Cave June 2005

That is why I am glad that the monstrous Brussels bureaucracy has been dealt a severe blow. This gauntlet flung down by the French – the French people! – should cause those currently in charge to come to an abrupt halt, get off their high horses and re-think the whole management structure. They could start by asking us, the people, what we think.... it might be more productive than dictat from ivory towers in
Brussels and Strasbourg. At the very least, any new attempt to produce a Constitution must start with a rewrite from scratch. It should also make provision for the
eventual (not in our time, I think, sadly) establishment of a world
government. In all, repeat all, underline all, cases of unification, the
minimum of functions should be unified, so that as much as possible is left
to the states (i.e. the ex nation-states) and where possible to local, i.e. regional or even council, control. Government should be from the bottom up, not the top down. Above all we need unity and justice, but we must stop throwing out
diversity to achieve it.

When did you last see a white egg?

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£93.......Yes £93. That is what your ID card will cost you. Actually it will be considerably more, as costs always escalate. That is, if we are daft enough to let them get away with introducing the things in the first place. At the moment, the State is still our servant, even if it doesn’t always seem like it. If this Orwellian nonsense is allowed to

go ahead, that relationship will be stood on its head. Go to http://www.no2id-petition.net and sign the petition now! Tomorrow you may be in Room 101 – and I am not referring to Paul Merton’s TV show either.

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Do you, like me, simply loathe piped music in shops? Why do I have to have my ears assaulted by inane ‘muzak’ whenever I go into the Co-Op or Spar – or hundreds of other shops nation-wide? Have any of these establishments ever asked their customers whether they want to have to listen to this audio-garbage while trying to decide whether to have chops or pizza for supper – or just decide to go and shop where their eardrums won’t be assaulted? If silence is golden, ‘muzak’ is definitely a base metal.

The world is noisy enough without this sort of mind(less) pollution. Ochone, ochone, it’s not even as though I get to choose what’s played!

On the subject of pollution, I remember as a child living in Edinburgh that I used to be able to look up at night and see the Milky Way. Today I can barely see it even from Weem. The advent of the orange sodium light has completely destroyed the beauty of the night sky for most of us, because it blanks it off. Only the moon and brightest stars manage to shine through. On top of that, it is also a monstrous waste of energy. I believe there is even a daft scheme to floodlight the Wade Bridge. Don’t get me wrong. I love a show and floodlighting has its place for special occasions. But surely not every day.

I suppose that for all our 21st century sophistication, there yet lurks an atavistic fear of the dark in people’s minds. Hence the unnecessarily bright lighting that is now the norm. And glaring orange is such an ugly colour. There is probably an argument that it deters crime and road accidents. Personally I think that the deep shadows associated with bright light probably provides good cover for a wrongdoer and it can certainly dazzle a driver.

I am not, of course, arguing for an abolition of street-lighting. That would be ridiculous. But please could we have less of it – and with all our modern technology surely it would be possible to devise something more pleasing, more akin to the soft white glow of the gas-lighting of yesteryear.