Joe's Jottings

Category: Politics

Civil Partership ceremonies on religious premises….some contradiction in terms?

Over the last decade or so, the number of times when New Labour has created legislation in what ‘the Simpsons’ would call ‘the American way’ – i.e. do a ‘half arsed job’ – has been legion. There must be some sort of finishing school for NuLab legislators where they go to have that bit of the brain responsible for common sense somehow removed. And now Lord Ali has kept up the tradition by tabling an amendment to the Equality Bill that allows civil partnership ceremonies on religious premises. Note the juxtaposition of words there…civil…and religious.

In a letter to The Times, Lord Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, has expressed his concerns about this amendment.

Now, I was of the impression that the reason civil partnerships existed was for people who could not or would not undertake a religious marriage (irrespective of religion) but still wanted to publicly commit themselves to each other. Look what the direct.gov website has to say on the issue:

“A civil marriage ceremony cannot have any religious content, but you may be able to arrange for individual touches such as non-religious music and readings to be added to the legal wording, and for the ceremony to be videoed. The register office where you intend to marry will be able to tell you more about the options available.

A Civil Partnership is legally formed by the signing of the civil partnership schedule. Like a civil marriage, this is also non-religious, but couples who wish to arrange for a ceremony should discuss this with the registration officials.”

Seems pretty straight forward there. They even say ‘cannot have any religious content’. With me so far? Good. Let’s take a moment to thing about religious buildings – and I’m going to include churches, mosques, chapels, synagogues and temples here. Most religious buildings are built with certain tenets, based on the religion in question, in mind. Ignoring the theological issues around whether the church refers to the building or the people who celebrate there, and focusing purely on the building itself, there are aspects of the construction and furnishing of most churches (and other religious buildings) that are symbolic – altars, crosses, positioning of certain fittings and furnishings, the orientation of a building within a plot of land – all can be highly symbolic, and hence ‘religious’. So, to be strictly within the letter of the law, any ceremonies held would have to somehow remove the symbolism from the building. Do we have to take away a cross because it might show up on a video, for example?

We then have the whole raft of issues around desecration; if a Mosque were to be used, do we insist on all those entering the main part of the room to be barefoot to respect the building, or do we allow any footwear? Same with clothing. Or is it likely that this opening up of religious buildings would only apply to, for example, Christian denominations or faiths that do not insist on certain rules around footwear / clothing / etc.?

And this applies whether the couple participating in the ceremony are heterosexual or homosexual; we have here a simple issue of a law being bought in as part of an ‘Equality Bill’ that will actually remove the rights of religious communities to indicate how their buildings are used by non-believers. Hardly equal rites for them, is it? Especially as in many religious communities the fabric of the buildings is maintained not by state or local government but by the religious group themselves.

A religious building is for the celebration of religious events. It’s not to provide a photogenic backdrop for people with no beliefs at all. It isn’t to provide yet another football in the political battles around the rights of homosexuals vs heterosexuals in our communities. By hanging this legislation of the Equality Bill, I’m afraid that it will end up putting some priests, Imans and vicars in a terrible position of being asked to go against their conscience or against the law in the name of equal rites – which don’t seem to apply very much to religious folks in these sorts of situations. A vicar can refuse to marry people in a Church based on any number of reasons – divorce, where the people live, lack of obvious connection with the Church / parish. These restrictions have been in place for centuries in some cases, and apply to everyone irrespective or sexuality, race, whatever who wish to use the Church.

This law seeks to effectively de-consecrate religious buildings for a short period of time – it should be resisted.

Now – here is where what I write will start getting contentious and I expect to be upsetting a few folks with what I say next.

It’s no secret that I am a religious man. I like to think of myself as a fairly tolerant and reasonably non-judgemental fellow, but it increasingly seems to me that when our Government talks of tolerance and equality it usually means that religious folks are going to get it in the neck, and be expected to suspend some of our personal beliefs in how we conduct ourselves in our day to day lives. If we’re now going to start being told who we can and can’t allow to use our own churches and holy places, then our rights are being eroded, and perhaps it’s time for some tolerance to be shown to us and our beliefs.

