Britain 'a crude colonial power in decline'

I'm reading a good 'page-turner' thriller by James Marinero, 'Gate of Tears', which takes a look into the future and the effect of Chinese superpower amibitions in the context of Britain's paltry maritime defence capability in the light of the Strategic Defence Review and the paying-off of our aircraft carriers in 2011.

Yesterday, I read some press articles involving a spat between First Lord of the Admiralty, Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, and Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir David Richards, concerning Britain's weakened defence capability. Stanhope took the view that an Argentine invasion of the Falklands could not be defended against in the light of our current involvement in the Libya campaign.

Today I read that Stanhope has been carpeted by the PM, AND today I also read thatArgentina is shaping up for another round:

'Britain a 'crude colonial power in decline', says Argentina's president Cristina Kirchner'

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/falklandislands/8581447/Britain-a-crude-colonial-power-in-decline-says-Argentinas-president-Cristina-Kirchner.html

This is really depressing news, and just goes to show that we cannot talk the talk and walk the walk at the same time. I do wish that politicians in the UK would see sense - we cannot have it all, and the way it's looking we'll not have the oil from the Falklands either.

Rage Against the Machines

Now, I've worked in IT project management for many years, and have come up through the ranks, analysis and programming. I do wonder where we are headed though! Where's the Turing Test?

I called a credit card company today. Dialogue:

Them/IT: Welcome to wanklycard, you are speaking to our new automated system. I will understand what you say when you speak to me. Can you tell me your 16 digit card number?

Me: Yes

Them/IT: I am sorry I did not understand that. Can you tell me your 16 digit card number?

Well, I was was getting irate by now (short fuse - not really)? I said Yes again and it still still looped.

OK, no exception handling (I think it kicked in after 3 failures and transferred me to Inida.

I hung up, redialled and started again, I give in and recite the card number. It continues:

Them/It: Can you tell me your 6 digit pass code.

Me: (go on, guess, that's right) NO

I gave up then. There really is no excuse for this sort of bad scripting or am I just turning into a grumpy old man? Don't answer that...

Rant over!

I've another rant on the way too, about the Care Commission and yet another insurance scheme for our old age.

More in my next post...

Pay-per-Read Newsprint Decline - a new Business Model?

The newsprint paradigm is dying on its feet (or should that be 'on the presses'), and traditional news publishers are trying to find ways of managing the decline. The younger generations rarely buy newspapers and get most of their news online. And for many of the younger ones, it's that old Simon and Garfunkel lyric - 'gather all the news I need from the weather report'.

Rupert Murdoch (News Corp) is talking about strategic partnership with Microsoft so that the provision of news can continue to be pay-per-read, one way or another. Many news channels are looking at paywalls around their product, but the basic problem is 'why should people pay for something they can get for free'. Value-add punditry and household-name columnists are not thought to provide enough perceived value to deliver the customers to the news corps. News consumers can easily get the punditry real-time via blogs, Twitter and other channel products.

Could it be that the e-reader is the way to go?

What's an e-reader? Simply, a paperback sized electronic tablet (maybe with an opening cover) which accesses, stores and makes available for reading a range of 'printed' material, typically but not exclusively 'books' - fiction and non fiction, news articles and so on. Lighter, smaller and simpler than netbooks or laptops.

Of course, 'printed' is an old term. As we move forward, there will be little in the way of hard-copy materialization of news, information and other formerly 'printed' material. E-readers will come into their own. Newspaper groups are already in trouble.

E-readers are on the cusp of an explosion.

In terms of format, they are a little smaller and lighter than a netbook, but optimised for reading, and of course saleable to consumers who are not interested in carrying a laptop or netbook (for some a matter of faith). I believe we will eventually see the convergence of the e-reader and the netbook, but it will be a subtle convergence from the e-reader side as more applications are built in. Navigation is by touch screen using your finger or a stylus or both - this is a point to satisfy yourself about before you buy.

Presentation is usually black text on white. Images are black and white. Screen resolution is typically 800x600 pixels. So, its' not quite your broadsheet newspaper size! Connectivity may be through a USB hard wired internet connection (or via your PC) or through a wireless link, enabling download of novels and the like, or digital newspaper material. Of course, the potential here is for live news feeds, but people can get those on their mobile phones now. Undoubtedly the larger format does make for a better and more sustained screen read than a mobile phone. Also, from the business model perspective, the ability to feed user-specific advertising content down the news pipe is attractive.

Storage is typically from 512Mb upward, some offering memory expansion with SD or other format memory cards, and MP3 player features are often included (but there goes your memory!).

Content is the nub of it and one of the big challenges to be faced. Catalogues of e-book material are often specific to the e-reader model, so it's a bit like going to a public library and being told you can only read books published by, say, Simon and Schuster. Many catalogues are digitally protected by copy-protection mechanisms, though there is a lot of free material available. And, what does it imply for authors? From the perspective of newspaper groups though, content is not a problem.

