Can  millionaires actually be quite hard up?  Imagine you have a biggish house in London, that you inherited from your parents.  But you are now retired with only the state pension.  You should really sell the house, but you grew up in it.  It’s full of “your life” It needs repair but you can’t afford it.  But it’s in a desirable area and it’s worth £1million.  Yep. you are a hard up millionaire.

But a billionaire is worth 1000 millionaires.

According to Forbes, the USA has 928 billionaires. They are cumulatively worth $7.8 Trillion.

The UK has only 56 and they are worth $244 Billion.

Now the “poor” ones are only worth one billion dollars, but the median billionaire is worth $3billion in the USA, and $2.6billion in the UK. (Elon Musk is worth $476billion)

So what is a billionaire?  Let’s keep it in dollars, it’s someone whose net worth is over a billion dollars.  (For older readers, a billion nowadays is a thousand million, not million million as it was originally defined.)

Getting a billion dollars into perpective.

If you start counting now, at 1 count per second, you will reach 1 billion in 32 years.  It’s a big number.  
You’ll need 15,000 years to count Elon Musks dollars. (continuous counting 24 hrs per day)

Or, do you drive a car?  A car’s engine goes around at an average rate of 3000 revolutions per minute and your average speed throughout the cars life will be around 45mph.  
If you have a magic car and every time the engine rotates (thats 50 times a second) you make $1 you will have to travel 250,000 miles to make a billion dollars.  Manage 119 million miles and you will have as much as Elon Musk.

The median net worth of a US or UK citizen (they are probably half way through their mortgage) is $192,000.  So a median billionaire is worth the same as around 16,000 US or UK “normal” citizens.  

While most of a billionaire’s worth is tied up in ownership of companies etc, a sizeable amount is spent on multiple homes, cars, yachts, private aircraft, and lawyers fees.

When this billionaire gives a million dollars to charity, it’s the same percentage as a “normal” citizen giving $64, except that the normal citizen will probably notice the $64, and the billionaire does not miss the odd million.  Of course it won’t cost him a million as he will get a lot of tax relief on it – almost 50% in the UK (with gift aid).

Along with this obscene wealth, come obscene power.  The USA in particular is a very litigious country, (the UK is catching up) and in disputes between individuals, billionaires always win as they hire the best (and most unscrupulous) lawyers and either win, or drag out the case until the other party is bankrupt. 

The post Billionaires and Trillionaires appeared first on Twenty Forty Five.

(Original post below the updates)

The fining of pieces of paper continues.

Update 5th March 2026

Channel 4’s docudrama “Dirty Business” tells the story of the water companies criminal activities. The hopes are that it will raise awareness of the situation in a similar way to “Mr Bates and the Post office”

The latter resulted in a public enquiry. Paula Vennells, the head of the post office was responsible for falsely preosecuting hundreds of sub postmasters, ruining theire reputations, driving many to insolvency, imprisining some, and driving some to suicide.
Her punishment – she had to give up her multiple jobs, including one as a priest, and to hand back her CBE. She is now a retired multi-millionaire.

SHE SHOULD OBVIOUSLY BE IN JAIL
and her ill gotten gains distributed to her victims.

But this piece of paper is taking the blame.

Will any of the water companies criminally negligent CEOs or their management teams ever see the inside of a jail?

If NOT WHY NOT?

Answer:- because this piece of paper is to blame for everything, and Susan Davey and her mob had nothing to do with it.

Update 4th September 2024
Well it’s a start.

At the moment, CEOs of water companies face fines for failing to comply with investigations by the Environment Agency (EA) and the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI), but there have been just three such fines since privatisation three decades ago.
Civil servants at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) told journalists on Wednesday that they planned to tighten compliance rules to force companies to hand over sewage data quickly, and that the maximum sentence for covering up this information or failing to release it would be two years

From the Guardian
Helena Horton
Environment reporter 
Wed 4 Sep 2024 17.30 EDT

See also The South West Water Scandal

The original post

The government has just fined Southern water £90,000,000 for pouring sewage into the sea.

In 2017 a worker lost a thumb and fingers in an industrial accident. Almost four years later (May 2021) the company was fined for breaching Health and Safety regulations.
We have fined banks;  we have  fined hospitals;  we have fined network rail

This is ludicrous beyond belief. Corporations or companies are NOT negligent or dishonest.  They are pieces of paper with writing on. PEOPLE are negligent and dishonest. And in these cases, the people are usually high up the tree, and their crime is almost always not taking their role seriously and ignoring their own staff at the bottom of the organization.

