COULD CUBA CRISIS BE TRUMPED?
I MISSED the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 because my birth was still some years away, but my parents both remember it.
They tell me that if this diplomatic stand-off between President John F Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had gone the other way, none of us would be here talking about it.
For several days, people genuinely thought international events beyond their control were about to kill them. Decades later there is some amusement to be had in imagining Donald Trump in Kennedy’s place during the crisis.
Would the world have ended? Is the survival of mankind such a big deal when set against weightier objectives such as saving face and showing the soon-to-be-vaporised world that The Donald never backs down?
We have now had three presidential candidates’ debates and more evidence of the disaster President Trump would be for his country and our planet than most of us have headspace to accommodate. Yesterday he was just six points behind in the polls.
In years to come I think people who don’t remember the Cuban Missile Crisis will look back on 2016 with a shudder. That, I hope they’ll conclude, was as scary as the world ever got. OUR mobile phones can’t quite do all the work of a qualified GP yet but give it time. Already phones are treating depression and blood pressure issues. Feeling low? Then sign up online for regular messages to your device telling you to be happier. Lonely? Starved of human contact? Texts from a machine could be just the thing. Those with high blood pressure, meanwhile, can download a special app. You will have noticed, as I have, how much people with high blood pressure enjoy new technology they don’t know how to work.