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The Financial Services Authority have today leapt into action and put together some stringent measures to ensure the security of the proverbial barn door now that the frolicsome pony of the UK’s economy has successfully bolted, eaten lots of sugar lumps, and subsequently been mown down by a truck.

Among their hard-nosed, profound changes to our current banking system are the following:-

• A change in the purpose and function of the FSA so it focuses on financial firms’ strategies and identifies when they might get into trouble.

Now I’m curious to know if I’m the only person who looks at that and wonders what the FSA were doing before. Financial Services Authority: that says, to me at least, an authority to oversee financial services, so if they weren’t looking at what financial services were doing, and that surely includes their overall strategies, what were they looking at?

• Banks being required to build up healthy reserves in economic boom times.

Why do we need to tell banks to do that? Seriously, that’s like having to tell a bloke running a fish and chip shop to take the chips out of the fryer when they’re cooked, or telling a bin man to chuck the contents of the bin in the back of the lorry, we assume the person behind the counter in the chip shop knows what they’re doing, and we assume the bin man knows what he’s doing, why do we have to tell the people who run banks, who earn in a year what we’re likely to earn in 20, how to do the basics of their job? More worryingly, why do we have to force them to do the basics of their job?

Going even further, this is just a tacit admission that our current system is inherently tied to boom and bust. Here’s a thought: a financial system that, almost by definition, leads to periods when people lose their houses and jobs through no fault of their own, is not a very good system.

• Risk taking to be discouraged through forcing banks to hold more capital and a bonus system that discourages risk taking.

Again, stuff that banks should be doing anyway. Basically this is saying that prior to this “profound change” in the FSA’s thinking, it was absolutely fine and dandy for a bank to take your savings, quite literally gamble them, and, whether the gamble paid off or not, give a massive sum of money to the person who did the gambling. Oh, and it’s also just peachy for banks to make up money out of thin air with just a tiny fraction of the amount being backed up by actual assets. The very fact that this is being regarded as a profound change indicates that bankers are a bunch of uncaring, overpaid scumbags, and the FSA a bunch of uncaring, oblivious idiots.

• Credit rating agencies to be regulated.

Hang on… you mean they weren’t regulated before? Credit rating agencies basically define the value or worth of packages of debt. That should be calculated according to the interest being paid on the debt and the likelihood of payments being defaulted. It gets complicated but essentially that’s what they’re there to do. I’d say that’s quite a big deal, because the debts we’re talking about are often mortgages, and that’s basically a contractual representation of your house. Basically what they did was rated high risk mortgages as high value because of the high rates of interest being paid on them, and ignored the risk of people defaulting on those payments. That was stupid, but it happened because there wasn’t any regulation, and because the credit ratings agencies basically found a way of making money out of doing it. They found a way of making money out of doing something incredibly risky and stupid, and they did it, a lot. They were able to get away with it because the idea of regulating them was seen as intrusive government.

Now all the above is essentially about the FSA, their changes, and the state of play before those changes. I’m asking why those changes are regarded as profound when they seem to be pretty much common sense, and should have been in place all along, and I’m asking why the services being regulated didn’t recognise and do something about the problems they were well aware they were creating?

The answer is that they found a way to make lots and lots of money by doing stupid, risky things with other people’s money, and the FSA, and all other relevant authorities, were quite happy for them to do it because it looked like that Holy Grail of capitalism: economic growth.

Jeremy Clarkson is a hero of mine. There are those of us in this wonderful land we call Great Britain that would like to see that lanky, tousle-headed chap take the keys to Number 10 Downing Street, and I’ll tell you why. He’s a man who truly believes in, and defends, that basic right of all mankind: the right to be free. The right to go about your everyday business without the interference of do-gooders telling you what to drive and how fast to drive it, telling you you can’t call women birds or make humorous references to golliwogs, but most of all Jeremy Clarkson is not afraid to say what everyone’s secretly thinking but is too afraid to say out loud for fear of incurring the wrath of the “PC Brigade”. That thing that Clarkson is not afraid to say is this: it’s time to do away with Health & Safety. I tell you, no one piece of legislation has done more to damage British business than Health & Safety. There was a glorious age in this country when your average working man wasn’t afraid to go down a coal mine and get his hands dirty for 12 hours a day in order to earn the money to just about be able to feed his family. Now of course all the Health & Safety regulations have made coal mining in this country completely uncompetitive. Granted it’s true that before H&S regulations hundreds of men died in the coal mines every week, and thousands more were seriously injured, and it’s also true that most mines on mainland Europe were modernised and introduced basic Health & Safety requirements long before the UK, and as a result actually turned out to be far more efficient and completely out-competed the out-dated, dangerous, inefficient working practices still maintained by the mine-owning gentry in this country; but still, think where we could have been if the government hadn’t started interfering and “protecting” the “rights” of those blokes who risked their lives to supply the country with fuel!!

