A Dark Legacy

Controversy is bubbling away like a broken pressure cooker suck on a high gas flame. I’m just writing about the words spoken in Parliament, yesterday. The case of the British “prince of darkness” is one for the textbooks. This man, who acquired the title “prince of darkness[1]” long ago, is Peter Mandelson. Now, formerly a Labour Party member, he’s slithered through political life, in the UK and Europe, dragging controversy everywhere he’s been.

Honestly, I don’t want to write about this politician. A casebook study of a follower of Niccolò Machiavelli’s brutal manual for would-be leaders. Being a “prince” in this century, and the last, seems to bring out the very worst in those who are given the title. It’s fine for fiction to be dotted with so called “evil genius” characters but in real life these are people best avoided.

At the heart of the recent News is not just a betrayal. It’s the habits and lives of powerful people acting in a way that assumes an immunity from any accountability. Evidence that greedy people collude behind closed doors to line their own pockets. That morals go out of the window.

I continue to believe that most politicians in the UK Parliament are motivated to make the world a better place. They go to Westminster to try to make a difference. To fulfil that adage to: “Try and leave this world a little better than you found it.”

I make this assertion not in a naive way. Afterall, I’ve stood for election more than a few times. Quite a lot, in fact. Over several decades. Sadly, never with any great amount of success. Often meeting people on the same journey. Most of those people I met are putting themselves forward to right some wrong or use their expertise for the public good and make a difference.

At the heart of the recent News is a moral vacuum too. This vulgar belief that ingratiating oneself with unethical wealthy individuals has no consequence. Instead of protecting the public interest and exposing corruption, a considerable number of influential men have chosen to either turn a blind eye or adopt disgraceful practices.

On first meeting, I admit that it’s not always possible to know of the evils that another person may have committed. What’s shocking now is the distinct lack of curiosity that seems to have been exhibited by many prominent people. That’s the generous (Christian) interpretation.

The exhibition of misogyny revealed in the information that has been released in the US is disgusting. It’s way beyond that simple expression. If we are to move forward as a society these behaviours must be eradicated. To leave this world a little better than we found it, change must not just be a word that’s sprinkled into public speeches. Behavioural change must materialise.

Yes, we all have a responsibility in this respect. No looking the other way or pretending that unacceptable behaviours are not happening. Call them out. Especially those with a public voice.

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/prince-of-darkness/

Mutuality in Aviation Safety

Back to the benefits of mutuality. That idea of working together for a common goal. It may seem bazar but instead I will start with the downsides of mutuality.

Parties who are in conflict often like to deny interdependency. It’s that instinctive feeling that we can go it alone. Highlighting that working with others turns out to be complicated, calculating and compromising. Surely much better to be that lone High Plains Drifter who lives day to day.

In the aircraft airworthiness discipline, I saw this happening during the lengthy process of the international harmonisation of technical requirements that took shape in the 1990s.

It’s not easy to say but a substantial number of aviation rules and regulations that are applied are written in blood. Ever since the first aircraft took to the skies there has been incidents and accidents. Each one presents an opportunity to gain experience. Tragic though they maybe, if there’s a positive outcome, it’s that measures are put in place to try to prevent similar occurrences happening again. This doesn’t aways work but it works often enough to make it the intelligent way forward. When that learning doesn’t take place, the result is condemnation and outcry[1].

So, imagine a situation where Party A has a rule that comes from a tragic aviation event and Party B does not have that rule, or see the need for that rule. Equally, where Party A is eliminating a rule that Party B views as a judicious measure for managing aviation safety risk.

Clearly, where safety is the goal, the harmonisation of technical requirements is not a trivial matter. Disagreements can put stress on relationship. It can from time-to-time cause people to walk off the playing field. To use an expression that became real at the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations football final. When the application of international rules doesn’t go the way people would like the results can be testing.

What I’m alluding to here is the early days of the technical harmonisation work that was done within what was then called the Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) in Europe. And how that work interleaved with the work that was done to harmonise rules across the North Atlantic.

