Sieg Heil! But not in a bad way

Apparently he is "a fascist but not a racist".

Di Canio, a talented footballer who once plied his trade near the volatile streets of West Ham is certainly a character, as they say.

"I made the Roman salute because it's a salute from a comrade to his comrades and was meant for my people. "

Oh, and apparently it was not meant as a political statement. So, that's OK then! I could at this point quote Silvio Berlusconis opinion on the matter, for he is amongst other things the Italian Prime Minister. But a bent politician will do anything to raise his fortunes, so lets leave him in his sty.

As much as I am in favour of the EC, it does mean having to accommodate political basket cases like Italy. If Italy was in the Middle East, it would have been liberated by now (or should I say, again) . Perhaps the Mafia would have ran the insurgency. Mussolini would probably recognize the current scene from the one he last saw before he was hung upside down. Unlike Germany, Spain and Japan, Italy has only very recently attempted to embrace any sort of democratic stability in order to leave its chaotic past behind.

But that's up to them. Its really up to us to discourage European footballers from goading fans with extremist stances. The press felt it necessary to point out that Jews would be offended, and went to Shaka Hislop (a black colleague from his West Ham days) for some condemnation. The embarrassing assumption is that everyone else would understand.

Unfortunately this little incident, added to other recent little incidents elsewhere go to prove that we are entering a period of increasing activism that European governments will not be able to tap into. No broad movements, just explosive bursts of outrage. The punches and kicks from the kittens in the bag who fear they are close to the river. All we need is a strong leader to free us from our bonds and unite us into one unstoppable force.

Have a happy New Year.

Its Full of Stars

One of my big disappointments in life is to live through the lull in big science. Exploration of the final frontier had been a subject of interest since the Renaissance, and the seed for reams of dubious fiction. The moon landings were one of the great moments in human history. Since then, we have suddenly become considerately more parochial. Governments feel that space is too big, too expensive and too pointless. We send out the odd robot to keep scientists busy, but public interest in what is beyond our solar backyard has been fairly tepid. Why is this? Why has our collective gaze moved from the galaxy to our naval?

The idea of the recent reality TV show Space Cadets was quite simple. A group of sufficiently gullible yoof was duped into believing they were destined to be the first tourist members of a Space Shuttle mission. They were flown out to a disused hanger in Ipswich which they were told was a Russian space centre. They launched into space with the help of a simulator and sound effects.

The combination of reality show and hoax is not original, and the issues it brings up are already familiar. Can anyone be fooled if enough illusion and special effects are applied? Were the contestants actually actors and were thus fooling the viewers? One realised quickly that it didn't matter; reality shows follow their own logic that the contestants and audience seem to understand.

At no point did the training exceed pub games or a Big Brother test. So in the mind our dupes, an astronaut was not a hard thing to become. When they first laid eyes on the nose cone of their balsa wood shuttle, our would-be Armstrongs did exclaim how “awesome” it looked. How it was “almost like a movie”. Hmm, was reality wasted on these people? Would they request to go back into the Matrix?

Once aboard the simulator our astronauts were told their orbit was in "Near Space", and hence they would not experience weightlessness. Given that amongst the population as a whole, many still believe the Sun goes around the Earth perhaps this level of ignorance is not extraordinary.

The program makers were probably hoping for a daring game to see how far they could take things. But it turned out that none of the contestants were sufficiently interested in the science bits to seriously question anything at all. And I guess we have the answer to our question. While the contestants were self evidently not overly bright, they did understand what space represents to most of people - an idea wholly unrelated to normal life. However excited the prospect of the trip made them, no part of the bogus training surprised them because they had no serious expectations. They would have behaved the same way had they been told they were off to feed aliens.

Somewhere and somehow in the last few decades space has simply become - out of this world. Even simple ideas like the inability to get into space by common flight, because flying requires an atmosphere just didn't occur to our budding Dan Dares. Despite the Space Station, there has not been enough hard space science in the media for basic ideas to take root. Star Trek is as venerated as NASA, and comes in Dolby sound.

Ultimately, there is no reason to set up a manned mission to Mars. It’s just a far away rock. But space exploration will quickly become a rich mans hobby unless it gets back into the limelight. If the galaxy is just a backdrop to a humiliation, then I fear we may never leave home.

Atomic

Job searching has re-introduced me to the joys of London commuting. The first shared cold of winter; trying to read on the tube when tired and uncomfortable; the cost of a travel card, which makes driving good value. And that slightly fetid light that illuminates the underground network.

Interview questions are often repetitive and self supporting. Frankly, it’s somewhat inappropriate that an IT company drags you half way across the capital to spot a missing semi-colon. If an IT company can't use IT to stop unnecessary journeys, then my guess is we are not close to becoming a less energy dependent society.

Energy saving has caught on over the last few years. I see that LPG is more clearly available at the pumps. Some roadside devices have solar panels - while normal for Arizona, it’s now less of a joke in the UK thanks partly to global warming. Everyone is up for recycling their waste these days. But this all is just peanuts; the real debate is the return of civil nuclear energy.

New Labour seems ideally suited to re-sell, or re-badge, nuclear power. How about New Clear Power? Or is it Nuke Liar Power? I suppose its more UnClear Power. Most people would chose to bleed to death very slowly as opposed to walk round with a primed hydrogen bomb that others call safe, and that is why coal and gas defeated nuclear power in the first place.

A lump of fossil fuel represents a great energy package - and it can still be dug out of the ground. While this remains true, no politician is going to waste their time explaining to an electorate why they should be martyrs to history and go without for the sake of the future. Or that was the thinking.

But burning fossil fuel is a dirty process, and that is the bigger issue today. A conventional coal fired station probably releases more radioactivity into the air than a properly working nuclear equivalent, in addition to the sulphur and carbon waste. Wind farms can contribute a trickle of energy to a Western nations constant energy thirst. But no, you can't run Britain on wind. If you wouldn't put a sail on a train and expect it to work, then erecting a few windmills and expecting them to run every major cities daily commuter services is clearly unreasonable. Nuclear Plants can and do provide a serious chunk of our power needs - the question is about their true cost.

Perhaps the disappearance of the Soviet Union has dimmed memories of the problems that creating a drifting radioactive deathcloud can bring. And seeing a plane flown into tower blocks makes the idea of nuclear terrorism with civil plants seem slightly arcane. There are just much more direct ways of getting a bang for your buck.

Maybe the stark unreality of alternative power has made everyone re-assess the once evil nuclear power. Electric cars are still not really here yet. Eco houses are just isolated architectural musings. Liberal Democrats are still naff. And buying power from the French is really quite galling.

Either way, when the idea of new nuclear plants was floated recently, complaints were muted. Apolitical youth are much less likely to wear badges these days. I don't know how many have any idea how power is produced in the first place. The banner wavers are more interested in complaining about McDonald’s abuse of cows. So maybe the way is open to start again after a short ignorable public debate.

Nuclear power does need to be respected, not necessarily feared. One day someone will come out with a good use for the waste. Probably. There will be some badly hushed up mini disaster. Definitely. But there isn't any point entering more decades of navel gazing while fossil fuel drains away. None of this stops research into workable mass market alternative energy anyway.

Meanwhile, there are some new fresh faced MPs from constituencies on the coast who are suddenly getting promotions and great starts to their careers. Guess what the payback will be? But I don't care - there won't be any plants built in London.