Practical Useful

Jim Murphy, the Scottish Secretary, is today promoting the case for more nuclear power build in Scotland, arguing that it is vital for our future energy requirements whilst reducing the massive carbon output from our current energy generation systems.

Now, and it’s been a while since I’ve said this about a New Labour minister, I completely agree with him.

Of course the SNP have quickly lambasted him with the Greens not far behind and Scottish Labour aren’t rallying to his defence because here in Scotland there is a widely held belief that Nuclear power is dangerous.

This belief is wrong and due only to ignorance brought about by unjustified fear.
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Obviously I’m a woolly liberal but is it just me who finds the following step-by-step plan for dealing with social problems troubling?

1. Identify a social problem.
2. Criminalise it.
3. Be surprised that there are suddenly more people spending short amounts of time in prison.
4. Be further surprised that this has caused more social problems.
5. Be completely surprised that the original social problem has not been solved.

Prison should be for criminals, parent’s who cant keep their kids in school need help, not porridge.

Welcome to the Panopticon. Originally a concept created by a philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, in 1785 the Panopticon is a prison where every corner of the designated space is covered by a camera so prisoners feel that they are being watched all of the time and thus are more likely to behave. In the UK the principal was used to build Milbank Prison on the bank of the Thames where now sits Tate Britain – a building whose function is to provide a space for us to look at reflections of ourselves, an art gallery.

The pleasing synergy of the first UK panopticon becoming an artopticon merits further examination as we become more obsessed with the voyeuristic tendency to watch each other as a form of entertainment and march headlong into turning every inch of this benighted isle into a prison.
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The BBC reports on a recent report in the International Journal of Astrobiology saying that:

“there are at least 361 intelligent civilisations in our Galaxy and possibly as many as 38,000.”

The most interesting passage is:

“While researchers often come up with overall estimates of the likelihood of intelligent life in the universe, [...] recent guesses put the number anywhere between a million and less than one.”

Less than one, eh? So that would be, well, zero?

Pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space, ‘cos there’s bugger all down here on Earth.