IT’S A CRY FOR HELP, STUPID

Occasionally, this country comes up with something that sparkles, that provokes an involuntary smile, that cheers you up no end.

I refer to the geniuses who came up with the white flag campaign.

Now here’s an idea whose time has come. To avoid the humiliation of “begging” or pleading for government aid, distressed families have been asked to raise a white flag outside their homes and aid would, like the mail, arrive.

The idea was born out of the minds of creative Netizens on social media, and it’s taken off big time. Businesses have also pitched in with pledges to help.

What’s tactfully unsaid in all the commentary is the fact that the government has been found wanting. Because it failed to step up to the plate, Malaysians took matters into their own hands. There would have been no need for this campaign if the government had done what it’s supposed to.

The prolonged lockdown has seriously damaged the economy and pushed thousands into poverty.

These are very troubled times and nowhere is it more starkly demonstrated than the statistics for suicide which listed 336 deaths over the first three months of the year.

More than anything else, it was those appalling figures that prompted the “white flag” movement, that tugged at enough heartstrings to compel action.

Our politicians love to dwell on our differences, the better to create perceived or imagined threats that promise to forever keep some segments of society insecure, so that these politicians can continue to justify their existence, their grip on power.

The white flag initiative promises to transcend these petty notions. And the people behind this campaign instinctively grasp what the government seems incapable of: you cannot do kindness too soon because you never know how soon will be too late.

Meanwhile, if you’re not part of the solution, then don’t be part of the problem. Or at the very least get out of the way. Better still, shut up.

Take the MP from Bachok, Nik Abduh Nik Aziz. As a child, he fancied a career in counter-intelligence. Looks like he made it, too.

The MP chided people for hoisting the white flag as those who admit defeat to challenges “from God.” He then brightly added that they would be better served “by praying.”

Unsurprisingly, this rocket scientist hails from Pas, an obscure party of obscure people with obscurantist views that have, apparently, never heard of the phrase “God helps those who help themselves.”

The same God also gave people a brain so that they might use reason and act with kindness aforethought.

But Mr Nik could be the exception that proves the rule, being proof himself that God does, indeed, have a sense of humour.

And then there is the Chief Minister of Kedah who seems to have a worldview shaped by the Cro-Magnon period. He’s threatened to deny state aid to anyone who hoists the white flag. Reason: it’s “propaganda” against the government.

Well, if the shoe fits…

As a former journalist who’s covered enough Pas ceramah to know, it might be instructive to share this.

When any Pas event is unfolding, the organisers literally pass a bag around. That’s how the party raises its money. You might say it’s its white flag.

This bag-passing should cease and desist. That would be conceding defeat, wouldn’t it?

No, these God-fearing people would be better served by prayer.

ENDS

IF THEY WOULD ONLY LISTEN…

I wonder if our ministers or our politicians read what people say about them on social media?

I wish they would. Perhaps then, they might be less inclined to say things that just mystifies the hell out of the average person.

On Thursday, the Minister of Federal Territories Annuar Musa, for example, said what can only be described as bizarre. He said that the public’s seeming indifference, their lack of fear in their flouting of restrictions, indicated that the government had been successful in its handling of the pandemic.

It usually takes a woman to make fools of men, but Mr Annuar seems like a do-it-yourself type.

But perhaps mindful of the fact that it took an election in Sabah to destroy the good the first movement control order (MCO) did for Covid numbers, he may just have been thinking of Homer Simpson: “Stupidity got us into this mess, and stupidity will get us out.”

It was the writer Henry David Thoreau who said, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” In an ideal world, it is a phrase that’s frequently used to justify following one’s passion and achieving a life that avoids the mediocrity of playing it small but safe.

But this is not an ideal world. Far from it. It’s a pandemic and things are falling apart because, going by the minister, the centre isn’t making sense. What Mr Annuar does not grasp is that the mass of Malaysians are truly leading lives of forlorn desperation and that is why some flout the rules.

They are desperate for jobs, desperate to meet friends and family, desperate for company, desperate for hope. The last thing they need is a glibly asinine statement by a minister who ought to know better.

Then there is lockdown fatigue. A Malaysian recently estimated on Twitter that from Match 18 last year to June 28 this year Malaysians would have spent 464 days at home under various government control orders. That would depress anyone into flouting some rules.

