Which picture do you choose for Lowlife?

We are all one blown fuse away from infrastructure collapse. How can one incident - wherever it is - cause 50m people to lose their electricity? It seems odd that in these times of disaster recovery and back-up it is possible for so much of the power grid to go down. And if by any huge chance any British power managers are reading, then don't take this as 'a beat up the Yanks' rant; I would ask yourselves if it could happen here and I am sure the answer would be yes. Civilization walks a tightrope.

After the heatwave (Copyright - All Newspapers) - we now have that early morning autumnal feeling which heralds the back to school period. The children are already back to school in Scotland so another year nearly over. Time is an illusion and all that. While we were in the car last week, my daughter said that it looks like everything else is moving and we are staying still. Relativist is not quite the right word - it is a philosophical concept rather than a scientific one - but you know what I mean. Last night she also noticed that things are appear to be bent when you look at them half in and half out of water. And they say that there is a lack of scientists. Now what would the world look like if I travelled on a beam of light?

By the way, if your IP address begins with 193.113.37 then contact me at the email address listed.

I apologise for yesterday's schoolboy rant. Well no I don't. I can be accused of simplicity but I would accuse my accusers of acceptance ("rolling over and dying in the face of hardship" would be a better description). There are plenty of things wrong in the world and the modern solution is a complex web of committees and conditional aid. There is no "just do it" culture (even at the BBC Mr Dyke - Get on with it).

I was thinking yesterday about how I would have felt about September 11th if it had happened when I was younger - out at the weekend and all that. I have responsibilities now so anything that threatens the nice balance of existence in the world is a very worrying thing. This reminded me of how shaky I got during the first gulf war. There were a lot of jokes from older colleagues about how the young ones might get called up. I never really believed that but there were some that did and got very worried. Whichever way you think about it, we are quite stable. I think a lot of the Sabre Rattling is simply to get the public prepared for things which have always been on the agenda but which are not obviously necessary. Sorry Alice. "Solutions not committees" should be another slogan alongside "speaking on Channel 3" but then again slogans are a major part of the problem - how many health-authorities have a mission statement of the obvious? For once wouldn't you like to see :-

We will try our best but at some times you may find yourself on a trolley for anything up to - oohh how long was the longest wait? - but that was an exception.

Sorry! I know that all the horror stories about our health service are just that. You never see tales of good service. There was a terrible programme called "Intensive Scares" on BBC1 yesterday and it was just that. It put dramatic music over routine operations to make you think something had gone wrong. It cut away from the 'action' in a filmic manner to increase tension. It was in extreme contrast to "What are you Staring at?" the other week. Read Barbara's story and be amazed. I was trying to sum up the programme but it is all on the web-site.

Rant II over.