the brilliantly leaping gazelle

I was out and about yesterday, relaxing in the park, when a couple traversed my eyeline. Normally, the sight of a couple wouldn’t bother me, but actually, there were five of them; the wife was heavily pregnant, the father was carrying a baby in a thing on his chest, and there was a toddler running behind them. And I thought ‘We’re fucked’, although thinking it about it was an apt summation of the wider problem of over population. She clearly had been and so, by extension, is the planet.

As anyone familiar with my posts will know, I’m not overly enamoured with the fact that people keep on having more children, when we know we consume too much of the planets natural resources as it is and now’s there’s a new fangled concern with regard to cutting down on consumption. Quite how this squares with people having more children I don’t know. Unless I’m much mistaken, more children means parents will buy more things and then those children will grow up and have more children themselves. To my mind, it’s a very vicious circle, one of our own creation, one which we adding to.

Gordon Ramsey, the grisly faced, potty-mouthed celebrity chef leaps to mind. Apparently his wife has just given birth to their seventh – seventh – child! What level of ego is he deluding himself with if he thinks that his DNA is so important that that the planet needs yet more of it. Same with David Tennant, his wife has just had their fifth. I mean, I know he was good in ‘Dr.Who’ and all, but its Timelords that can regenerate, humans just procreate. But my favourite has to be everyone’s least favourite mockney geezer Jamie Oliver, whose wife has just had their sixth. I only caught a bit of his show by mistake recently, but he was banging on about how important it was to use sustainable fish and to insist on buying organic because he cares, you know. Just not enough to keep his jubbly not so bubbly, or not to bish his bosh.

There should be a mandatory one child only policy, and if people want more children, well orphanages are full of children needing homes. They could have one of Angelina Jolies many rejects. I fail to see why anyone would want to have a child now, not with the state of the world being what it is. It doesn’t fill one with optimism for the future does it? Anyone who has had a child in the last, oh, five years, shouldn’t be too surprised when their child realises how utterly grimola the world they’ve been born into is and sues them.