( A three-minute read)

If one were to takes a look at England from the outside you would see that two world wars and the end of empire diminished its role in the 20th century.

Now the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union is raising significant questions about the country’s global role. It is redefining its place in the world with Brexit but is it now in danger of dying of inanition.

The world is on the brink of the Fourth Industrial Revolution “A tech revolution that started with the internet but has now spread to everything from materials science to medicine to robotics.

The world is also at the beginnings of a green revolution, that started with carbon reduction and is now changing the way people run businesses and live their lives.

We all know that England has a rich literary heritage encompassing the works of English writers such as William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. That the empire riches lead to the Industrial Revolution- to inventions- to inequality -to wealth- to world influence and power in fact – to all its present day’s problems.

Unfortunate it squandered its Industrial Revolution manufacturing to service industries.  Devotion to business and profit is now hocking its entire economy to save a broken system at the cost of social equality and a possible loss of international influence.

More recently, the UK has suffered a deep economic slump and high public debt as a result of the 2008 financial crisis, which revealed its over-reliance on easy credit, domestic consumption, and rising house prices.

The current English government is making life a whole lot less secure for many people. “Foreigners mate.” Take our jobs, undercut our wages is the great social media lie that is driving England into Isolation.

If it ever needed an example of the consequences of an isolation policy the recent abhorrent Salisbury assassination ( which are now resulting in tit for tat diplomatic expulsions) shows that with Mr. Putin been re-elected for a further six-year acting alone will not be enough.

It may well turn out that the substance used was manufactured in Russia and England is right to point the finger at Russia for its development but there is too large a gray area as to who used it.

Russia must have known that it would be linked to the assassination but I am unable to see the logic in the use a nerve agent. If Russian wanted the X soviet spy dead without a traceable trail back to the country it could have bumped Mr. Sergei and without his daughter Yulia with a bullet.

There is no benefit for Putin to be deliberately courting UK hostility.

On the other hand, the Russian use of murder as part of statecraft is well known.

There is nothing new about a high-profile or outspoken person being assassinated.

It is one of the oldest tools in the book to get rid of someone who is either too powerful, too dangerous or too inconvenient.

One way or the other the UK acting alone will not be enough in the long-term as there will be many that will not want or who will be unwilling to risk their links with Moscow in support of what they now see as a UK/Russia row.

Even though it is the core duty of the British government to deal effectively with a nerve gas attack on our streets, which has seriously incapacitated three people and endangered many more we are all going to need Moscow’s help to tackle the major international problems of terrorism.

Eventually in the long term, when the dust settles we will have to look for potential areas of cooperation with Russia which could begin to rebuild the shattered relationship with the West. Terrorism and perhaps the governing of cyberspace are good places to start.

When you become isolated you start kicked out every bit of imagination embracing inanition with false assumption that feeds back into further arguments distracting attention from failures of the British financial system.

Since no one would be expected to invest in an economy where future prospects and current creditworthiness are declared to be so shaky, leading who knows where?

Tomorrow’s consumption can only be funded by tomorrow’s production.

Stimulus…its what kind of stimulus and how to apply it intelligently that should be the focus of the governments’ economic policies in the UK, not isolation.

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(A two-minute read)

Prime Minister said her position is ‘based on practicality.’

These are empty reassurances not only for the fish stocks in the Irish sea but for the Good Friday agreement and any other agreement transition period or not with or without a border protecting Unionism.

We all need to face up to a few hard facts.

Brexit will be a loss for all of us.

England will be poorer in more ways than one and it will be so entirely of its own choice.

Next:   There will be no hard border in Ireland.

This is only true if Ireland somehow manages unites. Why? Because it is totally impossible while one side is in the customs union and the single market and the other isn’t.

Every Tom Dick and Harry will have their own regulations.  Yuppie England will see more snow than Columba exports.

Direct rule in Northern Ireland or a hard border after Brexit could lead to “serious trouble.”  When there was a hard border, there was very little commerce, very little travel, very little interaction between the people of Northern Ireland and the people of the Republic.

“That led to stereotyping, to the demonization of others, to attitudes that were based upon acts from the distant past.”

Next:  Ms May needs to secure a trade deal to do this England has to remain in a customs union.

The UK and the EU have not started discussing their “future partnership” yet.

Next: Any transition period is going to be costly and riddled with but what we are saying is.