People did indeed walk off the playing field. One or two of them became ardent anti-Europeans. Maybe it was easier for younger technical staff to accommodate change. Nevertheless, each step that was taken to change or eliminate additional national technical requirements created tension. Maintaining sight of the greater goal of mutual benefit was demanding work. In fact, technical harmonisation is demanding work and always will be as such.

Across boundaries circumstances differ. My analogy is that of saying that it is no surprise that the Netherlands maybe concerned about bird strikes and overwater helicopter operations. At the same time Switzerland maybe more concerned about mountain waves and high-altitude helicopter operations. Each concern needs to be met. Priorities may vary.

Recent headlines saying: “Trump Says He Is ‘Decertifying’ Bombardier Aircraft In US[2]” has a sour ring about it. Political pressure should not be the driver of aviation safety technical rules. It’s perfectly reasonable for aviation entities to compete aggressively in the commercial world. It’s idiocy to compete on aviation safety grounds. This is not new learning. This has been the case for at least the last half a century.

POST: A view Gulfstream Confirms Delay over Canadian Type Certification of Business Jets | Aviation International News

[1] https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20260127.aspx

[2] https://aviationweek.com/business-aviation/aircraft-propulsion/trump-says-he-decertifying-bombardier-aircraft-us

Gardens and a mighty river

Let’s mix three interests of mine. It’s Monty Don[1] I must thank for this one. He’s recently been seen in a series that tours the Rhine searching out gardens of interest. His travels along the mighty Rhine in Germany brough him to a couple of places that I’m familiar with even though he left out one or two that are dear to me.

The three interests are travel, politics and gardening. A TV presenters’ job is a nice one to have when it opens the world to others. Glimpses of fascinating places and gripping stories.

Often over a weekend, by car or train, I’d explore the Rhine River between Cologne and Koblenz. In Cologne the river valley is wide, spreading leisurely over kilometres. In Koblenz it’s narrow with step sides dotted with vines clinging onto the rocks. The river’s dramatic landscapes have an identity that’s special.

Shame that Monty Don didn’t stop in Cologne, but I can imagine that there was a lot to squeeze into the time they had allotted for filming. He did stop in Bonn and started to tell the story of the modern history of that region. Bonn being the capital city of former West Germany.

Rhöndorf, Konrad Adenauer’s house and garden sit in stunning scenery overlooking the river[2]. It’s a place to visit for those with an interest in modern history, political life and the relaxation of gardening. Monty Don took the time to stroll around and talk about the roses and the drama of the life of Germany’s first chancellor after the war.

Further down stream Cologne was bypassed for a stop at the former industrial heartland of steel and coal. My advice to Monty Don would have been don’t miss the Botanical garden in Cologne[3]. This is a lush green and open space in the city that I often walked and stopped for a coffee. It’s easy to get to by tram being right next to the Zoo in the North of the city.

In the early spring the camellias are stunning[4]. It’s such a great experience for lifting one’s spirits after a dull wet winter. Go to the Botanical garden are revel in the bright colours.

The gardens are a mix of French, Italian and English influences. A quick reminder of the ebbing and flowing of influences that have swept the Rhine lands over the centuries. Don’t miss it.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002px5m

[2] https://adenauerhaus.de/en/visit/rhoendorf

[3] https://www.cologne-tourism.com/arts-culture/sights/detail/flora-and-botanical-garden-cologne

[4] https://internationalcamellia.org/en-us/europe-gardens-of-excellence/flora-cologne-botanic-garden

Influences on Well-Being

How life has changed. In the time of black and white TV I remember watching Jack Hargreaves[1] wibbling on about a lost countryside. A romantic world of idyllic landscapes. Rolling English hills and green hedges. His series “Out of Town” played for a generation. To his credit he did focus on people and the way they lived their lives as much as the scenic backdrops.