But who pays the fine? Either the public, or if the fine actually effects the companies finances then cuts will be made at the BOTTOM of the tree.

The ONLY deterrent is a prison sentence for those found responsible. A fine has no effect on a person with a substantial personal fortune, and access to almost unlimited funds from their organization.

Somewhere in the organization, someone has withheld the funds, or not allocated resources and the result is either breaking the law, or a tragedy. That person is never identified, will probably keep their job, and their salary, and their bonus, and their pension. It’s unfair, and just plain stupid.

The threat (and actuality) of a few months, weeks, or even days in jail together with the subsequent criminal record, and increased sentences for subsequent offences would have an immediate effect on directors, executives, and managers behaviour.

So why don’t we simply SEND THE BUGGERS TO JAIL.

In such cases someone MUST go to jail.  If the culprit or culprits cannot be found then it must be the head of the organization.  It is his job to keep the organization on the straight and narrow.  He has failed and its up to him to find the reasons. If he can’t, then he has failed again and that warrants the jail sentence.  When he gets out, he will make damn sure it doesn’t happen again, and his friends will take more care too.

Addenda 13/01/2023

And a piece of paper takes the hit for Trump dodging taxes.

10/06/23

And another piece of paper has been fined £2.1m as for dumping raw sewage into the sea. The CEO of South West Water, Susan Davy, is paid over £400,000 per year and usually gets over £1,000,000 in bonuses. She decided not to take it this year, but she is paying out £112m out to the shareholders.  (I would guess she is a major shareholder). All the “outraged” local MP is calling for is resignations.  

No!

SEND THE BUGGERS TO JAIL.

The post Fining Pieces of Paper appeared first on Twenty Forty Five.

See also how it could pan out to individuals

The AI Broom Has Already Started.

The AI broom (not a mistype – it’s sweeping clean) has only just started.  The first places are those where the management is fairly familiar with AI and have their eye on greater profits.  It is what managers are paid to do after all. So companies like Microsoft (laying off 2000) and Salesforce (laying off 4000) have already began.

Accenture: A Case Study in AI-Driven Layoffs

More significant is Accenture “a global professional services company that provides a wide range of consulting, technology, and operational services to help businesses improve their performance and digital transformation” who are not only laying off 11000 but also say:-

KEY POINTS

• Accenture CEO Julie Sweet outlined plans to cut staff who are unable to reskill on artificial intelligence in an earnings call on Thursday.
• The global professional services company reported 7% growth in revenue, which it pinned on client demand to become trained on using AI.
• “Every CEO, board and the C-suite recognize that advanced AI is critical to the future,” Sweet told CNBC.

The company reported revenue of $69.7 billion this year, growth of 7% from the prior year. In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Sweet pinned this growth on massive client demand to deploy artificial intelligence across organizations. “Every CEO, board and the C-suite recognize that advanced AI is critical to the future. The challenge right now they’re facing is that they’re really excited about the technology and they’re not yet AI ready for most companies,” she added.

Companies selling AI solutions like Accenture have already started increasing their profits while cutting their workforce – and they are helping their customers to do the same thing.  More companies selling AI will spring up – it’s a booming industry.

But then the serious job cutting will begin.

Geoffrey Hinton’s Warning: “AI Will Replace Everyone”

Geoffrey Hinton, the University of Toronto professor emeritus widely known as the “Godfather of AI,” says the technology he helped pioneer is set to unleash sweeping changes on the job market, with many workers at risk of being replaced by machines.

“I think for mundane intellectual labour, AI will replace everyone,” Hinton said in a recent interview on the Diary of a CEO podcast. He warns roles such as call centre workers and paralegals are currently most at risk.

Millions of white collar workers who do planning, scheduling, forecasting, purchasing, accounting, recruiting, software, website design and maintenance etc.etc will lose their jobs.  Many use AI now to augment what they do. Those humans left in theses fields (if they are lucky) will be augmenting the AI.  Some will find manual jobs they can do. Most will not.

Meanwhile the AI companies will be making enormous profits, companies who replace much of their workforce with AI will make huge profits. But the rise in white collar unemployment will be unprecedented and perhaps catastrophic to society.

