Backwash

The BBC have been showing a series on "The Severn Industrial Wonders of the World" which are a series of dramatised re-constructions of the building of various engineering projects. I tried to watch the first one on the Great Eastern but it seemed an overblown pile of guesswork. I actually managed to sit through the one about the Brooklyn Bridge if only because I knew my dad would be watching it and I might have wanted to ask his opinion on it. It was Ok but nothing special. Last night was probably the least promising of the series - The London Sewers as designed by Joseph Bazalgette. An excellent programme. For all the massive above-ground things which humans build, it is the hidden stuff that mankind should be really proud of. Joseph Bazalgette is responsible for saving the lives of probably millions of people. His sewers are still used today and still cope with the sewage of London and any extra rain that might flush out through them. I have to mention Dr. John Snow here as he stood firm against the accepted wisdom of "miasma" as the cause of illness and worked out from statistical method and plain hard work that disease spread through water. It is the things we do not see which make a civilisation, not the bridges and the buildings, but the underground pipework, the social structures. The recent power cuts have shown up some real holes in how we perceive the "Western World" compared to the ROTW. Who has the problem now?

This leads me onto to the idea I mentioned the other day - The Moral Thermometer. The big problems in Western Society have been solved for the most part. Yes, I am sure you can give me a list of what you consider urgent problems but this is proof of the various colours we all put on things. For instance, I do not agree with Fox Hunting. Partly this is a reaction to what I see as the cruelty of this and partly it is a social thing where I believe this sort of social division has no place in the modern world. I do not want a debate about this so all the arguments and the "Yes But"s which are going through your brain need to be stifled. Yes my view can be seen a hypocritical when you realise that the component of my objection referring to the cruelty can just as easily be applied to the terrible treatment of the animals that I eat. You could just as easily find argument against the social component. The point here is not the actual situation to be judged but the fact that there is so little difference between mad advocation of a position and an equally strong opposite point of view. Most morality and the things which provoke the "Angry of Tunbridge Wells" letters are all just chaff when compared to the real things which have been sorted out and the things which do need sorting out in the world.

This all sounds like I am advocating a sort of surrender to the small bad things about our own society so that we can concentrate on the bigger problems around the world which is not what I want to do but maybe we should concentrate on things which really matter. There is not much chance of things changing anyway. The three main political parties seem to be just different wings of a single political organisation anyway. I have left so many things out of this rant. I know in my head what I want to say but it is all whirling about without any real direction. I don't think I have any dangerous moral faultlines with the generally accepted view of "how to be good". Does the media reflect the moral views of the population? The moral view sent out by the BBC rarely upsets me. Occasionally I have a problem with some of the things in the papers but mostly the TV news and the newspapers have an accepted view of what is right and wrong.

Everything you just read is wrong. I advocate a libertarian lifestyle and a denial of the cosy UK view of the TV. Actually I do sometimes feel like throwing things at the TV. The goody-goody view is that Eastenders is a nasty, spiteful view of human kind in this country but if it wasn't would anyone watch it. I stopped after the first few years because it was just more of the same but at the start it was clever and compelling. It did not rely on violence as much as good writing. This paragraph is of course prompted by the return of Den to the Square. Not enough to make me start watching again.

Just a thought: Joseph Bazalgette was responsible for removing "Fertilising matter" from the houses of Londoners. There is an irony in that his great great grandson is responsible for pumping it back.