He’s cheerily derogatory about the urban environment. Although he does take on the sentimentality that people have towards the countryside. In ways he’s a latter-day green campaigner. With a past century traditional style. 

This memory is sparked by me thinking about colds and flu. Winters accompaniments. Changeable January weather torments us in one way and in another gives us a tempting glimmer of the spring to come. It really is wet wet wet.

Ground water has risen to form shallow pools in the swamy field out back. This is much to the liking of the geese and a lone heron. The river Lambourn hasn’t yet bust its banks but that can’t be far off. Cloudy today with more rain on the way.

I’m fortunate in being in relatively good health. I’ve had my bout of winter blues. Now, I’m noticing the slightly shorter shadows when the sun shines. Everything is sodden. Hints of the season changing are out there. It’s the blubs that are trusting upwards from the soggy soil.

What do I attribute my good health to? I wouldn’t put it down to heathy living although the maximum of all things in moderation does appeal. In part, maybe it’s because I grew up in the world that Jack Hargraves documented. On a west country farm were muck and mud were plentiful at this time of year. Deep soggy and unavoidable.

I don’t know if youthful the exposure to muck and mud has a lifetime benefit. It certainly seems to be one theory that is put around. The idea that a person’s immune system learns about all the nasties that are encountered. It then adapts and knows how to fight off the worst of them.

My, and my brothers, inoculation consisted of a wheelbarrow, a pitchfork and a mountain of manure. Shifting this delightful stuff from farm sheds was mostly a manual task in the 1960s. Now, it’s a case of jumping on a Bobcat[2] or JCB and driving up and down until the job is done.

Solid stone-built farm buildings, like our cart shed were never intended for the use that my parents put them to. Keeping cattle indoors during the winter months. Layers of straw and muck accumulated their bedding grew in hight. By the time it was dry enough to let the cattle out into the surrounding fields their bedding was almost as deep as I was tall.

That’s how we earned our pocket money. A wheelbarrow, pitchforks and hundreds of trips backwards and forwards shifting muck. Creating a big pile in the farmyard. Then that got loaded into a muck spreader. The most organic fertiliser that can be spread on the land.

This memory is sparked. Looking at a cliff like face of compressed muck that went back for what seemed like miles. Digging away at it endlessly. Wheelbarrow load after load. A Sisyphean task, where only dogged persistence would pay off. No wonder I was a healthy young man.

[1] https://youtu.be/4e_jfU9eTSI

[2] https://www.bobcat.com/na/en

Disruption and the Gods

Always the most impressive artifacts to come out of archaeological digs are those made of gold. It’s an element that comes down through the millennium unhindered by the turbulence of the daily News. It’s been a repository of wealth for as long as we have walked the Earth. That might be a brave statement. Let’s say people have admired and desired gold for that long.

A strange hold over people. In the last couple of years, the chart of the gold price has resembled that of rocket taking off. If you thought house prices have shot up a lot in the last decade have a quick look at the gold price. From 1978 to 2008 the curve looks relatively flat. Once past that date renowned for the financial crisis then the value of gold goes mostly one way.

Is this good or bad? One might even say – who cares. Well, geopolitics, inflation and monetary policy all play their part. I’m not talking about a precise indicator of these factors, but the linkage is clear. Many people see gold as a hedge against the declining value of other assets.

Geopolitics is a nebulous term. It can mean a million and one things. I guess on the one side of the coin is stability and on the other is instability. To relate the rapid rise of the value of gold to anything it may as well be the growth in the influence of disruptive forces.

Disruption has become incredibly fashionable in the last few years.

It’s like a newfound management trend. Although it’s not. Once upon a time, everyone was supposed to be rational, to create a harmonious world in which we could prosper. Management gurus who said as much thrived. Classical theories flourished[1].

However, they did warn us that institutions and organisations would change dramatically, in time. And that’s the component that disruptors have latched on to. Impatient to change in a softly-softly manner, the current mode is more along the lines of – to hell with it, do it now, come hell or high water. Don’t bother me with any of that risk assessment stuff.