No, argue all you like, but the simple fact is, and what nobody other than Clarkson and a few other courageous Sun and Daily Mail readers are willing to stand up and say is: we need to abolish Health & Safety. History shows us that people do just fine without Health & Safety legislation. Industrial accidents have always happened and always will, there’s absolutely no reason to examine the causes and try and prevent them in future, that’s bad for business and bad for the country.

Jeremy Clarkson for Prime Minister, that’s what I say. Someone not afraid to stand up for the freedom of the average working man (so long as that freedom doesn’t include the freedom to work in a safe environment, drive on safe roads, live in a safe home, send his kids to a safe school and so on and so forth). What the PC Brigade doesn’t understand is that a man is born free, free to do whatever he likes, whenever he likes to whoever he likes without fear of consequences. That’s the kind of world Clarkson envisions, and that’s the kind of world I want to live in.

Outside of this particular issue, what is the value of airing both sides of a story? This quest for impartiality seems to be central to much journalism these days, albeit often very insincere. There are inherent problems with reporting “both sides”, especially when one side is wrong. There are circumstances when one side is wrong, it’s not always about two equally valid opinions being voiced.

Should the BNP be given more airtime to give voice to their opinions and policies? Is theirs an equal and valid opinion? No, it isn’t. However they try to market themselves the fact remains that much of their policy and beliefs are based on bigotry and racism. Their clumsy pleas for immigration control and an England for the English are not based on a sincere belief in the efficacy of those policies, but in the mistaken belief that one race or type of people has more of a right to this land than others. They are wrong. I’m not trying to make a moral point, I’m not trying to say that ethically the BNP are wrong, I’m saying that in every sense they are factually incorrect in their assumptions about the world around them. Everyone in England is an immigrant at some point or other. As a person with a fair bit of Welsh ancestry, according to the BNP’s logic I might well be within my rights to ask all the English to please get the hell off my island, as there’s probably a fairly good chance that the Welsh were here first. It’s ridiculous; their policies are based on nothing but an arbitrary unease about people who are different, a fundamental prejudice, on racism. What is more, they are demonstrably wrong. In more subtle areas of politics, for example those arguments between government intervention and free market self-regulation, it’s hard to predict, hard to demonstrate what works best and what doesn’t, it is often a case of perspective, and both sides can be legitimately argued for. The fact that the wealth and prosperity of Britain could not exist without our immigrant population or our historic plundering of other nations is pretty obvious. The fact that humanity as a whole is an immigrant population is a matter of archaeological record. The fact that the land we occupy remains long after we are dust, the fact that borders are arbitrary and ephemeral: all these things are indisputable. If you argue for a particular policy, or your perspective is governed by a denial of these things, then you are wrong. You’re not morally wrong, you’re not an opposing opinion that deserves an airing, you’re just wrong.

Why do we hold up arguments such as these as valid ones that need to be heard? I know that knowledge and proof are not absolute things in this world; that time and time again the consensus is proved wrong in the light of new discoveries, but racism is the consensus that has been proved wrong, not the other way round. It was the consensus before humanity learned what was wrong with it. Now that we understand what is wrong with it, now that we recognise the fundamental errors of assumption, we should be able to move on. This is not a new idea that contradicts our current understanding. It is an old idea that has been contradicted by our current understanding.