March 24, 2010
Facebook and the panic button….

Since the recent case in which a teenage girl was groomed and murdered by a paedophile via the Facebook site, there has been a lot of pressure from the UK Government for Facebook to put a ‘Panic Button’ style link on the site – a move supported by the CEOP organisation. Facebook have commented that they have no objection in principle to making it easier to report abuse on the site, but that they feel that the CEOP supported option is not necessarily the best way.

Facebook are far from perfect in the way that they treat their users; I think all of us who use the site would have our own grumbles about privacy and the attitude of Facebook as a whole towards individual users now that they’ve got big. But to be honest I think I would rather central Government stayed out of issues like this – especially New Labour, who seem to have spent the last decade dismantling our civil liberties bit by bit. For a previous broader comment on this issue, I direct you to this item from a year ago, in which author Phillip Pullman commented on the behaviour of New Labour.

Since then we’ve had the Digital Economy Bill – even without the Lib Dem Peers’ Amendments it was a pretty poor piece of legislation. With the amendments it offers a wonderful means of stifling debate by simply shutting down access to any site that breaches copyright. Under the Bill, as it stands, and if it were strictly applied, YouTube could be blocked to UK ISPs because of material that breaches copyright.

Part of the problem with New Labour is their amazing ability to put together piss-poor legislation on a ‘knee jerk’ basis. A lone gun nut leads to a total handgun ban – which doesn’t affect criminals as they tend to disobey the law anyway. Despite massive increases in the legislation aimed at child protection, the very basic laws that were there all along fail to be implemented and children keep getting killed. And there are many more examples. One interpretation of this repeated series of cock-ups is that they’re just incompetent; my own interpretation is that New Labour are just incredibly keen on reducing our civil liberties as much as they can to have a nicely compliant and obedient citizenry.

The issue for me here is not just the Facebook reporting mechanism; I’m afraid I regard that as something of a ‘thin end of the wedge’, by which Government could influence and impact the policies of web sites not even based in Britain. It’s not far from that sort of thing to the censorship policies adopted by China and, more recently, but to a lesser degree, Australia. Protesting about this sort of Government activity, which initially starts with child protection, is a little bit like trying to answer the question ‘Have you stopped beating your wife?’ in a way that doesn’t make you guilty. But given this Governments record on civil liberties I’m afraid I do not and cannot trust them.

As Rousseau said “Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost. ”

And we’re losing it bit by bit.

March 18, 2010
Shock Doctrine comes to Haiti?
A couple of years ago Naomi Klein wrote a fascinating – and scary – book called ‘Shock Doctrine’ in which she presented the thesis that what we now call ‘free market capitalism’ – that form of capitalism that started with the activities of the Chicago School of Economists in the late 60s and 70s – came to it’s successful position in our world by a combination of military and political interventions that were almost acts of war. She posited that various regimes – starting with the Pinochet regime in Chile in the 1970s – used the dislocations in society caused by coups, war and even natural disasters to bring in to being a form of free market economy that exploits the vast majority of people and gives certain companies and individuals vast wealth on the back of Government policies.

Recent examples have included the way in which beaches areas were sold off for tourist hotels after the Asian Tsunami wiped out fishing villages, the way in which New Orleans was totally socially re-engineered after Hurricane Katrina and the way in which companies like Blackwater and Haliburton have made vast profits form the war-created crises in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So, we shouldn’t be surprised, despite the removal of President Bush, to see companies moving in to Haiti to exploit and socially engineer the country after the recent earthquake. It’s a good situation for the purveyors of ‘disaster capitalism’- a sort of peacetime ‘shock and awe’ – which can make use of natural disasters that dislocate normal society. The Haiti earthquake’s magnitude, combined with the nature of the country, gave a fertile ground for these people to operate in. Let’s just take a look at the situation there.
- People are still without proper shelter; nothing like forcing people to live in squalor to break their will.
- Just a 100 miles north of the devastated capital city, cruise ships are docking at privately run resorts.
- The Heritage Foundation – an advocate group for disaster capitalism – pulled the following quote shortly after the ‘quake: “In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region.” Even their existing material tries to play up the ‘communist threat’ angle – pretty pathetic.
- The first loan given to Haiti by the IMF after the quake allegedly came with various strings attached – increasing prices of power, etc. – that is typical of the approach that the IMF have previously taken when they wanted to bring about neoliberal political change in a country as a condition for getting financial help.
In other words, despite the attention being paid to Haiti at the moment, and the demise of the Bush Government, there is still potential for disaster capitalism to be used to radically restructure Haiti in all the wrong ways. And it’s worth remembering that some of the larger companies who typically profiteer from these situations will only start showing up when rebuilding starts – i.e. when there’s money to be made.