I think, the downside of this pursuit of disruption is instability, insecurity and a latent fragility. Yes, it’s hidden. When a powerful disrupter succeeds the surface reaction is a round of applause. Under the surface the lack of long-term thinking invites an avalanche of negative repercussions. If the current gold price is a crude indicator, then there are potentially a lot of nasties just over the horizon.

An example to consider is the radical move to privatise the water industry in the UK. You bet that was disruptive. A politically fashionable move at the time. Surely a commercial mindset would serve the consumer, improve efficiency and increase investment. Ho Ho.

In the management of change, disruption has its place. If it’s the only card that a leader holds, and couple that with impatience, and outcomes are not going to be good. If they are good then it’s sheer luck.

[1] https://www.waterstones.com/book/gods-of-management/charles-b-handy/9781788165624

Dystopian Future in Colour

Let’s imagine our Earth where everything goes horribly bad. It’s not so hard. 2026 has started with a world turned upside down so let’s not be too pious. Mind you, the horribly bad of this TV fiction is way beyond the worst-case scenario that might be on the desks of present leaders.

Flash forward 200-years. North America has become a Mad Max like continent. That was 1970s Australia. What links the two visions is the bleakness of the outlook for the future. Fallout has more depth than most apocalyptic settings. It’s full of narratives running in parallel.

Max journeys across a vast wasteland in search of revenge. Cooper Howard is on a pilgrimage. Once a naive but mostly righteous man, now a ghoul soured by torment and cruel pragmatism.

Putting aside the storyline for a moment. Hats off to the folks who have produced this series. The colourful and graphic nature of the world that they have created is masterful. Themes are borrowed from a whole host of past sources. There’s a lot of a wild west mix up with a Comic Con convention become real. Tones of borrowing from mythology and classical history too.

The retro aspect is a charming touch. It’s as if the microelectronics that surrounds us happened in a very different way from now. Raw lumps of 1950s technology are thrown up in what’s said to be 2077. As if someone took the time of the Happy Days and spun it on its head. In the same situation would Richie Cunningham become a crusading embittered ghoul?

Another thread is that of the almighty evil corporation. Such a resonant theme. The failure of conventional government and the ascension of corporate enablers who shape society for their own ends. This is rooted in a mercilessly gloomy idea of human nature or at least that which becomes highly organised.

I’m watching series two and liking it. One or two moments delve into elaborate scene setting and forget to tell a story but overall, it’s superb.

On the robotics side there’s a hint of West World. Again, these machines are a retro embodiment of the image of a classical robot. The frightening development – look away now for a spoiler – of humans turned into passive machines to create a harmonious society is hyper nasty. Evil geniuses are probably the worst monsters.

All the underground bunkers have Star Trek like corridors arranged in a grid with doors that make the sounds like we might expect. The people who avoided nuclear devastation on the surface suffered their own devastation in a manicured alternate reality. Their world is one where the digital watch is still a good idea.

It’s the mishmash of sources that this series draws on that make it so interesting. The storytelling wanders around but that tells of the gaming nature of its origins. I’m going to carry on watching.

North Atlantic Airspace and Trade

Back to Greenland. A cold, cold land of mountains, snow, and ice. Next door to Iceland. I agree, the naming of places doesn’t make a lot of sense. Perhaps Greenland should be Iceland. And Iceland should be Fireland. Just under the Earth’s crust molten rock sits. It waits for the opportunity to come to the surface.

Iceland is highly volcanic. A land that’s growing and ripping itself apart at the same time. It sits on the Mid Atlantic Ridge[1]. The North American and Eurasian plates are moving away along the line of the Mid Atlantic Ridge. This is global geography. Not economic or social geography but the physical stuff. Ironically, considering the News, the North American plate is moving westward, and the Eurasian plate is moving eastward. Don’t worry this movement is slow.