Racism isn’t an alternative opinion that needs to be heard, nor is sexism, nor is homophobia. Prejudice is what it is. It is borne from ignorance, and can be defeated by learning and understanding. It can be shown to be wrong. Not morally wrong, not ethically wrong, but demonstrably wrong - based in error.

We don’t need to hear both sides of the story from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; we know that both sides will only see the wrong done them. We can see what they are doing to each other and know that neither side is in the right, that neither perspective is more legitimate than the other. We can look at what is happening and make our own judgements, we already know the judgements of the sides involved, and presenting them again does not give us a greater insight.

Human-caused climate change is a scientific theory, as such the only perspective we need on it is a scientific one, and the overwhelming scientific evidence is that it is happening. We certainly don’t need to hear the perspective of individuals who do not study the subject at a scientific level but who deny the findings of those who do, their opinion is worthless.

Balanced reporting and journalism cannot be about just presenting both sides of the story, because quite frequently one side of the story is nonsense. It’s not often that one can safely refer to the work of a soft-permed, tight-trousered, soft-rock group, but Extreme’s third album was called “Three Sides to Every Story”. The three sides were: yours, mine and the truth. Simply presenting your side of the story and my side of the story will not necessarily provide us with the truth of a story, and providing another side to the story is a waste of everyone’s time when we know that side to be wrong.

The BBC’s been coming in for a lot of stick lately. It seems the place is unable to stagger from one week to the next without some section of society launching into some frenzied tirade about how bloody awful Auntie is. I don’t think it’s fair, but then again, neither is the BBC.

The BBC is supposed to be impartial, unbiased, and, particularly in its News coverage, present both sides of whatever story it’s covering. Fairness and impartiality are right at the centre of the Corporation’s raison d’etre, it’s in the Royal Charter that gives the BBC a legal right to demand a license fee from every TV and Radio consuming person in the country. Problem is there’s no such thing. There’s no such thing as impartiality, there’s no such thing as objectivity, and presenting a balanced view of anything is all but impossible.

The latest little debacle is over the BBC’s refusal to broadcast an appeal from the Disaster Emergency Committee for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Now one of the main reasons the BBC has not broadcast the appeal is that they are unwilling to broadcast appeals for donations from the public when they cannot be sure the money raised will actually reach those in need, and given the current situation in Gaza, that’s not an unfounded fear. This has precedent; the BBC delayed broadcasting the DEC’s appeal after the South East Asian Tsunami until they were sure that the proceeds donated would be able to reach those affected. I think that’s fair enough, the BBC’s not a commercial organisation, it doesn’t broadcast adverts in return for cash, so if it’s going to broadcast an appeal from another organisation appealing for public donations, it needs to be sure of the integrity of that appeal.

Unfortunately the Beeb has also cited impartiality as a reason for refusing to broadcast the appeal. The logic goes something like: we’re still reporting on the conflict in that area, the affects are still ongoing, and the reasons for the humanitarian crisis, those who are responsible and those who are affected, are contentious issues that we have to cover impartially in our News coverage. Unfortunately that kind of logic doesn’t stand up too well to scrutiny. There have been politically contentious issues surrounding many humanitarian disasters that the BBC have broadcast appeals for, indeed, Michael Buerk’s broadcasts from Ethiopia in the mid 80s, became in integral part of the broader humanitarian appeal that sprang up around Live Aid, but you could hardly argue that there was nothing politically contentious about that humanitarian disaster.

The whole Gaza thing is not really about impartiality. It’s physically impossible to be impartial about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It has a history so complex that few people even understand what’s happening there now, let alone how, where or when it all began. I recently went on the march in Central London to appeal for a ceasefire in Gaza, (I would emphasise that the reason I was there was to call for a ceasefire, not for victory to Hamas which much of the crowd seemed to be in favour of) and was amazed to see people there wearing stickers of the BBC logo with a Star of David obscuring the second B. The BBC has long been seen by some as being pro-Palestinian in its coverage of the region, but it doesn’t take much searching to find those who believe that the Corporation is at the behest of the pro-Israeli lobby.

