YOBS GET POPULATION ON THE MOVE Tuesday, Feb 27 2007 

Crime and Life and Politics and Society anthonynorth 8:52 am

Moving house? Want to get the kids in a better school? Or are the yobs driving you out? According to Abbey, the latter is more likely to be the case in the UK.

Questioning 1,500 property owners on why they moved, the results suggest 5.3m wanted to escape a crime ridden area while 4.5m wanted to get away from neighbours from hell.

 It suggests a country on the brink of social collapse. It used to be the case that demographic change occurred because of politically inspired social movements such as feudalism or industrialization, but now it seems bad behaviour is the primary cause.

The possible reasons for this situation are many, but all focus on a single problem. The government is failing to police the country adequately; man is a creature of wants, but a liberal credo is in place which wrongly says man is a social being; home entertainment technology now expands noise outside your personal space.

These problems are not, actually causes, but ‘effects.’ At the heart of the problem is a single factor. Society can only operate when there is an idea that society exists.

Today, the individual is all. And when you have millions of individuals existing with no sense of society, anarchy and, apparently, demographic change, is the result.

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

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THE DEVIL AND THE CHEF Monday, Feb 26 2007 

Food and Life and Media and Society anthonynorth 8:57 am

‘Heaven sends us good meat, but the Devil sends cooks.’ So wrote David Garrick in 1777. Today, cooking is as essential as ever, but perhaps he really meant chefs. You know, those people who shout a lot in kitchens and make a fuss over preparing increasingly complicated meals no one wants to eat.

We are living in the age of the chef. They are increasingly considered artists, and television is full of their ‘magic.’ Indeed, the celebrity chef is a media phenomenon all his own. However, what kind of effect is he having on society?

Isn’t it rather strange that, as the celebrity chef pollutes the airwaves, fast food is increasingly becoming the diet of our society? I suppose we have elevated the chef to superstardom out of guilt. We know we should be cooking healthier food but we don’t have the time.

 So the celebrity chef is due to our culinary angst. But I have another explanation. We have to eat fast food to have time to watch them.

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

See Beyond the Blog (News page) for my latest posts elsewhere.

 

NO ONE WANTS A BRIGHT SPARK Sunday, Feb 25 2007 

Business and Computing and Education and Life and Society and Technology and Thoughts anthonynorth 9:28 am

The job market is becoming biased towards lesser academic degrees. Dumbing down rules, and our managers are becoming mediocre. The system works like this – according to the graduate careers mag RealWorld.

 Typically, an employer is looking for a high degree, but does not know how to compare the value of a particular course. Hence, arts and social science graduates are more likely to be employed with a high degree than a science graduate with a lesser score but much more valid education.

I’ve been convinced for years that the way society and business works nowadays is to employ staff who are not able to use the initiative that was once required. The central reason is that computing no longer allows free thinking in the workplace. Whereas once the machine was an extension of the person, the person has now become an appendage of the machine.

It now seems that the initial workers who were turned into appendages have become the employers. And like a machine, they can evaluate scores, but do not have the wisdom to evaluate the knowledge behind the result.

Forget The Terminator. The Age of the Machine is with us. And it’s subtle.

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

See Beyond the Blog (News page) for details of my latest posts elsewhere.

 

PARANORMAL SPIES Saturday, Feb 24 2007 

Conflict and Life and Paranormal anthonynorth 10:21 am

It has been revealed that the UK MoD tried to find Osama bin Laden in 2002 using psychics. It will no doubt produce much ridicule but this is, infact, quite normal. Churchill used astrologers during World War Two, though this was to try to second guess Hitler, who also had astrologer advisors.

Dubbed ESPionage, the US military has a large program. Born out of the Remote Viewing experiments at Stanford in the 1970s, the idea was to try to focus the mind on the target and try to psychically gain information. Obviously, successes would not be publicized – I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether this was for secrecy’s sake or a total lack of success. Although the initial Stanford tests did have some successes.

An ex-cop, Pat Price, would sit a room while a team visited a location picked from a number of closed envelopes. Price had to guess where they were. He had some successes, but this could be because he knew the area and it was obvious the selected locations would be memorable.

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

Go to my new site, Paranormal UFO Occult. See Blogroll.

 

SLEEP ON IT Friday, Feb 23 2007 

Life and Science and Society and Thoughts anthonynorth 3:00 pm

Sleep is the best thing for a tidy mind. So say scientists at Harvard Medical School. In tests, two groups were shown lists of related words. One group remained awake while the other had a night’s sleep. The ones who slept were more able to remember the words.

It’s as if a sleep can order the brain into files – a form of tidying process, the researchers advised. But then again, history has known this for centuries. Indeed, the history of science is full of anecdotes of scientists making a major break-through from ideas that filter into consciousness during or just after sleep.

 It doesn’t stop there. Many writers dream their plots – Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde is an example – whilst philosophers often had major ideas in sleep. Descartes, who began modern western philosophy, thought up his ideas in a number of dreams. So come on, science, catch up.

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

Log on my new mystery blog, Paranormal UFO Occult. See Blogroll.

 

THE BOOK OF LIFE Monday, Feb 19 2007 

Autobiography and Society anthonynorth 9:25 am

I want to speak about destiny – you know, that strange, almost supernatural thing some people think guides us through life. Is it a reality, or is it simply delusions from a fantasy-prone mind?

I have an example of destiny in action. I remember when I was a kid – I can’t have been more than ten – and I went into a shop. I liked going into this shop, not because the shop was particularly nice, but there were some kindly elderly women behind the counter who always had a kind word for me.

This particular day they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Without thinking I said: ‘A soldier, a writer and a dad.’ Now, I’d never given any thought to any of these things before, but it seemed so natural to say. Of course, they gave their kindly laugh, ruffled my hair and waved goodbye after my purchase.