Hopefully if they realise the rest of the world is keeping an eye on things they’ll be put off – a bit like lobbing rocks at a dog grubbing around your dustbin. If you want to find out more, take a look at the following:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=292737727221

http://twitter.com/nohaitishock

Say ‘No’ to Disaster Capitalism – you never know where it might show up next. Time to stop the bastards in their tracks.
March 16, 2010
A 21 hour working week? Earth calling nef….
I don’t like to admit it in public, but I kind of like my work. I’m self-employed, in IT. I probably do around 35 hours a week ‘client facing’ work and probably about 10 hours a week grubbing up new work, invoicing, etc. I’ll work longer hours when needs be, and slack when I can. I don’t regard work as the be all and end all of my life – far from it. But I have found that when I don’t work, bad things happen, usually presaged by letters from the people who hold my mortgage, my bank manger, the utilities companies, etc. Because when I don’t work, the money doesn’t appear.

I have worked with people from the New Economics Foundation (nef) and have quite a bit of time for them, but this latest suggestion blows my mind, I’m afraid. They suggest a working week of 21 hours. Very early on in this piece they do admit that people would have a reduced income. Yes, typically by about 40 to 50%, assuming a straight reduction.

Don’t get me wrong – I agree with this comment made by the report’s author, Anna Coote:

“So many of us live to work, work to earn, and earn to consume, and our consumption habits are squandering the earth’s natural resources.

“Spending less time in paid work could help us to break this pattern. We’d have more time to be better parents, better citizens, better carers and better neighbours.

“We could even become better employees – less stressed, more in control, happier in our jobs and more productive.

“It is time to break the power of the old industrial clock, take back our lives and work for a sustainable future.”

But I’m afraid that this approach is typical of the new left – legislate and push the impact of policy on to the people. Changes in people’s habits come from the people themselves. I consume less than I used to, spend more time being a better citizen, and am more productive in my working life not because I work less hours but because I manage the time I do spend working more effectively. The idea of breaking the old industrial clock is another piece of left wing thinking. Guys, don’t know how to tell you this, but the old industrial clock has already stopped and some of the biggest issues around working conditions today are not hours based but revolve around:
1. When and where the hours are worked – employers are inflexible, often insisting on the 9 to 5 regime sitting at a desk when it’s not actually necessary to get the job done.
2. The nature of the job – many job types are fleeing the UK leaving us with skilled technical service work, the professions, retail, leisure and service sector. Most of these jobs rely on people being there to deliver. A 21 hour working week means that to cover time when people will want to do things, 2 people will need to be employed where one was before.
3. The fact that the cost of living has greatly increased – people are working the hours they work because they need to to keep a roof over their heads.
I’m not at all impressed by this report. The report acknowledges a massive cultural shift – indeed it will be, making a MORE stressed workforce as people start wondering where the money to pay their bills is going to come from. More people will have to be in the workforce; whilst we have 2 million unemployed, I doubt that that would cover the requirements of halving the working week for most people. And the idea that everyone will join hands and walk happily in to tomorrow’s rainbow future of good parenting, good charitable works and a new worker’s paradise is rubbish. Good parents are good parents because they want to be, irrespective of the hours they work. People doing good works in the community – again, many of these do this not because they have time in abundance but because they make effective use of what time they have.