So which is it? Is the BBC pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli? Well the reality is it’s neither, and yet it is still forced to tread on eggshells to even try and cover what is happening in the region. So are they truly reporting impartially? No, of course not, they struggle to report anything. Impartial does not mean honest, it is more usually associated with presenting both sides of a story. Neither side in Gaza is innocent, neither side can be truly said to be legitimately defending their people or acting proportionally. The abstract concepts of authority, legitimacy, and recognised states and governments are not definitive markers for right and wrong, but some people see them as such. For some it’s very clear cut that Hamas are terrorists indiscriminately murdering civilians, whilst the Israeli forces are legitimately defending their people, for others it’s very clear that Israeli forces are the terrorists indiscriminately murdering civilians, whilst Hamas fight for the safety and freedom of their people. There is no right and wrong to either of these views, both can be and are argued for vehemently. There is no truth to be had in either perspective. If the BBC reports those perspectives they will be seen as legitimising them, whether that is their intention or not. So isn’t it easier just to report the facts of what is happening in the area? Well those “facts” are inextricably linked to those perspectives; report the facts and you are reporting those warped perspectives, you are automatically, in the eyes of those who hold those perspectives, taking sides. The BBC cannot be impartial when it comes to Israel and Palestine, because those involved, or those with an interest, will simply not let them be impartial.

The problems arise when the BBC tries to appease those parties. Trying to remain impartial when it is impossible to do so undermines the honesty that is the true underpinning of journalistic reporting. To be impartial implies giving voice to both perspectives, showing “both sides of the story”. Quite frankly, fuck their “sides of the story”. Both sides are trying to justify the murder of civilians; there is no value in giving voice to that. We all know that they think they’re right and the other side are wrong, we should also all realise that it’s not that simple.

No matter what the BBC does, it will never be seen as impartial on this matter, and on many others, but what it can do is be honest. Report the facts as the BBC sees them. When they change their reporting or methods because of the pressure brought to bear by those with vested interests or specific perspectives everyone loses out.

Ironically the appeal by DEC has probably received far more publicity through the BBC’s refusal to broadcast it, than if it had broadcast it.

Have a look at this “Egyptian offers daughter to Iraqi shoe-thrower”. If you can’t be bothered I’ll give you a brief summary. Some chap in Egypt, so pleased with the poor aim of journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, has offered the bruised Hush Puppy lobber his daughter in marriage. I mean what better way to express your disdain for Western Imperialism and the administration of George W. Bush than giving away your daughter? Of course, to us here in the civilised West it’s all an amusing little tale that will leave us wondering what those crazy Middle-Easters will get up to next, throwing shoes , giving away daughters to insulters of Dubya, it’s all such a laugh. The guy has OFFERED HIS DAUGHTER IN MARRIAGE. It’s ok though because his daughter is all up for the idea and says it would be a great honour so she’s totally down with the whole BEING GIVEN AWAY LIKE A FUCKING LAWNMOWER thing.

I know it’s not news that people around the world, and especially women, are still seen as property. Slavery is still rife, women are still paid less and not proportionally represented in highly paid jobs, and forced arranged marriages still make the news quite frequently. I watched a documentary on the history of BBC Television News recently and was shocked to learn that when the contraceptive pill first came out, it was only available to married women, and only with the written consent of her husband. That was in the 60s. Today, some bloke in Egypt still thinks his daughter is his to give away, and let’s not forget that every blushing bride who walks down the aisle on her daddy’s arm is buying into a tradition, albeit dated and not necessarily the reality today, that she is her daddy’s property to give away. Then over in the good old U.S of A you’ve got teenage girls pledging their virginity to their fathers until their wedding night, the thought of which actually makes me want to puke. Call it tradition, culture, ritual, religion, ceremony, any euphemism you like; seeing a person as property strips them of their humanity, and the rest of us of our dignity. It isn’t harmless, we can’t just laugh it off.

In the wake of Barack Obama’s victory at the US polls there have been a few annoying, but inevitable comments about Obama’s ethnicity. There are those who, when faced with the weight of popular sentiment around the globe voicing delight in the fact that the US people have finally found the courage to enact a real change in their country’s direction, have felt the need to play some kind of devil’s advocate, and with an unattractive huffiness have claimed that it shouldn’t matter what colour the man is, what matters is whether he’ll actually do a good job of running the country. Ability to govern should be more of a measure of his Presidency than his race. At first glance it’s almost a truism; obviously a person’s ability to govern will be the most important factor in their ability to govern - that doesn’t really need saying. Does it follow that Obama’s various ethnic backgrounds shouldn’t be a consideration? Is democratic government a purely meritocratic institution? Should it be if it isn’t?

