No Earth for the Meek to Inherit

How far to Betney Manor? I look at my map as again the windscreen wiper jams. Out I must get and fix it as the November rain buckets down on the Fens. A minor fault; but I am still 20 Km short of my destination. I squirt WD 40 into the innards of the motor and lo! The wiper goes back and forth noisily. So I resume my journey across the monotonous Fens and note changes at the crossroads where I have photographed my young daughter. How revolting this treeless landscape and how lucky I am to live in mountainous Avalonshire with its island-choked Pool where I sail my dinghy.
At last I see a sign for Betney Manor and there it is in a hillock maybe just five metres above the surrounding fields. It is a very imposing brick Georgian mansion with a Doric frontage and enormous iron gates adorned with a coat-of-arms bearing the likeness of a Norman knight on horseback. The Zakopane is so plebeian compared with the expensive cars in the drive and I reflect: this mansion is a full 10 Km from the nearest station. I would have been soaked to the skin if I had come by train and walked, fit man that I am, as a mist rises and night gathers.
Cocks crow; a wan sun shines from a milky blue sky; though dressed in my usual clothes of tweed jacket and cavalry twill trousers I am fit to meet any company as I go to the refectory and pause to comb my hair. My tie flaunts our Contributionist emblem; the outspread-winged Welsh Heraldic Dragon with glasses and bowler hat, as I am accosted by comely young ladies who say that they are research assistants at Cambridge University and I say that my name is John Alsop – see the tag on my lapel – I teach Geography at the Caediwpre Secure Special School where President Wearman’s sons are incarcerated for rape. Questions asked about their behaviour and I say that they are so disruptive that they have been keltied quite often. This is the only school in Britain where kelties are permitted and I have to say that they are elctroshockers which operate by piezoelectricity generated by the operator’s wrist.
Eager young men ask me about my Zakopane: the thriftiest car on the road but capable of just 90 KPH. It took me a whole day to drive from Charford, my home town in Avalonshire. Yes I know how Zakopanes can run off almost any combustible liquid including substances not talked about in front of ladies! And Polish engineers have developed a whole range of vehicles powered by Zymowski engines – combining internal combustion with steam power – that might power public transport or even airliners when oil supplies run out.
Distinguished Speaker after Distinguished Speaker on the rostrum: all are pessimistic about the future of Mankind and few have any remedies. Now I am called to give my presentation on Contributionist ethics and our proposed successor civilisation. I describe how my boss the illustrious Welshman Alan Moelwyn-Wright boosts the IQs of Caediwpre inmates by 20 points and they do Open University Courses but this is no guarantee that they will not reoffend upon release. Sadly so many do and Alan has to admit that the best he can do is teach lifeskills but he cannot turn fundamentally evil young men into law abiding citizens merely by teaching school subjects. I speak about our concept of the quality of life and show a film about the achievements of Friarshill School the crack school in Wales and perhaps Britain whose Headmaster is Alan’s son Bob.
Now I deal with Contributionist eugenics. I say, Earth cannot go on absorbing billions more people. There is bound to be a famine as the other speakers declare: In the ensuing chaos the infrastructure will collapse and survivors may not have the technology to rebuild civilisation on sustainable principles. We Avalonians have gone far to achieve that – but out electric cars have insufficient range to get from Avalonshire to the Fenlands. We consume about a third of the national average energy consumption; we recycle everything possible; we make clothes from nettle fabric; our orchards and market gardens feed us; and there’s a fish farm in the Pool of Avalon that supplies live fish to Caediwprenians who greatly benefit from a fish diet. You have seen our sons and daughters in action – taking part in adventure sports, the arts and demanding hobbies.
(A clip of a working model future solar airship in action followed by one of a slipsail cargo ship, then we see children doing geometric proofs on the beach at Gaer Rufenig, like Euclid himself would have done with measuring rods and enjoying themselves enormously then come clips of our twinned cities St Petersburg Munster and Avignon and finally a crowd of foreign children playing folk tunes in the market square at Romanbridge.) But even if we all adopted Contributionism habits the Americans and Chinese will still wreck the planet. I speak about Heimlerene which sterilises people and how 30c worth per head added to food like Mars Bars or Lucozade would sterilise everybody apart from graduates and those with IQs over 120. So engineering a population crash without killing a single soul.
“Great minds think alike” says Sir Samuel Hillelson the eminent biologist. “We want to implement precisely what you advocate Mr Alsop – but if word got out about the proceedings of this conference I fear that we would all be killed by religious extremists, Catholics Evangelicals and Muslims – and no government has the political clout to enforce out own eugenics programme which differs from your ideas in minor details. Yet the effort must be made. Are we and you the crowning glory of Evolution? We must grasp the nettle, and maybe by stealth, for the benefit of our descendants, put Heimlerene in staple foods otherwise there will be no Earth for the meek to inherit...”