People are not necessarily going to go and do worthy things in their communities, no matter what we may wish to believe. As a pragmatist, I look around me and see that what most people want to do with their time off is chill out, relax, consume and make full use of the recreation industries. I doubt taht this would change if they were given more time to do it in.

Give people a 4 day weekend and I’m not sure that people will actually thank you for it. Especially when the bills come in. But Governments will love it – they get to reduce the unemployment figures at one fell stroke. And it puts all of our finances on that much more of a knife edge – all the better to keep us in line.
February 13, 2010
We know where you’ve been on the Net, and we don’t need no steenkin’ cookies!

I’m not overly paranoid about people knowing where I’ve been on the Internet; I’m aware that it’s pretty easy for a website to feed your browser ‘tracking cookies’ that can be used for marketing and advertising purposes, and these can then be picked up on other sites, thus providing a path of footsteps that you have followed online.

Which is why I clear my cookies regularly, and set my browsers to only accept cookies from sites that I want to accept cookies from. But I can see that in some parts of the world, your browsing history might be of great interest to Government and Law Enforcement, and I’m sure that many of the larger online retailers would love to get their paws on a good, reliable and hard to circumvent method of looking at what common interests people have. For example, even if you’re anonymous, it can be of great use to companies to know what sorts of sites you visit, because you can then use data mining techniques to derive information on what other sites or products you might be interested in. For example, if you’re an Amazon user, you’ll be aware of the fact you get recommendations of the ‘We see you’re interested in x. Other people interested in x also bought y and z’.

Now…let’s take this a little further. I was browsing around the other afternoon and came across this site. Give it a try – it’s under the auspices of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I don’t know what it came back with for you, but my ‘fingerprint’ was pretty darn rare – I guess it’s inevitable because of the various things I have installed on this computer for work. The site looks at the information sent by your browser to the site, and uses it to derive a ‘uniqueness’ factor – a sort of tag. For an out of the box installation of an Operating System then I’d expect that there would be quite a few people whose finger prints are essentially the same. But the more you tweak and configure and install stuff on your PC, the more unique it gets….to a point at which it can identify your PC uniquely, with very few errors.

And all this without it ever putting a cookie anywhere near your PC. Now, there are ways around this – there always are – but they’re not the sort of approaches that the average man or woman in the street would take.

So what sort of ‘advantage’ would such a technology offer online companies, Government and the Security Services?

Now, this is pure supposition – I have absolutely no evidence at all that this is happening or is likely to happen…but let’s pretend. We’ll assume that a number of large online companies have collaborated on sharing this fingerprint data – basically you visit a site or even a page – or maybe even do searches for certain subjects – and your electronic fingerprint is tagged on to that fact.

Scenario 1. You do a search for information on equipment to help you avoid speed cameras. Later that day you go to buy car insurance. The insurer does a quick check on your ‘fingerprint’ against topics of interest to it – including sites offering legal advice for people caught speeding and also sites that inform or advise on speed traps. You show up – you’re declined.

Scenario 2. You’re interested in computer hacking – maybe even researching a book. You visit a number of sites of interest, look at books on Amazon and such. A few weeks later a major ‘hack’ happens and the authorities look at the electronic fingerprints of everyone who may have researched the topic. You will show up. This fingerprint is then circulated around ISPs who note that it is one that is associated with your Internet account.

Scenario 3. You’re gay in a country run by a repressive regime. You visit web sites where the fingerprinting is being done for commercial marketing reasons. The security services of your country get hold of this data, either by buying it or stealing it, and run a check of those fingerprints against the ones that are on file with the ISPs of that country. You will find yourself in major trouble.

There are ways around this technique – it’s easy to go through proxies, and possible to strip all this sort of identifying data off of the packets that go to web sites. And people who’re genuinely worried (or have reason to avoid this sort of inspection) will no doubt be doing this. But for the vast majority of people this simply would be yet another means of intrusion in to our private lives.

