Was Tebbitt A Spaceman?

Visionary spaceman?

Sign On To The Stars 

There's a fine line between visionary and madman, but in this 2005 article, Mark Cantrell wondered if Lord Tebbitt hadn't actually been beckoning us to a future among the stars when he famously declared 'on yer bike' 

FOR those old enough to remember, it's a staggering claim but Norman – now Lord –Tebbitt is destined to go down in history as one of the great visionaries of the Twentieth Century.

When he infamously declared "Get on yer bike," back in the days of Margaret Thatcher's scorched earth economic policies, it was taken as a heartless attack on the victims of his mistress. We misjudged him: the statement was in fact nothing less than the declaration of a bold vision for humanity's future.

History will most assuredly recognise this in time, beginning perhaps with this article, and eventually with the full realisation of Lord Tebbitt's bold vision. You see, we are still pedalling away with no bicycle chain; we still lag behind the potential he saw. The challenge is still waiting for Humanity to reach out and seize its future.

Well, Great Men lead, the rest of us follow. In time.

Only now, in the early years of the Twenty First Century do we begin to realise what he knew to be possible if the human species applies its full potential to the task.

And it was the unemployed to which he awarded this profound honour.

They were to be the vanguard of humanity's future.

For Norman Tebbitt had stated nothing less than the vision of our place among the stars. There are worlds out there: ripe for exploration and colonisation. A new frontier. A new future. Wonders in the waiting. For those voyagers of discovery.

So, in time, Norman Tebbitt will find his place alongside President John F Kennedy, who made an equally bold statement for his times: the goal of placing man on the moon. Not for the United States alone, but in peace for all mankind (except, of course, for Soviet communists, Red China, Castro, Beatniks and anyone else the United States didn't like). Tebbitt's name will list among the likes of Magellan, Goddard, Einstein, the Marx Brothers, Columbus, Gallileo and that bloke who stole fire from an absent-minded god.

Yes, Norman Tebbitt is a visionary for our times.

And we owe him no less than the honour of meeting his challenge.

Only now, with advances in quantum cosmology [and one might add here in 2011, with the return of mass unemployment] are we beginning to gain the opportunity to boldly go in Norman's footsteps. And therein lies the task: to finally formulate the equations, and crack the last mysteries of theoretical and practical physics so that we can finally become debutantes among the stars.

A fitting mission for 2005, then, and the centenary of Albert Einstein's work on relativity.

If we succeed in formulating the final equations, then we will stand on the verge of a revolutionary transformation in the realms of both international and interplanetary travel.

This brings us back to Norman Tebbitt's misunderstood declaration, for the answer to our interplanetary destiny resides within the humble Job Centre.

The concept is simple enough, and based on a simple observation of the nature of the place. What we have, what Norman realised, is that a Job Centre (and the Benefit Office) is actually a self-contained continuum that has been unfurled from the dimensional possibilities inherent in quantum cosmology.

They are in fact shells constructed around extrusions of this esoteric phenomena into our own universe. As such, once inside, a body enters the same place. We can call this the D-Continuum or D-Space. Once inside this locus in space-time, we potentially gain access to each and every expression of its intrusion into ordinary space.

It follows, that if we can find the correct mathematical expressions and crack the physics, we gain a medium for transit between different nodalities in mundane space-time. Or to put it another way, we can travel between points with a few footsteps since every Job Centre and Benefit Office is interconnected by its occupancy of the same place.

To provide an example, once we have understood the nature of these phenomena, then a traveller may enter, say, Vicar Lane Job Centre in Bradford. By taking the right corridor, locating the correct exit, they may vacate the premises into Glasgow, London, Cardiff, Paris – wherever the D-Continuum has found expression in the fabric of space time.

It means, we shall become explorers.

Finally, the unemployed can meet that long ago challenge and become the poverty-fuelled pedal powered conquerors of the Cosmos.

At least, if we can only crack the physics. And provided, they have dole offices on these brave new worlds...

The future is waiting, bright new worlds to discover, perhaps new civilisations to meet –  and greet with the time-honoured felicitation: "Giz a job!"

Mark Cantrell,

Bolton, 15 February 2005

Copyright (C) February 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Category: SATIRE

Posted in: PROSE,WRITING