Paul Buckingham - Philosophy and life in general

Our mothers came to lunch on Sunday. They cover most of the last century from Zeppelins to e-mails and my mother was telling us the story of how one day during the last war she heard my grandmother shouting for help from the garden. There was an air-raid shelter dug into the ground, on the roof of which a thick layer of earth was piled up as additional protection. In the spirit of 'Dig for Victory', my grandmother had planted cucumbers on the roof and had gone out to dig the patch over. She had dug her spade in only to find that she had made contact with the casing of an incendiary bomb, which must have fallen harmlessly in the previous night's air-raid.

Fortunately it did not go off in response to my grandmother's direct hit either. The bomb disposal squad was called by my mother in her official, albeit somewhat unlikely, capacity as the air-raid warden for the street and they made it safe. It's the sort of event in life that stays with you.

Later that day, I was standing by the sink of one of the houses we let to students, washing from my hands the dust from an old wardrobe which I had been breaking up. We needed to replace it and there was no way we could get it down the rather narrow staircase in one piece. It had come with the house, which had been sold to us some years previously by an elderly lady who had lived there for a very long time. And so I suppose the dust I was washing away represented, in some sense, the history of that house.

When we meet someone new, of course, they have no idea what our history is. The people who have featured in our lives over the years know the part of our history which they have shared with us and whatever-else we choose to tell them, but friendships come and go and, during even the longest friendships, there are things which will have happened of which the friend will not be aware.

And so there is no-one who really knows everything which has happened to me and how I reacted to all those events: not even me. I, who lived through it all, cannot remember everything which has happened to me. My memory of my own life is necessarily very selective.

But there is a sense in which everyone knows my history, because the events in my life and how I dealt with them, together with that accident of history, my genome, have made me the person I am today. And so someone who has only known me for a short time sees me for what I am now, rather than seeing what I am now, but through the distorting lens of what I was in the past.

For there is no doubt that it takes some time for us to adjust to the changing personality of our friends. But it takes even more time to adjust to our own changing personalities. My initial reaction, for example, is still to think of myself as the tongue-tied adolescent I was with, now, just an artificial veneer of self-confidence. Of course, the reality is that I have long since ceased to be timid and am now probably at my happiest when having a good conversation.

Which all goes to underline the need to move on from the past. The question is much more what I am going to do today and tomorrow. The past has its share of stories which are worth telling, but the present is where we live. And so we should take a look at ourselves every so often and reflect on who we are now and what our strengths and weaknesses are, so that our past does not impede our future. We should wash away the dust.

This is an essay where I do not know, as I begin to write, what my conclusion will be. But, to start with, let's be honest: Abu Qatada is not someone I would invite into my home. He is an extremist Moslem cleric' who has said some hideous things. If anyone converts from being a muslim to some other religion then he is in favour of that person's murder, and also that of the rest of his family. He has advocated the killing of Jews and attacks on Americans. His disciples have included some very nasty muslim extremists.

Mr Justice Colins, of SIAC, the court dealing with these things, having seen all the evidence against him, open and secret, said of him that he was a truly dangerous individual'. He came here on a false passport in 1993 and, ironically, was granted asylum on the ground that he would be subject to religious persecution if returned to his home country of Jordan. Irony is clearly written over everything in this case: he is using Human Rights legislation to resist being returned to Jordan despite his hatred of everything for which Human Rights stand.

And yet, he has now been awarded compensation by the European Court of Human Rights* (ECHR') of £2,500 (although not the £170,000 claimed) because he was detained for a while under laws which allowed indefinite detention of foreigners who appeared to be a grave threat to national security. The basis of the finding was not that he was not a threat to national security but that his detention was discriminatory, as the House of Lords had already found. This was because the law only applied to foreigners and not to UK nationals as well. The law was therefore changed, and now, in a modified form (Control Orders' - a form of house arrest), it applies to everyone equally. Which is nice.

At almost the same time, the House of Lords has decided** that this man can be returned to his country of origin, Jordan, where he has already been convicted in absentia of terrorism. He will be tried again, but it is said that some of the evidence on which the original conviction was founded was obtained by torture of the witnesses. And that evidence will be used again. This is what the controversy has been about.

Torture is absolutely prohibited by all human rights conventions. But the House of Lords has decided that the question of using evidence allegedly obtained by torture is not the deciding factor. The question is whether there is "a real risk that Qatada's trial in Jordan would be flagrantly unfair in character, course or consequences". In the light of the memorandum of understanding signed between the UK and the Jordanian governments as to how Qatada would be dealt with upon his return, they held there was no real likelihood of such risk.

The Lords said that the Human Rights convention, as previously interpreted by the ECHR itself, did not require a trial process of the standard which would be required for someone in the countries which had signed the convention - only that it should not be flagrantly unfair. The use of evidence allegedly obtained by torture (and there is after all no actual proof of its use) was only therefore one consideration amongst many. So then, we can send someone back to his country of origin where he would face a trial process which we in Europe would regard as unacceptable, but which nonetheless is not likely to be flagrantly unfair. Which does seem to be just a little discriminatory.

One of the problem with human rights is that we know the sort of gross breaches of human rights which we think should never be allowed. We can put names to them - Hitler, Pol Pot etc. But when we try to write down what we mean in a convention we inevitably fail to allow for the unknowable complexities of human life in a very different future. This is part of the reason why we now have so much difficulty in finding a way to deal with someone who is flagrantly evil and is a danger to national security.

The other difficulty is that the simple solution of trying him here for any crimes he has committed here has been ruled out. Why? Because in the opinion of MI5 and the government the trial process would apparently reveal too much about the technology used to obtain the information required to produce a conviction. Although it seems that this disclosure it is not a problem for other countries in Europe.

Quite clearly, the House of Lords has tried to find a way to deport someone that no-one wants here, without at the same time offending the principles of the Human Rights Act. Personally, I am not convinced that they have or that the ECHR will think that they have succeeded. What is really needed, though is a change in policy to allow evidence of crimes committed here to be prosecuted here, despite the misgivings of MI5. It would cause far less damage to the fabric of our human rights than that which we have seen arise from their attempts to detain without the need to prosecute for actual crimes. And human rights are important to us as well as to Mr Qatada.

This year we celebrate Darwin's bicentenary. He was born on 12 February 1809. The widespread media coverage has given us a greater insight into the man and his theories. As we know, at the centre of his revolutionary theory of evolution is his concept of the survival of the fittest. Organisms which are slightly different to others of their kind will have a different probability of survival - whether better or worse. Those which have the better chance of surviving, by being better adapted to their surroundings or being better able to compete with other organisms, will be more likely to live long enough to reproduce. It's as simple as that.

That such a simple concept was so revolutionary is surprising to us now. Darwin though amassed a tremendous amount of evidence during his years of voyage on the Beagle and then for many years after that. It showed the vast number of subtle variations which existed within the same species and which spread in a continuum across to other species. Up until then, it had been accepted that there was little variation within species and that there were clear differences between the species. This was despite the obvious evidence from plant and dog breeding which showed that major changes in a species could be brought about quite easily and quickly.