February 12, 2010
John Healey – Caring, sharing New Labour – repossessions can be good!
Unsurprisingly, repossessions are at a 14 year high. It would have been unthinkable for the recession to have had any other impact on householder finances, as is indicated by this report on the BBC website today. So it was pretty useful for John Healey, the current housing minister, to be interviewed today on Radio 5. I say ‘current’ housing minister because it’s quite possible that by the time you read this he will have either been fired or done the honourable thing and quit.

Basically, he’s reportedly said that “It can be the best thing for some people to be repossessed.” Yup, that’s right – check out Guido Fawkes here. Now, just in case you’re feeling confused that a member of the party that is purportedly ‘for the people’ is advocating that being evicted is acceptable for some, I will remind you which party he belongs to. New Labour. That’s right. Not the Tories, but New Labour.

Now, my initial thoughts were that he’d basically put his foot firmly in his mouth and what he’d really intended to say was ‘It’s never the best thing for people to be repossessed.’ That was a reasonable expectation of what to be expecting from a ‘socialist’, after all…but I did a Google search and…oh dear.

Unfortunately, this sort of caring approach to the property owning democracy is nothing new for Healey. Take a look at his coments from last year where he lauded a fall in home ownership. So it would appear to be more policy than slip of the tongue. Which makes you wonder what the housing policy of this Government really is.
1. Housing policy is to push people out of owning their own houses back in to state or local authority owned housing, redolent of East Germany in the 1970s?
2. Housing Policy is to remind anyone who owns a house that they cannot necessarily expect any help if they are threatened with repossession?
3. Housing Policy is partially dictated by the banks who want to get some easy money back by repossessing a few more people.
4. Housing Policy – like other policies – is to made so ludicrous that New Labour cannot possibly be re-elected and they’ll escape the consequences of their totally fucked-up handling of the economy.
You pays your money, and you takes your choice.

But if you’re one of his constituents – sack ‘im in May. You know it makes sense.
February 11, 2010
BBC bias in favour of globalisation?

As is my habit, I popped in to the BBC Website this morning to catch up on what’s been happening in the world and saw this article, with the link headline from the front page of ‘Why globalisation means you are less likely to be burgled’. Hmmm, I thought – interesting. As I expected, the article led on the fact that globalisation has driven down the price of consumer electronics such as DVD players and computers, and has indeed reduced the chances of being burgled. After all, is it really worth running the risk of breaking and entering someone’s house to steal a DVD player that costs £20? I think even the most desperate criminal would suggest not.

So far, so good – then the not so good news. Apparently the same criminals are now taking to mugging and other crimes against the person. So, another headline that could have been drawn equally validly would be ‘Why globalisation means you are more likely to be mugged.’ I’m used to the more tabloid end of the media doing such biased headlines from stories, but to be honest this BBC selection of headlines from the story was breathtaking in it’s bias.

The link headline at first glance looks like Globalisation good news; the conclusions being drawn from the story are only good news if you value a £20 DVD player as being more important than the physical and mental well being of someone being attacked in a personal mugging. is this what a BBC sub-editor truly believes, that in the name of Globalisation material goods are more important than the well being of a person?

Of course, this IS the point of view adopted by many apologists for globalisation – after all, the cheap goods and services offered by globalisation is usually afforded at the cost of poor and frequently unsafe working and living conditions in the developing world. To anyone unaware of what goes in to cheap goods, take a look at ‘No Logo’. There is no doubt that globalisation has, over the last 20 years, created the consumer friendly, consumption oriented world we live in; after all, in order for large scale multi-national corporates to thrive we have to be encouraged to keep buying the crap they produce, whether we need it or not. But we’re now beginning to see the wider cost of these cheap goods.

For most of this time the true cost of these goods and services has been hidden from us; unless you bothered to read books like No logo or study the reports of the impact of globalisation on local economies in other parts of the world, the only impact here in the UK was cheap stuff. The cost to people’s lifestyles in the rest of the world was hidden from us. But in this article, the research quoted has shown that there is now an emergent threat to our own lifestyles from globalisation – an increasing possibility of violent crime.

