482. I’m not sick of being right – I’m scared…

Following the announcement by BT (privatised UK telecommunications giant and sponsor of prestigious sporting gigs despite their crap customer service record) announced that 5k jobs would go due to their tech developments. In other words if you thought their customer service was shite to date – watch this space.

Goldman Sachs anticipates the loss of 300k jobs globally due to the impact of AI.

Are we really going to stumble into this very predictable dystopia the way Britain strode into the obvious long term harm of utilities privatisation and more recently the entirely foreseeable catastrophe of Brexit? The answer seems to be yes. We’re doing it.

Many years ago I got sick of asking the bank clerks who constantly harangued me about online banking, why they were working so hard to unemploy themselves. A year ago I had a conversation with a depressed clerk in a branch which was about to close (one of 5 in my area) and the idea that the wholesale closures were the entirely predictable result of years of insisting on customers banking on-line never seemed to have occurred to her. It’s also worth pointing out that online banking has marched hand in hand with the exponential growth in easy and extensive bank account fraud.

I’ve had literal stand up arguments in Lidl about self-service tills replacing traditional tills (see blog 218). Call me crazy but if I’m going to hand over hard gotten money I want to be treated like a human being and be served by someone earning a wage.

I presume at some point the mega companies will realise that when they have unemployed everyone for profit, there will be no one to buy their shit?

Our chances of remaining below crisis-level global warming are now in the rear view mirror so it seems the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are pretty much on siesta.

I argued against the evils of privatisation of utilities and public services in the 1980s. Most of those horrors have surpassed even the most extreme predictions.

On this blog I have so many posts on how humans are working incredibly hard towards their own economic and environmental destruction I feel I am my own stuck record;

Blog 12 Armageddon Will Not Be Televised sets the scene but then there are posts 18/30/36 – skip to 108 – 147 – 158. Global Danse Macabre or Living in The Penisic Era – 167. Try - 171 Privileged White Men Keep Getting It Wrong.

Really getting to it 202 – The TAT Economy or 208 The Cannibal Economy

See blog post 263 (I may not keep this promise) and so on – take your pick.

310. Extinction - Why Are People Still Choosing The Blue Pill?

354. Post-covid The World Must Ditch Slum Economics With Its ‘Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’

363 Debt Is Compulsory - Reality Is Redundant

Or more recently -

417. Fantasy Futurists are Failing The Human Race

428. Born in 1899 Macfarlane Burnet understood. Why don’t we?

 

It’s all packaged up, sci-fi dystopian fantasy form, in my novella -

Zero One Zero Two 

In my more hopeful moments I suspect incompetence may save us...

I recall many years ago (2004) in the UK we were told to ditch our analogue radios as the BBC was going digital. Everything would be digital. On that basis I went out and bought myself a brand new very nice analogue radio at knock down price. I kept it for over 15 years and still use an analogue radio.

It’s the same reason I wonder why so many are taken in by conspiracy theories. Many of them require so much planning and secret keeping and global co-operation all on a scale I’ve literally never seen accomplished.

Ironically, if humanity is to be saved from itself – it may be due to our ineptitude and inability to work together…

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I’m breaking for the summer as I have some festival work based on my children's poetry anthology and hope to crack open the new anthology I put on hold for house renovation.

Meanwhile do check out my other books all listed here My BOOKS or check them out via your own favourite online book store.

481. Brexit Britain - from sick man of Europe, via irritating slightly delusional cousin to pitiable, stuck-in-the-past old git in just 7 years.

Almost no one outside a lunatic asylum now believes Brexit was anything other than a disaster.

What is less often acknowledged is how quickly the harm, predicted by those shouted down by the swivel eyed loons prior to 2016, has happened. Britain has sunk so far already. And I’m not talking just the economy or its self-worth and global reputation. 

My strongly held view is there is a sense in Europe that Britain is starting to look very left behind. 

It’s a feeling I distinctly recall when I used to regularly stay in Ireland pre-The Good Friday Agreement. Something about the ongoing focus on conflict had left the country feeling as if it were stuck in past decades. Way past decades.

As life and the pace of change speeds up exponentially, it should come as no surprise that getting left behind can happen even more quickly.

This came home to me just recently in a conversation with a Polish contractor.

I am (again) in the midst of house renovation (when will I ever learn?) As well as hacking away at 70 year-old glued-on floor tiles and cutting up carpet – 3 layers deep in one room – sorting wasps in the attic etc. there have been a legion of contractors from the rewire to new plumbing.

It was only in talking to the Polish contractor that I began to sense the gentle sympathy of the moving forward for the left behind. And I’m not talking about his noticing that I don’t have a smartphone.

In discussing building materials and practices he uses compared to the British builders, it’s clear he thinks the UK is already a good half decade behind new ideas and practices on the continent. He also seems to feel this is widely accepted as fact in Europe. Phrases such as ‘we don’t do that anymore’ ‘That is not something that is used in Europe any more’ kept popping up.

