I’ve just finished Ian Morris’s Why the West Rules…For Now and can confidently suggest that if you only ever read one history book, this is it. Morris tells a new kind of scientific history, beginning with human evolution, the growth of technology, and shows how our civilisation really works. He shifts the perspective to show how parochial some of our concerns are. In short: it’s the big picture he gives us.

The analysis of the past is utterly compelling but it’s his prognosis that is most telling. We are reaching one of the great barriers to development, such as human beings have faced several times before: in the Younger Dryas Cold Spell around 10,800 BCE, the Bronze Dark Age  of 1200 BCE, the Fall of Rome, etc. He says there are two ways it could go and there is unlikely to be a fudged halfway house. In many respects his work ties in with several other recent thinkers. Jared Diamond is his most obvious influence. James Lovelock is in there too and this probably isn’t an influence but there are similarities to David Deutch’s recent The Beginning of Infinity. These are two magnificent books that everyone should read.

One aspect of the Murdoch crisis hasn’t yet been aired. The episode is the logical outcome of the monster Murdoch helped to create: Tabloidrealitysoapsvillesleaze.  In this subculture the unremittingly crude and incontinent story lines of soap operas become the fodder for news stories in the tabloids. Then the private lives of the actors in these dramas get the same treatment: reality and the storylines become deliberately confused in the papers. Add in footballers, instant reality TV stars, pop stars (now created through hysterical and gormless talent shows), politicians and celebrities with their pants down, real tragedies in which the victims must always be caught weeping on camera, hack into the phone messages of all of them, spread the whole filthy tableau across the media and rake in the money. When a certain critical mass was reached this hideous brew was bound to explode, drenching everyone in ordure. That moment has come.

One of the most revealing insights into Tabloidrealitysoapsvillesleaze emerged early in Rebekah Wade’s (as she then was) rise to fame. She married the soap star Ross Kemp of EastEnders. Kemp’s behaviour meant that besides his weekly TV slot he often made the front pages of the tabloids. Wade was once arrested for hitting Kemp and of course also made the front pages. Where in this was the dividing line between the soapworld, the tabloid press and reality? At the end of Animal Farm, the animals watching their drunken piggy masters with their new human friends could no longer tell which were pigs and which were men.

“ . . . smell far worse than weeds”. This is from one of Shakespeare's most enigmatic sonnets No 94). I thought of it today when I was clearing red lily beetles off the plants. They are very persistent and voracious pests that will strip a lily plan in weeks if you’re not looking. The first one I saw, this spring, I mistook for a ladybird until my wife put me right. It is far too long to be a ladybird even before you notice it hasn’t got any spots. The pests certainly make lilies “smell far worse than weeds” because the larvae cover themselves with their own excrement to deter predators. The only real form of control is to pick them off so you have to grasp the nettle, or rather the sticky black mess.

Shakespeare would not have known them because they only arrived in Britain from Europe in the 19th century. In recent years, with global warming, they have increased their range and now breed in vast numbers in southern England. The cold winter did nothing to deter them (the adults overwinter in the soil) and I think I’m going to be picking those sluggy messes off the plants for a while yet.