This is Devon -- Here is a truism I believe in ever more strongly each time I walk out the front door: travel, in all its multifarious forms, is the most mind-broadening and informative thing most of us can do to improve our knowledge of the world on a regular basis. For example, it's one thing to read about climate change or to wonder about its planet-altering enormity by watching TV programmes – but it is altogether more informative to stand next to a high alpine glacier in midwinter. Do that – and be told by a local expert that the ancient glacier will be gone in 30 years' time – and you will know that climate change is happening here and now, even if you won't learn what's causing it. I did such a thing in shirtsleeves last week, while gazing down into a Swiss valley that was green, but should have been white. It's when you go to the extreme edge of things that you see climate change in action. Mountains are the high altitude equivalent of the Earth's Poles – they provide a chance to escape our temperate zones and visit places where the slightest meteorological change has its first profound effect. And right now the great heights of Europe are telling us something big and worrying is happening. But then, we don't live in Switzerland and, unless we're winter-sports fanatics, why should we care about what happens in mountains? It could be that the lack of ice up there has nothing to do with the crazy conveyor belt of storms that's been hitting the lovely, comfy, old Westcountry in recent times. The act of travelling won't give us any answers to that, but it can allow us a hunch or two. Nor does travel have to be as dramatic as standing on the edge of a midwinter glacier in a T-shirt. Also this week I was on an early morning commuter train – but it was like no workaday journey you'd experience in the UK. A ride on the 8.30 express between Montreux and Geneva gave me plenty to think about… Every person in the carriage was busy making business calls on mobile phones in a plethora of languages. The immaculately dressed bloke next to me went from English to German to French in a single call. Others were switching from Italian to Russian – one woman was using a cocktail of Mandarin, German and American English. Can you imagine that happening on the 8.15 Taunton to Exeter? I felt a bit of a rustic sitting there in my muddy clothes – which is the way apparel goes when you hike in alps that should be covered in snow but instead are just wet. As we rattled along at a highly-efficient 120 mph on a train that was guaranteed to reach its destination within seconds of the advertised time, I began to wonder how poor old Britain – with all its self-important, head-in-the-sand, parochialism – can hope to compete internationally when a second-class train carriage plying the shore of Lake Geneva is full of multi-linguistic people who have the world at their fingertips. At least, I was wondering that – until I began to earhole the English parts of conversations. Then I realised that this clever lot were speaking the same old balderdash as the rest of Europe, or even the rest of what used to be called the Western World. All the conversations were centred upon arranging meetings, or strategies, or some other kind of middle-management claptrap. I have been on commuter trains in emerging Far Eastern "tiger economies" where people talking on mobile phones hurriedly discuss the pure and profitable act of making things. Here (by which I mean the UK, or Europe) we talk about managing things - which is an important-sounding way of creating, or keeping, jobs which aren't really jobs at all. "We're having a video-conference later to discuss response-times," said the bloke next to me. "They're slow, and we're worried about customer satisfaction." I felt like saying: "Don't bother with the conference – tell the person in charge of response-times to make things better, or else…" So my new theory – inspired by a week's alpine travel – is this: the snows and glaciers of Europe are melting because there's too much hot-air being wafted uselessly upwards by the millions working in management.
Reported by This is 12 hours ago.
This is Devon -- Here is a truism I believe in ever more strongly each time I walk out the front door: travel, in all its multifarious forms, is the most mind-broadening and informative thing most of us can do to improve our knowledge of the world on a regular basis. For example, it's one thing to read about climate change or to wonder about its planet-altering enormity by watching TV programmes – but it is altogether more informative to stand next to a high alpine glacier in midwinter. Do that – and be told by a local expert that the ancient glacier will be gone in 30 years' time – and you will know that climate change is happening here and now, even if you won't learn what's causing it. I did such a thing in shirtsleeves last week, while gazing down into a Swiss valley that was green, but should have been white. It's when you go to the extreme edge of things that you see climate change in action. Mountains are the high altitude equivalent of the Earth's Poles – they provide a chance to escape our temperate zones and visit places where the slightest meteorological change has its first profound effect. And right now the great heights of Europe are telling us something big and worrying is happening. But then, we don't live in Switzerland and, unless we're winter-sports fanatics, why should we care about what happens in mountains? It could be that the lack of ice up there has nothing to do with the crazy conveyor belt of storms that's been hitting the lovely, comfy, old Westcountry in recent times. The act of travelling won't give us any answers to that, but it can allow us a hunch or two. Nor does travel have to be as dramatic as standing on the edge of a midwinter glacier in a T-shirt. Also this week I was on an early morning commuter train – but it was like no workaday journey you'd experience in the UK. A ride on the 8.30 express between Montreux and Geneva gave me plenty to think about… Every person in the carriage was busy making business calls on mobile phones in a plethora of languages. The immaculately dressed bloke next to me went from English to German to French in a single call. Others were switching from Italian to Russian – one woman was using a cocktail of Mandarin, German and American English. Can you imagine that happening on the 8.15 Taunton to Exeter? I felt a bit of a rustic sitting there in my muddy clothes – which is the way apparel goes when you hike in alps that should be covered in snow but instead are just wet. As we rattled along at a highly-efficient 120 mph on a train that was guaranteed to reach its destination within seconds of the advertised time, I began to wonder how poor old Britain – with all its self-important, head-in-the-sand, parochialism – can hope to compete internationally when a second-class train carriage plying the shore of Lake Geneva is full of multi-linguistic people who have the world at their fingertips. At least, I was wondering that – until I began to earhole the English parts of conversations. Then I realised that this clever lot were speaking the same old balderdash as the rest of Europe, or even the rest of what used to be called the Western World. All the conversations were centred upon arranging meetings, or strategies, or some other kind of middle-management claptrap. I have been on commuter trains in emerging Far Eastern "tiger economies" where people talking on mobile phones hurriedly discuss the pure and profitable act of making things. Here (by which I mean the UK, or Europe) we talk about managing things - which is an important-sounding way of creating, or keeping, jobs which aren't really jobs at all. "We're having a video-conference later to discuss response-times," said the bloke next to me. "They're slow, and we're worried about customer satisfaction." I felt like saying: "Don't bother with the conference – tell the person in charge of response-times to make things better, or else…" So my new theory – inspired by a week's alpine travel – is this: the snows and glaciers of Europe are melting because there's too much hot-air being wafted uselessly upwards by the millions working in management.
Reported by This is 12 hours ago.