Fish

One of those cookery guys on the radio a few days ago said something like "there are lots of spider crabs in the sea and we should be eating them"

Well ... why????

It's not right for us intelligent, and supposedly civilized, humans to eat wild creatures on a commercial scale.

I had the same thought when looking at the huge arrays of fish in the markets in Brixton.

I have no objection to a person feeding his family with fish that he catches himself (or herself). And I have no objection to eating the meat from farmed creatures. There are plenty of lakes and bays where fish could be farmed. Just as farming has increased the world population of cattle and sheep so it would with fish.

Leave all wild creatures to live their own lives and stop catching them on a commercial scale.

And don't say that we can't stop because we need to protect the livelihood of fishermen. It would be trivially easy for Governments to compensate fishermen if they wanted to. Look how easily they compensated bankers.

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.

Cigarettes and Tobacco

The Government is proposing to prevent retailers having cigarettes on display in shops as a further step to reduce the number of people who smoke.

Why not remove all profit from the retailing of cigarettes by requiring retailers to sell them for the same price as they buy them?

In the meantime shouldn't retailers voluntarily donate all proceeds from the sale of tobacco products to charity rather than profit from such a harmful product.

Maybe there could be a voluntary window sticker "We give all tobacco profits to charity". I would prefer to use that sort of shop.

Square Pegs ...

I have complained in the past about the efficiency with which the Civil Service manages to place square pegs in round holes.

Everyone would benefit if only some attempt was made to put people to work at tasks that matched their skills and inclinations. The taxpayer would see more and better work done with his hard-earned dosh and the staff would feel more valued.

On the other hand ...

There's a strong case for limiting or preventing some people from doing the things they like because they do more of them than is good for us.

The high achievers of this world are high achievers because they persuade the rest of us to allow them to do what they like.

The high achievers of this world are high achievers because they do something they like and they persuade the rest of us to let them do an awful lot of it.

Hence we have too many cars; too many bathrooms; too many TVs; too-expensive health care; too much private and Government debt and excessive bank bonuses; rapid depletion of the world's natural resources and global warming etc, etc.

For example. I quite like Professor Brian Cox's TV programs and I admire his knowledge of his subject and his ability to explain it to the layman. But if he had his way we would spend £billions or £trillions going to Mars and other planets. What for? Wouldn't we be better off if we saved the money and treated ourselves to an extra day off work?

When I look around at all of the unnecessary things we have (which we call progress) I wonder can we never say to the high achievers "Stop, we already have enough thank you."

Chained to the Kitchen Sink

I reckon that women (and men) are now tied to their office desks with much shorter chains than those that were alleged to tie their mothers or grandmothers to the kitchen sink. And the shortest chains are attached to those whose employers expect them always to be available by mobile phone.

What's the difference between working at the kitchen sink or working in an office to pay for the washing machine and dishwasher?

Women's lib may have intended to redress the balance between the opportunities open to men and women. But all it has achieved is to leave vast swathes of cities towns and villages empty of men, women and children during the day with the consequent loss of the local community that, in times past, provided security and "family values" in neighbourhoods.

Long ago when paid work commonly required physical effort it was probably reasonable to expect men to do it. But once the nature of work changed there was no reason why it should remain a male prerogative and a young mother ought to expect a fair choice to be made as to whether she, or her partner would be the wage earner. Unfortunately there has been no change in the assumption that men go out to work. Its just that women now go to work as well.

And all for the benefit of the manufacturers and retailers of all the "essential" material goods that your grandparents lived without quite happily - fitted kitchens, TV in every room, dishwashers, fitted carpets, hardwood floors, two cars, exotic baby buggies, dresses, shoes etc etc etc.

Democracy

The present turmoil in Egypt reminds me yet again that the core value of democracy is not that we can choose our politicians at election time, but that they go away quietly when their term of office expires or they lose the confidence of their people.