One gets the impression that many people are sick and tired of their leaders. When Tajudin Abdul Rahman’s woeful attempt at humour in describing a train wreck earned him a well-deserved sack from a lucrative chairmanship, it’s instructive to note that a petition calling for his sack garnered 150,000 signatures.

Clearly, it wasn’t the petition that swayed the Prime Minister. If it did, then Azmin Ali, the Minister of International Trade, should worry: a petition calling for his ouster garnered over 300,000 signatures and, like a rash, continues to grow.

And to think the Prime Minister promised, when he took over, that his would be a government of “competence.”

It’s more like a government of controversy, recently attracting unnecessary criticism by contemplating the sale – sans competitive bidding – of Subang Airport to a billionaire, for a period of almost 70 years. And this despite protests from every government agency linked to the site including Khazanah Nasional, the federal government’s sovereign wealth fund.

The Klang Valley does not need new malls, skyscrapers or condominiums. What it does need are more green lungs, more parks and more open spaces. If they had their way, these billionaires might actually fulfill Joni Mitchel’s prediction: they’d pave Paradise and put up a parking lot.

ENDS

IF THEY WOULD ONLY LISTEN…

I wonder if our ministers or our politicians read what people say about them on social media?

I wish they would. Perhaps then, they might be less inclined to say things that just mystifies the hell out of the average person.

On Thursday, the Minister of Federal Territories Annuar Musa, for example, said what can only be described as bizarre. He said that the public’s seeming indifference, their lack of fear in their flouting of restrictions, indicated that the government had been successful in its handling of the pandemic.

It usually takes a woman to make fools of men, but Mr Annuar seems like a do-it-yourself type.

But perhaps mindful of the fact that it took an election in Sabah to destroy the good the first movement control order (MCO) did for Covid numbers, he may just have been thinking of Homer Simpson: “Stupidity got us into this mess, and stupidity will get us out.”

It was the writer Henry David Thoreau who said, “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” In an ideal world, it is a phrase that’s frequently used to justify following one’s passion and achieving a life that avoids the mediocrity of playing it small but safe.

But this is not an ideal world. Far from it. It’s a pandemic and things are falling apart because, going by the minister, the centre isn’t making sense. What Mr Annuar does not grasp is that the mass of Malaysians are truly leading lives of forlorn desperation and that is why some flout the rules.

They are desperate for jobs, desperate to meet friends and family, desperate for company, desperate for hope. The last thing they need is a glibly asinine statement by a minister who ought to know better.

Then there is lockdown fatigue. A Malaysian recently estimated on Twitter that from Match 18 last year to June 28 this year Malaysians would have spent 464 days at home under various government control orders. That would depress anyone into flouting some rules.

One gets the impression that many people are sick and tired of their leaders. When Tajudin Abdul Rahman’s woeful attempt at humour in describing a train wreck earned him a well-deserved sack from a lucrative chairmanship, it’s instructive to note that a petition calling for his sack garnered 150,000 signatures.

Clearly, it wasn’t the petition that swayed the Prime Minister. If it did, then Azmin Ali, the Minister of International Trade, should worry: a petition calling for his ouster garnered over 300,000 signatures and, like a rash, continues to grow.

And to think the Prime Minister promised, when he took over, that his would be a government of “competence.”

It’s more like a government of controversy, recently attracting unnecessary criticism by contemplating the sale – sans competitive bidding – of Subang Airport to a billionaire, for a period of almost 70 years. And this despite protests from every government agency linked to the site including Khazanah Nasional, the federal government’s sovereign wealth fund.

The Klang Valley does not need new malls, skyscrapers or condominiums. What it does need are more green lungs, more parks and more open spaces. If they had their way, these billionaires might actually fulfill Joni Mitchel’s prediction: they’d pave Paradise and put up a parking lot.

ENDS

IN NORTH KOREA, STUPIDITY ISN’T A HANDICAP

The South Koreans knew what Donald Trump’s supporters stood for. They were a money grabbing, Bible-thumping, greenhouse gassing, missile firing, seal clubbing, oil drilling club whose idea of a good time was to practise firing on gay parades.

On the other hand, North Koreans even approved of some of these practices especially missile firing. As a result, they made up for having no money to grab and no gay parades to fire upon by religiously threatening their neighbours, except China and Russia, with imminent extermination.

