johnwvincent

Choice

Desperate British Prime Minister (PM) comes out with the line that the future will be troubled and fast paced change will outstrip past progress. Ok, so what’s new? Hasn’t that been the path of the world since the invention of the computer? Acceleration of change is now locked into humanities destiny.

The audacity of the man is astonishing. Having been intimately associated with calamitous failures of the past decade he espouses his unique abilities to keep us safe and secure.

Hell, I thought former PM Boris Johnson had a big ego. Monday’s speech goes beyond ridiculous[1]. When he says: “People are abusing our liberal democratic values” what comes to my mind is the right-wing government he leads.

We all know, it’s reported continuously, how dangerous the world has become. Noone in any major political party would dismiss that reality. That is bar the eccentric, downright crazy and maybe the fringes of the Greens party.

Interestingly, as far as I know, PM Rishi Sunak isn’t a climate change denier, but he doesn’t have much to say on this monumental global issue. When he says: “And in this world of greater conflict and danger, 100 million people are now displaced globally.” It should occur to him that competition for resources in a world where the climate is changing is at the root of this movement. By the way, there are 8 billion people in the world[2]. So, let’s get our reality in proportion. True, the 0.1 billion people now displaced globally is a figure likely to grow in the next decade. But they are not the enemy.

I had to laugh when I came to the mention in the speech of “robust plans”. The thing that has been characteristic of this Conservative period of government is the distinct lack of planning.

The country’s whole relationship with its neighbours was changed without any plan (Brexit). The ups and downs of the COVID epidemic were endured without a plan, other than that which was made up day-to-day. Year-on-year cuts in defence spending have only been reversed in the wake of global events not a plan of any kind. Surely the Conservatives can only offer a – make it up as we go along – way of governing? It’s what they’ve always done. Hence, the slow decline that has afflicted the country.

The PM lapses into a lazy “needs must” argument that sprinkled with Brexit bull****. Shakespeare would have approved. One example, in All’s Well That Ends Well:

Countess: Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.

Clown: My poor body, madam, requires it: I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives.

Nothing wrong with being positive about the future. As a country we can do great things. What the PM claims is to have a plan. What he hasn’t got is a plan. And if he did have a plan the likelihood of his own side following that plan is absolutely minimal. He only goes where the devil drives.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-security-13-may-2024

[2] https://www.census.gov/popclock/world

ID

Photo ID is essential, or your ballot will be denied to you in the UK. You can’t vote in elections. That was the case for service veterans, last Thursday. The armed forces veteran card was not deemed acceptable ID[1]. This card was heralded as a great step forward by Conservative Ministers. It seems they had not thought through the implications of the new ID card.

The Electoral Reform Society pointed out that the arbitrary nature of voter ID rules is a problem.

No doubt to get milk the publicity, Boris Johnson, former PM, praised the officials who turned him away from the polling station where he attempted to vote in the South Oxfordshire police commissioner vote[2]. That inspired one or two cartoons. As you would expect featuring clowns. The legacy of Boris Johnson’s chaotic time in the premiership continues to echo.

News is not all negative on the voting front. The 15-year time limit on the eligibility of British people living overseas has been lifted. They will now be permitted to vote in UK elections[3]. Most interestingly, around 3.5 million additional people will have the right to vote in the forthcoming UK General Election. I wonder how those living in the European Union (EU) will vote.

Anyway, if we look at the results from last Thursday, the Conservative attempt at what could be called voter suppression seem to have backfired. Big time. My view is that we should be making it easier for citizens to vote and not harder to vote. As one joker pointed out, in this Parliament, there have been more cases of MP’s misdemeanours than there have been of voter fraud.

I agree that many of the heartfelt arguments of 25-years ago about ID cards are now somewhat moot. The way we use mobile phones has put paid to those arguments. Big Brother is here to stay. It’s astonishing how much personal information we give away freely, not to the Government, but to commercial entities committed to extracting profits from our data.

Formally proving ID is an anarchic process in the UK. There are multiple means, and they are all confusing or mixtures of one another. What is becoming a fixed point is one’s mobile phone number. So many computer systems send a text message that requires acknowledgement to prove who you are who you say you are. The assumption being that the person with the mobile phone is the person who owns the phone, and its number.

Maybe it is time for one unified and recognised official UK ID system.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/02/minister-apologises-veteran-turned-away-refused-voter-id/

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/may/04/boris-johnson-pays-tribute-to-polling-staff-who-refused-to-let-him-vote-without-id

[3] https://www.gov.uk/voting-when-abroad

Culture

Yet again, Boeing is in the news. The events of recent times, I feel are immensely sad. Now, it is reported that the FAA has opened an investigation into a possible manufacturing quality lapse on the Boeing 787 aircraft[1]. Concern is that inspection records may have been falsified.

