The modern world strikes again

AOG, Madrid

I have just heard on Spanish radio the story of a woman in New Zealand who has died after her electricity company, Mercury Energy, turned off the power to her home because the light bill had not been paid.

The woman in question was connected to an electric oxygen pump to breathe, and although her family tried to stop the power being switched off, the engineer who had been called out only responded that he had to do his job.

It is reported that he even went inside the house to see the situation for himself. And that he switched the power off anyway. This strikes me as completely inhuman, though I don't have all the facts and, as they say, there are two sides to every story. Nonetheless, I can't help but wonder about what was going through that man's head when he carried out his orders.

Here is a link to the story as told in Australia. Not many European papers carry the story yet. It is only 13:12 right now. It may change.

According to her family, she owed Mercury Energy 168.40 New Zealand dollars (US$122).

Folole Muliaga, 44, a schoolteacher with four children aged 5 to 20, had been off work since February with an illness and fell behind in her payments to Mercury. Her husband had taken time off from work to care for her.

The company are said to be "devastated by the woman's death and was conducting its own investigation to determine what happened", according to Mercury Energy's general manager, James Moulder.

Well, what do they think happened?

And already, modernity has begun to exude impunity left, right and center:

Auckland University professor of law Bill Hodge said manslaughter charges could potentially could be filed, depending on what information Mercury Energy had and how it was expressed to them.

Well, how does Professor Hodge think Mercury Energy were informed? Smoke signals? And what information does he think the company will admit to having if this goes to court?

Unfortunately, by this weekend, this poor woman's death will be old news. Until the next time something like this happens.

Once again, a life has fallen by the wayside in humanity's attempt to reach complete modernity. What's a life when faced with corporate greed, inhuman call centers, robotic taped messages. In order to better the lives of our species, we have lost the human touch completely.

Once our species achieves modernity, will there be anyone of us left to see it?

War Debts

AOG, London

According to an article on The Times, the UK paid off the last of its Wolrld War II debt to the US on the 31st of December, 2006. According to the article, the Treasury paid cheques totalling £43.5m — equivalent to 94p for every adult — in final settlement of a £1 billion loan taken out in 1945 and worth more than £50 billion today.

Another article on the BBC mentions that the UK still has outstanding debts going back to before the Napoleonic wars. These are called Consol bonds and they appear to hark as far back as 1751. It also mentions that the UK's WWI debt is still largely unpaid. It appears that the UK owed £886 million which in today's money means £40,000 million pounds.

Though to be fair, loans owed to the UK from that war are still outstanding- something close to £2,300 million pounds at the end of the war. Of course the UK is not the only country which still has war debts.

Apparently, these debts, both owed and outstanding, have not been revised nor payed nor written off since 1934.

According to the Iraq Analysis Group, the UK is currently spending £3 billion per year on its iraqui war effort.

This money could have also been spent thus:

" £3.2 billion spent on education, for example, would be sufficient to fund the recruitment and retention of over 10,300 new teachers for ten years. In health, it would allow the building of around 44 new hospitals. The £6.44 billion Special Reserve represents the entire annual budget of the Department of International Development and would allow a five-fold increase in bilateral aid to Africa. According to UNICEF estimates, £5 billion would fund two years of full immunization for every child in the developing world "

Long term, I cant help but wonder if the UK government really believes that the UK will benefit more from its operations in Iraq than it would from 44 new hospitals or from the work and dedication of over ten thousand teachers.

As for the American war debt, this website is a real eye opener: www.costofwar.com

I wonder in what century will the UK (never mind the US) stop paying for Iraq and Afghanistan. And I don't just mean financially.