Those who oppose the change will be branded (with some justification) as Modern Day Luddites.

Modern Luddites: From Machine Breakers to Hackers

The original Luddites were 19th-century textile workers who destroyed the machines they saw as replacing them. Modern Luddites will be different: thousands of highly skilled, now-unemployed software engineers with AI tools at their disposal. They won’t smash machines—they’ll hack systems. Cyber attacks will be widespread, sophisticated, and motivated by genuine grievance.

The Government’s Impossible Equation

Governments face an impossible equation: income tax receipts plummeting as employment collapses, while corporations—the very entities that created the crisis—fight any increase in corporate taxation. And it’s these same corporations who fund political campaigns and employ former politicians as consultants. The conflict of interest is structural.

Is this realistic?

I asked Anthropics Claude AI about timescales

and wrote a little accompanying story – click on the titles.

Now – 2026: The Quiet Cull

• Tech companies leading: Google, Meta, Microsoft all cutting thousands while productivity stays flat or rises

• “AI-augmented workers” replacing teams: one person + AI doing what took 3-5 people before

• Hiring freezes disguised as “strategic pauses”

• Entry-level positions vanishing—why hire junior analysts when AI can do 80% of it?

2026-2028: The Obvious Shift

• Customer service centers decimated (already happening but accelerating)

• Accounting/book keeping firms consolidating or closing

• Junior lawyers, paralegals finding no positions exist

• Middle management culls at large corporations

• “AI coordinator” becomes a role, but it’s 1 person replacing a department

2028-2030: The Reckoning

• White collar unemployment becomes a political crisis, not just a trend

• Entire sectors reeling: HR, marketing agencies, financial advisors, project managers

• Universities panicking as traditional “safe” degrees lead nowhere

• Small businesses running lean with AI

2030+: The Restructuring

• Either we’ve implemented new economic models (UBI, massive redistribution, worker co-ops)

• Or we’re in serious social instability

• The “collapse” isn’t one dramatic moment—it’s a decade of steady degradation

The Choice Ahead

This is an unstable state. History shows us that such instability doesn’t persist—it resolves, one way or another. Either through enlightened policy (perhaps, ironically, guided by AI itself) or through social breakdown: insurrection, civil unrest, or worse.

We’re 2-3 years into a 10-year transformation. The question isn’t whether dramatic change is coming—it’s whether we’ll manage it wisely or catastrophically.

And at the same time we have the challenge of climate change

But here is a little light relief in the same area,  sort of. 

The post How AI Will Replace White Collar Jobs by 2030: Timeline and Predictions appeared first on Twenty Forty Five.

Drought??

Cornwall has been under a hosepipe ban since August 2022.

In November 2022, SW water said:-

Reservoir levels across the South West are now very low and, in particular, are extremely low in Cornwall, following one of the driest periods in the region for over 130 years. Levels continue to fall and will remain low for the foreseeable future, without a sustained and substantial period of rainfall this Autumn, which is not currently forecasted.

They seem to have removed this paragraph from their website now!

I thought I’d check with an independent rainfall monitoring site.  I chose Newquay Weather station.

As the latest full month of data was June, I extracted the rainfall for the 12 months up to June for the last 14 years.  It is quite obvious that we have had above average rainfall for the last three years.  Of course it is possible that all the rain fell on Newquay and avoided the reservoirs. Or maybe it’s due to:-

• lack of planning for the increasing population
• failure to cure leaks
• lack of investment in storage facilities (the last completed reservoir in Cornwall is Drift Reservoir, which was officially completed in 1962, the last one in the South west is Roadford Lake in Devon, which was finished in 1989)
• complacency
• or, encompassing all of the above, not giving a toss.

Pollution

Meanwhile South West Water is polluting our beaches with raw sewage whenever we get rain.

From the Independent

Eighty per cent of beaches in Cornwall have been given raw sewage alerts after heavy rain in the South-west, according to the pressure group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS).

SAS monitors water quality across 68 beaches in Cornwall, in the South-west of England. Of those beaches, 33 have received a “sewage pollution alert” and 21 others have received a “pollution risk forecast or incident alert”.

Management (Fat cats)

In 2022:-

South West Water boss Susan Davy has more than trebled her annual salary with an award of more than £1m in bonus and benefits despite overseeing the closure of beaches after raw sewage was pumped into the sea around Devon and Cornwall.