When flying it’s usually faster to travel East than it is to travel West. A fast-moving band of air known as the jet stream[2] whizzes across the Atlantic. It represents that boundary between the cold polar air and the warmer southern air. The airspace of the North Atlantic (NAT)[3], which links two great continents is busy. There are seven Oceanic Control Areas (OCAs). US, Canada, Norway, Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Ireland, and The Azores (Portugal) all have a role to play.

Back in the mid-1990s, I worked on Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum (RVSM). Looking at aircraft altimetry to determine what accuracy requirements would permit a change in separation standards. These standards, and the manual that goes with them are the responsibility of the ICAO European and North Atlantic Office in Paris. Yes, that’s Paris, France.

Given the arguments put forward by US President Trump, and his supporters, it does seem surprising that only Greenland is of interest. In aviation what happens across the North Atlantic, all the way up to the North Pole, depends on seven sovereign countries working together.

I’d say if there’s reason to be suspicious or concerned about one of them in terms of their capability, security measures, or vulnerability, what about the rest?

Whether goods or travellers go by air or by sea, across the Northern Atlantic, the success of their journey depends on communication, collaboration, and cooperation between sovereign countries. Without conflict of a major kind, it would be difficult for one country to take over that space.

I also did work on guidance material for Polar Navigation[4]. In the polar region, magnetic heading is unreliable or useless for aircraft navigation. Thus, it’s important to have other suitable accurate sources of navigation to be able to plan a flight over the top of the Earth. Aircraft communication is an issue too.

Russian airspace may be closed but this does not stop airlines flying over the pole. Finnair goes to Japan over the North pole[5]. Meticulous planning is needed to make theses flights safe.

Anyway, my point is that much of the commotion over Greenland’s fate tends to ignore the complexities of international trade and travel. At all stages international standards, communication, collaboration, and cooperation are essential regardless of who you are.

[1] https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Plate-Tectonics/Chap3-Plate-Margins/Divergent/Mid-Atlantic-Ridge.html

[2] https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/learn-about/weather/types-of-weather/wind/what-is-the-jet-stream

[3] https://skybrary.aero/articles/north-atlantic-operations-airspace

[4] https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-11/Polar_Route_Operations.pdf

[5] https://www.finnair.com/gb-en/bluewings/world-of-finnair/flying-over-the-north-pole–well-planned-is-half-done–2557656

The Digital Dilemma: On Youth

Every modern technology challenges us all. Technologies’ relentless path is unstoppable. Technology inevitable is a two-edged sword (good and bad). Not everyone will accept these statements. This is my observation of the last 50-years in the UK.

1976 was an incredible year. It’s being celebrated as the year of Punk Rock. That’s just one snip out of the scrapbook. In fact, the music scene was over briming with diversity in that year. Low-cost microprocessors were coming on to the market. Forward thinking innovators, like Sir Clive Sinclair[1] were thinking about how to put these into the hands of everyday people. Trade Unions were signalling concern that this technological revolution would mean the loss of millions of white-collar jobs. Politicians ran around in fear of a severe threat to the established social order.

Let’s just say, there was no less a public clamour about how to react to the transformations that were coming down the road as there is here in 2026. What is a 16-year-old to make of all this at any time? I was 16 in 1976. Now, what’s it like to be 16 faced with current relentless and often troublesome pressure of social media?

That’s one phenomenon that I didn’t have to deal with as an energetic engineering apprentice with the thrust for speed and motorcycles. That said, all the stuff we hate about social media, bulling, harassment, intimidation, hurt, and suffering were still ever present in society.

My starting point is that banning things is to be avoided if there’s a better way. It’s profoundly illiberal to reach for the law to ban as the only approach to problem solving. My caveat. If there’s evidence of systematic harms being caused to a vulnerable population then a ban may be inevitable. In this I can cite the restrictions that are placed on young drivers and motorcyclists. Without legislation restricting activities our society cannot accept the resulting death toll.