Citizens’ rights – in particular, EU nationals who move to the UK during the transition period. Do they get treated the same as if they had arrived while the UK was in the EU? The EU says yes, the UK no.

The UK also wants to be able to strike trade deals with other countries – which it cannot do as an EU member – although these cannot come into force until the transition ends.

Next: Vague aspirations.

There are two sides in England both have different ideas about what it should look like.

It is England, that wants to leave the European Union, not the European Union wanting to leave England.

She had the temerity to talk of what will be remembered of Brexit “a generation from now”.

Here’s a prediction:

A generation from now, the current young generation, who utterly loathe Brexit, will remember the monumental pain in the arse that was taking the UK back into the EU under worse terms, sometime around 2031 at the very latest.

“Brexit means Brexit”  “Let’s get on with it!”  “The world is not watching.”

The Lawyers are laughing all the way to the Bank.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

costly transformation,

( A three-minute read)

In the not so distant future, it will not be the aims of education to be the transmission of knowledge but the fostering of inquiry.

All human societies, past and present, have had a vested interest in education; children are born illiterate and innumerate, and ignorant of the norms and cultural achievements of the community or society into which they have been thrust.

We all know that education serves as a social-sorting mechanism but this is coming to an end with technology. The great social importance of education is underscored by the fact that when a society is shaken by a crisis, this often is taken as a sign of educational breakdown; education and educators become scapegoats.

There seems little point in education the children of the today with yesterdays knowledge if they are void of creativity. The passive language of seeing, which has shaped our discourse down to the present will no longer apply.

The question of what knowledge will be, and what skills will be needed ought to be—part of the domain of philosophy of the curriculum of the future.

What are the basic aims and ideals of the educational enterprise?

What ought educators try to accomplish?

I suppose the best education will equip individuals with the skills and substantive knowledge that allows them to define and to pursue their own goals, and also allows them to participate in the life of their community as full-fledged, autonomous citizens.

The world is going to need critical thinkers, not the present day state-provided brainwashing students.

Plato’s starting point is that the organization of society depends ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. Only those who have rightly trained minds will be able to recognize the end.

Granted each individual is an organism situated in a biological and social environment in which problems were constantly emerging, forcing the individual to reflect, act, and learn but this is also changing and perhaps Plato’s theory “the spectator theory of knowledge” is going to come true.

In schools, those under instruction are too customarily looked upon as acquiring knowledge as theoretical spectators, minds which appropriate knowledge by a direct energy of intellect. The very word pupil has almost come to mean one who is engaged not in having fruitful experiences but in absorbing knowledge directly.

Something which is called mind or consciousness is severed from the physical organs of activity.

However, in the future, as robots and automation sweep the global workforce each student although an individual will blaze his or her unique trail of growth on the internet.

This is already happening with many University offering online courses.

A teacher will have the task of guiding and facilitating this growth, without imposing a fixed end upon the process.

Dewey sometimes uses the term “curriculum” to mean “the funded wisdom of the human race”, the point is that over the course of human history an enormous stock of knowledge and skills has accumulated and the teacher has the task of helping the student to make contact with this repertoire—but helping by facilitating rather than by imposing.

As technology removes the need for knowledge students coming out of University with degrees in Law, Medicine etc will not be needed.

Virtual learning, digitization, and augmented reality will make obsolete our old definitions of a classroom in 2020.

Before each of us is imprisoned in a world of our own making we should move creativity to the top of the education premise.

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( A one minute read)

The feel-good factor of Britain’s success took little time to wear off after it emerged that each medal at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games had cost £4.1m in funding a mere £350m for 27 golds, 23 silvers, and 38 bronzes.

The five-medal haul in Pyeongchang cost a mere 28million, £5.6 million a medal. 

Using the current rates of both precious metals, the street value of a gold medal is approximately $548.

In a country with its national health services trapped for additional funds, (£8 billion a year in funding will be needed by 2020.) going through the biggest financial squeeze in its history with waiting times rising and quality of care deteriorating.

That is spending £6.2bn on two aircraft carrier that will be worthless and possibly be spending £40bn on a programme that is designed for uncertainty and indeed that an “uncertain future threat environment” may mean no threats arise and so £40bn would have been spent unnecessarily.

It would be a fair question to ask are they worth it. Is it Lottery Funds well spent.

I would say yes on the premises that money spent promoting peace far outweighs money spent on defense in a world that needs to come together to fight inequality and climate change.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

Against worthless Aircraft carriers, Trident missiles they certainly are.