Some e-readers might come with an inbuilt subscription to media (such as newspaper publishing groups). I do wonder why newspaper groups are not offering free e-readers with a newsfeed subscription. This for me is how the news corporations could get a new handle on retaining their market. It seems to me that the economics are in their favour.

At current (late 2009) pricing levels, typically $250+ street price for an e-reader with wireless connectivity, you'd have to buy about 15-20 hardbacks a year for an e-reader to be economic (even if they were royalty free books, and they are not). When you add in the cost of a quality broadsheet, say just $5 a week, then the economic equation tips rapdily towards e-readers. And again, the ability to pipe dynamic user-relevant ads down the newsfeed strengthens that profitability prospect.

So much about these gadgets revolves around style and being an early-adopter. Therein lies the rub - early adoption of e-readers is currently perceived as risky. Whilst Sony have a range of models out, there is talk about Apple producing a larger format iPhone/ touch screen tablet PC convergence product. So, the technology platform has not yet stabilised or standardised in market terms. However, the smart city-based early adopters are exactly the people who buy the quality broadsheets.

Who knows what it means for the lower level higher volume newprint market. I'm not sure that it offers them a solution.

We now have the launch of the Apple iPad, and this will really stoke the market. Pitched between eBook and netbook, the battle lines have been drawn.

So, are you really an early adopter, ready to bet your money on a particular technology, with echoes of Betamax video recorders? Well, maybe not, but e-readers could be the saviour of the more fleet-of-foot news corporations.

(c) 2009-2010 Phil Marks

Can we afford a Global Warming Data Scandal?

The ruckus over the alleged editing of the climate warming data at the University of East Anglia in the UK is another episode in the continuing saga of academic dishonesty that has beset scientific research so publicly in the last decade.

We have seen cases of fixed clinical trials of drugs, manipulation of data and false reporting in the MMR vaccine scandal (which led to the striking-off of a doctor) and numerous other examples of scientific fraud. It is by no means a new phenomenon – cases go back many years. Piltdown Man, for example, was a notorious tale of scientific duplicity. This originated in 1912 and was not exposed as a forgery until 1953. A skull reportedly discovered in 1912 in a gravel pit was purported at the time to be evidential of the ‘missing link’ between Man and Apes. Whilst some people might have built reputations and careers based on the discovery, there was arguably little real harm done by the forgery.

However, in the case of the MMR scandal, some children may have suffered as a result of not being appropriately vaccinated on the basis of the evidence presented by the researcher – at the time it caused a lot of worry for many parents who avoided the triple vaccine for their children because of the alleged link (proven to be completely false) with autism.

Now, on a massive scale, we have the potential for a similar scandal. More than 170 nations attended the recent International Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen - there is a huge bandwagon in motion and vested interests (on both sides of the argument) almost on a planetary scale.

For me, the case for man-made global warming is not yet proven (I do have some background in physics and oceanography). Certainly, there is significant evidence to suggest that industrial and societal emissions are contributing to global warming, but the significance of that contribution is, for me, still open to question.

The specific data which has been challenged relates to atmospheric temperature records. Just recently, we have heard that the last decade has been the warmest since records began 150 years ago. Well, current understanding is that the earth is some 4,500 million years old, so a timespan of 150 years is relatively speaking, not even a gnat’s whisker. I appreciate that the climate may well be warming, and that there are significant dangers to countries and to human population in countries such as Bangladesh and the Maldive Islands, and even the East Coast of England. It does concern me though that we may well be misusing our resources in bringing industry and society into line on carbon emissions, when those resources could better be used in building defences (in the broadest possible sense) against planetary climate change which may well be outside human cause or control.

In the case of Piltdown Man, for example, there were several eminent detractors from the hypothesis of the missing link, but their voices were drowned in the groundswell of excitement surrounding the topic. I do hope that the same is not happening over climate change, with dissenting voices being silenced and the whole peer-review process under a cloud. Additionally, the reported inability of climate-change dissenters to get published in the leading scientific journals is a cause for serious concern. Rigorous research and robust and honest peer-review are essential components in the progress of science (and mankind) – without them we are really in trouble.

We need solid, objective research, and quickly, to determine the scientific significance of man-made carbon emissions in relation to the natural background climate change.


© Phil Marks 2009. All rights reserved.

Should Gordon Brown have used the 'C' Word?

The high UK tax burden (more than 40% and growing) has been brought into sharp focus in the last few of months in the UK, but is really in the spotlight now as the General Election campaign gets underway, January week 1, 2010.