You could say it was consistent. North Korea consistently threatened, bullied and hectored its neighbours, most of whom simply ignored the republic and went on making their nations better places for their citizens

North Korea today is the most repressive, the most authoritarian and one of the most consistently famine-stricken nations in the world. South Korea, the nation the North invaded in 1950 because it thought it would win, is currently 54 times richer than its northern neighbour and is ranked among the world’s affluent.

The North’s current leader is the grandson of the rocket scientist who thought nothing of invading his southern neighbour all those years ago. Clearly, the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

That’s because said grandson, Kim Jong-Un, who dubbed himself Supreme Leader, thought nothing of sending hit men to Malaysia, a friendly country, to assassinate his enemies.

When a Malaysian court extradited said hit man to the US, an enraged SL broke off diplomatic relations with Malaysia, an act that enraged all North Korean diplomats in Kuala Lumpur because they knew, with foreboding, that while it was certainly a farewell to nasi lemak, it was likely to be even worse.

Supreme Leader loved US basketball, bourbon and burgers which was why he was overweight and suffered perpetual bad hair days. But he was also a plump predator who thought he deserved everything he stole and knew that Larry Hagman was right: the only rules to live by was never to be caught in bed with a live man or a dead woman.

He also thought he should Lead by Ruthlessness and once reduced a defence chief to a smear by ordering him executed by anti-aircraft fire. The reason, according to South Korean TV, was a lamentable error by the chief: he dozed off during a particularly tedious SL speech.

Something new this way comes and it’s called K-pop, a cultural phenomenon out of South Korea that’s become hugely influential globally and threatens to change the way North Koreans think.

Standout example: Korean boy band BTS is the most popular group in the world and the first since the Beatles to have three number 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100.

Fat Boy was horrified and has labelled K-pop a “vicious cancer” that’s corrupting his country’s youth. Meanwhile, his people were consuming South Korean movies, K-dramas and K-pop videos with an abandon that terrified the tubby terminator.

Kim knew that his people had to be weaned off the stuff as it portrayed the South as an attractive alternative. Worse, K-pop content encourages thinking, self-expression and individuality, all themes that were inimical to SL’s obey-or-else tendencies.

The stout slaughterer’s response has been typical: he imposed harsh punishments like 15 years in a labour camp for listening to K-pop and death for those smuggling the videos in from the south.

It isn’t clear if he will prevail. History has always bet on the former when the popular will comes up against the dictatorial won’t.

ENDS

GIVE IT A REST, DOC

The website Lexico defines “power crazed” as a person having an “extremely strong desire for power, or irrational on account of having had power.”

Sound familiar?

When it comes to opinions on how Malaysia might presently be governed, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, 95, has more opinions than a Rudy Giuliani on steroids.

Malaysians found out yesterday that the physician tried his luck yet again, suggesting to the King that the best way forward for the country was a 1969-style National Operations Council (NOC) to run the show.

The NOC was a small council led by Abdul Razak Hussein, then a deputy premier, that led the country in autocratic fashion in the wake of racial riots after a general election in 1969. Essentially, it worked as a dictatorship, albeit in “benevolent” fashion.

And why does the good doctor feel compelled to float such a drastic proposal in the first place? Well, apparently, his team in Pejuang – a breakaway party with 5 MPs – have “some ideas” about the economy and controlling the current pandemic but cannot get them implemented as they aren’t in government.

Asked if he had suggested to the King a possible candidate that might lead the NOC, Dr Mahathir said that there was no specific person named but he did “offer his services”.

It was not unlike the old saying about cattle horns: “A point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.”

Here’s my translation of the physician’s message: he has some ideas, no one’s listening so it’s a good time for him to return as Paramount Leader who will Brook No Dissent.

For that is what an NOC essentially implies.

This is the same politician who was against any extension of the Emergency. Now he proposes a new, and stronger, Emergency with fizz, bang and wallop.

This was the same politician who wanted Parliament to reconvene and allow the citizenry its voice. Not any more, not if he can come back as a new-look Tun Razak!

And, finally, this is the same fellow who resignedly told Bernama only two months ago that he “was too old to become Prime Minister again.”

“If I were younger, I could become Prime Minister again, but I am 95 now and I can still function and hope to advise people on what they should do … I feel I shouldn’t be the prime minister for the third time,” he said.