Not that you’d guess form that first BBC headline.

February 10, 2010
What happened to the Stiff Upper Lip?

In separate interviews, we heard today that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had openly cried when discussing the death of his daughter in a media interview, and we also found Spinmeister Supreme Alastair Campbell losing his composure during another, rather mild, TV interview. And we’re not talking about losing his composure in a ‘throwing the lapel mike to the ground, stamping on it and cursing the interviewer’ way – it was a tearful breakdown as he defended Tony Blair.

I quite like men (and women) to show their emotional side; I think it shows them to be human, and it takes a big person to demonstrate true emotions in public. But this sudden outburst of emotion and angst from leading politicians makes me rather uneasy – let’s just say that the making public of these episodes so soon after Peter Andre broke down on Sky News, and only a day or so after John Terry was apparently in tears after losing his job and allegedly paying his ex-girlfriend several hundreds of thousands of pounds to not tell her story seems to indicate either a sudden outbreak of male emotional awareness or a cynical use of the media to garner sympathy.

And I’m afraid that I’m going for the latter. Whilst it’s perfectly understandable for anyone to cry and break down in extremis, I’m afraid that there are times when I don’t expect to see it. This is particularly the case with Campbell; the war is history now and tears shed at this stage seem to be tears for Blair and himself rather than the human tragedy of the war. Feeling sorry for one’s self and blubbing in public like this is just not what I expect to see from a man who has spent much of his professional life spinning the truth about political decisions. It just comes over as a cynical ploy to garner sympathy and support, especially with the Chilcot Inquiry and the forthcoming General Election.

What has happened to the stiff upper lip; crying and publically displaying emotion may have become more acceptable but this doesn’t mean it’s compulsory. I want my political leaders to be strong in public – if they want to have emotional outbursts then I’m afraid I expect them to happen in private. Part of the job of leadership is to be aware of the emotional impact of what you’re doing, and deal with it. If you’re involved in a decision to go to war, then crying about it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have a high ‘EQ’ – it might just mean that your initial views of what war was like were immature and the reality shocked you.

So. To all my leaders. Lead. Look strong in public. Look like you know what the heck you’re doing. Please don’t turn on the waterworks because if you do I’m likely to think you’re looking for sympathy or my vote.

February 7, 2010
The Way of the Weasel

There is a super book by Scott Adams, creator of ‘Dilbert’, called ‘The Way of the Weasel’. In a semi-lighthearted manner it deals with the less honourable methods that people in the workplace have of ‘weaseling out’ of difficult situations. Well, it’s good to see that our elected representatives here in the UK have managed to achieve a level of Weaseldom that would be hard pressed to match even if you were a fully paid up member of the family Mustelidae.

I refer, of course, to the gentlemen from the Labour Party – Elliot Morley, David Chaytor and Jim Devine – who are facing charges of false accounting under section 17 of the Theft Act 1968 which they vigorously deny. (We shouldn’t forget the Tory peer, lord Hanningfield, who faces similar charges – however, he has had at least the sense of honour to resign from his position as leader of Essex Council in order to defend himself against the charges which he also denies.)

This is hopefully the ‘final act’ of the UK Parliament’s Expenses Scandal that has now dominated political life for nigh on a year. But what have these three fellows done that makes me spend 500 words of prose on them this Sunday? Well, their lawyers have raised the possibility that they may be able to yet again dodge any consequences of their alleged actions, even at this stage, by making use of the 1689 Bill of Rights – in particular the portion that deals with Parliamentary Privilege. Parliamentary Privilege is best known as the legal process that protects an MP from being sued for libel or slander when speaking within the House of Commons on potentially delicate issues. However, it has wider application, as we’re seeing here. The position being adopted by the Labour MPs is that they feel that the whole issue should be dealt with as being a breach of the rules of the House surrounding expenses, and as such shouldn’t actually be an issue for criminal law at all but should be dealt with under Parliamentary Privilege rules.