But there was something else. The pre-Darwinian world was supposed to have meaning, to have purpose. Darwin's world had no need of purpose. By definition, evolution was not aiming at any particular goal: it just happened. This seemed to most people to be completely unnatural. And recent experiments on young children reveal the idea of a purposeful world to be their normal state of mind. According to the researchers, children as young as three attribute purpose to things. When 7 and 8-year-old children were asked questions about inanimate objects and animals, it was found that most believed they were created for a specific purpose. Pointy rocks were there for animals to scratch themselves on. Birds existed "to make nice music", while rivers exist so boats have something to float on. "It was extraordinary to hear children saying that things like mountains and clouds were 'for' a purpose and appearing highly resistant to any counter-suggestion," said the researchers.*

Of course whether this normal' state of mind is innate or comes from upbringing is unknown. But a purposive way of looking at things is natural for adults as well. It is though more a wish to see purpose in what befalls us in life, rather than accepting that our lives are simply the subject of chance events. This wish to see purpose in seemingly random events is exemplified by the astonishing pronouncement of a recently promoted catholic bishop that the devastation and deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina were the result of the sexual immorality of the people in Louisiana. I wonder what he will make of the bush fire disaster in Southern Australia this week.

But his pronouncement also illustrates the quite logical consequence that such a belief in purpose' means that we are more likely to believe that we have a reasonable prospect of controlling our destiny' by non-rational means. We can become more moral people, pray or head the warnings of our horoscopes.

And it seems that in hard times, when human beings feel that they are losing the normal sort of control they have over their lives, they do indeed rely more on superstition, spiritual searching and conspiracy theories. Studies show that people in risky professions - deep-sea fishermen for example - perform a greater number of superstitious rituals than those with desk jobs. Those living in high-risk areas of the Middle East are far more likely to carry a lucky charm or avoid walking under ladders than others. A 2007 study showed a 50% increase in the growth rate of evangelical churches in the US with the downturn of each economic cycle. Uncertainty about our lives, whether at work or at home, tends to makes us unhappy and so it is not surprising that we look for ways, whether real or imaginary, to take back control. Although whether this genuinely gives us all happiness or just makes a large number of us more neurotic is, in my view, open to debate.

So then, whilst Darwin showed us a new way of looking at life and death, many people have a real problem facing up to the consequences. For them there seem to be two options. The first is a refusal, mainly by the very religious, to accept the validity of the overwhelming evidence in its favour. For the others there is the possibility of accepting the theory without ever thinking about its consequences, something which experience tells me is quite widespread. Perhaps in another two hundred years time, we shall as a species, have evolved the ability to live with reality? Maybe. Perhaps by then pigs might also have acquired the ability to fly.

I remember when I was about 12 years old riding my scooter along the garden path and trying to work out what to believe in God' really meant. According to the books I had read, the words had connotations of to trust in, cling to and rely on' God's Son. And, of course, if you did believe then eternal life would be yours. But for all these extra words, the basic point was that there had to be absolute acceptance. To doubt was to sin. And it was that which I found difficult. How is acceptance of something in any sense possible unless there is some convincing evidence that it is true? And no proof is offered; merely assertion.

Now if I want to climb Everest, I know that my best bet is to find myself an experienced Sherpa, one who has done the climb many times before and so who can guide me in (relative) safety to the top. In that sense I shall believe in him, I shall rely upon him, although not absolutely - I know that we may still get into difficulty.

This illustrates the problem that the various religions have. They each profess, alone, to be able to guide us (by very different paths) safely to the top of their Everest - to eternal life. The difficulty is that none of these guides or their illustrious predecessors over the millennia have ever been there themselves and come back, or can produce any evidence that the people they have guided have actually found the safety of eternity.

Belief, however, is not confined to religion. We have political beliefs - I can for instance believe in peace. But in reality all that means is that I want peace - and if necessary I suppose that I have to be prepared to fight for it! One may be motivated by a belief in Socialism. I, however, do not have to believe in Socialism in order to know that, like most people, I have a strong emotional reaction against unfairness (especially towards me) and feel empathy for those in a worse position than me. These are enough to motivate me to do something, without the need for any underlying system of beliefs.

Communism, that extreme form of socialism, asserted that all would be well if we were all equal. Not that it ever lived up to its own agenda, but since the 80's it has suffered a rapid decline and is now unrecognizable as any form of Marxism even in China. Economic reality has ultimately defeated a long-held set of beliefs. Mind you, pure market-based capitalism as a belief system is hardly credible in the light of present circumstances either.

This is the main problem with beliefs: if I say that I believe something to be true, then I have an emotional need to try to justify it, whether I have doubts or not. That is a large part of the reason why communism lasted for so long even when it was quite obvious that it had failed. By having beliefs, I paint myself into a corner. Politics ought surely to be based on pragmatism - what works - rather than the rhetoric of belief.

And then we have quasi-religious beliefs such as astrology or those underlying complimentary medicine'. Now it has been shown by that cynical group of people we call scientists, that most types of complementary medicine are of no more use than flower power was in the 60's or girl power was in the hands of the Spice Girls. So we have a contradiction. We live in a time when there is a call for proper evidence-based medicine in the NHS, rather than relying without question on what doctors have always believed works. At the same time, however, many people choose to accept a rag-bag of mystical ideas which are by and large based on mutually contradictory versions of how the body functions, but all under the overall banner of complementary medicine. Of necessity this results in equally contradictory ways of curing the body's ills, although this contradiction is never pointed out by its practitioners.

Obviously complementary medicine does not extend to serious illness, because there is a tacit understanding that these things shouldn't be relied on for anything life-threatening - hence the substitution of the phrase Complementary Medicine' for the original description Alternative Medicine'. For minor or chronic ailments, however, people will spend money on them. They feel justified in doing so because it is their belief' that it works for them', rather than accepting that people do sometimes just get better or feel better because the body has managed to repair itself or because their mood has changed. The placebo effect is a wonderful thing.

Maybe such beliefs remain popular despite contrary evidence because they are largely protected from argument. For many people there seems to be an unwritten rule that all beliefs are personal' and so not susceptible of debate, especially when they are based on wishful thinking regarding illness and death. To accept that they are wrong is not an option. For them, there is no requirement that a belief should have been arrived at rationally - and so, by the same token it cannot be challenged by reason. The consequence is to encourage lazy thinking.

For these reasons, therefore, I think that it would be useful to abolish the word belief altogether. I cannot see what the word adds to any debate, except for a false degree of certainty - after all, logic tells us that there is nothing that we can believe in, in the strong sense of being absolutely certain of it, unless we are insane or fools or have been convinced of it by a charismatic speaker.

I personally do not feel the need to believe, for instance, that the sun will rise tomorrow. I simply live my life on the assumption that it will do so, based on the available evidence. I shall continue to do so until I see a reason not to - albeit perhaps for only a brief period! I don't even believe' in logic. I use it because it works where no other approach produces reliable results.
So then, I don't have the need for the certainty or the self-delusion of beliefs. Instead, perhaps rather boringly, I have working assumptions based on evidence. And these days we should all surely be asking not just for evidence-based medicine, but for evidence-based living. In doing so, we might at last rid ourselves of the cloying inertia of belief.

It was just the other day that the death was reported of one of the last four of the veterans of the first world war hitherto surviving. He was 108. His three remaining comrades in arms are aged between 107 and 112. And these are men, and men do not usually live for as long as women. In fact currently, there are 7 times as many female centenarians in Britain as men. Now attaining the age of 100 does not rival Methuselah, but it is nonetheless far beyond the Psalmist's three score years and ten.