Our hearts bleed but you won’t hear us disagree.

Dr Mahathir talks about “giving advice” but even that harmlessly-benign-Mr. Rogers-stuff has its sinister downside: Abdullah Badawi was hounded out of office because he “did not take” the doctor’s advice and chose his own way instead.

That is the problem with Dr Mahathir right there. He thinks he has all the answers but we, Malaysians, over 24 years and a bit, know that he does not.

Good leaders leave the stage when the applause is loudest. For Dr Mahathir that moment came a long time ago, in 2003.

It’s all but gone now: you can’t reheat a souffle.

ENDS

GOD IS GOOD BUT DON’T DANCE IN A SMALL BOAT

“A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew the facts of the case.” Finlay Donne, 19th century American writer

Finally, a leader from the United Malays National Organisation (Umno) who makes sense.

No, it isn’t an oxymoron. You heard right. Nur Jazlan Mohamad, the party’s deputy head in Johor, has called for Umno to reconsider its ties with Islamist party Pas, in a pact first proposed in 2019. The pact was proposed after the then ruling BN coalition lost the 2018 general election to the opposition Pakatan Harapan coalition. An Umno-Pas coalition was then proposed as a sure-fire winning formula.

Now the cracks are showing. “Umno has always been suspicious of PAS leaders as they now seem to be more interested in power and position and, in some cases, money, too. And in the current episode involving the Malaysian Rubber Board (MRB), there are some serious allegations,” said Mr Nur.

The latest episode involves the planned sale of prime property belonging to cash-rich MRB, currently under the jurisdiction of PAS minister Khairuddin Aman Razali. The board’s former chairman Umno MP Ahmad Nazlan Idris alleged recently that Mr Khairuddin was attempting to influence the sale’s outcome.

Pointing at the episode., Mr Nur said PAS was likely to be a liability in the next general election if the parties cooperated.

Be that as it may, the matter is now under investigation. The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission has reportedly called up Mr Nazlan for a statement in connection with the MRB allegations.

That is as it should be.

But back to Pas. All those who think they’re squarely to the right of Attila, raise your hands. Just ask yourself: what have they done for this country in terms of direction: in terms of sound policy, in terms of adding to the gross national good?

The party has ruled Kelantan for over three decades and what have they got to show for it? It’s a state with a lower life expectancy than other states, except Terengganu (ruled by Pas, unsurprisingly). It also reports the highest number of AIDS cases in the country and has the dubious distinction of being the most dirty.

Moreover, they assert claims that are downright stupid. Last year, Mr Khairuddin – the same MRB chap – led a three day mission to Turkey to drum up foreign investment. In his words it was very “successful.”

How successful? In the words of another bona fide rocket scientist, Abdul Azzez, the MP from Baling, it was so successful, it brought in RM82 billion in FDI!

What’s wrong with these people? They can’t even lie convincingly. Turkey isn’t doing very well at all. Its lira is half the value of the ringgit and the total amount of FDI Turkey got for the whole of 2019 was a paltry RM32 odd billion. Meanwhile, Mr Azeez is awaiting trial on corruption charges himself. #Justsaying.

From my observations of Pas over 30 years of journalism, a few consistent themes have emerged.

One is an obsessive preoccupation with the attire of Mas stewardesses. Indeed, it appears behavioural, frequently manifesting in distasteful parliamentary questions that demean women and insult the intelligence of male listeners.

Others include frowning upon anything that might, in moderation, improve the quality of the human spirit, to wit, wine, beer or tuak.

Finally, there is Pas’ long- standing desire to impose sharia law over the country, the better that we rapidly harken back to a medieval future.

But, why, oh why, don’t they denounce corruption? Better still, issue a fatwa against it.

ENDS

THE CORAL ISLAND

Towards the end of my first year in university, in 1975, an interesting announcement appeared on the notice board of University Malaya’s Science Faculty.

It asked for volunteers for a project in Terengganu. But it had a caveat: you had to be able to swim.

I could. There was no reason for this except dumb luck. When I entered Form 1 in King George V in Seremban, the school was in the midst of building a functional pool, egged on by an energetic Headmaster and public donations.

By the time I was in Form Three, swimming was an integral part of Physical Education and by the time we finished Form 6, most of us could swim reasonably decently.

