Oliver Postgate

“Lord, look down upon your world!” commanded the Devil.

“Why should I?” replied God. “It stinks.”

“I said look! not sniff. Look down on a single moment sixty-two years ago. The moment in which you remade time. The moment when you allowed mankind to see itself as it was, in a single flash of eternity.”

“OK. So I let them drop an atom bomb on Hiroshima. It was a strategic ... read more

Unusually for him, the Devil was wroth. In fact he was hopping mad and made no secret of it. “Hey!” he bawled in a voice of flame, “What have you been up to?”

“Nothing evil.” said God. “Just tidying things up a bit. You know.”

“I do indeed! And a right pig’s ear you’re making of it! It’s my job to sow discord among the teeming masses so that you ... read more

“Belt up!” said God in a voice of thunder. “Stop niggling about your home-made house rules. What I want to know is important – What happened to all that money?

“What money?” asked the Devil.

“There’s this joker in France who says he has “lost” something like forty billion pounds of other people’s money! Well then, where is it? You can’t lose the entire wealth of a nation, even ... read more

The fervent Channel 4 programme "The Great Global Warming Swindle", produced by the 'denyers', and its slating and rejection by the 'disaster crusaders', has taken the debate about the likely future of the world out of science, which is necessarily inconclusive, and into the realm of pseudo-religion.

Now you either 'believe in' one future or you 'believe in' another. Both attitudes are rich with indicative examples but apparently without sufficiently ... read more

Do you remember the Nuclear Arms Race? For years it seemed as if mankind was going to commit suicide in a nuclear holocaust. The conviction that the competitive accretion of nuclear explosives, enough to cause general annihilation many times over (and also, ‘collaterally’, poison the world), was a form of defence seemed to be indelibly cast in the minds of politicians. It was only eventually shifted by the sudden application ... read more

It is devoting a whole issue to publicising the likely effects of climate-change, just as they were being publicised three years ago and also almost twenty years ago (by Mrs Thatcher!).

Nobody took any notice then either. Why not? Because the basic situation is too simple and the solution is not what is called ‘politically realistic’.

What is this ‘political reality’?

Well, it certainly has nothing to do with real ... read more

The other day I heard John Bolton - who lately resigned his post as US representative designate to the United Nations - saying how unforgivably evil it was of the Syrians to (allegedly) assassinate certain Lebanese politicians who were thought to be obstructing Syria’s ambition to gain political control of Lebanon. If true, that is certainly a despicable thing to do, definitely not the sort of behaviour we expect from ... read more

GREETING

I will not lumber you with love,nor climb on you to measure you for sins,nor wipe you over with forgivenesses,nor kick your shins,

I know your eyes do not see out of minenor are your tears the tears I shedbut I don't care.For I will take your hand and make a place for youbecause you're there.

... read more

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your eyes, and also, if you have tears to shed, prepare to shed them now. For I am not joking. I write about the future.

Not so much about our own future, but about the future of our children and of the world in which they hope to live, the world whose atmosphere we are fast poisoning beyond recovery, the world that is moving inexorably ... read more

I ask this seemingly simple question while the White Paper on its proposed renewal is being published, because, quite frankly, I don’t think many of the people discussing the subject really know what Trident is, or rather, what it is for.

What Trident consists of is well known. Britain and the US have sets of submarines which take turns to go out and lurk under the oceans where they can’t ... read more

Yes! Yes indeed! If there’s one thing the world needs most urgently just now it is a new statesman, or come to that, an old statesman or stateswoman, one, or half a dozen even, who can draw the world’s attention to the sorry state it has got itself into, and persuade it to sort itself out.

Where would such a statesman start? What qualities would be needed? Courage, certainly. Also ... read more