And becoming a centenarian is on the increase. In 2007, there were 9,300 centenarians in the UK as compared to about 100 in 1900. Bearing in mind that those now aged 100 or more were born around 1900, then it is clear that, with all the medical advances we have seen since then, we can look forward to vastly increasing numbers. In the last 40 years, the number of centenarians has increased tenfold and so it seems reasonable to assume that in 40 years time that figure will reach at least 90,000.

For years, ever since as a young lawyer I consulted my first copy of the actuarial tables, I have been telling people that the longer they live, the greater the age they can expect ultimately to live to. This takes a while to sink in, but I generally find that their eyes un-glaze when I point out that three score and ten, or perhaps three score and fifteen now, is the average innings for all just-born babies. It takes into account the risks we will encounter during our lives from illness or dangerous sports like, well like any kind of sport really. But if, having got to, say, 50, we've managed to avoid them, and being alive is a good indicator of that, then that increases the likelihood of our living to a reasonably ripe old age.

Of course the actual life expectancy at birth varies from person to person, not only because of the amount of danger we expose ourselves to, but it is also influenced by where you are born and who you are born to. This is clearly unfair. I therefore intend to write to Brussels to suggest a new European Directive. It would provide for the Standard European Life Expectancy and would fix it at 75 years.

Does a fixed life span mean that I am in favour of euthanasia for everyone once they have reached the end of their Euro life-span? Well, it could be an answer in a world with an ever-increasing population, but no. Quite obviously though, if in reality we have the actual life-span which nature has bestowed upon us, but are deemed to have a lifetime lasting only 75 years, then something has to change. That something would be the length of the year. We would each therefore have a personalised variable length year. The older we got, the longer our variable year - to be called the Euroyear" - would have to be in order to accommodate our increased life expectancy.

Now this is not a wind up. Alright, it is a wind up, but think of the benefits it could give us. At the age of 50, my life expectancy was actually 84 years. That means that, on average, each of my Euroyears" was 84/75ths of a calendar year or 409 days. At my present age, the age at which the tables anticipate that I will fall off my twig has increased to 87 years. My Euroyear" would therefore have increased by 14 days so that now it is 423 days long. Allowing as well for the previous years when my Euroyear" was underestimated because I hadn't then lived long enough to demonstrate my longevity and you have an almost exponential increase in length for my Euroyear".

Now, apart from the creation of Eurojobs, where's the benefit? Well, as they get older, everyone complains that time rushes by faster and faster. With my proposal this would all stop. Instead, as we got older the years would get longer rather than shorter. As an alternative, you could have the choice of this extra time being reflected in a longer week - currently my Euroweek" would stand at 8 earth days, a possible disadvantage if I still worked, but no problem now that I am retired. Or at last we could have that thing which everybody wants - more hours in the day: an extra 4 for me to be exact.

Just before Christmas, there was a poll in Russia to find the most popular Russian of all time. 50 million people voted. It was a close run thing. In the end, Alexander Nevsky, a 13th century warrior prince came first and second was reformist Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, who was assassinated in 1911. In a strong third position though, came Uncle Joe (Stalin). He had in fact been leading until just before the poll closed.

Now tell me if I'm wrong, but wasn't he some sort of dictator? The one who sent millions of people to their deaths in the work camps of the Gulag and because of whom millions more perished in political purges or during the forced collectivisation of farms during his rule from the 1920s to his death in 1953? The poll was inspired by a similar poll carried out in this country to find the greatest Brit. The result was a close call between such luminaries as Newton and Darwin, but ultimately the winner was Winston Churchill. Alright, he was a war leader, but he was leading the fight against a dictator. And that dictator is still apparently revered by rather strange groups of people who see an iron fist as the main requirement for a leader - providing, of course, that they can be in his gang, even posthumously.

Now I am not suggesting that the Russians who have just voted for him would actually have been in Stalin's gang if they had been alive during his reign of terror. Somehow, it seems that the passage of time has instead enabled them to down-play the horror of what happened in favour of a sentimental attachment to the presumed stability and greatness of the country during that period. In the same way, many people in Zimbabwe will be looking back at the stability and wealth that there was when the minority white population was in charge of what was then called Rhodesia following UDI. That of course, just like the Russian example, is to confuse a wanting for stability and a comfortable life with the means of having it. If dictatorship were indeed the only means of achieving such ends, then it would be a sad day.

Such selective vision is however commonplace in us humans. In fact, I suspect that with the lack of interest that there is in politics and the lack of trust in politicians, a surprisingly large number of people would not be too bothered if they never had to vote again. They would accept the lack of liberty which that would imply as the necessary cost for getting rid of the annoyance of the current political order. If only we could agree on someone to replace them - perhaps we could borrow Barrack Obama for the duration.

I was struck over the Christmas period by the amazing and beautiful descriptions of God contained in the carols and oratorios sung. He (for he' it is) is great, loving, all-knowing and able to do for us everything we need. He is wonderful. Of course, his care for us hardly seems to tie in with the reality of our lives, but we nonetheless continue with our idolisation of God. It seems to me that we have moved on from appeasing the local dictators - the spirits of the trees and the rivers and instead we have created a supposedly benign mega-dictator. We have managed to define God in such a way that he is a paradigm of all that we could ever want - the perfect benign dictator - and having so defined him, it seems impossible to remove him from his position. It would destroy our dreams.

Dictatorship, however benign it may appear to be on the surface, is still though an aggregation of power in one persons' hands, or perhaps I should say in the hands of a group of people. Because, as we all know, a dictator cannot dictate without the aid of his gang of supporters. This is true in the playground where the bully needs to have mates in order to be really effective, just as much as for Stalin or Saddam Hussein who needed people who would accept the reward offered in exchange for being enforcers, even if it was just the reward of not being themselves in the firing line. Are the clerics of any religion any different? When we cease to acknowledge the rule of their particular God, we know that he will visit terrible vengeance upon us in the form of plague, pestilence and earthquakes. We know this, because the religious folk tell us so. And they are more than happy with such an arrangement. They are, after all, in God's gang. You cross them at your peril.

The relationship between the gang members is inherently unstable, based as it is on competition to please the man with the ultimate power and so improve your position in the pecking order. And when the dictator dies, there is always a power struggle. But how much more difficult must it be to maintain order when the dictator has no earthly form. Where the adherents must decide on very limited information what the dictator would have wanted. After all, this is what we see with religions. And in the sectarianism which is rampant in all religions, we see the disorder that would be expected where there is no tangible presence to keep control, with followers of the different sects at war with each other. Often literally.

But in the more civilised parts of the world, I suspect that there is a growing realisation that we should not take all this too seriously. There are still the true believers who take it all seriously, but for the vast majority in this country and in Europe generally, I think that these days the idea of God can be put into the same category as homeopathy or reflexology. We dip into it in a rather embarrassed way when we have nowhere-else to go but, otherwise, we live our lives without taking much notice of the shouty people who want us to chastise ourselves for our sins or have numerous children. It may even be for once that a dictatorship will come to an end simply because no-one can be bothered to be afraid any longer - interestingly, it may be ended through apathy rather than conflict.