It was Akbar who said we should go. He was my roommate and, like me, aimed to major in Biochemistry. He argued that there would be only few swimmers among the Science undergrads. As such, we would almost certainly be chosen if we volunteered.

He was right. The project headed by Professor Jonathan Green, an American expert on marine biology, called for the first ever marine survey of the reefs off an island situated off Kuala Terengganu.

It was called Pulau Redang. Neither Akbar nor I had heard of it.

I was a callow 20 at the time and thought I knew the sea because, like all kids from Seremban, I’d swum off Port Dickson.

But the South China Sea is an ocean, full of enormous, foam-flecked waves that crash and heave. All the braggadocio drained out of us when we saw the waves and we listened soberly to Dr Green’s advice, and warning, about handling ourselves in the water.

We were ferried over to Redang by trawler on a sunny April day and were ordered to jump in when we were still 200 yards offshore. I guess it was Dr Green’s way of ensuring that we could, indeed, all hack it.

The government wanted to know what exactly was down there and Dr Green, and the other lecturers, made us do an actual survey using precise areas. We all were assigned an area and, using snorkels, we tried to identify the fauna on the seabed. It was a coral reef so it was shallow and you rarely had to dive over 10 feet. With flippers, it was pretty easy.

That was a very long time ago. But I still remember the absolute beauty of the reef, its blue-green waters, the colours of its creatures: sea horses, the thousands of sea cucumbers, tossed about carelessly; the brilliant anemones.

And I learnt to be careful. Once it was rough, and I was over-confident until a wave just picked me up and tossed me on to the coral. It was sharp and it hurt like hell but I learnt my lesson.

We befriended Mohd, then 8, who was from the only fishing village on the island. He’d been drawn by the smells of our dinner and Akbar and I fed him chicken rice which must have been a treat for him as he came most nights.

Mohd and his brother Hassan – 15, I’d guess – were endlessly fascinated by our snorkels and flippers. We let them try it out but, truth be told, they didn’t need them. They could free-dive 20 feet with ease and once showed us where we might find giant clams. That earned us serious brownie points with Dr Green.

They invited us back to their kampung and so, one night, we went. Hassan must have said something because the whole kampung turned out in our honour.

Once you got past the thick Terengganu dialect, they were lovely people, humble and down to earth.

They invited us to participate in what seemed to be the village youth’s favourite pastime – stick fighting. We were hopelessly inept and they were mercifully kind.

But I sensed a certain seriousness to the whole thing and, over thick, black coffee, I asked Mohd’s mother, the village matriarch, why they seemed so intent on the “game” (the word I used).

She looked nonplussed by my question but answered so matter-of-factly that it was chilling.

“Sooner or later, we have to fight them so we might as well be prepared,” she replied. She was referring to the Chinese, the irony of half our university group being Chinese, notwithstanding. The spectre of May 13 still hung in the air, it seemed.

As I said, it was a long time ago.

ENDS

Note: Dr Green’s work on the island through the 70’s ultimately led to the creation of Pulau Redang Marine Park, a gazetted area protected by law.

MAYBE NAPOLEON’S RIGHT: HISTORY’S JUST A SET OF AGREED UPON LIES

Many years ago, I was at a World Economic Forum session in Kuala Lumpur listening to the Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia detail his country’s plans for the region.

During the question-and-answer session that followed, he was asked why the Chinese felt compelled to view much of the South China Sea as “theirs.”

The reply was so fast it seemed rehearsed: “There is a reason for the sea to be called such.”

This was swiftly followed by a comment from the back, in an American accent: “The Indian Ocean stretches down to Australia and parts of West Africa but you don’t see India claiming those waters.”

When nations begin using history to legitimise their claims – to territory or anything else – the results are generally fraught with peril because the rationale is spurious to begin with. Henry Ford is the one credited with saying: “History is bunk” and while he said a great many egregious things, I think he got that one right.

One is reminded of the cartoon, in which the first box features Donald Trump fretting about the “dangers of unchecked immigration into the US.”

And, in the next, a seriously unhappy Geronimo is agreeing, “Amen to that.”

Whether it’s the Chinese or the US, these claims are unending. When the British first proposed the creation of the state of Malaysia through the union of Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak, both the Philippines and Indonesia objected on the grounds, yet again, of “history.” Manila claimed “ownership” of Sabah while Jakarta insisted that Sarawak had always been part of the republic.

