Is Adam Hart-Davis a Tory?
August 23rd, 2008 at 00:06

I’m not one to moan, but I think I’d be fairly justified in saying that I’ve had a pretty bad week. Right now, for instance, I should be rocking out to Rage Against the Machine at Reading, but my tickets never materialised, and for the past few days I’ve had a bloody awful stomach bug, which meant I’ve spent a couple of days in agony as my stomach decided to make the metaphorical “pain in the arse” debacle that was my Reading tickets fuck-up almost literal (it was more of a horrible pain in the stomach).

But now to top things off, for reasons I forget, I’ve discovered that one of my favourite celebrities, Adam Hart-Davis, is related to one of my least favourite people: David Cameron. Yeah, I needed to take a moment to let that sink in too. It turns out that, according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia anyway, that they’re second cousins once-removed.

This has somewhat tainted my preconceptions about how cool AHD is. I’d previously assumed that when he went into the polling booth, Adam (we’re on first name terms despite having never met) would obviously vote for the greater good, and do his democratic duty of voting for whoever keeps the Tories out. But now I know this new information, what’s to say his tribal loyalties don’t kick in? It’s pretty natural to vote for friends and family in things where voting is involved - it’s pretty much the done thing. Does this mean that AHD is voting for the Tories?

It would all make a depressing amount of sense: they both went to Eton and both have “riding bikes” as a sort-of quirky, eccentric trait. And Cameron used to be a director at Carlton Communications, one of the constituent companies that made up ITV… who later commissioned AHD’s (inexplicably excellent for ITV) How London Was Built.

I can only hope that AHD and David Cameron aren’t the best of friends. Perhaps AHD could be like the embarassing cousin? At family functions whenever Adam arrives, Dave winces and thinks “Oh god, not him again… what’s he wearing this time? Who thought the bright yellow shirt and shorts were a good idea? I hope he doesn’t show me up by enthusising about his love of science and history…”

C’mon Adam, betray your genetic make-up and don’t be a Tory, please! Ask your partner (leading psychologist and pioneer of memetics, Susan Blackmore) if she can introduce you to altruistic memes like social conscience and helping the poor!

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An uninformed treatise on Georgia, the international system and international relations generally, that will probably come back to haunt me when I’m older and wiser.
August 12th, 2008 at 01:56

I’ve studied international relations for three years now and have taken an active interest in world affairs for much longer, yet despite having an honours degree in the subject I still, frustratingly, am not really any closer to having any answers about how to sort the various international messes out. This isn’t a slight against my old university - it was excellent, and I can now explain the problems much better than I once could - but the world’s problems are so bloody complex that international relations cannot be mathematically modelled and experiments cannot be carried out to find solution - the carefully nuanced diplomacy that acts as the razor-thin wedge between a pragmatic peace and everything kicking off is more like an ultra-pretentious dance. Outside observers will be baffled and apathetic, asking “what’s the point?” and write-off the politicians, yet for the performers, every spin, kick or slow-motion movement is totally vital to the greater meaning of the performance.

Basically this is just a long winded excuse for being rubbish at international relations. But it’s not like the people who do it professionally are any better.

Take the Georgia “crisis”, for example - which is actually a war, even if the media doesn’t want to call it that yet. Tanks? Check. Incursions on to foreign soil? Check. Opposing armies shooting at each other? Check. I haven’t a clue how to fix it - but I can tell you the problems it has caused.

If anything, this (yet again) exposes the inadequacies with the international system. Back in the 17th century, the chaps around the table at Westphalia probably thought they were being pretty smart coming up with the concept of a sovereign nation-states as discrete territorial units - unfortunately this has become The Done Thing, which means that, in theory at least, all of the minorities or regions after some independence are essentially fucked by international law to the point where you get absurdities like Taiwan not being a real country and having to fudge its way into international things (”Chinese Taipei”) or entire regions of the world in a weird status-quo because the other countries can’t really be seen to be supporting them for fear of pissing off their “rightful owners”. If only Northern Cyprus, or Somaliland, or South Ossetia were as lucky internationally as Kosovo.