Scientists have reported an experiment they have carried out on a blind man. He was blind because he had had a stroke which had damaged the part of his brain which enabled him consciously to see things. His eyes and the optic nerves were unaffected, as was the part of the brain to which the optic nerve reported. They put him in a room with lots of things in it and asked him to walk across it. He succeeded in doing so without colliding with any of the obstacles. He was unaware at a conscious level of having seen anything, but his sub-conscious brain had seen' everything and guided him accordingly.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging has apparently come a long way and now it really is possible not only to localise where different functions of the brain take place, but also to see them take place in response to external stimuli. In this way a picture has built up which tells us that we are both very different to how we normally perceive ourselves and that Freud was not quite as far away from the truth as we nowadays tend to imagine. Because now it seems that in fact the vast majority of processing goes on at a sub-conscious level, with only occasional reporting back to the conscious level of the results. This is true of what we would see as intellectual tasks as well as everyday things. We see this in doing the cross-word, where we look at a clue and have no clue as to the answer. Give it ten minutes and, preferably, a complete distraction, and upon returning to the clue, the answer is blindingly obvious. Likewise, we go to sleep unable to see an answer to a problem only to wake up with a much clearer picture of how to deal with things. From the research carried out, it seems that it is both when we are awake and also when we are asleep that our subconscious is beavering away to produce solutions. It never shuts down.

We are not surprised when we walk down the street without consciously making an effort either to walk or to avoid collisions with other people. But of course, babies don't do that. They have to learn to walk, to take avoiding action. But they soon sub-contract that work to the sub-conscious so that they can get on with other things. And it seems that those other things include not only the motor tasks which we have to manage in order to stay upright, but also, at least in part, the higher, rational activities that we need to engage in order to determine the meaning of life, the universe and everything. After many years of study and of practice of the law, the mere presentation to me of a problem would normally automatically bring to the fore at least the outlines of its solution. Presumably from my subconscious. That in turn would suggest to my conscious brain how to investigate further and then by combining my background knowledge' together with the consciously acquired new data from e.g. the case-law I consulted, the most likely solution would gradually emerge into my conscious brain. Apparently that's how it happens.

So what exactly does the conscious me do? The latest research suggests that the sub-conscious is processing all the information we take in, but the conscious brain (the mind') decides what information it actually needs for what it has determined is required for its purposes. It then extracts that information from the basement level. Current theory is that the conscious brain is there to manage things. It is there to keep records and plan; to keep to the fore a picture of who we are and what we want to achieve. Unlike other animals we have long term goals. And to have these it is reasonable to assume that it is efficient for us to be more than just dimly aware of ourselves as entities. In order to plan for the future, we have to see ourselves as part of a process in time - to imagine ourselves in our planned future. To interact socially and so co-operate as successfully as we do with others, we have to be able to recognise them as beings similar to ourselves and understand how they think. We have to stand in their shoes. We must be fully self-conscious.

And in all of this, is there a place for a mind separate from the brain? There seems to be no need for one according to the scientists. But for those who still think there is one, I wonder how they would explain Alzheimer's disease? The dualist's non-material mind is supposed to be the real me and allow me' to continue into eternity. With Alzheimer's, however, accompanying the progressive loss of the memories is the inevitable loss of personality, the loss of me'. It seems odd that a brain disease can mean that the non-physical mind parallels the physical brain's decline, so that there is essentially nothing left of the real me to go onto the next life - neither personality nor memories. You would think that my eternal spirit would at least have a back-up copy of me to use in case of emergency, both during my life and afterwards.

For more detailed information about fMRI etc. please see the web-site for In our Time', 13th November 2008

The Swiss have given the world many notable things - the Swiss Army knife, the cuckoo clock and, of course, the Swiss Roll. What they gave us on Sunday last (30 November 2008) was, however, quite extraordinary. Despite the disapproval of the USA and the UN drugs authority, they voted Yes' in a referendum in which they were asked to approve the continuation of a regime under which the State supplies heroin to long-term heroin users.

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s Switzerland had one of the highest rates of heroin addiction in Europe. In cities such as Zurich, Basel and Bern it was common to find addicts injecting and dealers selling publicly in the streets and parks. Users often shared needles, leading to high HIV infection rates, and in the spread of Hepatitis. In an attempt to reduce the spread of such diseases, the Swiss health department began introducing needle exchanges, followed by clean injection rooms where addicts could take their illegally-bought heroin in a safe environment, supervised by a nurse.

For many, the next logical step was to start prescribing heroin to those addicts, many of them already ill, who really did not seem able to get off drugs. And so in 1998 following a referendum the law in Switzerland was changed to allow a ten year experiment in the state supply of heroin. The prescription of heroin was allowed to junkies who had tried everything else, but had been unable to give up the drug. Its prescription was though part of an overall strategy involving help from psychiatrists and social workers as well, in an attempt to help the addicts to normalise their lives.

Under the scheme, patients can take heroin several times each day but, to have the supply, they must go to a clinic where they inject themselves as a nurse watches. There is no chance therefore of the heroin being taken away for sale on a black market. Although the dose is not in practice limited by the state, the amount mostly chosen for injection by addicts themselves is just enough to satisfy their cravings but not enough to cause a big high. This means that after a relatively short period of time, they are fit to leave and get on with their day. Those who have jobs go back to work. For those who have families, it is possible to have something approaching a relatively normal life.

The permanent change in the law had already been approved by Parliament earlier this year, but the (mainly religious) right wing in Switzerland demanded a referendum on the basis that it was morally wrong to supply heroin to people who were never likely to become abstinent. In their view, it was only right to supply heroin where the treatment' had as its likely outcome that the addicts would give up their habit entirely. Otherwise, how could it be regarded as treatment'? So why did the Swiss decide last week by a majority of over two-thirds to adopt the more pragmatic view? Well, the previous ten years were an experiment and the results are now in:

And there is another, unforseen, result: the incidence of heroin use has dropped from 850 new users in the year 1990 to only 150 new users in the year 2002 and has continued at this lower level since. This contrasts with the situation regarding the number of users in the UK, Italy, and Australia, which has continued to rise. It seems that the supply of heroin by state-run clinics has changed the image of heroin use from being the rebellious act of rock stars to being an illness which needs therapy. Finally, for the Swiss, heroin seems to have become a 'loser drug', with its attractiveness fading for young people.

Switzerland is now looking at extending the idea to other drugs, notably cocaine. Other countries, such as Australia, Germany, Denmark and Holland are seriously looking into the adoption of the policy for their heroin addicts.

To give state help to people to continue to take heroin for the rest of their lives may seem shocking to those with absolutist moral views. For those of those of us who are not so hide-bound, however, it makes simple humanitarian sense to help people who have little real prospect of overcoming what is a dreadful disability and, at the same time, to relieve society of the consequences of the criminality which would otherwise inevitably accompany their sad lives. Maybe one day, even in this country, we shall benefit not only from Swiss Rolls, but Swiss pragmatism.

Everyone 'knows' that we in Britain are more class-bound in our attitudes than anyone-else, except perhaps the Hindus in India. We are known to define ourselves in terms of a range of classes and sub-classes from upper class to working class. And we look down on or up to each other accordingly.

Following the takeover by William the Conqueror, it was he and his entourage who took the positions of power and became the new upper class, much no doubt to the chagrin of the previous Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, who would have regarded them as nouveaux' and arrivistes' and just, well, too français.