Ms Davy, who is chief executive of South West Water’s parent company Pennon, is paid a base salary of £456,000, but with her bonus, incentives and benefits the company’s latest set of accounts show her total pay was bumped up to £1.6m.

The boost to her bank account comes as more than a dozen beaches across Devon and Cornwall have been shut due to pollution.

inews

Then in 2023:-

As the rainfall dropped all the way down to average, and the chickens came home to roost over the lack of investment in infrastructure  and the huge bonuses paid to director and shareholders, she must have felt some sense of shame, (or possibly trying to hold onto her job following public anger):-

Last month, Susan Davy who has run South West Water’s owner for nearly three years, along with several other industry executives, decided to waive her £450,000 bonus amid growing public anger over the condition of the industry.

The decision contributed to her salary package falling from £1.53 million to £543,000 last year, as Davy only received her base salary, benefits and pension.

Earlier this month, Pennon sparked outrage by raising its dividend for the year by 10 per cent to £111.7m, despite South West Water being fined £2.15m in April for illegally dumping sewage into rivers and the sea around Devon and Cornwall.

The company is also facing an investigation by industry regulator Ofwat into whether South West Water accurately reported leaks and the amount of water used by customers.

nybreaking

 

Poor soul, how will she manage to live off only £543,000 per year?

Then in 2024

NORTH Cornwall MP Ben Maguire has urged South West Water’s Chief Executive, Susan Davy, to “do the decent thing” and quit while leading a debate on the Cornish sewage scandal in the House of Commons.

Mr Maguire led a recent debate on Sewage Discharges in the House of Commons Chamber and highlighted the widespread failings of South West Water. Speaking to a busy Commons Chamber and facing off against Environment Minister Emma Hardy MP across the Dispatch Box, Mr Maguire explained how the issue of sewage dumping in our waterways was one of the biggest concerns constituents raised during the General Election.

Mr Maguire highlighted the shocking sewage dumping statistics at world renowned beaches like Harlyn, Daymer Bay, Polzeath, Summerleaze and Crackington Haven while also highlighting the poor water quality in rivers including the Allen and Inney. The River Camel’s water quality had earlier today been labelled “unfavourable” and Cornwall’s Wildlife Trust urged action before ecosystems and species suffer irreversible damage.

Cornish times

Well done Ben McGuire.

Then in 2025

South West Water has agreed to pay a £24m penalty for illegal sewage discharges into the environment from its treatment works.

The regulator for the water and wastewater sector in England and Wales, Ofwat, says the company, which has 1.8 million customers in Cornwall, Devon, the Isles of Scilly and parts of Dorset and Somerset, is being penalised for dumping sewage in breach of its legal permit conditions.

But there was anger over revelations on Thursday that the regulator had not imposed a direct fine on the company.

The Guardian

Followed by

A Cornwall MP says he has become so frustrated with sewage pollution, he has put the Chief Executive of South West Water on what he has described as “resignation watch”.

Noah Law, the MP for Newquay and St Austell, has said he is issuing a ‘final warning’ to Susan Davy, calling for her to take immediate action to upgrade the region’s sewage treatment infrastructure.

ITV

Well done Noah, and finally

South West Water Chief Executive Officer Susan Davy will step down from her role and retire from Pennon Group’s board, bringing an end to her 18-year career with the water utility giant.

Ms Davy has been CEO of Pennon Group, the parent company of South West Water, since July 2020. Before that, she served as Chief Financial Officer for five years.

Her retirement comes just a day after industry regulator Ofwat found a “range of failures” in how South West Water had managed its wastewater treatment works and sewer network. Ofwat said South West Water (SWW) “failed to meet its legal obligations”, pointing to a lack of adequate management systems, including oversight from the senior leaders and board.

Lynn Parker, Ofwat’s Senior Director of Enforcement, said: “We’ve found significant failings that have led to more spills than the law allows over a significant number of years so we consider this to be systemic failings. 

ITVX

The piece of paper known as South West Water has been fined tens of millions of pounds for pollution offences.  This is simply an example of a certain section of society looking after its own. See Fining Pieces of Paper.

Complaining to South West Water

Complain directly here although due to the SWWs lack of investment in anything (except their shareholders) you may be waiting a while for an answer.

What customers think

Trustpilots score is 1.4 out of a maximum of 5. 