This especially doesn’t seem fair for South Ossetia, who seem pretty keen on being a part of Russia, or presumably united with North Ossetia in one way or another. The west have been pretty quick to condemn Russia for their ridiculously disproportionate response and moan on about Georgia’s sovereignty and that… they didn’t seem quite so concerned about Serbia’s sovereignty when they were busy recognising Kosovo. Don’t get me wrong - Russia are massive hypocrites too when they talk about South Ossetia’s rights to self-determination, as I’m sure the people of nearby Grozny would want to point out.

And that’s the overall problem with the international system - it’s horrendously unfair. As any realist will tell you, there’s no real international laws, it’s just the big guys calling the shots. They might play fair if you’re lucky, but chances are they’ll only do it when it’s convinient for them (cf: America ignoring the UN over Iraq, then getting pissy with Zimbabwe and threatening to get a UN RESOLUTION over it - no wonder Mugabe presumably laughed it off and went back to organising gangs to kill opposition supporters).

This setup works when you’ve got a unipolar setup - like the 90s with America basically in charge of the world. It’s by no-means fair, but then international relations never is, but it’s stable because no one has the power to stand up to them. They might fuck a few people over but they’ll generally keep the peace. A bi-polar system like we had in the Cold War is pretty good too as they kept each other in check with the whole Mutually Assured Destruction thing. What’s scary is that it looks as though we’re entering another period of a multi-polar balance of power with the great powers being America, China and Russia (or Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia, if you will). This isn’t particularly stable, as 1914 and 1939 grainily illustrated. With more than two powers the balance of power may end up somewhat asymmetrical (Oceania and Eastasia have always been at war with Eurasia), and if backed into a corner in a war sparked off by a small international event - say, the assassination of an Arch-Duke or a power wading into conflict over a breakaway region in the Caucasus region - it can’t be long until someone starts chucking the bigger guns around?

Whilst I paint a pretty nightmarish picture of the imminent apocalypse due to the international community’s inability to adapt to modernity, I would like to think that if any of my former lecturers, or indeed anyone who knows what they’re talking about, are reading they’ll think that what I’m suggesting is laughably implausible because I haven’t factored in the one thing that can save us. And it ain’t a pretty solution. Money could hold the answer to this. More capitalism could be the thing that pacifies the international system. Sure, some sort of revolutionary socialist utopia could probably solve a lot of problems, but let’s be realistic - what’s more likely to happen? Unlike a science experiment, we can’t run a test, and we’re active participants in a constantly changing international environment - in the absence of the interactions of some sort of personal God who happens to be big on Marx, we can’t reform the system from the top-down, so capitalism is the, er, best option.

Though capitalism does make wage-slaves of millions of people in the developing world, keeping them oppressed and unable to participate in the political process, thus maintaining the status quo and allowing for us in the west to become slaves ourselves to consumerism and thus distracted from politicial participation ourselves, it does have one thing going for it. It maintains a degree of stability in the international system.

The term “complex independence” was coined (by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye if you’re looking for someone to blame) to describe circumstances in which states maintaining an economic interest in each other creates a mutual desire to cooperate rather than blow each other up. To take a ludicrously extrapollated example, America would never attack Britain, even if Gordon Brown punched Laura Bush in the mouth and kicked Barney, the Presidential dog, around the face, because America has far too much money tied up in Britain, so it’d essentially be attacking it’s own interests.

Back in the real world for a moment, this makes the apparent response to what’s going on in Georgia all the more bizarre. Obviously no one in the west is talking about military action, as that could be the kiss of death for the existence of biological life on this planet, but someone has suggested (yeah, I do my research thoroughly), that delaying Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organisation could be a good idea.

Though the WTO isn’t be any stretch of the imagination a force for good in the world, what with the raping of the third world, and the hilariously inbalanced voting system of voting power being weighted based on the size of the memberstate’s economy, surely getting Russia in on the machine that powers the wheels of global capitalism can only help pacify it?

One of the (alleged) reasons for Russia’s continued military action in Georgia is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that apparently pumps 1m barrels a day - about 1/90 of world output - which was specifically designed to not go into Russian territory, meaning the Russian’s don’t get a cut. Similarly, a lot of this “resurgent Russia” talk is centred around Russia’s new importance for supplying Europe and others with energy? If energy wars are going to be the geopolitical flashpoints of the future then surely you want these guys on the inside and negotiating, not left alone outside getting pissed off about it?

(Another option would be to do the decent thing and go green and work on renewable energy, but obviously some sabre-rattling and tough words are much easier.)