We didn't really have any other major upsets after that until the aftermath of the two world wars. Oliver Cromwell did have a go at changing things permanently, but the fact that he didn't really do class was probably the reason why his new order didn't last much after his death. At the top level, after all, the trappings of class are a reward for faithful service. If you don't reward your followers well, particularly after a civil war, then they'll transfer their allegiance to someone who will.

I do wonder, however, to what extent class is still important in society, rather than being simply an echo from earlier times. Advertisers, for example, faced with getting a good return on their budgets categorise us in terms of income, jobs type, educational attainment and many other measurable factors and target adverts accordingly. They do not take much notice of the traditional class divisions.

Now it is certainly true that there is still a nebulous idea of class which permeates society and much time and ink has been used in trying to categorise people by their titles, manners, accents and use of the word lavatory'. But do the class divisions have any generally agreed definition? Is class useful in describing people? Personally, I find it very difficult to use it in a way which tells me anything very useful about any individual. Rather, I find myself trying to shoehorn a person into my rather vague notions of a class category, when in reality no individual can be defined so simplistically.

Most of us have characteristics which cross traditional class divides to some extent. I dare say that even the toffs like bangers and mash from time to time. If we look at individuals, we see that each will belong to many different social groups: the banker who goes to Aston Villa matches; the lawyer who goes to evening classes at the local comp to improve his French; the newspaper editor who belongs to the local bowls club. In the detail of what we do, we are able to see each other in more than the monochromatic light of class.

It is perhaps an irony of our times that the stately homes are now largely owned by the National Trust (i.e us), or else by aristocratic owners reduced to making ends meet by letting the public parade around them and hiring them out for corporate events. Such is the relevance of our old class system.

Indeed probably the most visible class' nowadays (in the media, at least) is a new group of people - the Celebrity Class, which is a mixture of everyone who has somehow contrived to get in the public eye, from actors and billionaires to the latest winner of Big Brother. It is a class of all classes and possibly both the most desired and most despised of all of them. And also the most irrelevant to the reality of almost all of our lives.

But whatever I may think about the relevance of class, it is still true that I am not likely to mix much with other groups of people who do not share one or more of my interests. Why would I? And my interests are quite likely to be influenced considerably by how I was brought up, my education and the type of work I do. In itself this is not a problem: we do what we want to do and mix with whom we want to mix. And if an aristocrat does not want to mix with me simply because of his perception that he is superior to me, then his blinkered vision is his problem.

John Prescott, as we have seen in his documentary, in being fixated on seeing things from a working class perspective, is similarly blinkered. I was brought up in working class circumstances, with the tin bath hanging on the outside of the kitchen, but do not now define myself by that. I had my opportunities, as did my parents, and we took them. As did John Prescott. By my own efforts, and with the support of my parents, I have moved on.

But this is not a way open to everyone. And it is here that a real class problem exists: amongst that underclass of people, who live in dreadful conditions and who do not have the choices which the rest of us have. They cannot take advantage of the chances that education gives if they are not encouraged to attend school, if they take drugs or are in prison. They will not maximise their chances of good health if they live in conditions where chips are the only vegetable. For us to talk about equality of opportunity for them is vacuous: even if excellent schools and health systems are there for them, the major influence in peoples' lives remains that of their parents or indeed parent. Statistically, the children of well-educated, well-off parents will usually progress just as well if they go to reasonably well-performing state schools as if they go to private schools. For the other extreme in society, no amount of external provision of opportunity will overcome the malign influence of a home where there is no thought of trying to improve their position; where it is perfectly normal for state benefits, rather than work, to put burgers on the table and to keep the TV turned on in the corner of the room.

Can we deal with this in any way? You would think that the Conservatives would say that it is up to each person to get on his bike' and sort himself out. It is therefore all the more surprising that the Conservative sponsored Centre for Social Justice', run by former conservative party leader Ian (Duncan) Smith is saying just the opposite. (See http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk ). They say that more state-sponsored intervention is needed in such families to help them to cope with their circumstances and so lift them out of poverty and into a more productive life. As always, the devil is in the detail, both that of the policies and of the individuals lives. Combining the need for intervention to help such people out of those circumstances with the need to let them take responsibility for their own lives as much as possible is very difficult but, it seems, is possible granted the will, and money, to do it.

So then, it seems to me that we can live with most of our class system: its influence on most of our lives is largely imaginary, but it helps us to promote the picture that foreigners have of us - as totally bound up in tradition. That, after all, is why they continue to come and spend money here as tourists. What we do not want them to see, however are the conditions of those at the bottom of the heap. And that is where the influence of class is real and, sadly, not imaginary.

Last week I went to the funeral of a Coleshill man who had been killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan a fortnight before his regiment was due to return home. I decided that I would go and attend - out of solidarity.

I did not imagine I would be able to get into the Church: I did not even try, but stood instead with about 300 others outside the packed church. There was supposed to be a relay of the service to those outside, but the PA system did not work. Instead we stood talking in low voices beneath our umbrellas in the cold and rain. The people around me were of all ages and all types. It was half-term and so there were quite a lot of youngsters amongst the crowd of people. I ended up standing by and chatting to someone I know who runs discos for a living, but who was there, like me, not because he knew the soldier or his family, but simply because he felt that, as someone who lived in the town, he should be there.

The Church itself is set in extensive grounds at the back of the shops which form the High Street and which act as a sound barrier to the passing traffic. It was almost as if we were in the rural world of yesterday. Except that the day's events were very much of today. Finally, the coffin was taken from the Church down to the cemetery by his former comrades in arms. A sergeant amongst the group pall-bearers was clearly having great difficulty preventing himself from crying. It was a moving event.

Whilst always being against the war in Iraq, I felt that the war in Afghanistan was justified in international law and also on moral grounds. Al Qaeda had just carried out the attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Taliban government had fully supported Al Qaeda in what it had done. The Taliban had imposed a repressive regime on its citizens which, morally speaking, as far as I could see was not much different to the infamous Cambodian regime of Pol Pot. And so I hoped, and for a while it appeared, that some semblance of a civilised life could be brought to the country. The terrible excesses of the Taliban's virulent extremism became history. Education for women was restored and people could go about their lives without being arrested by the thought police.

As time has gone on, however, things have not gone as well as we might have hoped. Why? Well, it seems to have been the usual combination of an unwillingness to put money and people into the aftermath of the war and the consequent return to power of local gangsters (the so-called Warlords') in the now all too familiar power vacuum which followed the defeat of the Taliban. Yet again, the idea of winning the hearts and minds of the populace seems to have been relegated to a distant second, whilst the undermanned armed forces try just to bring security' to the various regions of the country. Why are they so undermanned? Mainly because of that other war - the one in Iraq. That and, it seems, a close-minded approach to doing things.

Somewhat ironically, I was wearing a poppy as I stood outside the church. Afghanistan is the world's leading producer of opium (82% of global opium production), cultivating 1,650 square kilometres of opium poppies and a potential 6,100 metric tons of opium in 2006. The policy at the moment is to try to eradicate poppy crops, thus removing a major source of income for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, but also leaving the farmers in remote villages unable to make a reasonable living and so antagonising the community in consequence.

An alternative to this has been suggested by the Senlis Council (http://www.senliscouncil.net). Put simply, it is that instead of destroying the poppies, their planting should be done in a controlled way with suitably high price paid to the farmers in order to allow the legal production of the number one pain-killer, morphine. Virtually the whole of the world's production of morphine goes to about 20% of its population - i.e the developed countries. The other 80% of the world largely goes without, despite the fact that they suffer more pain than we do, granted for instance the much later diagnosis of cancer, and therefore its untreatability, and the much higher incidence of Aids in, for instance, Africa. The detailed proposals are on their site and have been referred to in the press on a number of occasions.

