Arguably the most worrying news of the week is that in an America university an AI system has created a series of previously unknown viruses capable of infecting and eliminating certain types of bacteria.
Fair enough, you may say, if AI can eliminate some of the most deadly bugs killing people worldwide, this is good. But these experiments can go horribly wrong – as some theorists have said happened in China and let Covid loose on the world.
You’ve only got to have some mistake in the laboratory and an unknown bug escapes with no known antidote. The result could be catastrophic.
But not only that, we know there are crazed nutcases in power in the world who would dearly love to weaponize one of these bugs, attacking an enemy with it.
Sadly the world is not a happy place and before universities carry out experiments – with the very best of intentions – much stricter controls should be in place for the sake of humanity.
LOO AND BEHOLD!
One of the stories in the UK causing the most furore is the news that Labour controlled Cambridge council has decided to provide squat toilets in some public loos – because, apparently, the city has a lot of foreign visitors.
Most people are totally unfamiliar with them – it’s rather like doing what was a necessity centuries ago, pooing in holes in the ground. There are very few of these toilets in the UK- mostly found in Mosques and Islamic places. Critics on the right are labelling this as yet another move to make Muslims feel more at home in the UK. I’ll let you decide on that one – I just think they are most unhygienic and have no place in the UK.
BRITAIN’S £3 TRILLION IOU
I think that most people will agree with me that once you buy your home on a mortgage, the best thing you can do is to gradually pay it off, so that eventually you will be debt free.
Why then is it that presumably intelligent people in Parliament think it perfectly acceptable to borrow more and more money, year after year, and get the country into such a huge debt it will never get out?
The sad fact is that Britain’s national debt has risen above £3trillion for the first time, after the Government borrowed £2.7bn more than expected in the first three months of the current financial year.
The annual cost of servicing government debt will average £112.8billion per year in 2025-26 prices It means every man, woman and child would have to find approximately £42,000 to £44,000 to pay off the country’s official £3 trillion national debt. That’s how much we all owe!
Just one single year’s interest bill would be sufficient to cover the cost of repairing every pothole on roads across England and Wales nearly six times over.
Eight per cent of all money the Government gets in tax goes on paying interest on the debt. So are politicians down the decades financially barmy, or just not fit for the job? I’ll let you give the answer.
Just as a footnote on this – successive governments have raided the National Insurance pot to keep taxes down, which is why Britain now cannot pay people retirement pensions comparable to other affluent countries in Europe.
Spain is doing marginally better, owing €1.74 trillion and economic growth has helped Spain in not having to borrow big sums lately. To pay off Spain’s national debt completely, every single Spaniard would have to pay approximately €34,928. Sadly the borrowing bug crosses borders!
ROMANCE RUNNING ON EMPTY
Why are younger people so stupid? I’m generalising of course, but I watched while a young woman drove to her boyfriend’s house and because he was not in, she waited outside. She sat in the car and left the engine running for at least 15 minutes. That was probably about €5 in fuel, and then think of the unnecessary pollution.
If young people thought a little more about not wasting money they might have enough to saved to put down as a deposit on a mortgage.
