Future Britain – Fifty Years Time – A personal view

My starting place is to compare what life was like at fifty year intervals from 1809, pick the main threads and extrapolate those changes into the future.

1809 – World population 1 Billion – Napoleonic Wars, 1812 Russia defeats Napoleon, 1815 Waterloo, our language and industrial revolution well under way, 1819 tarmacadam roads,1821 Famine in Ireland, 1831 Cholera epidemic, 1835 Railways boom,

1859 – World population 1.3 Billion, Queen Victoria, Dickens, horse-drawn carriages, no pavements, children in the mines, life expectancy 48 years, slums, workhouse, mills, coalmines, iron and steel, pre-gas, pre-electricity, Britain as the dominant world power, sailing ships, opium wars, grain races, china clippers, first translantic cable,

1909 – World population 1.7 Billion, horse-drawn carriages, no pavements, children in the mines, life expectancy 48 years, retirement at age 70, slums, workhouse, mills, coalmines, iron and steel, pre-gas, pre-electricity, Britain as the dominant world power, steel battleships, sewage systems, motor cars just starting,

1959 – World population 3 Billion, schooling and healthcare, B&W TV, phone, cars, trolley buses and trams, jet aircraft, oil 3$ a barrel, food rationing ended in 1952, America as the dominant world power, life expectancy 68 years, translantic traffic, as many books published between 1955 and 1970 as in the whole world upto 1955, (1973 oil 13$ pbl),

2009 – World population 6 Billion, computers, internet, global village, English as the common language for the world, satellites, Google Earth, blog and twitter, oil $40-$140 a barrel, America as the dominant world power, life expectancy 88 years, mobile phones, knowledge still growing exponentially, power of computers still growing exponentially, China has scammed £1trillion off America by fixing the exchange rate and has started cyber warfare.

2059 – World population 10 Billion, At today’s prices the price of oil is $1400 - $4,000 a barrel, Space planes will be in ordinary use, Holographic imaging will be available, video phones are standard, computers are in use as brain enhancers, China will be the dominant world power: balanced by the Romans (USA, UK, Canada, ANZAC, Pacific rim countries,) and their allies India and Africa. The mavericks are North Korea, Pakistan, Iran, South America and Russia. China will have rented a huge chunk of land from Russia. Russia will have recovered their buffer states because the Europeans couldn’t agree on nor pay for a strategy to hold them together. Russia is not a world player, they have sunk back to subsistence because they can’t deliver their oil and gas consistently, poor infrastructure, poor security of delivery. China and India are now the primary producers of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, together ten times more than the rest of the world together.

The UK is independent of the EU; life expectancy is 108 years, there’s self-sufficiency in food and water; with sustainable energy; the UK population has grown by 15 million, retirement age is 95. 1.5 million extra people, mainly wealthy people from around the world have come to Britain because of the quality of life and of the safety and protection our police and armed service provide and of course the tax regime.

We have an extraordinarily good life, one we could not have imagined in the depths of the 2009 global depression.

So how will the UK look, what will everyday life be like:

Together we are all driving the knowledge-based economy in languages, law, entertainment, culture, cuisine, sport, design, engineering, education, all largely from our offices at home. We will see language universities. While we may do some serious metal based manufacturing, the real thrust is in development only of high value requirements.

The key to our society is service whether financial services, conference centres or entertainment or the arts or sport or buildings maintenance or restaurants or software or new knowledge or new materials or helping one another, everything is about quality of service. The key to quality of service is education so that each person gets the best education for themsleves. Everyone is British, everyone celebrates their uniqueness.

The Northern Irish Protestants, the Hong Kong Chinese, the Singaporeans, the British Caribs and the Free Dutch have settled in, many on the land reclaimed from the sea; new towns have been built where the storm gates in the flood ramparts are; new towns have been built over the motorway junctions.