There are a few points to make here. First, and by no means least is the presidency of the last 8 years. It would take a wild stretching of facts and leniency of perspective to look at George W. Bush and say he became President of the U.S.A because he was the best person for the job. The sad truth is that electing the best people for the job in any democracy is a precedent that is far from being set, it just doesn’t really happen. Firstly, there is more than a touch of truth in the saying that those who want power are the last people that should have it; then there is the often blatant corruption or inherent unfairness of democratic systems. Add to that voter ignorance and apathy and it’s clear that we’re very lucky to end up with an even vaguely competent leader, let alone a good one. Clearly both those marks were missed by some way with the election of George W. Bush, indeed much of Bush’s popularity apparently stemmed from the fact that he was the kind of bloke you wouldn’t mind having a beer with, rather than his ability to govern wisely.

So will Barack Obama prove to be a competent, capable President? Well, it doesn’t really matter does it? With the exception of accidentally destroying the entire U.S.A with his own nukes, it’s hard to see what he could do that could possibly be any worse than what’s gone before. He is also faced with a country wedged firmly in the economic u-bend, whilst the rest of the world is left to gaze bewildered at the rising tide of their own filth as it gradually spills over the edge of the bowl and onto their over-priced brogues. Barack Obama will not be able to fix this; the ridiculous thing is that some are expecting him to.

So he can’t fix his own country’s problems let alone the world’s, he may yet prove to be an incompetent, poor leader, and it may not even matter. If all that’s true, why, when I woke to the news on the morning of November 5th, did I well-up with tears whilst listening to his victory speech? Why did I feel a genuine tug of hope and optimism in the pit of my stomach? Why did I feel, for the first time in a few years, that humanity may not be doomed to suffer and die horribly and deservingly as a result of its own ignorance? Why does it matter that Barack Obama won?

It matters because his name is Barack Hussein Obama. It matters because he is black. It matters because, for the moment at least, the U.S. is still the richest, most powerful nation on earth, and it matters because the people living there decided to put him in charge. What happens now is almost irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if he’s any good. What matters is that with his victory one more nail was hammered into the coffin of prejudice, ignorance and hatred. That is far more important than any political policy.

If you live in the UK, and don’t live under a rock, you’ll have been aware of the media frenzy surrounding the broadcast of an edition of the Russell Brand show. All of the major newspapers in this country have run with it on their front page at least once this week. Here are some other things they could have been focussing on in the past few days:-

1)    Nearly 600 square miles of rainforest was destroyed.
2)    The situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo has deteriorated.
3)    132,000 children died.
4)    35 Iraqi civilians were killed.
5)    The global economic recession continues to worsen.
6)    We came closer to reaching peak oil production.
7)    45 Afghanistani civilians were killed.
8)    The US continued to base its troops in 150 countries around the world.
9)    The US national debt exceeded $10 trillion.
10)     The US came one step closer to electing their first black president.

Now obviously many of these stories (although certainly not all) have been reported in the UK media this week, but front page space is scarce, and for every day that Brand or Ross gurned out at us from those covers, the faces of dead innocents did not. I’m not blaming the media. I work for the BBC; the Brand/Russell affair has been of great interest to me, as it has obviously been for much of the country. It’s fine to take an interest in stories like this, but it would be nice if they didn’t distract us from the things in our world that need our attention.

I think it would be fair to say that Hollywood has run out of ideas. All the major blockbusters are re-makes of re-makes, another Marvel or DC superhero brought to frenzied, punchy, exploding life on the big screen. Some of them are fun; lots are tired and boring despite the squillions of dollars spent on effects. They’re lacking an original story, they’re lacking new ideas. Hollywood needs to regain its magic; it needs to learn from others who are able to constantly, almost on a daily basis, churn out jaw-dropping, mind-boggling plot twists and crazy characters. Hollywood just needs to angle its gaze to the North East of that fine country we call the U.S.A. and start taking notes from the Race for the White House.

