The Fluoridation Saga will continue after the third and final instalment of Teatime at Marshbeck. The first instalment was two weeks ago on Sunday 9th April 2006 and the second instalment last Sunday. The story first appeared in the revised 1983 edition of The Sane Alternative by James Robertson and included the idea of an LHP…a Leisure Home and Personal Infomatic Set…indicating that James Robertson was already 25 years ahead of his time foreseeing the merging of telephones, computers and other digital devices. It is the afternoon of 5th January 2050 and Herbert and Emily are continuing their conversation about The Good Old Days back in the 1980s and 1990s.

‘Let’s be fair to them, though’, Emily says. ‘The great transformation didn’t take place suddenly, out of the blue. Indira’s right. People had been discussing alternative futures for some time. Would it be Business As Usual? Disaster? Police State? We once retrieved some of the debates from the archive data bank through the LHP. And surely, Herbert, there was the big controversy in the ‘80s about masculine and feminine values, and whether the post-industrial future was going to be HE (Hyperexpansionist) or SHE (Sane Humane Ecological).’

Old Meg Jones can keep silent no longer. ‘This is all very interesting, Emily’, she says, ‘but the biggest thing that changed was politics. It’s only about fifty years since most people realised that politics was about how you lived your own life. Then they began to do politics for themselves.

When I was young in the ‘80s and ‘90s, a few thousand full-time politicians did politics for everyone else, mainly in places like Washington and Moscow, London and Brussels. They made a profession of it, a career. My mother was in the game herself for a while. She was an MP. And Herbert’s quite right; I remember her saying it was a very masculine game, even for women. For most people politics meant casting a vote from time to time. That was it. The politicians liked it, of course. It gave them a lot of attention, and made them feel really important.

No-one would want to go back to that now. But imagine how exciting it was at election time. Everyone stayed at home to watch the results on television. In fact, as that way of doing politics began to break down, it turned into an entertainment like horse-jumping and all the other spectator sports of those days. It must be difficult for you young people to realise what it was like, with everyone sitting passively in front of the television all the time, watching and listening to the performers. Ordinary people couldn’t communicate directly with each other all over the world as you do today through the LHP’.

‘Talking of politics,’ says Emily, ‘it’s nearly six o’clock, and time we all went to the monthly cluster meeting. There won’t be many domestic matters on the agenda this time, though I want to get the minifarm roster settled for the year and I think your Harley wants to propose up-grading the coppice, doesn’t he, Meg?

But there are some external questions to discuss: what should be done about the dispute over the Marshbeck Water Supply? What do we think of the proposal that Trentside District should stop trying to be self-sufficient in energy? Do we have any ideas for this year’s inter-continent exchange programme? And shall we take up the idea of a special link with the dolphin group at PISCES?

‘Come on Bruno and Shantih. ‘We want a full quorum of under-tens at the cluster meeting; the voice the future must be heard. Anyhow, we don’t want people saying you’re missing your education. They might suggest we send you out to school!’

God forbid! Schools? What were they? Prisons or Child Care Centres? And so to the second part of my three part essay on Me & Fluoridation. The first part of the saga is in yesterday’s weblog…Number 112.

In 1974 a report went off to the World Bank about the future water supplies for the Central Rift Valley in East Africa. The engineers wrote their bit...and I wrote the rest. Once upon a time the rest meant demand projections which the engineers did themselves. This is how it worked. The Chartered Engineer would design his dam and set his demand growth rate to yield a positive Net Present Value. Then he would write his report, putting his demand projections as the opening chapter. Hey Presto! The Engineer's Dam is the only supply response to the expected demand for water.

Lake Nakuru was not quite that straightforward. In the Central Rift Valley there are two problems with the water coming in and going out. It goes in dirty and comes out different dirty. The in-problem helps the engineers get their dam...so they were happy to let the resident Economic Planning Engineer (me) loose on the problem.

But the out-problem was best hived off to a separate project. This would have worked just fine had our firm of consulting engineers not been awarded both the Nakuru Sewerage Project and the Rift Valley Water Supply Project. Big mistake. The engineer working on the Sewerage Project drank with me at the Impala Club, had lunch with me at the Lamu Coffee House and had his office just along the corridor from me opposite the Jomo Kenyatta Centre. So we talked to each other...something that was not really supposed to happen.