This is in no way a reflection of the UK economy or government. In fact it is just a general realisation of how much life is rubbish today. That not only is everything turning to pooh but now my stupid car won’t start!

Why won’t it start?

I do not have a clue. In fact this is the second time in two weeks it has refused to start. I use to be with the AA and would call them out to fix my car until I discovered that it was cheaper to buy a new battery than to renew my membership and things were good after that. So now I have no help to start my car. Which is not too bad when it was in my drive. Rather terrifying when I was stuck in the car park in the Liverpool university chemistry department on Friday at 18:30 in the evening.

HELP!

But now my dad has driven over, lent me his car and by chance I noticed something hanging down from the front of my car when we were about to try and get it started. The thing which was a black box thing with some wires and tubes looked not to be broken - by my technical eye. It looked to swing and the thing that held it looked to have rusted through. What it does I do not know. BUT moving it about and pushing on the wire connectors made my car work again. So building a rudimentary mount from wire, cable ties and bits of a nuclear reactor it was held back up to where it was the car starts every time and my dad drove off in it.

Now a few days later the nuclear reactor components have all been removed and replaced with a bent coat hanger the car continues to start and it is back in my possession and I think touching wooden floor all is good again.

When I told people that my car would not start, the first thing 90% said was buy a new car! What the fuck. What are you on about buy a new car. We are not talking about a kettle from ASDA for £7 we are talking about a car. The response don’t worry get it on finance just made me even more annoyed. What are you on about? You are still paying for it! You are paying more for it! Are you mad?

Is this what is wrong with the world. That I may love to drive my Dad’s new car, I also love my old car and would prefer to fix it for a few hundred pounds than buy a new one for a few tens of thousand. Is the fact that you are not paying it all off at once blinding people that you are still paying a large amount of money out. Is the fact that everything is so easy to get, I can google for information rather than go to the library, I can write, read and send an email quicker than I can find a pen and paper has the world become too easy and that is why we look for the easy answer the quick fix and often that is just get a new one rather than diagnose and fix the problem at the source?

I find it very funny, this new phenomenon of “I want it now” or IWIN. I am not immune to it, when I buy things online I want them the same day but am often too lazy to go to an actual shop with crowds of people and have to deal with people and the shop but would be able to walk away with a thing now, there and then!

But my IWIN is controlled when it comes to things like buying a new fucking car rather than replacing a bulb or a fuse or a coat hanger.

It is however perhaps the IWIN mentality which will be the end of us here in science in the UK. Why? Because I think people have forgotten the effort required, the dedication need to do this sort of thing. They would prefer to watch it on a TV, forgetting that without the Scotts we would have no TV, without an American no light and without a brilliant Brit no standardise electricity within the UK.

Damn it just forget it you’ve probably all ready stopped reading by now.