It’s utterly bizarre really that “sanctions” in both the metaphorical sense of delayed entry to the WTO and literal sense like pre-2003 Iraq (etc) are touted as a viable tool in international relations as they never work. Putting them on Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Cuba… basically the ‘axis of evil’ to name only a few, has only isolated them more - if we’d worked to bring them into the international economic system where they could have been economically active like how, say, Taiwan and Indonesia were transformed in the mid-20th century, or how China is being transformed right now. I really can’t see how working to piss off Russia even more is going to help at all.

A pleasant side-effect of all of the globalisation that I’m rather inexplicably advocating is that it erodes the power of the nationstates - the ones with the weapons - and in one sense makes the economic system fairer as countries compete more fairly - look at Lenovo and Tata from China and India respectively as successful multinationals that are helping gradually shift the power away from America. If Russia were in on the west’s evil system of exploiting the poor in pursuit of nice consumer goods, they might be less inclined to attack the west’s interests.

And yes, the cruel irony of this change in the international system (which to a large extent has already happened) is that we do end up with some sort of horrendous, unaccountable, amoral, profit driven, worker-exploiting corporatocracy, which itself would be a problem at least as massive as one where the nationstates are in charge.

Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t very good at solutions, but was pretty good at describing the problems?

(End note: No, I’ve no idea what my political opinions/leanings are anymore either. I thought I was some sort of liberal idealist, but what I’ve just written may beg to differ. And would you like to see more incoherent treatise on international relations? Or should I stick to going for the lols? Let me know in the comments, like?)

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You gotta fight for your right to Taipei
August 4th, 2008 at 23:58

Surprisingly, I’m actually quite looking forward to the Olympics. Not for the reasons that the Chinese hosts are hoping though - I’m looking forward to what will hopefully be an unrelenting fortnight of protests.

Everyone knows that the Chinese government could be described as a “nasty piece of work”. They’ve got heaps of human rights issues and the like that could easily compete with the nastiest international villains like Robert Mugabe, or Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. When the International Criminal Court accused the latter of committing genocide rather than deny it or perhaps even laugh it off, as you might expect, really endeared himself by threatening “more violence and blood”. I mention this not because China are key players in propping up these awful regimes, but because it shows how sneaky they are in comparison to these amateurs.

We don’t see politicians moaning about China so much because China use their massive power to deflect criticism: if western politicians slag off China too much, they might cut off our supplies of cheap iPods and Happy Meal toys… and obviously that would be a clear sign we’re only a few steps away from Armageddon.

The Olympics are so important to the Chinese government because it’s a big platform for them to project their “we’re nice guys really” image - though their gamble is that they won’t be able to crush any protests quite so easily if every TV camera in the world is pointing at them. It’s not 1989 anymore so it won’t just be Kate Adie filming it - any “uprising” would be caught by every mobile phone in the area and be on the internet in minutes.

This is obviously problematic for the Chinese government but they’re trying their best to manage the problem. They’ve set up special “protesting zones” in parks a long way from the stadium, but you have to wonder whether this will be enough. They can’t exactly send the tanks rolling into the stadium if any athletes unravel a Tibetan flag on the podium á la the famous Black Power salute. I think there’s only one thing they can really do if they want to crush dissent: Make protesting an Olympic sport.

Making protesting a sport will turn it from a serious form of political participation and into a silly game. It’ll make protesting funny and trivial - on par with say, dressage, or horse dancing, which inexplicably qualifies as an Olympic sport. Protesting would become a farce if after the protestors have made their point a series of strict judges grade them on their performance, docking marks for say, lack of style or being too disorganised. Also, I don’t know about you, but every time I hear celebrities wade in on political issues, be they actors, musicians or athletes, I roll my eyes and switch off assuming they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. Making athletes out of the protestors would render their opinions worthless.

The Chinese themselves could probably rack up a few gold medals in the protesting events - those Tibetan dissidents could play for China – they seem to know a thing or two about smashing windows and stuff.

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Er, strategising for the Tories.
July 30th, 2008 at 01:33

It never rains, it pours - quite literally in the case of Gordon Brown. He’s taking his first holiday since he became PM, and the Met Office has issued severe weather warnings for the east of England, where he’s holidaying in Southwold.