The American administration, no doubt still smarting from the abolition of prohibition in the 30's, is against it. They list a number of reasons for this, most of which could be overcome granted the will to do so. Perhaps the two reasons given which stood out as being quite insane, however, are as follows:

1. "There is no demand for it". Quotas for the legal production of heroin poppies are set through an international body and are based on previous usage in each country. But the cost of morphine is high and so doctors in developing countries do not prescribe for their patients what they simply could not afford to buy. So there is no demand. Welcome to the world of Kafka!

2. "Pain relief should not be the priority - priority should be given to anti-Aids and anti-cancer drugs". As if preventing or curing illness on the one hand and pain relief on the other are somehow mutually inconsistent!

Sometimes I despair of the stupidity of those in charge. Maybe the new American administration will think differently.

In prehistoric times when hunters and gatherers worked together to get food for the table, there can have been no real concept of money. What after all would you use it for? There was no Waitrose then; nor were there gas bills. The more skilled hunters may well have demanded the mammoth fillet instead of the scrag-end in recognition of their skills and there may have been bartering where the neighbour had a particularly desirable stone necklace or flint axe. But the idea of an object representing some sort of abstract value had not yet arrived. There was no system of tokens which could be exchanged for something-else later on.

When society became more complex, however, simple bartering was no longer sufficient. In order to allow trade to expand, money was undoubtedly necessary. It enabled you to value something at the point when the job was done or the item sold. You could then carry its value around with you and use it at a later time or in a different place to buy whatever it was you needed. Of course it was originally based on gold. And so the money itself was actually worth' something - everybody recognised its scarcity and so valued it highly. They still do.

However, a system of currency does not actually require that coins have intrinsic value or be backed by gold. Which is as well, granted that Gordon sold the majority of ours back in 1999, leaving us with only 300 tonnes of gold, then worth just under £3 billion as against a total amount of currency circulating of about £750 billion.

But, the coins and notes we use only have to be accepted by all of us to have the value stated on them for the system to work. And we all unthinkingly sign up to that idea by the acceptance of salaries etc. for the work we do, instead of being paid in legs of lamb or washing-up liquid. We can take our money to the shop and buy turnips or caviar as we choose or we can save it for a rainy day. With money we can all get what we want, when we want it, as long as we all believe in its value. Of course when we lose confidence in its future buying power, as in Zimbabwe, then its value can diminish rapidly.

The problems really start, however, when you try to make money out of money. Businesses need money to trade. Big companies need enormous amounts of money to build skyscrapers, roads, ships and planes. Of course they borrow from the banks, but they also issue shares in order to raise the money. The shareholder buys a stake in the company and, in return, the company will pay him dividends, if it is successful. But the shares are themselves a saleable commodity. They can be traded on the stock market. This is where it can all go wrong because it is where the gambling instinct comes to the fore - buying and selling shares in a fluctuating market in order to make a profit on those transactions. No longer is it just a question of dividends in exchange for a capital investment, with the possibility of an eventual capital gain.

And so we have millions of people in suits being paid to guess how the value of shares will change, minute by minute, in response to, yes, the underlying value of the company and its trading prospects, but also, just as importantly, to that very strange thing called market sentiment' or what is really just herd instinct.

For the market is based only in part on reason. It seesaws between opposite extremes of value based on the wisdom of the crowd - gossip, received wisdom about what will happen in the next few days or weeks. Why? Because as humans that's what we do: we follow fashion, and stock traders are no different; they too follow the herd. We find it very difficult to follow our own path when all around us are acting differently. In connection with the first stock market crash in 1720 - the South Sea Bubble - Isaac Newton said that he could not calculate the madness of people'. Mind you he was probably feeling sore through having lost £20,000 from the crash. John Maynard Keynes commented, "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent".

But, despite all the evidence, we seem to believe that we are not really gambling, but taking a reasoned view of our investment. In times of healthy economic growth, with stocks going up in consequence, it is easy to convince ourselves that the gains are the result of our special foresight. And when markets fall, we are like gamblers who are convinced that just another throw of the dice will reverse our fortunes.

It is high time that we recognised that there is no difference in essence between the racing tips in the Sports Argus and the stock-market tips in the FT or between the man in the cloth cap trying to work out the form of the runners and riders in the 3:30 at Uttoxeter and the stock-market traders in their red braces. I would send the lot of them off to Gamblers Anonymous.

The President of Formula One, Max Moseley was, as we all know, videoed engaging in the sort of conduct which is the life-blood of tabloid newspapers. His predilection for sado-masochism with prostitutes put him and Formula One on the front page of The News of the World' for all the wrong reasons. But the newspaper felt it had to appeal not to mere prurience, but to high morality in order to put him on the front page. And so it alleged that the role-play' was based on a Nazi/Holocaust theme and that, accordingly, it was in the public interest to run the story in all its detail.

Moseley sued, but not for defamation (where he would certainly have either lost or at least not been awarded any damages) but for invasion of privacy. He alleged that the Nazi allegations were untrue and that accordingly he was entitled to respect for his private life' meaning that the paper had not been entitled to publish what it did. The judge found the Nazi allegations to be unfounded and so awarded substantial damages and costs to Moseley. In an interview with the BBC the other day, Moseley complained that the revelations had caused severe embarrassment to his wife and children. He said, in effect, that that was all the newspaper's fault - what he did in his private life was up to him. He was entitled to keep his secret life secret, even from his wife. Perhaps particularly from his wife. The general reaction on the web can be summed up in the words what incredible arrogance!'.

Miriam Margoyles, the film and stage actress, was the subject of Desert Island Discs a few weeks ago. Her choice of records was interesting, as was the wonderful choice of a luxury to take onto the island - a flush toilet. During the programme, however, she told us that 40 years ago she had revealed to her Jewish mother that she was a lesbian. Her mother had had a stroke a few days later and died shortly afterwards. Miriam Margoyles blamed this on the shock of her revelation and said how much she had regretted saying anything about it. She believed that such things did not need to be talked about where it might upset the hearer to know. She therefore disagreed with those running Stonewall who demand that all homosexuals 'come out'. In their view, solidarity between homosexuals is vital in order to overcome the prejudice which certainly did exist 40 years ago and undoubtedly still exists, although to a lesser extent today. Whilst I can see the point of what they are saying, the gentler view expressed by Miriam Margoyles seems to me to be quite justified.

There are of course some arrogant people who pride themselves on saying precisely what they think at all times. Most of us though exercise our discretion over what we reveal to others, very often for good and, I would suggest, morally justifiable reasons. Although Thou shalt not bear false witness' is one of the commandments, and liars are to be consigned to the flames of Hell, little white lies have always been regarded as justifiable. All babies are, of course, beautiful. Really. But what do you do if you discover that your best friend's husband is having an affair? Is it anything to do with you? Most agony aunts seem to advise that you might perhaps say something to the errant husband, but that you should not say anything to the wife.

So what is the difference if you are a journalist dealing with the peccadilloes of the rich and famous? The standard thinking is that these things need to be revealed if it is in the public interest'. The public is most certainly interested, fascinated even, when such things happen. But that does not mean that it is necessarily in the public's interest that they be revealed.