Age limits are part of a civilised society. So, a dilemma exists. What level of harm triggers a ban? That is assuming that an enforceable ban is the most effective way of achieving reduced harm. In reality, a ban by law does not aways work. Either people find a way around it or it turns out to be unenforceable. It can also become smothered in processes and procedures to be rendered useless. Exceptions and qualifications.

How about banning mobile phones or social media for young people? That’s two quite different moves.

Mobile phones are part of the digital landscape. No one should go through future education without a necessary exposure and grounding in the digital world. It’s their world. It’s not going away. Social media is different, but it’s a nebulous product. It’s not so easy to sit down and write a useful and workable definition of what’s included in social media. Even if a law is written about social media, within a brief time it will turn into something different. It’s a combination of communications technologies.

What we do need is regulation to minimise harm done. That needs to be agile but comprehensive. A most perplexing task. Up until now, regulation is the digital realm has been ad-hoc and focused separately on application areas. Much more work is needed.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/16/home-computing-pioneer-sir-clive-sinclair-dies-aged-81

Dreams

Dreams are weird. For a start I often wake-up knowing that I’ve had a dream only to ponder on what it was about. It’s as if an erase function was pressed the moment the sunlight starts to beam through the curtains. As if my mobile’s alarm triggers a mental dustbin to empty.

Now, if I do wake-up from a dream in the night, I try to remember to scribble a note. Naturally, that’s merely a case of putting down a couple of words, not a full-page story. Interestingly that note can be surprisingly useful in restoring a glimpse of what I was dreaming.

I’m not going to get into the interpretation of dreams[1]. I don’t think they are a kind of prophecy. Literature is full of that notion. To me it must be that complex jumble of stimulus that has accumulated slowly being sorted, either filed or discarded. That’s not an analogy with a conventional computer. I think we have a powerful desire to take masses of information and make sense of it. That means wrapping a story around a lot of disparate stuff.

Dreams are weird. That’s because they have parts that make everyday sense and parts that live purely in the imagination. Boundaries and simple cause and effect don’t have to conform to waking reality. Imaginary worlds can be way of the charts.

Here’s goes. Fragments of what I remember go like so. It’s a clean room, like in a large semiconductor manufacture. White coats and white walls. Workbenches and sophisticated equipment laboratory style. Serious looking people.

Groups in different rooms. Could be in entirely different places. All working on making some kind of super chip [Have I been reading too many articles on quantum computing and alike?]. Could be a scene from a classic 007 movie where the villain invited their competitors to their secret hidden laboratory.

The last image was curious. A group of scientific people standing around staring intensely at a device (chip) sitting on a bench knowing that its performance has beaten all the opposition. Left the competition in the dust. Lots of questions being asked. This was not a hostile or nightmarish dream. This solid grey device looked like the base of a ceramic butter dish.

Even stranger the heatsink that rose up from the structure was shaped as a miniature model of the Roman forum[2] in Rome. It was as if the designers were so cocky they wanted to play a joke on their competitors. Me being one of them.

I don’t think there’s much mileage in sensemaking of this morning recollection. A dream about an imaginary future happening isn’t a kind of prediction. Perhaps it’s a chunking together fiction, facts and fantasy. However, it’s possible that some kind of breakthrough technology is sitting on a cleanroom bench somewhere. Where are the modern-day oracles when we need them.

[1] https://www.freud.org.uk/schools/resources/the-interpretation-of-dreams/

[2] https://www.rome.net/roman-forum

Think

To un-invent would be to un-think. Although, there are numerous mechanism and ways of doing business that it would be fantastic to get rid of it’s not so easy to tell us to stop thinking. If it can be conceived of, for good or ill, it will be conceived of. Since we didn’t write the laws of nature then what come out of their application was intended by a greater power, if there is such a power in the universe. Putting this aside, if I had the undiluted power to un-invent something it would processes, means and mechanisms that enable and encourage stupidity.