Most reviewers were let down by their experience overall. People express widespread dissatisfaction with various aspects of the company’s services. Consumers are particularly unhappy with the level of customer service they receive, citing slow response times and a general lack of helpfulness. The payment processes also appear to be a significant source of frustration for many consumers. Furthermore, reviewers frequently mention negative experiences with the staff, highlighting issues related to contacting the company and resolving complaints. The general consensus is that the level of service provided does not meet expectations, leaving many people feeling disappointed and underserved.

The post The South West Water Scandal. appeared first on Twenty Forty Five.

“Enjoy life while you can. Because if you’re lucky it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.”

James Ephraim Lovelock CH CBE FRS (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022)

Lovelock said this in 2008. He’s been pretty correct so far. I think we can safely say it’s starting to hit the fan now.

The UK government has issued this document

Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse
and national security.

A national security assessment

It warns that global ecosystem degradation threatens national security and prosperity through crop failures, natural disasters, and disease outbreaks.
Critical ecosystems including the Amazon rainforest, Congo basin, and boreal forests are on pathways toward irreversible collapse, potentially beginning as early as 2030 for some regions.
Consequences could include severe water scarcity, reduced crop yields, fisheries collapse, and intensified geopolitical competition for resources.
The UK’s reliance on food imports and inability to achieve current self-sufficiency makes it particularly vulnerable.
The assessment calls for major intervention to reverse biodiversity loss trends and improve food system resilience.

We can’t now do much to alleviate the problems over the next ten years, and only extremely drastic action may mitigate the situation after that.  But I really can’t see that happening.

I believe the very rich and powerful establishment figures have accepted that climate change is inevitable, and their number one priority is to ensure that they will be safe.

I think calling this site “2045” was rather optimistic.

A few questions and answers that illustrate our predicament

Q. What is the current level of CO2 in the air?
A. 427ppm. It has risen by 30ppm in the last decade and 20ppm in the decade before.  Clearly the rate is accelerating.

Q. When was it last so high?
A. 22 million years ago

Q. Was it going up then?
A. No, it was coming down.

Q. When was the last time it was going up from this level?
A. Around 65 million years ago following the comet strike which caused a mass extinction.

Q. And before that?
A. CO2 levels were higher than now, up to 1000ppm, and global temperature was around 6 degrees hotter.

Q. So we have no experience of this before?
A. No, as far as we know, this is the fastest rise in CO2 levels since oxygen breathing life appeared on the planet.

What we are doing about it

We know that greenhouse gases, in particular carbon dioxide and methane reduce the amount of the sun’s energy that is radiated from the Earth back into space. This does not just make us a bit warmer. It increases the amount of energy in the atmosphere which causes bigger storms and hurricanes. It changes the areas on earth which are habitable. We know there is a feedback effect where man made emissions cause increased temperature which trigger “natural emissions” such as forest fires, melting permafrost etc.
We know that these gases have been building up in the atmosphere for 200 years.
We are trying to stop this build up.

Most of the governments of the world have come up with agreements on Cop 26

The Climate Law also sets an intermediate target of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.

EU Website

Whatever that means! 55% of what they were in 1990 maybe?.

Why not simply state a figure?  Emissions are now 34 billion tonnes. In 1990 they were 22 billion tonnes. A 55% reduction of that figure  takes us to 9.9 billion tonnes, or one third of todays value. So is this the target?  If so why not simply say so.

This is an easy target for the UK.  In 1990 our emissions were 600 million tonnes.  In 2020 they were 330 million – so they are NOW 55% of what they were on 1990. So we have met it already.  (I wonder who came up with that target at the meeting hosted by Boris Johnson)

For China, emissions were 2.5 billion tonnes in 1990, so they would need to reduce them to 55% of this or 1.4 billion.  Current emissions are 11 billion tonnes, so that is a reduction of 80%

India is in a similar position to China

If we were to cut emissions today

• CO2 in the atmosphere will not suddenly decrease.  That will take many years.
• Global temperatures will not stop rising.  Global temperature and CO2 levels are not proportionate. Their relationship is much more complex.
• The Greenland ice sheet and the polar ice will continue to melt, but more slowly
• Ocean temperatures will continue to rise, but more slowly.

All we could do is hope that we have not pushed the system too far.  