Poor Gordon, you wait ten years to get your job, and then you’re rubbish at it. Then Barack Obama, probably the most popular politician this side of North Korea (Kim Jong Il’s opinion poll rating of 100% is admittedly fairly impressive), who’s reflective glory you could bask in, comes to Britain, but he’s not really here to see you at all, is he? He wanted to get a photo with your more popular predecessor and arch-nemesis.

Oh, and you got obliterated in another by-election, where if the 22% swing was reflected nationally (fairly unlikely), even you yourself would almost literally have the seat pulled out from under you, losing your seat in Parliament.

And then you’ve got even newspaper columnist writers with centre-left sympathises, who would theoretically gravitate towards your party, slagging you off in newspapers. Those columnists really do have a nerve.

You might think Brown has the most difficult job in the world - he’s not only got to run the country, but he’s also got to figure out why everyone hates him and sort it out pretty quickly, otherwise he’ll lose this job. However, I don’t think this is the most difficult job in the world. I think that job belongs to David Cameron.

I’d hate to be David Cameron. Not just because that would mean that I’m a member of the Conservative Party (the very thought sends a cold shiver down my spine), but because doing his job is incredibly difficult. Cameron may be pretty smug when looking at the government’s woe at the moment - I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone look so happy at coming third in an election after he gave a speech following the Glasgow East debacle, but he needs to be careful not to go too far.

At the moment, Cameron is essentially playing the game Buckaroo- Brown is a horse he must try his best not to irritate too much, and he is an eight year old child. He’s got to place little plastic shovels and cowboy hats on to Gordon Brown’s spring-loaded back, without making Brown jolt suddenly and run away from his job. For all Cameron may say about the PM and how rubbish he reckons he is - getting rid of Gordon would be bad for the Tories because the next Labour leader might be someone people actually like, which would present more of a challenge to them.

This is a fairly interesting irony really. Whilst it could be possible to moan that this quirk merely serves to illustrate the symbiotic relationship between the political classes and potentially erodes the ability of the opposition to hold the government fully to account over issues of national importance… I just think it’s funny that (at risk of giving advice to the Tories), the best strategy for them is to help Gordon Brown stay in office.

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“Waterboarding? Nah, its just like surfing. Dead fun.”
July 22nd, 2008 at 23:02

As you may know, the world is currently fighting a War on Terror. It’s pretty important – as the so-called war is causing us to tackle all sorts of important issues. Issues of war and peace, issues of civil liberties, and then there’s the debate over torture. Basically the War on Terror has more issues than your average moody teenager.

Torture is a complex issue – both proponents and opponents of torture make some points of varying validity. Opponents argue that the use of torture to extract information, or rather, essentially confessions is barbaric and goes against the ethical standards of our modern society, and even when used, can result in inaccurate or dodgy information rending it useless anyway – as if someone is hurting you, chances are you’ll say anything to make them stop. You’d probably even admit to being a terrorist, or a UKIP voter, or even Episode 1 being your favourite Star Wars film.

Proponents of torture (who do actually exist, though mostly live in America) don’t just support it on the grounds of “What’s the harm? It’ll never affect us as we don’t look ‘Muslim’ enough” – they would argue that torture could be a necessary evil to extract information, for example, if a suspected terrorist knew where a bomb was or other vague hypotheticals, like those acted out by Jack Bauer in the TV series 24, where the United Nations Convention Against Torture is broken in almost every episode.

One thing about torture is clear though – it’s a powerful technique. So powerful in fact, that it can make even opinion columnists change their mind about something. And as a loud-mouth opinion columnist myself, I can tell you the one thing I hate most in the world is admitting that I am wrong and changing my opinion.

The American torture technique du jour at the moment is water-boarding – a “process” in which the suspected terrorist has water poured over his (blindfolded) face and into his nose and mouth – causing the gagging reflex to kick in, and is made to feel as though he’s being drowned. Of course, the proponents of water-boarding claim that it isn’t torture, but then seem awfully sheepish when asked if they’d want to undergo it themselves.

A columnist for the American Vanity Fair magazine, Christopher Hitchens, recently underwent water-boarding, in the name of journalism, after he was challenged about a column he wrote where he argued that water-boarding isn’t torture. Do a search on YouTube to see the video, though it does fluctuate between distressing and hilarious depending on how much you like Hitchens. Needless to say, he changed his opinion pretty sharpish.