A company that once had a massive professional engineering reputation has sunk to a place where expectations are low. It’s not so much that the company is having a Gerald Ratner moment. Unfortunately, the constant stream of bad news indicates something deeper.

It’s interesting to note that Frank Shrontz[2] passed away last Friday at the grand age of 92. He was the CEO and Chairman of Boeing, who led the company during development of the Boeing 737NG and Boeing 777 aircraft. In the 1990s, I worked on both large aircraft types.

A commonly held view is that, after his time and the merger with McDonnell Douglas the culture of the organisation changed. There’s a view that business schools graduates took over and the mighty engineering ethos that Boeing was known for then went into decline. Some of this maybe anecdotal. Afterall, the whole world has changed in the last 30-years. However, it’s undoubtably true that a lot of people lament the passing of an engineering culture that aimed to be the best.

A famous quote comes to mind: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Those sharp 5 words get discussed time and time again. Having been involved in a lot of strategic planning in my time it’s not nice to read. How wonderful intent, and well described policies can be diluted or ignored is often an indicator of decline. It’s that cartoon of two cavemen pushing a cart with a square wheel. One says to the other: “I’ve been so busy. Working my socks off”. Ignored, on the ground is an unused round wheel. If an organisation’s culture is aggressively centred on short-term gain, then many of the opportunities to fix stuff gets blown out of the window.

We keep talking about “performance” as if it’s a magic pill. Performance based rules, performance-based oversight, and a long list of performance indicators. That, in of itself is not a bad thing. Let’s face it we all want to get better at something. The problem lies with performance only being tagged to commercial performance. Or where commercial performance trumps every other value an engineering company affirms.

To make it clear that all the above is not just a one company problem, it’s useful to look at what confidential reporting schemes have to say. UK CHIRP is a long standing one. Many recent CHIRP reports cite management as a predominant issue[3]. Leadership skills are an issue.

[1] https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/some-787-production-test-records-were-falsified-boeing-says

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/frank-shrontz-former-ceo-and-chairman-of-boeing-dies-at-92/

[3] https://chirp.co.uk/newsletter/trust-in-management-and-cultures-is-the-key-to-promoting-confidence-in-safety-reporting/

Mojo

There are days when I walk down the street, and everything is peaches and cream. I smile. People smile back. And there are days when I walk down the street, and everything is gloomy and downcast. I frown. People frown back. Like a coin has been flipped.

It’s true there are one or two tiggers to these phenomena. One is so British it’s often taken for granted. The marked difference between a warm, sunny summer day and a chilly, grey overcast winter one can be massive. Fresh green leaves, flowering plants and dry footpaths are on one side of the coin. Bare trees, barren hedge rows and cold puddles underfoot are on the other.

Those are the environmental factors that play with us poor humans as if we were puppets. It’s so much easier to feel optimistic and upbeat when the weather treats us kindly. Air, light, and heat cast a magical spell over all of us. We spend our savings, and we jump on aeroplanes to seek out these influences.

My thoughts stray into the realms of the unknown. I can be analytical and scientific about what sets feelings or moods for a day. What I see and hear can defy simple explanation. Dig deep enough and logic can prevail but not always. Not on every occasion.

I walk down the street perfectly cheerful about the world and its ways, at a time when the world kicks back. Equally, I walk down the street gloomy and pessimistic with the world and its ways, at a time when the world beams happily. What’s going on? Is it me?

An unexplainable factor is interfering. It’s as if I’ve flipped from a good mojo to a bad mojo. There it is. A word that wraps up an intangible feeling. A mysterious material hanging in the ether. My mojo. Or the mojo of those around me. The term is in common usage, so it must be meaningful in some useful sense. We certainly sprinkle the word into conversations when it’s clear that something magical has been lost or is drifting away.

My conclusion is that its one of those phenomena that just must be accepted. It’s written into nature. It’s an example of random chance in everyday life. It’s a probability that can’t be calculated. Even the most sophisticated computation isn’t going to tell that my lottery ticket numbers are winners on any one day, or not.

Today, my mojo and me are happy. But I can’t say much about what might happen tomorrow.

1997 & Today

Thursday was the anniversary of a moment of great political change in Britian. In fact, it was more than political change. It was a renaissance. 1997 was the year Tony Blair became Britain’s youngest Prime Minister (PM) in 185 years. Recession lingered as the British economy had been stumbling along since the previous General Election (GE). People were ready for change. Where have we heard that before?

Paddy Ashdown’s leadership secured a net gain of 28 seats for the Liberal Democrats. That made their total in Parliament to be 46 MPs. Blair landed with 418 seats in the Commons and the Conservatives fell to 165 seats. And to think, for all his failings, former PM John Major was nothing like as ineffective as the current crop of Conservative MPs.

