- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
Above: World GDP/capita versus percentage of the 'Saturation level' (point at which consumption per capita does not increase with income levels). Cement points estimated by Global Cement. Graph courtesy Rio Tinto.
I recently saw a news item that suggested that we will all be able to live until we are 150 years old (but most likely this will only apply to rich people, as usual). I shuddered. Imagine - living to 75 and then living another 75 years as a very old person. Imagine living 75 years as a very old poor person - since low industrial growth rates around the world will almost certainly translate into lower returns on pensions. In the future you will have to have an enormous pension pot to live off it alone - most people will also have to work, albeit part-time - deep into what is now considered their retirement ages. Perhaps it would be best to go out with a bang at an earlier age, as soon as the money runs out. As has been noted before, 'There are no pleasures in life worth denying yourself for an extra two years in an old-folks home in Weston-super-Mare [a older seaside town in the west of England].'
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial Director, Global Cement Magazine
I have just returned from a short trip to Bergen in Norway, to visit an old university friend who now works over there. The region around Bergen, including Øygarden, the Jotenheimen Mountains and Balestrand (the architecture of which was 'borrowed' by Disney for the film 'Frozen') was awe-inspiringly beautiful, but the prices were eye-blisteringly high - just to look at a restaurant menu might leave scorch marks on your retina.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial director, Global Cement Magazine
I think that it all began with those cutesy ads for the Apple iPod - the ones with a funky-looking youth in silhouette, wearing a very obvious pair of white 'ear-bud' ear-phones. They glorified personal choice, while at the same time closing the user off from interaction with other people. Listening to music while walking or running somehow eradicates part of the humanity of the wearer - they become 'apart.' I know - I've said 'Keep going' or 'well done' to any number of competitors in running races and been completely ignored because they were in their own little world. Not least of the anti-social effects of the iPod and its ilk is the pernicious tinny noise that they leak into the ears of other people (and the insidious devaluation of the pleasures of the noises of the real world - for example the wonder of bird song - and of the ultimate non-noise: silence).
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial director, Global Cement Magazine
I have two daughters, Elizabeth (currently 15) and Jemima (13). Elizabeth gleefully tells me that next year she will turn 17 and will be able to start to learn how to drive. How did that happen? It seems like only yesterday that I was bathing her in the sink of our kitchen in our tiny house, and Jemima was still only a glimmer in my eye. They've grown up so fast. Too fast.
- Written by Robert McCaffrey Editorial director, Global Cement Magazine
A lost decade sounds like a throwback to the drug-addled 1970s, when rockers lost their minds and their memories through over-indulgence in drugs, booze and hookers. Some say that if you can remember the 1960s, then you weren't really there. However, the proverbial 'lost decade' of this month's Last Word is less about LSD and 'free love,' and is more about the less sexy concepts of deflation, productivity gaps and economics.
