Some days bring good news, others bad. On some special days there are bits of news that raise the spirit and make the soul sing for joy at the very fact of being human and therefore ultimately and completely responsible for being the most annoying and most amazing species.

The good news is that scientists have discovered and unravelled the genes that when defective cause breast cancer and colon cancer.

In simple terms this means that they can design detection programs and drugs and treatments which can detect and cure these two killers. There is bad news of course, and that there is more than just one gene which causes these problems for each cancer and it may well be that each individual has an individual combination which produces the cancer and so need a treatment specifically tailored to their own set of genes. On the bright side this may be no bad thing since it will add to the efforts being made to tailor medicines to each individual's genetic make up, rather than a "one fits all" approach which prescribes drugs which may work well for one group of people, but cause severe side effects for others for no apparent reason.

As usual it will take years to develop drugs and to eliminate these cancers. This is small consolation for those with the conditions now and those who will develop them before the answers are found, but science is getting there.

The incredibly annoying thing is of course that whilst science continues to find answers to these problems, human beings continue to do their best to buggar it all up. From global warming to global war, from Iraq to Afghanistan, from North Korea's insane regime to Iran's equally insane wish to become a nuclear power, the world seems hell bent on being hell bent. Why is it that such insanity is all around us when all that most people want is a decent life for themselves and their kids? Why are we divided by religion, by race, by political belief, by rich and poor, north and south? We are told that there are no simple answers, indeed, from an early age, we are taught, persuaded, educated, preached at, that nothing is simple.

Well it serves those who have power to let us think so. There aren't apparently any simple answers to global warming which don't involve complicated taxes, mass unemployment (and not just in the automotive industries), mass deaths from cold, civil unrest, geopolitical upheval and probably a plague or two of locusts as well. It is surely the classic problem which scientists can describe and can predict the consequences, but which it needs "politicians" to solve for us.

Well I respectfully suggest that that is complete and utter bullshit. If we wanted to solve global warming tomorrow we probably could, and we wouldn't need politicians to tell us how to do it. Answers on the back of an envelope please! What is rapidly becoming apparent at the beginning of this century is that politics and political institutions are becoming as outdated as Ford Edsels and wimples. The answers probably lie in the direction of a global population enabled to act in concert across national and contintental boundaries by universal communication.

If I were planning to survive for the next 94 years (which I am not), but governments are, I would be working very hard on a way to secure some degree of influence on the process. Evolution favours those who can create favourable conditions for their survival. What better or more favourable conditions than a global population which moves its resources and governs it citizens as they permit themselves to be governed? It may be democracy or it may be just a world wide market in goods and services and people where tourism for everyone to everywhere is an accepted right. No more capitalism, communism or any other damn ism or schism. Just get on with it. Do it. Add Google to Amazon to Microsoft to any other way of getting this communication to everyone in every corner of our planet.

Start now. Solve global warming, solve poverty, solve cancer, solve religious hatred and local conflicts which destroy peoples lives and hopes, share out the precious resources and above all share the one thing that separates human beings from all other creatures, our capacity for optimism, for hope and for each other.