Foretelling the future is a real mug’s game, so here are a dozen of
my predictions. It’s not a list to be taken at all seriously because we really can’t predict the future and even trends are elusive – or am I just watering things down for polite society?
For me the main interest lies in how far down the road we
are with certain obvious trends and what events are likely to intervene - or not. You decide.
1. Democracy will disappear completely from the EU and most
parts of the world except possibly the USA, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Japan.
2. The global aristocracy will become more overt in its
activities, its members more recognizable, its privileges enshrined in law.
Global aristocrats will have a recognized legal status with immunity from local
laws.
3. The UK will cease to exist – it will be relegated to a
number of EU regions.
4. The EU will take over all public service broadcasting.
5. Censoring the internet by the EU will be achieved via a
steady burden of legal obligations imposed on every ISP who wishes to operate
in EU territory. There will be technical ways round it, but nothing legal and
nothing available to the ordinary user.
6. Science will become entirely policy-driven. The EU will
be forced to steal scientific information from other parts of the world as its
own science is relegated to concocting evidence for propaganda purposes.
7. Education will become a function of the EU and it will be
illegal for parents to educate their own children. It will also be illegal for
an unlicensed teacher to teach anything to anybody.
8. Smoking will become illegal everywhere in the EU.
9. Alcohol will become a more and more serious social
problem as people seek some kind of escape from comfortable but wholly
unrewarding lives. The state will issue regular health warnings but will turn a
blind eye to alcohol problems.
10. Motorcycles will not be allowed on public roads.
11. The use of private cars will gradually be restricted to
the wealthy and government employees.
12. Creativity will disappear.
7 comments:
Science will become entirely policy-driven.
As will medicine and EBM.
JH - agreed.
Christ! For a Monday morning I was feeling quite cheerful but now I think I'll go back to bed - and pull the covers over my head!
Aren't we nearly there already?
DD - any excuse (:
D - well the trends seem to be real, but the people involved are born bunglers.
All this pre-assumes that the EU will continue to exist; I find this assumption to be extremely suspect. All the current indicators are that the flagship EU project, the Euro, is headed for the rocks and cannot be saved by any means at all.
When the Euro dies, or more precisely when Germany gets tired of paying everyone else's bills and secedes from the Euro and lets the ECB print as much new money as is needed to inflate away the debt, we will go back to a collection of nation-states. Except, now, the credibility of the EU will be pretty much zero and quite a few former members will be likely to reassess their contributions to EU central funding in a downward direction.
The upset all this will cause will clobber Governments very, very badly. A lot of Government will default on their debts, and subsequently won't be able to borrow. They will thus have to live within their means, which ought to put paid to almost all political "castles in the air" projects for a good long time.
Dan - your prediction may turn out to be accurate. At the moment I'm just looking at the political will which seems intact to me, but unless you mix in their circles, you can't really tell.
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