UK Riots: A Sign of Things to Come?

Phone hacking - what's that? A story that I thought would have control over the headlines for weeks to come has been quickly snuffed and set aside as the UK was rudely thrust into the new age of the recession. Rupert Murdoch is probably breathing a massive sigh of relief. A protest over the shooting last Thursday of Mark Duggan by police officers in Tottenham quickly escalated into a violent frenzy on the streets of Tottenham on Sunday. Like wildfire, the riots spread across multiple boroughs of London the following night (Brixton, Croydon, Islington - the list goes on), and before long news was filtering to the watching world that cities including Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Liverpool and Manchester had become victims of mob rule as well.

Peak Oil

My father has long been interested in the topic of peak oil and I have grown up in the knowledge that our modern society comes with certain conditions that will, ultimately, mark its demise. Put simply, the peak oil crisis relates to the amount of non-renewable carbon-based fuel that is still available on Earth for manipulation, and at what point that the energy required to extract these diminishing supplies of fuel will surpass the energy that you would gain from using them once collected. The USA reached it's peak way back in the 1970's, and is now largely dependent upon oil-rich (for now, anyway) locations such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq to feed its ever-growing addiction. Once the oil supplies across the whole world surpass their peak levels (which is estimated to be around, well...now) the oil markets will face a period of schizophrenic uncertainty and eventual collapse, and along with it many of the benefits that oil conferred upon our civilization - be it motor fuel, fertilizers for growing crops and sustaining our population, materials for a plethora of different products, and for many homes and industries, their electricity supplies. The implications of this issue are vast, potentially traumatic and not to be taken lightly.

Rinse & Repeat: Libya and the Mistakes of History

Well it didn't take them long, but Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama have got themselves stuck into a nice, juicy war. It's headline-grabbing stuff and mainstream papers like The Sun are having a field day, pumping the public full of patriotism in support of our air strikes on Gaddafi and his forces as he continues to brutalise his own people and stifle the rebel movement. Colonel Gaddafi has been transformed into an international pariah (again) in the space of time it takes to fire a Patriot missile into Tripoli.

Not Even a Sporting Chance

So there will no longer be a national P.E. scheme. The Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced that the £162m budget for school sports will no longer be set aside, instead allowing school headteachers to decide how best to spend on P.E. Basically, it's screwed.

Too Little, Too Late

You can't help but flinch when reading today's headlines, no matter what walk of life you're from or what paper you happen to read. It was the day everyone was dreading. The Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne promised cuts and boy did he give them.