There’s an old joke that goes “What’s the difference between Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance?”, the answer being “About 7 years in prison.”. The same thing applies here – the difference between the issue being dealt with under Parliamentary Privilege or under the Criminal Law is that the Parliamentary authorities are unable to send you to prison if found guilty. I can see why this approach is popular….

If these men are innocent of the charges, then surely the best way to prove that innocence, even at this late stage, is to go in to open court and robustly defend all aspects of their behaviour, showing the relevant paperwork, receipts, etc. and telling us in open court why their actions are legal. For the lawyers to go the way of ‘internal process’ in this way may well be legally possible, but will leave these men forever labelled as not being willing to face the same legal process that non-Parliamentarians facing similar accusations would have had to face. David Cameron has expressed “disgust” at the possibility, and Nick Clegg has warned of public outrage if this path is chosen.

Me? Why am I not surprised. The behaviour of so many of these people has been so apalling that one has to wonder whether or not they’ve set out to destroy the whole image of representative democracy in the UK. But that would be TOO paranoid, even for me.

Please guys – do the honourable thing. Stand up, say ‘Mea Culpa’ and face the music with dignity.

February 7, 2010
Where next for space?

I have to admit to being quite saddened by President Obama’s announcement cancelling the NASA project to carry out manned missions to the moon. Perhaps it’s something to do with my age; I can remember the Apollo moon missions as a schoolboy, along with the feeling that by 2001 we might actually have a world something like that portrayed in the movie 2001. And then Star trek couldn’t possibly be too far behind.

Well, to paraphrase the old Apple advert ‘2001 wasn’t like 2001′. The public lost interest, the 70s happened and the money ran out. Governments felt that there were more politically and economically pressing concerns, and space flight became very much a science-driven, unmanned affair with the exception of the Shuttle. And now we have Ares / Orion being cancelled for being over-budget, late and reliant on old technology, and one wonders whether we’re going through the same sort of thing again.

For a President who is supposed to have vision, I’m afraid that Obama is currently looking pretty short sighted on this one. I totally appreciate that the US (like the rest of us) has some significant budgetary issues to deal with. But the ongoing silliness of bailing out banks and large businesses does nothing for national confidence or vision. It benefits bankers, stockholders and the wealthy. It reminds the rest of us across the world that we’re regarded as the ‘bank of last resort’ – you can always whip the public purse for a bit more money. Sure, we can look up to the skies, but all we’ll be seeing are the towering office blocks of the unacceptable face of capitalism that got us in to this mess.

Now, more than any other time in the last 30 years, we need a lead from the US in terms of something with vision and the potential for achievement for all mankind. The human race enters the 21st Century full of fear – of terrorism, economic crash, ecological disaster. Whilst it’s definite that renewed and invigorted investment in space exploration won’t do anything immediate to resolve any of these problems, it offers the possibility of enhanced technical fixes for the future, the possibility of a unified global approach the universe beyond our atmosphere and, probably most important of all, a sense of hope.

We have no heroes today; we have no explorers of world renown that show that the human race is indeed made of ‘the right stuff’. We’re expected to pay our taxes which currently go to pay for bailing out banks and repaying national debt foisted on us by feckless governments who’re trying to Govern the world of today with the attitudes of the mid-20th Century. We have Governments mired in control-freakery, who look towards ‘wars on terror’ and ‘wars on drugs’ as means of burying large amounts of economic production that might otherwise be used in more ambitious and adventurous ways – like space exploration.

Mars is the obvious next destination; I hope that the cancellation of Moon based projects is regarded as a facilitating move to allow more resources to be spent on Mars missions. But my gut feel tells me that sooner or later that too will be dumped. I understand that there are issues to deal with here on earth, but given the ability of the Governments of the world to bail out banks, develop massive and never ending weapons programmes and generally attempt to support the any number of flawed and expensive policy programmes that fail to deliver year on year, the resources are available.

It’s just that Governments choose not to support programmes and policies that give their people hope – and not just in space. And that is saddening and infuriating in equal measure.

February 5, 2010