Modern day politics can be a cynical business; it’s easy to become jaded in the face of blatantly manipulative spin, bare-faced lies and shameless hypocrisy. Thankfully this year’s Presidential election campaign has taken all those most loathsome facets of the 21st century’s struggles for power and turned them into the best soap opera in the world, ever. I have stopped watching telly. Why bother turning on Eastenders to see some whiny cockneys moaning about their half cousin’s step-niece’s lesbian relationship with her fag-smoking, binge-drinking 9 year old friend who turns out to be a 45 year old milkman (ok I haven’t watched it in a while, I pick up the plots by the gentle osmosis of sitting near people who do watch it) when you can fire up your Internets and watch Sarah Palin talking about being working class, then going out and spending $150,000  on designer clothes in 6 weeks?

John Stewart of The Daily Show recently described Governor Palin as a gift from God, and I couldn’t agree more. She is the glace cherry on the icing of the most delicious cake that has been this election campaign. We’ve had Ron Paul raising millions of dollars in a few days despite the obvious fact that he never stood a snowflake’s chance in hell of ever being made Republican candidate even though he is possibly their most intelligent, coherent member (perhaps that’s why he didn’t stand a chance?). We’ve had Obama and Clinton knuckling it out for the Democratic nomination, a tussle that could only have been made more exciting by the introduction of oil and bikinis (please God don’t try and visualise that, I just did and I’m going to have to have a shower when I finish writing this), and just when it all seemed to have settled down into an ideological battle between another stupid, old, white man and a young, vigorous, black man, McCain pulls, not an ace from his sleeve but a Sherman tank in the form of the unknown Governor of an enormous patch of snow. Mayor of a town of only 9,000 for a few years, then Governor of Alaska, she’s only just got a passport, left the US for the first time last year, already being investigated for abuse of power despite not really having any, she doesn’t know her arse from a hole in the ground - ladies and gentlemen of the United States, nay, people of the world, John McCain presents to you the woman a 72-year-old’s dodgy heartbeat away from having the codes to the largest nuclear arsenal on earth – Sarah Palin.

We’ve had Joe the Plumber who unwittingly spear-headed McCain’s campaign for a few days until it turned out that he had not just been economical with the truth, but he’d taken the truth, bundled it with some sub-prime mortgage debt, top-sliced it, sold it on to Lehman Brothers and denied any knowledge of it. We’ve had interviews which involved more winking and vacuous platitudes than answers, and debates where the seemingly endless repetition of “my friends” was meant to convince the American people that, whilst he may be a vindictive, short-tempered, small-minded idiot with no new ideas, that old Johnny McCain would probably still be quite nice to go and have a beer with so long as you don’t mind a repertoire of juvenile, racist and sexist jokes.

In all this I feel Barack Obama is really letting the side down. Not so much as a sniff of a gay affair with Joe Biden, resolutely refusing to display an inability to answer tricky questions like ‘what publications do you read?’, and generally being boringly pragmatic, intelligent, sensible and far too damn presidential.

I will feel a sad emptiness when this election is over and the US people have elected Obama to finally turn their country into the place it could be, rather than the disgrace that the warped ideology of the neo-cons have turned it into. Whilst I know this will be for the best, part of me would love to see another 2000 election with hanging chads, Floridians incapable of pulling a lever correctly and blatant, flagrant abuses of democracy. We have just a few more days of this pure, unadulterated, grade A entertainment, who knows what Palin can achieve in that time? I can’t think of anything worse than what she’s done and represented already, but I bet she can. Fantasy is boring, Hollywood move over, Washington DC is where it’s at.

Well it was inevitable I suppose, given that financiers, bankers and economists all over the world have been collectively wetting their pants and crying for the past two months whilst their Alice in Wonderland brand of making themselves rich comes tumbling down around their ordinarily deaf little ears. Yes, we now see countries in the EU claiming they’re not going to be able to meet their CO2 emission targets because of the global economic crisis. Given the extra strain on current political systems and economies our glorious leaders are slowly deciding that, when push comes to shove, we can’t afford to do anything about our slowly worsening environment when all efforts need to go into righting the economy.