• If the permafrost warms and releases it’s methane,
• and/or the ocean gets warmer and cannot absorb as much CO2
• and/or the polar icecaps melt and cannot reflect heat back into space
• and if any of the above triggers the others

then the earth will flip into another stable state where sea levels are 80 metres higher and storms much more frequent and violent, and current tropical regions are all desert.

But we are not cutting emissions today.

If, and it’s a big if, the countries who attended COP26 achieve their goals, we may begin to see a reduction in the rate of increase.

• Coal is to be phased down (not out), The big coal using, and producing, countries (China, India, Australia) would not agree to a phase out.
• Only a very small number of small countries made any commitment on oil or gas.

Large reductions in these areas would result in a reduction of wealth for these countries, and a subsequent reduction in living standards which will result in dissatisfaction with the government, riots, and insurrection, coups, and civil wars and any changes reversed anyway. Nations are not altruistic by nature.

I asked Chatgpt to summarise Trump and Climate:-

As of June 2025, former President Donald Trump has been actively reversing many climate-related policies established during the previous administration. Here are some key developments:

Revocation of Environmental Policies

• Columbia River Basin Memorandum: Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum that revokes an executive action from the Biden administration aimed at restoring fish populations in the Columbia River Basin. This action prioritized climate change considerations over energy resource management, which Trump argues is detrimental to American energy interests. His administration is focusing on energy production and infrastructure, emphasizing the need for reliable energy sources over environmental regulations.

Energy Policy Focus

• Coal and Fossil Fuels: The Trump administration is taking steps to keep coal plants operational, including two in Michigan that are significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions. This move has faced criticism for lacking support from local utilities and stakeholders, who argue it could lead to increased costs for consumers.

Wildfire Management Initiatives

• Bipartisan Support for Fire Technology: In a notable shift, there is bipartisan support in Congress for new technologies to manage wildfires, with California companies leading the charge. Trump has proposed consolidating federal wildfire agencies and promoting the use of innovative technologies, such as drones and AI, to improve wildfire response and land management.

Legal and Regulatory Landscape

• Supreme Court Rulings: The U.S. Supreme Court has recently ruled in favor of fossil fuel companies, allowing them to challenge California’s emissions regulations. This decision aligns with Trump’s broader agenda of reducing regulatory burdens on the fossil fuel industry.

Public and Political Reactions

• Criticism and Support: While Trump’s policies are aimed at bolstering energy independence and economic growth, they have drawn criticism from environmentalists and some political leaders who argue that these actions undermine efforts to combat climate change. Supporters, however, argue that prioritizing energy production is essential for economic stability.

Overall, Trump’s current approach to climate change and environmental policy is characterized by a strong emphasis on energy production and deregulation, often at the expense of environmental protections.

So in the coming years, enjoy life in between “100 year events”, which will happen every year or so and with increasing severity. There is nothing we can do to change what will happen in the next 10-20 years, but we could divert our efforts to alleviate the suffering which the climate change will cause.  
But with the world’s economy ran by billionaires, all striving to be trillionaires, I suspect little will happen unless they can profit by it.

I did keep a blog of records broken in temperature, rainfall, and storms.  But I was adding multiple posts per day.  

Now I will take James Lovelocks advice and enjoy life while I can and watch it hit the fan.

Just as the climate change kicks in, we also have the developing AI crisis to contend with. How wil they both play together?

AI and jobs factual

AI and jobs fictional

The post Climate it’s all hitting the fan appeared first on Twenty Forty Five.

Americans were voting in the US election as started to write this.  

Coincidentally this was the day in the UK where we traditionally burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament.  The bonfire is usually accompanied by fireworks.

In America, folk who try to overturn an election and march on the Capitol, get invited to stand at the next election. In the UK, Guy Fawkes was hung.

I thought there might be fireworks in the UK and the USA over the next few days.

I prefer ours.

Well Trump got in. I guess that spared America the inevitable fireworks if he had lost. 

But it leaves me asking why?  Trump is a criminal, he is vindictive, he is losing his mental faculties.  he has obviously got worse over the last four years so how bad will he get in his four years as the most powerful man in the world? 

Yet the Americans voted for him. There is no reason why America should have more than the usual percentage of crazy people, and the crazies  will be vastly outvoted by “normal” “middle of the road” Americans.  So why did these folk vote for him?