I think that this was very admirable of him and – and I must admit I’ve got to declare a hidden interest here – way beyond the call of duty for an opinion columnist… there’s not a chance in hell that I’d volunteer to be tortured to find out what it’s like, if you were to offer it.

This said – I will say that getting an iPhone for free is probably torture… if anyone from Apple wants to prove me wrong; I’ll grudgingly accept any free gifts – entirely in the name of journalism, of course.

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Fashion, globalisation and why I’m bringing down civilisation!
July 16th, 2008 at 18:11

I’m afraid to report that I think that I might be a threat to the very survival of civilisation as we know it. I’m sorry – I’m trying my best not to, it’s not deliberate. I’m not trying to blow anything up, or start any wars or anything like that - I’m not going out of my way to bring an end to civilisation – in fact, I really quite like the way things are.

I think I’m a threat to civilisation though because I’m not doing my duty and participating in applying the glue that holds society together: fashion.

I’m not really into clothes shopping – though I guess this doesn’t sound terribly surprising as I’m a man – but I assure you that I’m really not into clothes shopping. I really struggle with the concept of replacing the things I own for no reason other than that they are no longer trendy (though an upgrade would be a different matter). Case in point, for the past five years I’ve really worn nothing other than black t-shirts with punk logos on – without paying much attention to what other people wear. This is presumably because my inner-teenager is totally individual and is totally sticking it to the man, man.

I should probably explain why this makes me a threat to civilisation. This isn’t some sort of ego-trip on my part (though I am brilliant), nor am I about to announce that I literally have earth-shattering superpowers (however much I wish I did), and can hold the world to ransom – I’m a threat because the whims of fashion and our constant consumption of new stuff – are what keeps the wheels of capitalism turning. And if those wheels are turning, economic activity spreads around the world to all of the factories, suppliers and everyone in between, and so on. And if we have strong economic ties to another country, it makes war and conflict with that country much more difficult – because obviously if you try to blow a bit of it up, you risk blowing up your own stuff too, costing you money. It is essentially the same principle that American writer Thomas Friedman uses to explain why no two countries that both have McDonalds restaurants ever gone to war - not because the people in the two countries are too fat and unhealthy to run about with guns, but because they risk hurting their own business interests.

So by me not spending all of my money on new clothes in the pursuit of satisfying the psychological disorder known as fashion, I’m indirectly responsible for making war between Britain and, say, China, more and more likely.

“But James, are you therefore advocating, by extension, the continuation of the systematic exploitation of millions of poor workers in the third world in the interest of stability?”, I’d very much hope you were asking.

“It, er, seems like I am”, I’d reply, as bewildered by my own logic as much as you are.

I think the conclusion this week is that I’m not only a threat to civilisation, but I’m also, apparently, an uncaring monster.

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Mugabe for Haltemprice and Howden
June 27th, 2008 at 21:39

Another week, another byelection, another humiliating Labour defeat. For those not paying close enough attention, Labour came fifth in the Henely by-election (y’know, the one to replace Boris). Sure, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Tories would retain the seat, but coming 5th, and being beaten by the Greens and THE BNP, is a pretty good indication that Labour are up shit-creek. If this result is anything to go by, the Prime Minister’s best bet is surely to become a racist?

Worse still, it isn’t over yet for the Labour government - they’ve got yet another by-election to endure up in Haltemprice and Howden, wherever that is, where DaveDave is fighting to retain the seat he lost after, er, resigning. The official Labour “line” is that they’re not even putting up a candidate because the election is a publicity stunt - whilst this has some merit, and brilliantly means that DaveDave is fighting against some amazing joke candidates (Miss Great Britain, David Fucking Icke), it also makes them, and specifically Gordon Brown look weak and scared. You’d think arguing about civil liberties with a man who supports the death penalty would be pretty easy, but alas, Labour won’t even take on an academically easy target.

Though if the Labour Party had put up a candidate, they’d have to do pretty well, otherwise it would be even more humiliating for them. But I think they can overcome this - all they need is someone who is tough, someone who has a track record of winning elections in the face of such strong oppositions. They need Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe is a master electoral strategist - despite the polls in his native Zimbabwe showing that he’s horrendously unpopular, all indications are that he’s going to have an easy victory in the forthcoming Presidential run-off election. Haltemprice and Howden would be slightly trickier, as he’d actually have opponents, but Mugabe is known for his skills in turning elections around.