It’s the old Environment vs. Economy argument. Economy generally wins, which would be fine if it wasn’t so monumentally, earth-shatteringly, brain-mushingly retarded. Environment vs. Economy - what the fuck? I mean seriously, just have a look at that. Environment – Economy - where’s the debate? On the one hand, you’ve got Economy; there have been various experiments throughout history with economies and how they could work. We’re currently living with the Reagan/Thatcher installed de-regulated free market brand of economy, and it turns out that, as many suspected at the time, it’s a shit idea. It’s failing abjectly, and those of us who benefited least out of it are going to have to bail it out. That’s not my point though, it’s just one brand of economy, and there’ll be more to follow, maybe the next one will be based on speculative quantum future trading of magic beans or something, it’s not important, what is important is that “Economy” is a construct. It’s a concept thought up to manage human interactions, to manage the flow of resources, and I think you’d be hard pushed to identify a system that’s ever worked particularly well for everyone involved. Then you have Environment, so what’s Environment? Well there are those who will dismiss Environmentalism as being all about saving fluffy animals and hugging trees, but let’s have a think about it: what actually is the Environment? Quite simply the Environment is what keeps every man, woman and child on this planet alive. Our planet allows us to grow food, find water, and breathe air. It’s not overly dramatic or sensationalist to say that if our environment was to fundamentally alter we would almost certainly all die. We know that there have been mass extinction events in the past history of our planet, and most have been the result of changes in climate and environment. Now we can argue the toss about how badly we’ve buggered up our Environment and how much worse it’s going to get. Currently scientists are saying that global temperature is going to rise by between 1°C and 6°C over the next 90 years or so. To put that in perspective the temperature difference between now and the last ice age was only about 6°C. The Environment keeps us alive; damaging it is the human race slowly committing suicide.

Now some will no doubt argue that the economy keeps people alive as well, providing medicine and aid to third world countries. In that respect it’s still doing a really shit job because third world infant mortality is a fucking disgrace that we should all be ashamed of. Our global economy has ensured that a tiny proportion of the world uses the majority of its resources and has far more than they need whilst a majority struggle to survive and millions die of starvation and preventable disease.

Environment vs. Economy – it’s an irrelevant argument, entirely moot. Consider sustainability; everyone bangs on about sustainable sources of energy and resources. It’s talked about as if there’s a choice, there isn’t. There is no choice between sustainable and unsustainable; the clue is in the word. Unsustainable – that means you can’t keep using it, not because it’s immoral or a bad idea but because at some point it won’t be there. We live in a linear system, our world has finite resources that we plunder, use and discard. Our economy is based on growth. A fucking five year old could look at that and see it’s not going to work. Are we really so ignorant that we want to put our efforts into maintaining a blatantly failing and fundamentally unsound system rather than correcting our mistakes in order to keep ourselves alive?

Environment vs. Economy: One a human construct that has never truly succeeded in its aims, one the thing that keeps us alive. You can have an environment without the economy, but try having an economy without an environment. This may seem a simplistic argument, and it is, but the complexities of our global economy have been its undoing, and a large contributor to our negative impacts on the environment, so maybe it’s time to look at things simplistically. Maybe it’s time for us all to decide what we really value: an economy based on fantasy that allows us to buy big screen TVs whilst others starve to death; or the environment, the natural world that is our only home.

I reckon I’ve got one of the best commutes in London. My journey starts by cycling over Horsenden Hill, a lovely wooded area where you can see woodpeckers and occasionally dogging, I then join the Grand Union Canal near Perivale and cycle along the towpath for about 6 miles before having to join the rush hour properly at Scrubbs Lane and avoid death at the hands of the morons in metal cages on wheels, one of whom dislocated my collarbone for me a couple of years back. The hazards of cycling on London’s roads are pretty obvious, I’ve ridden a motorbike and cycled through this town for the past 6 years and have realised that the only way to stay alive is to assume that everyone else is blind, retarded and trying to kill you, but even on the towpath there are dangers lurking where you least expect them.