In the last election in the UK I voted Lib Dem.  Now I don’t like the Lib Dems and I don’t trust them either, but it was a tactical vote as in my constituency this was the surest way of beating the Tories. I did not vote for the Lib Dems, I voted against the Tories. (Update, I am very impressed with our MP Ben McGuire)

In Scotland, where I lived for over thirty years, some independence supporting voters actually voted Tory!  I am sure they did not like the Tories, but this was the surest way of unseating the incumbent SNP MSP.  The SNP are currently a corrupt party who rely on a vote from gullible independence seeking Scots to stay in power. 

So the non crazy Americans did not vote for Trump, they voted against the Democrats. They thought that Trump was the lesser of two evils.

Gosh, how bad must the Democrats be?

Four years ago I decided to stop posting about politics. I have deviated!!  Back to the straight and narrow,

The post The US election appeared first on Twenty Forty Five.

Putting the Earth in perspective is nearly impossible with traditional diagrams. Most illustrations of our planet come with the disclaimer “Not to scale” – and for good reason.

The relative dimensions of Earth’s features are so extreme that they’re difficult to draw accurately. However, we can visualize the Earth in perspective using mental imagery and familiar comparisons. By understanding these true scales – from Earth’s paper-thin crust to our position in the universe – we gain a profound appreciation for our planet and our place in the cosmos. Let’s explore Earth’s dimensions using scale models you can picture in your mind..

Earth’s Physical Scale in Perspective

Imagine the globe 12 inches in diameter in the middle across the equator in front of you. That’s about football size (or soccer ball size for non UK folk). It will look spherical, although it is about 1/20th of an inch smaller from top to bottom (pole to pole).

You hear of continental drift, and plate tectonics, and find it difficult to imagine? The crust on your 12 inch earth is a 1/20th of an inch thick at the thickest point – in some places it’s less than 5 thousands of an inch.

A crust? That’s more like a surface scum! Underneath that is around 3 inches of surface mantle, its fairly solid, but plasticy so it can, and does move.

The atmosphere, where we all live becomes too thin to breath at one hundredth of an inch above the surface, this by the way is the height of Mount Everest. It continues up getting thinner and thinner to the dizzy heights of 1/10th of an inch, beyond which it is negligible.

The deepest part of the ocean plummets to 1/50th of an inch, but the average depth is only 3 thousands of an inch – our globe is only slightly damp.

An astronaut is defined as a person who has been more than 80km above the surface of the earth, on our globe that is about 1/15 of an inch. Felix Baumgartner’s space jump was about a millimeter

The moon is around 3 inches in diameter ( a bit like a tennis ball) and around 30 feet away.

The sun is 110 feet in diameter and its 2.2 miles away

The nearest star is 600,000 miles away.

A human being is about the size of a virus, the smallest living organism. Blue whales, the largest animals on the planet are the size of bacteria.

Life on Earth: A Timeline Perspective

Let’s do the same with time, and imagine that our earth formed a week ago.

The universe was created in the big bang two weeks ago.

Life appeared after only one day! (Yes the universe is only twice as old as life on earth

The next day photosynthesis began. This continued for a couple of days, but the living organisms which were photosynthesising put too much of there own waste products (oxygen) into this 1/100 inch thick atmosphere and they mostly died out.

 But they were replaced by a combination of life, some of which used photosynthesis to live off carbon dioxide and gave off oxygen, and some of which used the oxygen to live, consumed other carbon rich life and gave off carbon dioxide – a rather neat symbiosis. This continues to this day.

Around eight and a half hours ago the dinosaurs appeared and disappeared quite suddenly about two hours and twenty minutes ago.

It’s sobering to think that they were the dominant species for almost 6 hours, especially considering the first humans appeared only 4 minutes ago.

Abraham walked the earth ½ second ago, Jesus ¼ second, and Mohammed 1/6 second.

Current thinking is that the temperature of the earth will increase by six degrees is the next 70 thousands of a second and as a result the earth will only be able to support one sixth of the current human population.

Our place in the Universe*

Now to put the Earth into the Universe. The Earth goes around our sun and this is one sun in a galaxy of 300 thousand million suns. The galaxy is called the milky way. It’s a disk shape, fatter in the middle a bit like a fried egg.

Let’s imagine we shrink the galaxy down to the 8000 miles (the real diameter of the earth). Our earth is close to the edge and its about the size of a flu virus.

