Ideas 3...A Leisure Orientated Society

In a highly automated society, insufficient job satisfaction and inadequate purposeful employment, will be apparent. The creation of a leisure orientated society which would instil feelings of purpose and satisfaction, thereby maintaining a civilised cohesive entity, is essential if the human race is to survive into the foreseeable future. Creating a leisure orientated society will not only cost an enormous amount of money to establish, but will also require drastic fundamental changes in the way society operates, and more importantly in the way people view work and reward.

Artificial Intelligence and androids will be introduced into the workplace by 2030, although expert systems software is likely to replace jobs in call centres and concessions areas in stores before then. Amazon Fresh opened the UK's first automated concessions system in March 2021 in west London. Just load the app onto your cell phone at the entrance and as you walk out with your groceries you are automatically charged for them. There are hundreds of thousands of people working in concessions (behind the till) in the UK, many of them young with few employment prospects. The pace of change depends largely upon government policy. The policy in the UK is one not of a science based economy, but instead that of a quick fix, where graduates having spent ten years in higher education are employed on a project related basis only, whilst many of them are recruited from abroad. As for the pace of change, it is much swifter in the PRC than the UK, but with the introduction of AI into government and company planning, the pace is likely to pick up just about everywhere. Will the human race be able to cope?

People would still have a job, although the number of hours actually worked would probably be around ten hours per week, and would consist mainly of supervising the supervisors, and attending meetings related to company policy and future planning. The importance of keeping people occupied in order to keep crime rates low, is the fundamental reason for having people engaged in leisure activities. The relief of stress whilst raising the quality of life through active participation in sport, is justification enough for the expenditure of huge sums of money to finance the building of huge sport and leisure centres.

In a leisure orientated society, people would be paid to pursue sport and leisure activities in addition to receiving their company wage, company annual profits bonus, company share dividend and state universal benefit. It was a pity that at this time the British Government was not creating worker co-operatives out of state owned assets, since many of the workers from these once nationalised industries would later be made redundant with nothing but the dole to fall back on. Instead, most of the shares in the sale of nationalised industries, would be bought by wealthy institutions.

At the very least, payments to participants for sport and leisure involvement would be necessary in order to overcome people's resigned acceptance of their otherwise imposed sedentary lifestyle. To be paid for pursuing sport and leisure activities may sound ridiculous, but the reasons are obvious even as I write this. With the growth of television in the 196Os, British society became far more introverted, whilst the increased sale of alcohol in supermarkets coupled with the fear of crime on the streets speeded up this trend. Being propositioned by female and gay prostitutes in pubs and bars, has resulted in people going out less in the evenings, and speaking to one another less, even within the family. Lack of sufficient human interaction is a major cause of mental illness and crime. Advances in information technology will increase this trend if it is not counteracted by the creation of an attractive alternative, such as sport and leisure employment.

Leisure centres and amusement - theme parks have been around for many years in Great Britain and elsewhere. As in many other countries the main stumbling block to their utilization has been afford ability of access by visitors, and the weather. Access would be free. Hopefully technology will be able to solve the weather problem by building huge domes possibly a kilometre in diameter, which will enable an hospitable artificial environment to be created, including wave generators and wind machines for surfing, sailing and parachuting, etc. Similar structures for sport already exist in Japan, Dubai, Germany, etc.

Each sport and leisure complex would serve roughly one hundred thousand people, located where good communications by road and rail existed. Given the necessary encouragement, by government, the necessary finance could be found by private enterprise.

Many sports such as rock climbing, gliding, scuba diving, micro light flying, motor racing and ballooning, etcetera, carry a certain amount of risk. Hopefully an enlightened general public will see the long term benefits of such risky pastimes, and consider it justified. In a controlled environment these risks would be kept to a minimum. With increasing age, people become less adventurous and able. For senior citizens and the disabled, lighter pursuits such as gardening and collecting, would be considered acceptable alternatives, for which monetary reward would be given. Only approved activities involving human interaction and skill would be eligible for financial reward. For those considered physically fit, human effort would also be considered a requirement. A programme of sport and leisure activities would therefore be drawn up to suit each individual, with emphasis on mental as well as physical capabilities and needs.

