Jim's Quality of Life OnLine

Is it "moral" to promote future misery for multi millions of people? Should the world's major religions be promoting the distribution of contraceptives and promoting comprehensive sex education? With the present-day world population over six and a half billion - and with millions starving to death - we have already passed our sustainable limits for both our major food energy sources, grains and fish, as well as very quickly reaching our fresh water limits.

As a matter of urgency, do the well-meaning people at present opposing such things as abortion, contraception, RU486 - for moral reasons - need to rethink this matter?

The anti-abortion lobby groups also have allowed themselves to be used politically - and this has resulted in helping to return governments which, far from being pro-life, have actually turned out to be pro-war.

We hear about climate change but our real world problem is population.

A hundred years ago there was no talk or worry about climate change. As the population of the world grew bigger and bigger, we had the Industrial Age coping with the demand for more and more goods and services and food. Pollution! Now, as this demand increases further, we need more production to cope with the demands - creating more pollution and damage to the environment, leading to climate change.

Simultaneously we have the "lungs" of the world (the forests) being denuded to provide for the housing needs of more and more people.

Shouldn't we all urgently adopt the slogan 'populate and perish'?.

Jim Vickers-Willis,
Convenor "Quality of Life Online",
Author" The Magic of Life",

You are invited to visit our web site at:
www.vickers-willis.com

Are the Greens the only ones who can afford to be honest? Is Bob Brown the only political leader able to frankly promote the interests of the general public - rather than being in thrall to the interests of the big lobbies who provide the funds for saturation television advertising which can change the result of an election.

I saw it in 1967 when I stood for Parliament against the Vietnam War, before the Labour party took up the cudgels. One business man gave me fifty pounds and I borrowed on my life insurance policies to fund one television advertisement!

Right now we want more trains and public transport but the financially powerful road transport lobby wants to promote its products. This is the same group who in the 1930's purchased the railway lines in 25 American cities, ripped up the tracks and forced people to use cars and trucks - which caused Los Angeles (which had one of the world's best train systems) to become one of the worst smog ridden cities in the world.

Then there are the mining and oil interests who see solar power and renewable energy as competitor rather than as a public benefit.

There are so many similar lobbies, and maybe the most frightening is the Armaments Industry. One newspaper report recently stated that the American President had been "bankrolled" in his election by the Armaments Industry. Whether this was true or not, the frightening fact is that the Armaments Industry gains when politicians who start or escalate wars get into power; if we can be conned into shooting their products at each other, that escalates their profits.

What can we do to help the major parties free themselves from these shackles which prevent them governing for our benefit?

The answer has been obvious for a long time: ban all television election advertising for three months before an election. That will cut out a major cause of the need for this vast amount of big lobby money. The television industry lobby will say "we must keep freedom of speech” but the truth is we want to free our politicians to allow them to speak honestly - like the Greens.

Jim Vickers- Willis

Are we to be known as the generation which wrecked the world - mostly for money?

We have the world already over-crowded (6.5 billion people, growing) with powerful forces against contraception and abortion.

We have the obvious need of alternative sustainable energy but strong forces including the oil and mining industries have opposed this. We have so-called "right to life" groups helping to elect an American President who led us into war, thus creating huge profits for the US Military/ Industrial complex (the Armaments Industry).

Then there is the matter of powering our profit-making factories with nuclear energy - ignoring the blight of the world for future generations with nuclear waste.

I haven't even mentioned global warming where the answer always seems to be that doing the right things will "damage our economy".

I wonder what our grandchildren will think about this. Do you think future generations will be impressed by the fact that we have enjoyed a booming economy and lived it up based on the profits we made in wrecking the world?

Perhaps some young ones, with some better ideas, will read this and do something; I hope so.

Jim Vickers-Willis