ragged blog

Apparently Mi5 think there are alot of targets growing in the UK. the decisions of the UK Government over the last decade has a clear link to this I am certian. However we can only move forward from here and I hope that the relevant people can learn to keep (reasonably) quiet, so as not to further enflame the situation. BBC NEWS | UK | MI5 tracking ’30 UK terror plots’

I was caught in particular by this line:

MI5 has increased in size by nearly 50% since 9/11 and now stands at roughly 2,800 staff.

And an amusing anecdote from Prejudice:

We’ve noticed terrorists, so we’ve started hiring new people!

Surely this idea is absolutely stupid. Some right honourable old bats inconcieved idea of ‘hardening intelligence services’ when the number of terrorists they KNOW ABOUT are in number as large as their organisation apparently started before 9/11.

Having been through Uni within the last decade, I also know that the number of opinionated and fanatical (entirely british) students out there is increasing. They are able to find and push resources which may or may not contain accurate data (e.g. the film entitled ‘The Corporation’ which takes a very hard-line standpoint and broadly innaccurate measure on the reasons for business decisions) leads to alot of these students believing their ‘hippy’ ideals might save the world. Some of them may even go so far as to become a threat to those of us that are trying to really just help (by being productive human beings, and friendly to the world around us).

One of the classics I remember is:

“we should just stop all of the oil tankers from going accross the atlantic if their over X years old”.

The impact of these thoughts is never appreciated by these people. Having spent some time around EMO groups during periods where they become active, I’ve learned myself a few hard lessons with regard to this sort of problem. Just how much fuel is available in the local area? What is the impact to life if it’s no longer available? The answers to these kinds of questions often make said students recoil and become quite quiet, or they simply resist the reality and keep going with more vigor in the hope to dispell the unwanted commentry over their opinions.

My wonderful girlfriend has many friends who fall into this ‘hippy’ category, and whilst not active, some of their ideas are bordering on similarly destructive. Equally some of their ideas are priceless and I would hope that both sides of the coin can be remembered by people from all sides of these rather blurry lines. My belief is that a global culture shift towards true understanding (or at least people having a desire to really understand, rather than rely on here-say) is the only thing that could save this planet. I’ve sen just as much marketing bullshit from ECO warriors as I have from DOLLAR warriors.

A few words of warning on how to approach these problems in general though:

1. Changing the world rapidly is contrary to nature (even when the world you are changing is man-made). Rapid change is generally a dangerous operation and should not be done lightly.
2. Removing key resources from places they are required can KILL PEOPLE. If a hospital looses power, a power station looses oil/coal, people can DIE.
3. Removing necessary transport mediums for human requirements is dangerous and again, can KILL PEOPLE, although less directly. Observe fuel riots.
4. Your opinion is always limited by your knowledge which is bound by the sum of your experiences and your imagination. Research needs to be done properly. I know you may feel it is too urgent to do this, but if you don’t you’ll make it worse – see attempts at ecological balencing by species introduction.
5. Bounce-back or reaction effects can do more damage to your cause than good. If you want something to change, and you force change on people, when they get back what they want it often comes back in more force (because they get so upset for having lost it, or in business they lost so much money).

Finally, as I mentioned ‘The Corporation’ I’d just like to point out that I’m building a business currently, and we have no aims to generate revenue at any cost. This is written into the core culture of our business plan and our investors DO take an active role in ensuring they see good ethical practices from our business. The crux of this is, it’s not ‘Corporations’ who make evil decisions, it’s a person making the decision inside the company, and often their reason is regardless of the real world events (and often they will never experience the events either). I’m sure the families of the people who make these decisions (in most all cases) do not consider their relatives to be evil people. Somewhere this understanding gets lost in ‘hippy hype’ and I’d like to see it not in future. If you want to be so arrogant as to actively preach and push your ideas on everyone else, you should make damn sure that they’re correct first, otherwise you’re just another marketing idiot pushing ideas on people that they don’t need.