The average British family watched twenty-seven hours of television per week in the 1980s, whilst the main participating sports were darts and snooker at the local public house or working men's club. As for Birmingham, hardly any pub had games facilities. For the population as a whole, gardening and attending sports matches as a spectator were less actively pursued. Improving the quality of people's lives should be the main priority of any government. At this time British sport was confined to drab Victorian stadiums, since rebuilt, with many of those people present, merely spectators. Whilst Dubai can have a minister for happiness, the average UK citizen gets a one hundred and twenty year old Victorian hovel, and the drab British climate, to dampen any feelings of healthy longevity. So much for twenty-first century sci-fi movies.

In July 2023 the state of Victoria in Australia announced it was pulling out of providing the Olympic games venue due to a cost of A$6 billion. This was quickly followed by Alberta, Canada, due to a projected cost of C$2.7 billion. So why doesn't the Commonwealth Games Federation come up with a mobile games venue base upon prefabricated stadiums and sports halls, with tented villages for the athletes, etc. The tents could either be put into storage between games, or handed to charities for use in trouble spots or disaster regions. Putting mobile entertainment in tents is not a new idea, since circuses have been doing that for decades.

In a leisure orientated society, retirement for the elderly is replaced by reduced working, where the number of hours worked would be only that necessary to give an individual an identity. The replacement of retirement with paid leisure, would add quality to the lives of senior citizens, who under the present system feel rejected and forgotten. About half the elderly population in the UK live alone and don't go on holiday. It's about time HMG set up a state funded and organised dating agency, since they have the databases to make it work. Bringing people together would make more housing available. At the present time most dating agencies are a con.

In my youth my brother and I went sailing at the Middle Nene Cruising Club at Thrapston. That club no longer exists. Probably due to people switching to the internet for their entertainment. My brother pursued the sport of gliding in later life, but I, like millions of other people in the UK, do not go out. The last time I went out, one year ago, I was banned from my favourite bar, that I had been going to for 7 years prior to the pandemic, because I had not responded to something the doorman had said to me. I simply did not hear him. I then went to another bar and paid for half a pint of cola with my debit card. Looking at my bank statement a few days later, I learned that I had been charged incredibly, six pounds. You don't need to look any further to see why pubs, bars and night clubs are in the decline. They have had to endure two years of lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic, plus one year of high energy prices, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In addition many elderly do not go out because, like me, they are suffering from arthritis, much of it caused by lack of expose to sunshine. And of course the real price of alcohol is ridiculously high compared to what it is in other European countries. Then of course there is the government's failure to provide people with secure employment and a mate. Most dating agencies on the internet are a fraud, so why doesn't HMG set up their own which people can trust? Their support for homosexuals has spread distrust in strangers across the nation, whilst the influx of illegal migrants, economic migrants stealing our jobs, criminals on the run and terrorists, which is now costing almost £2 billion per annum in 2023, is creating a mongrel nation full of even more distrust and dread for the future. Many people don't even know who there neighbours are. Many city dwellers live in tower blocks, that have become like catacombs. HMG appears incapable of designing a society that works. Their social engineering, which has had absolutely no support from the electorate, because they were not consulted, is a subtle disaster that not even the media has commented on. For reasons I fail to understand, they want slavery through the gig economy, not job security. So it would seem that a leisure orientated society is merely a utopian ideal that will never be fulfilled. This above all is an excellent reason for abandoning multi party democracy in favour of a world technocracy. Will this ever be debated in the United Nations and then implemented, or will unrestricted capitalism continue to be given a free reign to ultimately trash civilisation? Dream on.