The visible Universe is about 500,000 times the size of our own galaxy and contains about 170 thousand million galaxies.

Do you find this amazing? I do. But there is something I find even more amazing:-

Over the last few cosmic seconds on an infinitesimally small spec in the corner of one of billions of galaxies, a species has evolved that thinks they are the peak of the universe’s achievements!

They believe that the creator of the universe has visited this sub microscopic spec less than a cosmic second ago and passed secret knowledge onto them!

And they argue, fight, and kill each other over how to interpret the “Creator’s” words!

Now that’s amazing. 

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Let’s do a little extrapolating from the present to the next few hundred years based on developments over the last few years.

• We are sending automatic unmanned probes into space.
• Artificial intelligence is now advanced and its development is accelerating
• We are unlikely to send many human beings on long open ended trips with no return.

Combine these together and it becomes very probable that we will send highly intelligent machines into space to collect data and send it back to earth.

These machines will be capable of making decisions based on the circumstances they are in. Some will leave the solar system and head off into deep space for journeys that may take tens of thousand of years.  

Humans, and probably any naturally occurring and evolving organisms, are simply not suited for this type of travel. Computers are eminently suitable. Needing only electrical power they could be run from a small nuclear source and can switch to a low power mode. Even a “thinking” being could survive the loneliness and the isolation if they could “compress time” by reducing their internal clock. A ten thousand year journey could appear as a day or two!  

So we send a intelligent probes to nearby stars, and the journey takes hundreds or even thousand of years.

During this time it is quite possible that humanity may cease to exist – this could be due to  disasters such as comets, asteroids, super volcanoes, plagues, wars, severe climate change etc etc. In that case the only residue of our civilization would be the spacecrafts we had sent.

Now, how many times has this happened in the past in the galaxy? How many orphaned non biological  life sources are roaming the universe?  

Well I don’t know the answer either, but I do know in an almost infinite universe the answer is certainly NOT zero. If we ever make contact with other intelligences, it is much more likely that the intelligence will reside as programs in alien technology, and not as little green men. We may already have been visited by some.

It may well be that it is peak of humanity’s destiny to join them. Their organic ancestors (that’s us) will be as remote to them as our amphibian ancestors are to us.

Now extend the extrapolation millions of years into the future, and into the past. In an almost infinite universe, millions of organic based civilizations have devoted, are developing and will develop to produce non biological descendants, then die off. These descendants will evolve too but, unlike us, evolution will not be random and based on survival of the fittest.  They will design the next generation, and merge with it. It is inevitable that they will interact with others. Non biological intelligence (such as our own primitive AI) can perform  incredibly fast, by our standards. And they have billions of years. Perhaps they will form a “universal mind” 

It is the destiny of the universe to be populated by Non Biological Intelligence

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• Vladamir Putin and the Russian government are waging war on Ukraine, and civilian deaths are currently running at 188 per month (December 2022)
• Jeremy Hunt and the UK government are waging war on the NHS and civilian deaths are estimated to be running at around 2000 per month.

Ukraine is generally accepted as a war zone, so, with civilian casualties over ten time higher in England, than in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, I think the term is justified.

Back in 2016 I wrote an article about Jeremy Hunt.  His hatred of the NHS as illustrated by his starving it of funds, is consistent.  Back then he was minister for health, but now he has Steve Barclay to do the dirty work and continue the move to private health care. 

The route chosen is to take advantage of the increased workload mainly due to the pandemic and loss of staff due to Brexit and to drive the staff to despair and inevitable resignations.  Steve Barclay, to his credit, is pushing back a little, so I guess we may be looking at a new minister for health soon.

Nothing will stop the tories continuing to bludgeon the health service. They want it dead, so the much more lucrative (to them) private health care is all that is available.  It’s already well under way.  Try getting any of these on the NHS:-

• An NHS dentist
• Your ears syringed
• A face to face doctors appointment
• An ambulance if you have an accident
• An operation for your hip or knee in under a year

The flogging will continue at a ramped up pace until, hopefully, they are booted out in 2024;  but will the next government do any better?

I think the phrase NHS war zone is justified.

Update 2/9/2024
Well they were booted out, and hopefully consigned to the dustbin of history.  But will Starmer do any better.  It is early days, but so far it’s not looking good.  

Follow the money – how many influential Labour MPs have financial interests in private healthcare?

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