or asked Clarkson to focus his apology on those points. Is this a tacit admission, even by Brown’s supporters, that the British PM is a lying idiot? If you are not going to defend Brown as a politician, he needs no defense for being the one-eyed Scot he is. There is plenty of irony that, in aiming to shout down Clarkson, so many are obviously hoping to grab column inches using pretty much the same tactic as Clarkson himself - saying something daft just to get attention. If our politicians were more dignified, they would have done the opposite of Clarkson, and keep their mouths shut. Brown’s being a one-eyed Scot is a matter of fact, not an insult, no matter how stupidly Clarkson put his jibe. It is certainly not a secret and denying people the right to say facts out loud is ludicrous. Whatever next? Is it okay to call Barack Obama an idiot, good to call him a black hero, but outrageous to call him a black idiot? I keep getting fed up with references to Boreama’s blackness, so you can understand why I find it a little confused that some adjectives need to be repeated ad nauseam when conjoined with praise, but can never be said out loud when mixed with criticism. Either being black or Scottish, or one-eyed is irrelevant, or it is not. The problem with PC ethics is that distinctions between people are encouraged, when linked to something positive, but treated as disdainful when associated with a fault. Logically speaking, being a Scot is relevant to Brown’s competence as PM or it is not. It is hypocrisy to say, on one hand, that you are proud that the PM is a Scot, and on the other to complain about mentioning the PM’s nationality whilst implying he is incompetent.

That Brown is an idiot is a matter of opinion, and is an insult. But the good thing about democracies is that they entertain freedom of speech. Even idiot politicians are allowed to have their say, for what little good that does. I saw that the original Pop Idol winner, Will Young, was a novelty addition to the usual rent-a-gob goons (Chakrabarti, Farage etc) to the BBC’s Question Time this week, which says everything you need to know about the standard of political ‘debate’ in the UK. Not only did he appear, but he was crediting with boosting the ratings to a season high! But however poor debate is, people are entitled to say what they like, and that includes people calling politicians idiot liars if they feel like. Even Will Young knows that. It was Young, the amateur amongst the other all-pro gob squad, who had the courage to point out that the obsession with saying the right thing, and avoiding offense, means “everything is becoming a little bit vanilla”.

Calling a politician an idiot or a liar is fine by the average voter, who would only agree. Demanding censorship of such statements is the real disgrace in this story, and gives the game away on how much these politicians really care for the freedom of speech that democracy depends upon. Thankfully, like Rudd, Clarkson, and the audience of his stage show, there will always be plenty of plain-speakers to tell the politicians when they are wrong - though most of the plain speakers will just ignore all this rhubarb and turn the telly to Top Gear.

*** Update ***

Does Jeremy Clarkson read my blog? Probably not, but it seems he had the same insight into what was right, and wrong, about all the complaints over what he said. So, to make his position clear, Clarkson has said sorry for pointing out that Gordon Brown is a one-eyed Scot. Though this is true, Clarkson says he was wrong to point out Brown’s nationality and disability whilst also calling him an idiot. But Clarkson is not sorry for calling the British PM an idiot! Whilst it seems incredible this non-story has run so long already, I eagerly look forward to what the rent-a-quote crowd say now. Will be they complain that saying Brown is an idiot is unfair to idiots everywhere?