A fried of mine now lives in Perth, Western Australia, and is a very keen surfer. He frequently regales his friends back home with, often quite tedious, tales of the latest wave he ‘dropped in on’. A while ago he got quite emotional after he ‘dropped into’ a wave and found himself surfing alongside a small pod of dolphins. Obviously this is an amazing and beautiful thing, but when you read this after cycling to work on a damp Tuesday morning, knowing that you’ll be returning home in the miserable darkness of a British winter, a touch of the cynical and bitter can come through in your response. To that end I penned a reply about how as I ‘dropped onto’ the canal towpath on my Trek Soho that morning, two ducks had been bobbing gently on the water, they had both stared at me, and one of them quacked. As connections with nature go, there’s no real reason why my duck encounter should be any less spiritual than my friend’s dolphin encounter, but there’s something about ducks that’s just not quite as romantic. Perhaps it’s their sheer commonness. On an average journey to work I will see lots of ducks, I’ll also see plenty of moorhens, Canadian Ring Neck geese, swans and usually a heron. This is my rush hour: avoiding the bottle necks of various wild fowl and pedestrians along the Grand Union Canal towpath.

Over my years of using the towpath I’ve come to notice the tangible difference in character of the various species of water bird that inhabit this particular stretch. Moorhens are the stockbrokers of the canal; panicky, bickering idiots. From a distance they could be romantically perceived as graceful, demure creatures, shy by nature, carefully nurturing their young in as unobtrusive a manner as possible. This would be a fiction. To see the moorhen’s true nature one must only cycle past one as it feeds along the side of the towpath. Once out of the water moorhens apparently lose all sense of direction and as you cycle towards them, slowing, and perhaps ringing your bell to give them fair warning, they will ignore you completely until you are within about three metres, they will then eye you suspiciously, make their odd hooting, squeaking sound a couple of times, and continue to feed albeit in a slightly more hurried manner, as you come within one metre of these little black drama queens they will automatically, and this happens every time, elect to scamper, squawking and flapping straight across the front of your wheel. Never, never, will they stay on the side of the path where they were, they will always make a mad dash across your path presumably seeing the other side of the towpath, be that the water side or not, as the safer option, despite the ninety kilos of man and machine bearing down on them. Moorhens are thick, thick and annoying.

Then there are the geese. They think they own the canal. They will quite happily hang out in gangs of six or seven, spreading themselves across the towpath, shitting, honking and generally being quite anti-social, and then gives you evils if you deign to cycle anywhere near them. Frankly I feel less intimidated by the occasional gangs of hoodies lurking under the bridges of the Grand Union than I do when one of these long-necked gits hisses at me for trying to avoid him. They’ve got a fucking canal to swim in! Do you see me, diving into the canal and invading their space? No you don’t, because I’ve got some manners.

Swans: don’t even get me started on swans. Don’t be fooled by their ethereal beauty and their tendency to appear on the covers of bad valentine cards, and yes, that thing they do where they ruffle up their wing feathers does make the whole world appear to be in soft focus, and as for making a heart shape with their necks whilst courting, I mean, the worst Mills & Boone author couldn’t have made that up, but don’t let the flashy bastards pull the wool over your eyes. When they’re doing that heart thing with their necks they’re not whispering sweet, watery nothings to each other, they’re planning their next attack on a toddler. We may all have grown out of the belief that a swan can break your arm with its muscular neck, but the swans haven’t. Find one of those making itself comfortable in the middle of the towpath on your morning ride to work and you better start looking for alternative routes because they’re not going to get out of the way.

And finally the heron. I don’t really have much against the heron to be honest. There’s usually just the one on his own and I sympathise really that he was cursed with a panicky nature but the inability to take off quickly. Just this morning one of these leggy chumps flapped laboriously onto a railing aside the canal to try and spy something living in its festering depths only to discover me approaching at a steady pace. His startled eye clocked me too late and by the time he’d crapped himself, unfurled his great canopy of wings and fallen off the railing in order to take flight I was already long past him.

I love my commute to work, I really do, and I’d rather spend that early part of the day in the company of some bolshy birds than with the homicidal maniacs who inhabit the roads, but still, the beauty of nature often clouds our vision of how ill-tempered it is.