International Transparency

Membership of the United Nations should be conditional on "foreign" journalists (TV, radio and print media) having quasi-diplomatic status with the same journalistic freedoms that they enjoy in the country where they are accredited. That would make it pretty difficult for Governments to abuse their people in secret.

It may seem a bit unreasonable to faciliate all of the activities of tabloid journalists and paparazzi but the problem with trying to come up with a set of "United Nations" rules for journalism is that the liberal governments might be just as interested in applying restrictions which they would happily "blame" on the UN - "We'd love to be more open, but we are not allowed".

The recent revelations about Andrew Marr shows that even journalists are not above a bit of secrecy when they can get away with it.

Saving Time

We are obsessed with efficiency and saving time. "Hurry up", "Don't waste time".

We have vacuum cleaners instead of brooms, cars instead of bicycles, computers instead of slide rules, faster computers, faster trains, faster broadband ...

Why?

Long long ago we spent all our time meeting our needs for survival - just like wild birds and animals still do.

Now we can meet our needs for survival with a small fraction of our time - as far as I can see agriculture comprises about 1% of the UK economy.

If we have 99% of our time free from essentials - or even 89% - why do we need to save even more time?

What are we saving time for? What do we do with the time we save? For some strange reason we save time so we can do more, not less!

The reality is that we spend our "saved" time making and doing things so we can buy stuff that other people are making and doing in their "saved" time so they can buy the stuff we make and do.

The only part of the system that actually matters is the small bit that provides the essentials.

We hope that the people who provide the essentials continue to want the unnnecessary stuff that the rest of us make and do. Because if ever the providers of the essentials decided they didn't need to buy any more of our stuff (new cars, new tractors, new phones, new computers, new films, new music, new loans) and therefore did not need to produce and sell their stuff (food and drink) the rest of us would starve.