In this country, however, it seems that it is enough that the deception has occurred in order to justify the suggestion that that person is not fit to govern us or to take decisions where integrity is necessary. If he has deceived his wife, then will he not deceive us? Well, in the case of such deception by the man in the street, the answer is: probably not, actually. Such behaviour is usually reckoned to be in a different category to the rest of what we do. But the ruling classes and the rich and famous are not the man in the street. And whenever a window is opened on their lives we seem to see a tendency amongst them to think that they can get away with anything; that, just like Max Moseley, they are exempt from the requirements of the morality normally expected to be observed by mere mortals. But if they do not feel constrained by the ordinary decencies of life then, as in many a civilisation before, that general state of immorality can cause major problems to the country as a whole.

If they do not feel concern that a god is looking on and judging their actions, then it may be that the newspapers have to take on that role: investigating what they do and revealing all to a fascinated public. Although I hesitate to say so, perhaps the job of the newspapers is, after all, to bring the rich and famous down a peg or two.

"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

Some 60 years later, in 1838, The People's Charter' was published by the Chartists, a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom. The charter stipulated the six main aims of the movement as:

* Suffrage for all men aged over 20
* Electoral districts with equal numbers of voters
* Voting by secret ballot
* An end to the need to own land in order to be an MP
* Pay for Members of Parliament
* Annual election of Parliament

At first glance, there appears to be no conflict between the statement made by Burke and the demands of the Chartists, the first 5 of which were finally accepted in 1918. But two of their demands make Burke's statement of principle difficult to achieve in practice: the requirement that MP's be paid a salary (so that non-toffs could stand for election) and having an annual election to Parliament. Why? Well in the last few weeks we have seen the reason for this inconsistency played out in the democratic system of America.

A large majority of Congressmen turned down the $700,000,000,000 (is that enough noughts?) bail-out package. They were of course entitled to exercise their judgement and say no if that was what they believed. But the reports of why those in marginal seats actually said no are very instructive. It was reported that there had been a violent reaction against the bill from the grass roots. They had telephoned their congressmen in droves to tell them of their disapproval. The elections for the House of Representatives were to be held only a few weeks later and so the congressmen had to bow to the immediate will of the people rather than exercise their own judgement, or face the near certain loss of their seats and their salaries. The impending election meant that they could not take a long term view of the rights and wrongs of the bill. And so we see that the fact that people are now career politicians, relying on their salaries, makes their role as independent thinkers much more fragile. Even worse, were there actually to be elections every year, then their representative role would be even further diminished. They would become simple proxies for their constituents. And I am not convinced that this would produce sensible long-term results. We need people who can reflect in an informed way on the great issues of the day and then decide on our behalves accordingly.

But then we look at the morality of what happened. The grass roots were against the package on the basis that it would be grossly unfair and immoral to reward the fat cats who had got them into the mess in the first place - despite the fact that the ordinary Joe would suffer just as much, if not more, from the lack of action to prop up the banks (and so the fat cats). A clear case of an irrational mob reaction. But this was soon abandoned when, a day later, the stock market had its biggest fall ever. Main Street finally realised that this affected not only the super rich, but them as well via their pension funds, the availability of credit and so, ultimately, their own jobs. The telephone calls for rejection of the bill became outnumbered by those in favour of it.

No doubt some congressmen breathed a sigh of relief, realising that they could do as they had always wanted to and vote for the bill. But having frightened the executive and the party leaders with their initial rejection, there was then something else which came into play. The bill was passed on Friday with the benefit of an extra $100,000,000,000 in scrapings from the Pork Barrel - tax breaks for local groups in their constituencies, like the $7 million for the children's wooden arrow makers in Myrtle Point, Oregon - given to bribe those (presumably unprincipled) Congressmen whose votes could be bought. They were given something that they could wave under the noses of their potential electors, so bolstering their chances of keeping their jobs.

Thus we see that capitalism, condemned as being an activity based on selfishness and greed, is probably no worse in practice than our democratic system of governance, which is also ultimately based on selfishness, that of the voters and of some, at least, of their representatives. Mind you democracy is probably still the best system we have - in principle. We just have to get the practicalities sorted out, so that long term needs can stay on top. This time it was only achieved by the skin of our teeth.

I am still reeling from the fact that Damien Hirst has made £111 million from the recent auction sale at Sotheby's in London, mainly of the works which remained unsold at the various galleries through which he normally sold them, plus a few new works.

From what I have seen in the news reports, they seemed mostly to follow the same theme - an animal or fish preserved in formaldehyde or butterflies on a painted background. There was for instance "The Golden Calf", sold for £9.2m - a young bull in a tank of formaldehyde wearing a golden disc. Or you could have for £9.6m "the Kingdom", which is a preserved tiger shark in a tank. If your budget didn't stretch quite that far then for £541,000 you could have bought "Strawberries and cream", described as "butterflies, manufactured diamonds and household gloss on canvas". And all this at a time when the financial world went into melt-down, with Mr Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary announcing in the same week that the various Banks' toxic assets (the mortgage backed instruments) would be taken off their hands by the American taxpayers and realised gradually over the natural lifetimes of those loans, meaning that their present day value (or lack of it) would cease to be of immediate relevance.

Now it is not unusual for an artist to produce works which are similar to each other. The same haystack can be seen in very many different pictures by Monet, although each in different lighting conditions, that being the point of it all. And Chaim Sutine produced pictures of sides of meat, a part skinned rabbit and a plucked chicken. These are hung alongside works by Renoir, Cézanne, Picasso etc in the Orangerie in Paris and just one floor down from Monet's world famous Nymphéas'. But pickled animals? Just as the financial world seems in recent years to have been a house of cards, so I cannot help but think that these latest purchases will not prove to be quite the investment opportunity they may appear to be.

The banks depend on confidence to keep going. Once that disappears, then the system stops working. Assets which have a realisable value in the long term such as those based on house loans, some at least of which will be paid off normally, suddenly have no short term value, simply because no-one is interested in buying them. Without buyers, assets, however valuable they may seem, simply have no value.

The art world depends not on confidence, as such, but on that even more changeable thing, fashion. If an artist is not fashionable, then no matter how technically brilliant he is or how much his works may engage your emotions, big money will not be paid for them. Billionaires will not want to show off such works to their friends. And that is what it seems mainly to be about. After all, it is difficult to imagine people discussing the finer points of the Golden Calf's tank or the precise concentration of the formaldehyde used. Even the poor calf was just the product of nature. The golden disc is the only other thing and it is difficult to see long conversations ensuing from it. No, the point of it all is to own something which is both fashionable amongst your peers (i.e. can be called "cutting edge art") and has cost a lot.

But if Damien Hirst had only produced a single work, then it would be highly unlikely to fetch significant money. There has to be a body of work which can, over time, make the artist well-known and create a clientele all of whom have a vested interest in seeing the works they have bought go up in value. Having bought one work, they can be persuaded to buy more, but at increased prices and to persuade their friends to do so as well. Why? Well, the more they are willing to pay for new works, the more the works they have already bought will appreciate in value. That is how it works. And so, rather like a pyramid selling scam, it goes on until...until the earlier sharks starts to rot, (which they do despite the formaldehyde) or until someone finds a new Damien Hirst, when the bubble in the original Damien's work will start to deflate.

