This looks fascinating; a series of TV programmes made by the BBC and exploring various plausible worst-case scenarios for the near future, from mass electricity shortages to the polarisation of society into the super-rich and the underclass to inter-generational unrest as the baby boomers retire, the marginalisation of men, and explosive obesity. The programmes take existing trends, extrapolate them pessimistically, and use that as a basis of a hypothetical future scenario. I wonder if they'll ever come out on DVD.

Posted by: Alexander | http:// | Sat Mar 13 16:37:16 2004

I'm surprised to see the terrorist attack in Madrid has passed you by completely.

Posted by: Graham | http://grudnuk.com/ | Sun Mar 14 00:44:11 2004

He's still coming up with some freaky veiled dismissal of American foreign policy starting with "I wonder if ..."

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Mon Mar 15 00:37:18 2004

Re: the terrorist attacks in Madrid: everybody else has blogged about them, and there's little I could add to the discussion of them.

Having said that, the fact that voters threw out the conservative government (whose poll chances, if anything, should have improved after such an outrage) is interesting.

Posted by: Ed | http://asseptic.org/blog/ | Mon Mar 15 02:41:43 2004

the voters threw out the conservative gov't because they were caught in a blatant lie: immediately after the attacks the conservatives accused the basque separatists and pointed a finger at the socialists for not being as resolute against ETA, in a very denounced move to obtain a political dividend. however, with the fact everything points the responsibility to al-queda (take yesterday's arrest of five suspects with an islamic background) made the whole strategy backfire.

it's interesting to see the conservatives were so eager to point the finger at the socialist party they completely lost it. the spanish government had already proved they were terrible at crisis management (take the Prestige ecological holocaust), but they apparentely were even worse in the political management. definitely a case study.

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Mon Mar 15 04:48:33 2004

And to think: if the government had managed to suppress the truth about al-Qaeda's involvement for 48 hours more, they could have won with a landslide (as the tories in Australia did after the "children overboard" thing).

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