Hell, even if as the official Labour candidate, Mugabe were to enter into the argument about civil liberties that DaveDave craves so much, Mugabe could put his case strongly forward: he’s got a consistent history of locking people up without charge for well over 42 days, and he even hates all of the other civil liberties too, so is well inline with official government policy (tough on civil liberties, tough on the causes of civil liberties).

If the Labour constituency party were to pick Mugabe as their candidate, they wouldn’t just be getting Mugabe, they’d be getting his great political machine too - just as Labour borrowed Bill Clinton’s “third way” to win in ‘97, they could import the similarly revolutionary “Vote Mugabe or Die”, which has proved incredibly effective in Zimbabwe.

I mean, think about it - if you lived in the constituency, you’d vote for Mugabe, wouldn’t you? I mean, you’d have to.

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Maybe the future is safe?
June 27th, 2008 at 19:48

Remember a few weeks ago when I told you about how a friend of mine had joined the Conservative Party? Thankfully it turned out that it was his girlfriend messing about with his Facebook groups (or so he tells me). Whilst I was delighted by this news though, there is still the horrible reality that a Conservative Future organisation does exist and is active in my area.

In a brilliant coincidence though, I found myself in the pub last night though, arguing with who I believe was the chairperson of the local Conservative Future branch, who rather inexplicably, is the latest girlfriend of another of my friends. (Unfortunately, “connections” like this merely mean that I live in a small, incestuous town, rather than am sort sort of town bigwig who knows the other bigwigs.)

Of course, when I found this out, a quiet evening at the pub became a bit like a junior version of Question Time, where Star Columnists (ahem) and Key Political Figures are bought together to argue about the issues of the day. And the best bit? To my delight, the future Tories - the party that are back in their constituencies preparing for Government - are completely clueless.

I started by challenging the Tory chairwoman and her “Tory” friend with an easy question: “Eh? What the fuck? You’re under the age of 60 and support the Tories? What Tory policies do you like?”

The question appeared easy, but then I did slip in the phrase “Tory policies”, which must have floored them a bit. After the friend muttered something weak about the Tories being “for families”, and agreeing that the other party’s Maoist “People’s Communes” policies are ridiculous, they eventually they said something about the Tories “abolishing university tuition fees”.

“Huh?”, I thought, having not heard anything like this - challenging them, they then went on to admit that they’d “just made it up”. Which I suppose is one way to win an argument. (Googling after the event revealed this, but I’m about 95% sure this isn’t current policy.)

“Do you really like David Cameron?”, I asked next, expecting them to say they did, so I could rant on about his plastic face and his mollusc-like slime trail, to my surprise, the chairwoman said she didn’t actually like him for these very reasons. “PARTY DISUNITY!”, I somewhat childishly cried as I pointed at them, to the bemused glances of the pub’s other patrons. “Who would you prefer to have in charge? IDS? David Davis? Norman Tebbit?”, was met with a blank look and protestations of “You don’t talk about politics at the pub!”, which became their most powerful line of “argument”. I was bewildered by this, as politics chat is all I go to the pub for. I mean, other than objectifying women and grunting whilst football is on the TV, obviously.

After this, unfortunately every time I mentioned politics they were all “I don’t want to argue!” - so I responded to this complaining that argument is what politics about, and how if that’s what the Tory campaign is like, I can’t wait for the next general election. Unfortunately, rather than, er, argue with me, they just ran off to smoke - and presumably phone the constituency chairperson to let them know to keep an eye on that James O’Malley and his ultra-leftist column in the local paper. Or at least, that’s what I hoped had happened.

So, er, at risk of ending on a Partridge-ism, needless to say, I had the last laugh!

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Humanity’s value.
June 24th, 2008 at 19:20

One of the key ideas in our society is that “everyone is born equal” and that everyone has equal value- if this is true, then it begs the question: what is the value of a human being? According to eBay, it is 2.2 Million Australian dollars, or just over a million pounds sterling.

We know this because a man called Ian Usher, originally from Yorkshire, now living in Sydney, sold his life on eBay - his house, his car, even his job and his friends - for AUS$2.2m. If the ever reliable Wikipedia is anything to go by, with a world population of 6,704,845,726 people, it means as a species we’re worth over £7150 TRILLION.