It has probably got to the point where Hirst no longer much cares about the money. He must after all be amongst the world's super rich. But his policy of producing lots of works which are similar to each other must in itself also eventually devalue the brand. Too many sharks in formaldehyde, whether wearing a golden crown or dressed in goggles and a snorkel tube will not be good for the resale market.

So it is to be hoped that the Banks have not invested in such works. If they have, then I can imagine a latter-day US Treasury Secretary announcing that they have set up a mechanism for taking the Bank's latest toxic assets off their hands and, this time, having to throw them back into the sea.

Colliding worlds

After 15 years of construction work the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has started to accelerate each of two contra-rotating beams of protons to just under the speed of light. The point of all this (and of the 10 billion euro cost) is to try to recreate the presumed conditions in the first trillionth of a second after the big bang'. This will be done by smashing the two beams of protons together. A direct hit will produce an unimaginably high temperature which will destroy the protons themselves. It will turn them back into pure energy. As the temperature then reduces there should be a re-creation of all the intermediate stages which preceded the coming into existence of those protons 13.7 billion years ago at the dawn of the universe.

Or so it is hoped. The point is that no-one really knows what will happen. It is a big experiment. There are a number of theories to explain the sub-atomic world, but none of them so far are actually borne out by experimental data. In order to explain the very existence of mass, the theories posit the existence of the so far never detected Higgs boson' (with its flip side, the Higgs field). Such particles should finally be seen in the aftermath of this small bang'. If not, the theories are dead in the water.

But none of the theories we have go on to explain the macro world - the world we can see, with its gravitational pull. We do not have the so-called grand unified theory of matter which is the holy grail of physics. Not even Einstein could crack the problem.

It has become even worse since his day because observations of deep space now tell us both that there is insufficient observable matter (i.e. mass) to hold the galaxies together and also that the galaxies are flying apart at too great a velocity to be explained by current gravitational theory. Rather than tweak the gravitational constant, some physicists have proposed the existence of dark mass' and its counterpart dark energy' to explain what is going on. What are they? Nobody knows, because they are undetectable by current methods. They are only at present a conjecture to deal with an anomaly. But it is hoped that the LHC will ultimately tell us this and everything else about matter as it replays before our very eyes what happened when particles started to condense out of what had been, until then, simply pure energy.

So then, we live in exciting times. But it seems that not all of us share that excitement. There is the obvious question of cost. What is the point of spending so much money to find out the answers to questions that most people do not have the ability to understand or think relevant? But then most people do not understand that without quantum theory, which no-one really understands, apart from a relatively few mathematicians on our planet, we would not have the semi-conductors (electron tunnelling) or hard disc drives (read-write heads using giant magnetoresistance') needed to run our computers. Neither would we for instance be able to make progress with increasing the output from solar cells. No, I am not thinking of that.

What I am thinking of is the contrast between, on the one hand, the open-minded wish of the scientists involved in the CERN experiment to test their theories, if necessary to destruction, in order to be able to explain how the world works and, on the other hand, that other global phenomenon of the last few weeks - the closed mind of Sarah Palin.

The candidate to be the vice-president, as well as being a self-declared pit bull with lipstick, is also a creationist. She is someone who would not therefore know the meaning of having an open mind, of looking for explanations of what goes on around us. After all, the good book tells us all we need to know.

It tells us for instance in Genesis chapter 1 vs 11 to 19 that plants were growing and producing seeds and that trees were bearing fruit on the third day. That of course was just before the fourth day, when the sun finally appeared in the sky to give light upon the earth' and so, a day too late, enabled photosynthesis actually to take place. She and her friends would no doubt completely disagree with the matter of fact programme I saw on the television the other day relating to fossils: for creationists, the various prehistoric eras never existed. The fossils are just God's little joke.

Neither does she think that there is anything in the warnings of the scientific world when they say that there is about a 95% probability that man is causing global warming and that as a consequence we need to curtail our CO2 producing activities. Maybe that's because it's so cold in Alaska that global warming sounds attractive..

And so we have a potential leader of the free world who makes George Bush look almost intelligent and even liberal in his views - at least he has finally accepted the basic global-warming argument. So if I believed in a god, I would even now be on my knees praying for long life for John McCain. We'll just have to hope for his sake that God herself isn't a hockey mom. I wouldn't give much for McCain's chances if she is.

We were in Annecy, France and on what was a very warm night, we decided to have an early meal at a restaurant in the town. Because it was only 7 o'clock, the restaurant was almost deserted and so we were given a table right by a wide, open window looking out directly onto a canal. The canals going through the town were at one time used for commerce, as witness the steps down to the canal. These days, however, the only traffic on the canals consists of the ducks and some swans sailing by. The water, coming from Lake Annecy, is so clear that you can see the unblinking gaze of the swan as it lowers its head under the water looking for food.

Opposite the restaurant is one of the many buildings lining the canal. Blue-flowered wisteria grows up the front of the whole of its four storeys to the roof itself, twisting around the balconies and windows on its way. Tiny sparrows landed on the window ledge right beside us and looked meaningfully at our meals. I looked back at them sternly to discourage them from making kamikaze dives to take my steak away.

Afterwards, we walked around the park at the side of the lake in the just darkening evening. Tourists were taking photographs and the pedalos were coming back to their moorings for the evening. A boat which is effectively a very large floating restaurant, Le Libelule' (the dragonfly'), on the other hand was just going out on a cruise of the lake with its compliment of diners. It was a perfect evening. Until the telephone call.

It was a call to confirm the arrangements for a visit to see some friends at our twin town, Chassieu, the following week. The bad news was that they have a swimming pool. Perhaps we would like to bring our bathing costumes? Now my legs have not seen any serious sunshine for many a long year and so are as white as any you are likely to see amongst the holiday-makers on the beach at Weston super Mare. I wondered aloud whether the world was ready for legs like mine, but received little sympathy.

We arrived back at the apartment and sat in the verandah with its sliding doors pushed wide open. Outside, the children from one of the other flats were playing a rather noisy version of hide and seek. Eventually, the local child-catcher came for them... No, I must have been dozing: it was the parents calling them to come back in. And so peace descended once again. Until late on, it remained warm enough for the crickets to carry on chirping, but then we started to see lightning flashing behind the mountains on the other side of the lake, although they were so far away that we could not hear the thunder. The lamp-post in the quiet road outside started blinking on and off in the sultry evening heat. We had some gentle music playing in the background and I had a glass of a very nice local white wine in my hand.

But my mind was still on the need for an all-over (almost) sun-tan. How to achieve it in just five days? I could simply sit out on the lawn in my swimming trunks soaking up the sun, but then the neighbours would see me. Perhaps I could disguise myself with a large bushy beard and glasses? No, the last man who did that has just ended up at the war crimes tribunal.

Perhaps in my case I should instead simply shave off my beard and lose the glasses - maybe then no-one would recognise me? Alternatively, for the next few days I could make the ultimate sacrifice and get up early to catch the morning sun as its bronzing rays shine into the relative privacy of our verandah. Or perhaps there is a tanning spray-booth in the town.

And so passed a night in which I was chased by barbers, hid amongst bushes and finally walked confidently out onto a beach glowing with a sort of orange colour to the admiring glances of all around. Such is vanity. But vanity is a hard and unrelenting task master and so, one way or another, the suntan starts now.