My life was pretty much marked out for me at that time. I came from a family of newsagents so it seemed that I would be going into the family business. Infact, I did so, but soon got fed up and went off to London.

Coming back I didn’t know what to do with my life but I ended up going into the RAF. Of course, I met the girl who would be with me for life and over the years we had seven children together. And guess what, I eventually decided to be writer.

 Destiny. Does it exist? Did I know, instinctively, all those years ago that I WOULD be a soldier, a writer, and most definitely a Dad? Or is destiny an inner thing, where unconsciously you realize what you want out of life, and sculpt that life to make it so?

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

Go to Beyond the Blog (News page) for details of my latest posts elsewhere.

 

SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN Friday, Feb 16 2007 

Society anthonynorth 9:36 am

Out of 24 countries, British kids come bottom concerning so many areas of life. So says a recent UN report. It is a stark condemnation of British life, obsessed with consumerism and trivia. Just look at what such things mean concerning our kids.

With a pervasive media flashing images of wealth and a free-for-all lifestyle, old standards such as family loyalty go out of the window. Family figures can no longer command the same degree of authority they once had, leaving an almost feral lifestyle to follow.

When celebrities fill our screens, showing how we can live a totally selfish life, this becomes more appealing than the hard work required to follow the standards and meaning invested in tradition. The millennia-old wisdom behind tradition is thrown out, and loyalty is nowhere to be seen.

Modern society is obsessed with the individual. This is required to allow you to become self-absorbed and think, ‘you’re worth it.’ But the result is a further degrading of loyalty to family, society and culture.

Because of the way we think today, things will inevitably go wrong. But whilst ‘there is no such thing as society’ when you can’t be bothered to stick to the rules, there ‘is a thing called society’ when things go wrong. And this is blamed, rather than your own declining standards.

The degrading of the family, the lack of meaning in modern life, an obsession with the individual, and the blame culture are the central elements to the problem here. And with parents like that, the kids have no chance.

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

Go to Beyond the Blog for preview of my alternative network. See Blogroll.

 

MEMORIES OF A COLD WAR Friday, Feb 9 2007 

Autobiography and Conflict and Life anthonynorth 11:10 am

Seeing pictures of the National Cold War Exhibition on the news the other day brought a flood of memories to my mind. During the late 1970s and early 80s I was in the RAF, stationed at a number of air defence bases in the UK.

This was the front line of the Cold War. If it had gone ‘hot’ the UK’s air defences were a priority target for the Soviet Union. The British Isles were known as the ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ to the Americans, and were the staging post for reinforcing Europe. Knock out the UK air defence, and this reinforcement would become impossible.

We trained constantly for this possible battle, which would have included air strikes and ground attacks by Soviet sleepers and special forces. Often, whilst people slept in the sleepy villages, we would be on exercise, playing cat and mouse throughout the night, with the occasional mock firefight.

These battles could be very realistic, and the whole thing could become surreal. Sometimes I’d be on the airfield when a scramble would come. The ground would shake as the Phantom fighters took off, their hot flame of reheat scorching the ground. The noise, the vibrations, the speed – you could feel the power of those machines.

Sometimes, in one of the headquarters, cut off from the outside world, mock reports of nuclear attack would come, and you’d think, I’ve been to that city, and you’d get carried away with the possibility that one day it might not be there.

Towards the end of an exercise, we were always affected by mock fallout. So we’d don the NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) suits and do buddy buddy on each other, checking for the slightest opening, that, in the real thing, would kill. We’d sit and work in these things, sweating, becoming claustrophobic, for hours on end whilst we checked our ability to survive the nuclear phase.

And then after hours, sometimes days, of this mock war, we’d actually start to believe it was real. And then we’d go home, back to real life, and the birds would sing much sweeter. We were at peace.

Thankfully we remained so.

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

Go to Beyond the Blog for preview of my alternative network. See Blogroll.

 

THE ARGUMENT IS OVER? Saturday, Feb 3 2007 

Business and Campaigns and Environment and Politics and Society anthonynorth 10:09 am

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has given a stark warning. Global warming is almost certainly man-made and it will get bad – very bad indeed. Drawing on the research of 2,500 scientists over six years, it is the most comprehensive survey of climate change ever.
The findings advise a 90% certainty of our complicity. The most damning evidence comes from Antarctic ice cores showing larger concentrations of carbon dioxide today than in the recordable past.
Effects will be many. There are predictions of severe droughts and freak storms as the norm. Advising a 1 – 6 degree rise in global temperature by the end of the century, sea levels will cause the map of the world to be redrawn.
Enough of this. The evidence is overwhelming. If you’re a doubter, you may also doubt that you’ll get burgled tonight, but I bet you have insurance – I bet you lock your door if you go out. It’s called the Pracautionary Principle. Strange how we automatically use it for some things but not the major ones.
This is the problem, and the reason the argument is far from over. What is over, as such, is the science. Of course, the science will rightly go on, but it is time for the focus to shift to us – the general public.
Governments are trying to do something – some of them, at least. But this is simply cosmetic. No government can take correct action because, first, drastic action would result in losing votes, and, second, we live in the Fossil Age.
Power comes from fossils, such as coal, gas and oil. Alternative energies have been starved of funds, regardless of what governments say, because the multi-nats will not want to lose their power. You see, proper alternative energy would not require huge corporations to run them, but smaller, local concerns.
This puts fear into the corporate boss, and similarly into the politician. True measures to fight climate change would destroy centralized power. But eventually, we will have to move out of the Fossil Age before WE become the fossils.

© Anthony North, Feb 2007

Find more on the Environment on my Beyond the Blog