Considering that the world’s total GDP, the sum of every country’s economic worth is a paltry $65.95 trillion (2006 est)- or about £33.5 trillion, this makes one thing clear to me: the economic case for re-legalising slavery is unarguable.

Think about it - we can beat the credit crunch, pay off all of that third world debt that the news agendas have forgotten about, and still have enough money left for everyone to have a swimming pool in the back gardens of their mansions - simply by remortgaging the human race. Here we are worrying about how we’re going to pay for things, and yet all this time we’ve been literally sitting on a veritable goldmine of cash.

The cash windfall would be like a lottery win for humanity. With money like this, America could easily afford to stay in Iraq for the next 53,000 years (at a cost of $720m – or £365m - a day) – the only danger would be running out of soldiers to send there.

And don’t get me wrong, this wouldn’t be like the rubbish old version of slavery, this would be a whole new, better kind, as we’d all be in charge. You wouldn’t even have to sell off your entire life - what’s to stop us all becoming like the asset strippers, like James Goldsmith, who bought up loads of companies in the 80s, and sold off the inefficient and redundant parts?

Don’t need that womb as you don’t want any kids, ladies? Sell it off! Don’t need to know all that stuff about Shakespeare and photosynthesis that you accrued from school, hairdressers? Sell it off! Need to teach your enemies a lesson, but you’re a bit of a wimp? Literally hire some muscle!

I don’t even think this idea is that terribly revolutionary - after all, we already sell our labour every time we go to work, and in most cases, there is a direct link between amount of work done and the amount of remuneration. There have even already been cases of companies paying people to get a tattoo with their logo on and stuff - monetizing our entire lives is merely a logical extension of this.

I guess the only problem with this is the, er, horrifyingly, fact that I seem to be happily advocating a form of slavery. Would anyone like to buy my sense of shame? It’s going cheap, and I haven’t used it much, so its in near mint condition.

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The one type of scepticism I don’t subscribe to.
June 18th, 2008 at 15:14

One of my favourite easy targets to complain about is the Eurosceptics. You know the type – you might even be one yourself – the sort of person who on the mention of the words “Brussels” or “Europe” transform into an approximation of a droopy faced angry bulldog with rabies, and lament about “Eurocrats” and “straight bananas”. I’m a big fan of the European Union, so I struggle to understand where Eurosceptics are coming from.

I mean, sure, the EU isn’t perfect – it manages to get away with all sorts of crazy stuff but that’s only because it does it in a phenomenally boring way, so no-one usually pays any attention. For example, did you know that there are two European Parliaments – one in Strasbourg and one in Brussels, because they can’t actually agree on a place to meet? They’ve even recently built a high-speed railway line between the two, which has no-doubt already been dubbed the “gravy train”.

But I find it hard to complain about stuff like this, when we live in a country where every year, a man in tights with a sword knocks on the door of the House of Commons, only to be ignored anyway.

Maybe I’m just really forgiving because the organisation has some pretty noble goals after all: it was founded to keep the peace in Europe and now works in the interests of keeping us all happy and prosperous. Sure, it does it in a ludicrously complicated way, but it is a union of 400 million or so people.

What’s bewildering about the Eurosceptics though, is that when the EU tries to do stuff to make itself better, the Eurosceptics will try and stop it – presumably because if, for example, the Lisbon treaty was adopted and made pan-European governance easier and more effective, they’d have less to moan about.

Last week, in a referendum, Ireland rejected the Lisbon Treaty on the grounds that “It’s a bit complicated so I’m going to let Eurosceptic scare stories make up my mind for me.”

Unlike the other 26 EU states, they had to have a referendum because it’s in the Irish constitution that they have to hold one to ratify treaties. This must have sounded like a great idea back in 1937 when they wrote their constitution: I guess the thinking was that if someone is capable of voting on who they want to win Big Brother, then they’re more than qualified to decide on whether a complex legal document for institutional reform is a good idea or not.

I’ve never really understood the Eurosceptic pro-referendum campaign here either for similar reasons – us ordinary peons haven’t got a chance in hell of understanding the Lisbon treaty because the law is a complex thing… it’s why we have lawyers. If only there were similar people we could use to help decide whether the Lisbon Treaty is any good… like, if only there were a chosen group of “politics experts”, whose job it is to decide on a daily basis whether laws and stuff are a good or bad idea for us?

Oh, hang on a moment…

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