Early on in this blog I wrote about how quickly the UK could become the Greece of Europe. In fact this has not only happened more quickly than I envisaged –it has happened more deeply and more obviously and more catastrophically than the most Cassandra of Remainers ever foresaw.

But we did foresee. Not because we have special powers but because the lunacy and self-harm of Brexit was always obvious.

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Do remember to check out My BOOKS here or via extended distribution from your own favourite online bookseller.

480. Being force-fed gaudy, expensive homage to a greedy, inbred, half-baked, spoiled old man who has inherited ill-gotten wealth that would make Midas blush is an insult to our intelligence – but, in case they were needed, here are another 20 of the many more reasons why the ridiculous, extravagant weekend royal dressing-up party at public expense was an affront.

 

1.     Europe’s first significant deadly conflict since WWII is ongoing.

2.     Global climate/environmental catastrophes deepen by the hour.

3.     Huge increase in reliance on foodbanks here in the UK.

4.     Growing child poverty here in the UK.

5.     Deadly misogyny in the MET police force here in the UK.

6.     Racism – ongoing.

7.     Debt (personal / student /national) deepening exponentially.

8.     Housing crisis here in the UK.

9.     Corruption / incompetence on an industrial scale (see any recent post).

10.                        Crisis in education here in the UK.

11.                        Crisis in the National Health Service here in the UK.

12.                        Lack of impartiality in the UK’s public broadcaster (see the resignation of its chairman appointed by Boris Johnson after a back room money deal came to light)

13.                        Sewage in English waterways (the party in power voted not to resolve this issue!)

14.                        Infrastructure fragmentation and failures – rail/energy/roads etc.

15.                        Increasing homelessness.

16.                        Increasing number of drug deaths.

17.                        Tory government scapegoating of the poor and migrants (as usual).

18.                        Increasing numbers of deadly dog attacks (something I’ve written about in the press for years)

19.                        The Brexit embarrassment and self-harm – ongoing.

20.                        The cost of living crisis.

In summary, it’s way past time for Britain to grow up.

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Thanks for reading. Usually I put a link to all my books on one site but this week just this one - Zero One Zero Two

 

479. ‘What is the world coming to?’ used to be a rhetorical question…

Whether you are looking at your own locale, in my case Britain, or THE world -‘what is the world coming to?’ is surely the question that should be on everyone’s lips.

Instead, here in the UK the media circus is trying to whip up – well – a circus around the RIDICULOUS freak show that is the coronation of Charles Windsor. Charlie is an old fart, who, in case you missed it, takes bags of supermarket cash from Saudi princes, seems incapable of dressing himself and has a meltdown if a pen doesn’t work. And this chump wants “a chorus of millions” pledging allegiance to him… It’s such a WTF moment I don’t know where to start.

Put aside the purported £150 million cost (+++) at a time of national fiscal crisis. Put aside the unresolved sludge of their hideous treatment of the first black woman in their midst. Put aside the false equivalence of both The Palace and the UK media constantly bracketing trafficked- teenager botherer Prince Andrew with the couple who fled bullying and racism. Never mind that any time one of the liggers or hangers-on is asked to actually come up with evidence every time they fall back on the tired worn out old argument that the monarchy is ‘good for tourism’ – they can’t. The fact is that many non-medieval countries have way more tourism than the UK.

You’d think all was right with the world if we’ve got the time and resources for this nonsense. You would not think the chair of the BBC appointed by his mate Boris Johnson after a financial favour was done has just had to resign. You wouldn’t think the UK was a laughing stock of the world due to – well – it’s a long list but -

Brexit.

Sewage in the waterways voted for by the current party in power.

Failure to deal adequately with Afghanistan

Housing crisis

Failure to deal humanely or promptly with Sudan

Growing child poverty

Constant hideousness from the Home Office – from diverting overseas aid during covid to the ongoing Rwanda/migrant fiasco

Liz Truss crashing the economy during the shortest premiership in history

Rishi Sunak referring to the UK as the Unicorn Kingdom at a meeting of business leaders (yes – I too thought that was a joke at first)

In my last post I gave one example of how infrastructure just does not work in the UK anymore. And that is not one of the big baddies. For that you need to look at railways or education or power companies. I could now turn to The World – the actual wider world – but – as pointed out in many previous blogs – does anyone not know? Check out my Neil De Grass Tyson post The Earth Is Pissed Off

So – apart from the general ludicrousness of it – which cannot be over-stated – how can we possibly justify the nonsense the country is being subjected to this weekend Sat 6^th May – a day maybe not of shame but certainly of catastrophic embarrassment for anyone who has not lost the intellectual will to live…

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Thanks for reading. Do check out My BOOKS via the link or on goodreads or your own favourite online book store.