When I was just a school boy, around the age of nine or ten, with a friend or two, I'd often venture over to the local corner shop. We were just children, all we really wanted to do was to waste our pocket money upon alarming quantities of sweets. I can still recall how importantly we viewed our respective purchases. Should anybody's tuck fall even a half penny short of the entire sum, then instant 'advice' would be ready on hand; where to 'invest' that last ha'penny?
We came away with our respective feasts, paper-bagged up, and set about scoffing the lot, before we should return home. Upon reflection, I wonder now whether perhaps the low cost was brought about through subsidy by the local dentist, a man who's sole relationship with me was driven by a rabid desire to substitute the entirety of my mouth with metal.
At that time rationing would still have been a recent memory for our parents, and so sugar was very much in the ascendancy, yet to be recognised for the slow poison it actually was. A minor deity!
The shop was there from my earliest memories of the street, and it was there when I eventually upped sticks and set sail for pastures anew. In my childlike memories I want to believe that the same chap, mysteriously unchanged throughout, ran the place for the entirety of my childhood and beyond. He provided tooth-rot for the kids, newspapers and cancer sticks for their parents and all manner of minor convenience items for the locals. What more could one require from a corner shop? Perfect!
He wasn't forever wandering the streets, searching out a second or a larger premises, in order to expand. At the end of the week he duly considered his lot and settled for more of the same, much to the satisfaction of many a school child. I don't suppose the concept of 'sustainable growth' ever troubled his contented little mind. And why should it have?
He lived in a finite neighbourhood, within a finite space, in a finite country, upon a finite planet, within a finite solar system... You get the idea, I'm sure.
Each and every return to the town of my youth, has slightly sullied the memory. The shop is there, still I think, but the town has grown, the volume of traffic has exploded, there's more litter, the neighbourhood looks curiously run down, everything's noisier! There's a monstrous Tesco 'super' store, 'nuff said.
Still beautiful, Paul Townsend
On Thursday I 'learned' that the Eurozone's economy had, "stalled in the second quarter," 0% growth, raising, "the ugly prospect that the region's meagre recovery (had) lost momentum." For some curious reason it reminded me of my old corner haunt. Surely, I was given to consider, this childhood place had existed in a contented, "stalled" state for decades. What could it be that the proprietor of that tiny shop doesn't understand, that Europe's great leaders might? Or are things really that black and white?
Perhaps we should contemplate things from the smaller perspective.
That is unless those big and 'important' leaders, with all of their resources and advisers, know something that we don't, about sustainability. For example, perhaps the reasoning behind the cessation of manned trips to the Moon is based upon the fact that just behind our heavenly companion there is secreted another Earth, ripe and ready for the pillaging. They're hoping to keep it a secret, in order to throw a huge, "Of course we haven't buggered everything up!" party. "Look, just around that corner are the answers to all of our woes. The cupboard really isn't nearly empty after all."
Or perhaps they're just deluded, or lying to us, or incompetent, or far too much concerned with self-serving. Who can possibly say?
Also on the news, I watched the handsomely remunerated Professor Lesley Dobree, Deputy Vice Chancellor of Anglia Ruskin University, talking 'frankly' about this year's clamour for University places. Lesley and co. had invested heavily in 'sustainable' expansion and were looking to shovel in the maximum number of new students. Sweeteners (bribes) on offer at this particular University were thousand pound book vouchers. Other universities were offering the likes of gym memberships.
Ever beautiful, Paul Townsend
Is Lesley also privy to unspoken inside information, regarding the whereabouts of a massive cache of global resources? Or is it very much a case of, "Wakey, wakey, Lesley!" This isn't about education, this is just another huge financial transaction. All of those potential students are merely resources, much like coal, oil and gas.
And there was the far from N.I.C.E. news that another drug has been deemed too expensive for the NHS. Abiraterone (Zytiga), it has been deemed, is not to be used prior to chemotherapy. It is, "not cost effective at its current price," the nation has been informed. Which sort of begs the question, what is the point of developing life-sustaining or lengthening drugs, if they are not to be made available to those who require them?
That, of course, would be a valid question until one factors in that highly topical term, 'sustainable growth,' then suddenly the scales fall away and everything makes 'perfect sense.' The Institute of Cancer Research has clearly also been making its bid for greater 'sustainable growth,' looking to 'grow' those share values for its top investors, never mind the lost causes- or indeed patients- that might occur en route.
So, 'sustainable growth,' upon a planet with absolutely nothing that is truly sustainable, least of all its resources. But, hang on one cotton picking moment! Unless that blossoming human population could be regarded as nothing more than another exploitable resource. Cooking on gas!
Perhaps, purely as a very last resort you must understand, we could consider human fuel in order to keep those generators a burning.
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