Stranger than Fiction

Admittedly weird! If they are all analogue displays I can't think of a possible cause. If they are the mechanical digital displays that release a flip down card for each of the numbers I can imagine that a 'sticky' card or release mechanism for the hour could have this result, particularly if the clock was new or was tipped backwards at the time. This would still be quite an achievement even if all the clocks were the same make. The easiest explanation is that some mischievous being is playing tricks on you. I speak from the perspective of somebody who has been responsible for the occasional prank!

I was thinking magnetic pulse for the clock discrepancies. It was always my curse at school - too much imagination, not enough application. If I could be bothered, I'm sure I would be dangerous. I made Professor Brian Cox laugh, he was talking about the consequences of leaving the EU, and the dire predictions being made. I said "for that to be true you would have to accept that economics is a science." Sadly nowadays it seems science consists of cherry-picking facts to fit your hypothesis and meet the expectations of your sponsor.

I tried to set up a very expensive radio controlled clock system for a mainframe computer. Basically the signal received was very unreliable * and the clock would either refuse to update or update to some weird time. We set it so that it had to receive 3 consistent time signals in a row but rarely got even one, never mind 3. My dad loved his first radio controlled clock which was very reliable but subsequent ones were very dodgy and usually took about a week to get the time right. Internet connected clocks all synchronise with a number of stations around the World and are very accurate and if the internet is working, very reliable. TV stations etc all use the same and will reflect local equivalents of BST etc. Thus, a computer I use that rarely connects to the internet has only just changed to BST and will likely be equally late adjusting come winter. * It wasn't just a weak and corrupted signal but the transmitting station regularly had shut downs.

I've included this as forty years ago, such a realistic consideration was out of the question, with China ordering birth control. Is this worrying?

Yes and no. I see a lot of automation in our future. We will be more productive by using our brains, not our brawn. Even care will be partly automated. Some see that as horrifically impersonal but machines can be tirelessly productive (give or take a breakdown but then aren't we all?) Machines aren't bored doing repetitive jobs. They don't keep you waiting while they discuss their love life. They won't pass on the cold they got from their kid. So if you like your drink a particular way, can they get a robot to make it just so? Will it be able to order the ingredients, store them correctly and everything else we do without much thought? Quite possibly. The hard part comes when trying to solve the anomalies eg if you drop the drink, if the milk is off, if you burn yourself, if your false teeth fall in. AI is getting scarily good at mimicking human speech and could easily replace the impersonal chatter of a carer but without the days when they're too stressed or rushed for more than a few sentences. What I want is a 'put it away and get it out' robot. I wouldn't need to know where the item was stored, or how many other things would need to be shifted to retrieve it, it would just magically appear and then vanish as I demand. The robot would make best use of the storages spaces and not mind how long the task would take. If it failed, the new robot would be able to download the map and seamlessly carry on where the other left off. We can all dream Population could be boosted but that's a major discussion about the value we want to put on women having kids. At the moment it's still thought to be something women automatically want and as such they need to make the effort but the evidence is that the desire for kids isn't always stronger than the desire for a comfortable life. Kids are hard work and take a lot from a woman, physically, emotionally and financially, even if there is a partner contributing. Interestingly, with lock down a lot of men have suffered post natal depression. It turns out that spending all day and night with the little darlings isn't a recipe for automatic joy.

Helen, God help the men, if all those robots have mother-in-laws.

The mother-in-law model is a really good cook but costs extra.

Not worrying at all. The world is already overpopulated, and exponential population growth is not sustainable because resources are not unlimited. Why human beings feel compelled to produce biological replicas of themselves has always been beyond me. Let's face it, the most "evil" animal on the planet is the human being. It is sewing the seeds of its its own demise (Shakespeare alluded to this); maybe it will relocate to another planet with sufficient resources, who knows? (Shades of chariots of the Gods.)

Kaga, if they are anything like mine was, she was worth a million.

That has been the conventional view, but there is now apparently the danger of a worldwide shrinking population which will create another issue, the number of us over-80s means there won't be enough people paying tax to support us all. www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521 This is a long term issue though, most, if not all, of us won't be here to find out if these predictions are right.

Situations change. Currently there is a shortage of school places - but in 10 years there will be too many. Many times it has been prognosticated that we will all starve, yet science and technology has meant that we continue to produce excess food. Not always where it is needed, but then politics come into it. Our ingenuity keeps us moving ahead of the cycle of life, and that is why we need new minds adapting to new challanges, and providing new answers. As we live longer, staying active and healthy for longer, expectations will have to alter with it. My opinion is that despite all attempts to destroy the family, we will return to extended family groups living together, the middle aged caring for the elderly and the elderly helping the young to care for the very young. It works. "We've made life freer for individuals and more unstable for families. We've made life better for adults but worse for children. We've moved from big, interconnected, and extended families, which helped protect the most vulnerable people in society from the shocks of life, to smaller, detached nuclear families (a married couple and their children), which give the most privileged people in society room to maximize their talents and expand their options. The shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a familial system that liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor." David Brooks