ABOUT this time of year, when the sun beams down on the petrochemical smokestacks alongside the M53, you can almost feel happy about life.
Almost. Well, at least it’s not raining …
But the big trouble is that life in our annoying little nation and the life of the world are both stuck in the same rut they’ve been in for years.
And that is not at all satisfying for any of us.

No. Mere summer cannot banish the blues in our hearts – and certainly not a summer as capricious as the British one.
The world seems old, dirty, knackered … and full of the same old rubbish.
We have the same clapped-out politicians still (mainly) clinging on to their jobs in Westminster, even though vital public functions such as health, education and asylum control are in deep crisis and there has been a shed-load of scandals for the Government.
Plus, the polar icecaps are melting fast, if ITN is to be believed. Soon New Brighton will disappear under the waves. Now that would be a catastrophe.
Meanwhile, the threat of murderous terrorism in the UK remains a clear and present danger, according to the latest official reports.
On a local scale, who knows what will happen to all those jobs and livelihoods under threat at the Vauxhall plant at Ellesmere Port?
Years ago we could find escapism from all the gloom on the telly – but now terrestrial TV (which is what the majority of us watch) is packed with dieting shows, DIY crap, inconsequential quizzes, and “nothing-in-Britain-works-anymore� pessimism from the likes of Tonight With Trevor McDonald.
Unless you watch ITV1’s late-night The Mint, of course, in which case telly is a tax on your stupidity.
And, of course, we have our precious “working class� drama penned by the tediously predictable Jimmy McGovern.
I know there is an established literary tradition of patronising the working class among Liverpool writers but don’t expect me, a genuine working class person, to like it.
I watched McGovern’s The Street (BBC1) last night (Thu) with mounting disbelief. It was so awful.
The writer’s stereotypes were all present. So was his naïve left-wing preaching.
Working class characters are not really racist in McGovern’s world (except the obviously wicked ones from Central Casting); and Catholic priests are bad, selfish and callous etc. Er, that’s it.
The scene where the asylum seeker and the character played by Timothy Spall danced together to a music soundtrack as they decorated the kitchen was such a cliché.
It has been done better many times before, including on The Royle Family.
The truth is that telly has lost its magic and its power as a cultural force.
While the TV biz has undoubtedly grown bigger over the years, and offers more programme choices (sadly, most of them American), the quality has gone right down the pan.
So when I surveyed the “stars� who’d turned out for the BAFTA Television Awards recently, I thought: What a shower of mediocrities.

HERE we are then in the summer of 2006, staring environmental catastrophe in the face, with the nuclear arms race escalating, and all of us insecure in our employment and pensions.
If we are lucky enough to have a job. Or a pension.
So what is there to look forward to?
Well, we can forget the telly. Only Coronation Street and The Bill are worth watching these days.
Maybe we should try looking OUT of our world for distractions and inspiration rather than in on ourselves all the time.
Because I strongly suspect that we humans simply cannot be the only examples of intelligent life in the universe.
Now, the whole subject of extra-terrestrials is regarded as a crankish by the mainstream media but actually the question of whether there is life on other worlds is perhaps the most significant one human society faces.
Few scientists doubt that life of some sort exists on other planets.
The subject is also taken very seriously by the world’s top philosophers and theologians.
It really is a deeply serious issue.
We shouldn’t be put off by all the freaky UFO websites run by mad Americans nor all the Hollywood schlock about monsters from Outer Space and storm-troopers packed inside UFOs intent on enslaving the world.
The reality might be quite different.
If intelligent alien life did ever make contact with us, we might actually like our visitors.
And who is to say the aliens would be as militaristic and as prone to grabbing territory as we are? They might be highly evolved and entirely pacific in character.
Contact with other beings would certainly make our own constant squabbles and ideological differences seem very parochial. Ditto all our shameful, dirty little wars.
Maybe our meeting with the ETs (who will hopefully be nothing like the Speilberg version) is just what humanity needs.
And contact might be just around the corner. How exciting is that?
Bring on the great adventure, I say.
Anything is better than staying in and watching the telly.

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