Right now – and it is unlikely to change - the main election battle ground between the political parties is the massive mountain of debt facing Great Britain and how it is to be reduced. The Conservative Party are accusing the Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, of refusing to explicitly accept that public spending cuts are necessary. Brown’s message has been ‘Tory cuts versus Labour investment’. There is considerable speculation that furious back-office battles have been taking place about this blank refusal, with Peter (Lord )Mandelson weighing in heavily on the ‘be straight about it' side, and Alistair Darling on the edge of no-mans land.

I do get worked up about the Government saying that we have been living beyond our means and running up unsustainable levels of personal debt. When the economy hits the buffers, what does the Government do? It cuts taxes (I will come back to that), prints money (£200 billion ‘quantitative easing’) and borrows heavily. Things get even more interesting - Pimco, one of the leading dealers in UK Gilts (Government Securities), is expecting to be a net seller of Gilts in 2010. Pimco’s Head of European Investments is Andrew Balls, brother of Ed Balls (UK Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families) and Gordon Brown’s right-hand man. Ed Balls is supposedly spearheading the Labour Party’s re-election strategy (this used to be Lord Mandelson’s territory). Cue angst on top of embarrassment.

Back to taxes and summer 2009. What did the Government do when the economy was headed down the tubes? It reduced VAT from 17.5% to 15% and set up the ‘car scrappage scheme’ which was a simple hand out of cash to the motor industry via a rebate (of course it was wearing a green cloak). Naturally, there was no problem with EU subsidy law, because all the big EU economies were dishing out cash to their motor industries (de rigeur for the French). So, the basic principle in operation was that if you want to stimulate the economy, then you reduce taxes.

Hang on, is that not a Tory policy? That is why I get worked up. The Labour Government knows that to stimulate the economy, then taxes must be reduced. They have to face it – there is nowhere else for taxes to go – they are now at unsustainable levels.

In the interests of balance (who ever heard of three way balance – did you ever try weighing sugar that way?), I should mention the Liberal Democrats. The man who the UK public respects as sensible, solid, truthful and direct on the economy is Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. They may end up holding the balance of power after the General Election. He, at least, is direct about the need for public spending cuts.

Here we are in early 2010, with a General Election in the next 6 months. VAT has gone back up to 17.5%, the car scrappage scheme has only a couple of months left to run, the country is crippled by bad weather ('Events dear boy, events' as Macmillan said), and Gordon Brown is dogged in avoiding use of the ‘C’ word (not even uttered after the 9pm TV watershed). Compound that with a ‘Gordon must go’ campaign in the Parliamentary Labour Party and a filed putsch and you realise that avoiding use of the ‘C’ word nearly cost him the party leadership.

Darling's (when I hear that name it always conjours up General Haig's ADC in Blackadder 4) latest (8 January) pronouncement about 'Britain facing the toughest spending cuts for 20 years' is clear code for the fact that Gordon has had to back down as a result of the Hoon and Hewitt double-act. I doubt that we shall ever hear Gordon using the 'C' word - he is, undoubtedly, too stubborn for that utterance. And, the cream on top of it all today is that the bankers' bonuses supertax is going to be absorbed by the banks so bonuses will not be cut; whilst I favour bonuses, the situation just shows that the Goverment did not set the rate high enough if it were to be a disincentive. What a shambles!


(c) Phil Marks 2010

Welcome Cynik-Politik - Target Driven Government is Dead

Listening to Lord Mandelson of the multi-titled Ilk being interviewed on BBC Radio this morning, I realised that Target-Politik is dead. We now have Cynik-Politik.

That idea has been emerging for a couple of months now on the international stage, as (principally) European Governments grapple with the punitive cost levels (and that’s dollars as well as poll-cost) of designing legislation to implement Kyoto carbon reduction targets. All they have done is move the target horizons out and soften the targets (the UK) and agree as a group to not have binding agreement as an objective of Copenhagen. That’s at the macro-level.

At the micro- level –or should I say, within the UK, this government has realised that it cannot deliver on targets it has set in Education, the Health Service, the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement, to name but a few. The problem with targets is that you can only do so much with statistics to hide target shortfall. The Government scored an own-goal in setting up the Statistics Commission, which has limited its ability to use sleight-of-hand to cover up failure to achieve targets.

So, what do you do when you are patently failing to hit very publicly-set targets? Well, you just convert targets into ‘Rights’. Problem solved. Get the Queen to sign off on that in the Queen’s Speech.

Great, Targets are dead, long live Rights. And the bonus is that the Government (in the form of the Labour Party) has a clearly defined ring-fence around its (for the moment) core beliefs. They cannot be measured against these so-called Rights, but they can use them as a front-line defence against the Tories.

It is no wonder that politics and politicians are discredited, when they resort to tactics like this. Welcome the new dawn, Cynik-Politik is here to stay.

Copyright © 2009 Phil Marks