But the British and the Malayan leadership pit the matter directly to the people of the regions themselves and, in a referendum supervised by the United Nations, the notion of Malaysia was overwhelmingly accepted.

Despite the popular snub, Jakarta took it badly and declared a campaign of “ganyang Malaysia” (Hang Malaysia).

It took another two years of foolishness – and a coup that unseated Indonesia’s then President Sukarno – to restore amity to Southeast Asia. Even so, every eight years or so, Manila threatens to dust off its ancient claim to Sabah which leads to another fruitless round of sabre rattling from both sides.

If one takes history too seriously, you might end up with some utterly strange conclusions.

For example, did you know that present-day England was once ruled by the Romans in an unbroken stretch that lasted for 366 years (43AD to 409AD).

To put it in a modern context, that’s roughly 55 years longer than the current duration of the modern superpower known as the United States of America.

Taking that a step further, how would the people of England feel if Rome were to declare that, because of its ancient claim to England by virtue of historical antiquity, that, henceforth, all Romans and their descendants had a right to become automatic citizens of England. Sorry and all that, and I know it’s hard cheese for you chaps, but it’s history, what?

It would just about sum up the feelings of the Palestinians currently.

And don’t forget the clincher, all ye who treasure history: that the Jewish claim was rooted in no less than divinity, that the land in question was promised to them by God!

ENDS

Between a bout of feeling out of sorts and the impending paranoia of a soon-to-be imposed lockdown, my blog will be halted until it resumes. I mean, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

LOCKED DOWN IN SINGAPORE.

2021: A SPACE DUMP

Things may be crashing around our heads soon – sometime between May 8-10, although the chances of that happening, while “statistically significant” are still “significantly unclear.”

These are the bromides the scientific community dishes out to reassure the great washed masses like you and me.

The plot is deathly simple. Parts of a Chinese rocket used to propel the country’s first permanent space station into orbit are now falling back, uncontrollably it seems, to earth.

The good news is the Chinese believe it will “easily” burn up upon re-entry into the atmosphere. The bad news is that no Western agency agrees. They think the debris will be the largest-ever to plummet back to Earth and could weigh several tonnes.

It’s happened before, according to Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell. The last time China launched a similar rocket, they ended up with big long rods of metal flying through the sky and damaging several buildings in the Ivory Coast. It was seen as a victory for humankind except in the Ivory Coast, where people kept glancing anxiously upwards for years. The current anxiety, reported by Ivory Coast’s news agency, anxiously, is likely to stoke anxieties to a fever pitch.

Meanwhile, the Europeans estimate that the debris will land on a strip of Earth running from southern Spain, Portugal and Italy down to Australia. You can trust the Europeans for their exactitude.

While spit-balling on an estimate, they finally agreed that “between 20% and 40% of the dry mass could survive.” That’s the equivalent of several tonnes of seriously heavy metal.

It was Einstein who came up with the definitive equation about space and it was about time too, but all this space travel is having an impact on Planet Earth.

About 150 tonnes of man-made space hardware fall back to Earth each year which is ridiculous. It’s fortunate that almost 60% of Earth is covered by ocean which, as you can imagine, must cover a mountain of excess.

In addition, space itself is increasingly congested by Earthly junk, courtesy of seven decades of exploration. If Jim Croce is to be believed, that there isn’t anything “meaner than a junkyard dog,” then only Heaven knows what manner of junkyard alien we’ve created.

As if that weren’t enough, civilians hoping to join astronauts on the July 20 inaugural flight of the New Shepard rocket system have two weeks to bid for a single seat in the spacecraft starting now, US aerospace company Blue Origin said yesterday. It’s owned by gazillionaire Jeff Bezos who, for reasons of prudence and sanity, would not “be accompanying the lucky winner” on this historic trip.

The accompanying promo gushed: “if you feel fat or overweight, this will be ideal for you” but the very fine print noted that only the “seriously rich” should apply.

It isn’t clear how science will gain from this particular trip. The rocket booster jettisons a crew capsule designed for up to six people. It reaches a height of more than 60 miles and lingers in zero-gravity space for several minutes before returning to Earth for a parachute-enabled landing.

Apart from inflating Mr Bezos’ ego, it isn’t clear how this helps climate change or benefits humankind in any way. Maybe you just had to be there.

That’s what the promo said.

ENDS