In 1997, there was an air of excitement. What was suppressed energy and optimism burst to the surface. For a short while there was a great sense of possibilities. The chaos of past years could be put behind the country and a new era could start. OK, that positivity had a shadow. There were one or two signs of more chaos to come less than 20 years later. The Referendum Party failed to secure any seats in Parliament, but their troublesome movement did not die.

It was the year I stepped down from Surrey County Council. My four-year term on the council had come to an end. Happily, I won a seat on Reigate and Banstead Borough Council. Surrey has a two-tier system of local government.

How do I describe the feelings of that that spread through that Thursday and the weekend of almost 27 years ago? Wow. It seems such a long time ago when I spell it out in numbers. Those years have passed quickly.

“It was a new age. It was the end of history. It was the year everything changed.” For Science Fiction fans that’s a few words from the series called: Babylon 5. Probably the keenest to tackle “political” stories of any popular Science Fiction series. It was certainly littered with great monologues and speeches.

“It was the year of fire, the year of destruction, the year we took back what was ours.” It’s that last bit that echoes in today’s gloomy situation. I think most of the nation wants a General Election – now. They want that opportunity take back what was ours. To take back our democracy. For good or ill, it’s people’s votes that should determine what happens next.

It’s 2024. We’ve got a PM that we didn’t vote for, a Foreign Secretary that is unelected and rouge right-wing MPs, on his own side, clawing at the PM day-by-day. Not to mention a stack of discredited former PMs. And discredited MPs. And a long line of capable one-nation conservative MPs who have been hounded out of their party.

Putting the personality politics to one side, polluted rivers and seas, overstretched public services, crumbling infrastructure, failure to sort out social care for an aging population, lack of industrial policy, you name it there’s a massive list of issues that need attention.

The Conservatives have stollen what was ours. The story of the last decade is a sad one. Distractions, broken promises and divisive pandering have taken center stage putting sound governance firmly on the back burner.

Now, we are at the dawn of a new age. Or at least we could be. Our best hope for peace and prosperity is to welcome change. Embrace it. Not delay it. Change is coming one way, or another. Let’s return the UK to be a shining beacon in Europe. A shining beacon in the world. I could be as dramatic as to say: “All around us, it was as if the universe were holding its breath . . . waiting.”

We have the power to put chaos and despair behind us. We must choose to use it. The ballot box is the place to start.

POST: Change is happening. The local election results are in. Local election results 2024 in England – BBC News

Runaway

Real votes in real ballot boxes are the best way to get an indication of where we are in these unsettling times. OK, I admit that the voter turnout for local elections doesn’t match that of a General Election (GE) in the UK, by a long way. However, what you can say is that those who are motivated to vote in local elections are certainly going to make the effort to vote in a GE.

So, the voting trend that has been observed over the last year, at least, continues. The Labour Party is gaining ground. The Conservative Party is sinking rapidly. The Liberal Democrats and Greens are making measured progress. Independents are gaining. Nationalists are treading water. The newcomer, the Reform Party is growing rapidly from a petite base.

If you have any association with, or supportive opinion of the Conservative Party this must be an extremely unsettling time. Yes, a lot can change in the next few months but the political party in power in the UK is steaming towards an iceberg at high speed. It’s the modern-day Titanic of the British political scene. It’s quite sinkable. It’s members running in different directions.

Often vigorously supported by “conservatives” is the British First Past The Post (FPTP) voting system for GEs. As is self-evident from any inspection of its history, FPTP punishes harshly small political parties or political parties whose national support dips below a certain point. Probably for the first time in decades the British Conservative Party looks as if its heading for that fine line whereby it’s devastated by the results of a national election. The political dynamics are different in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. That said, the general trend of decline of the modern Conservative Party is national.

Brexit is a failed past experiment. The Banking crisis of 20-years ago, COVID-19 and so called “woke” don’t cut it as excuses. That’s pure desperation. Agreed, that no one predicted how conflict and war would be such a pressing concern.

It’s an opinion, but I’ll express it anyway, that the public are swept by a mood of discontent. They are soundly fed-up with the British Conservative Party. There’s little, if anything, that can be done about the trend set by this public mood. It’s an abstract concept, the “public mood” and not so easy to quantify or qualify. It’s the sort of thing that we only know by its symptoms.

The tone of language used to describe the Prime Minister (PM) and his Cabinet is one sign. It’s as much to say – who the hell would want his job unless they were barking mad? Putting on a brave face when the trend is set.

Moving away from the Titanic analogy to that of a runaway train[1], the image in my mind is that of a steam train driver frantically pulling every leaver that can be found but nothing changes. The train is going to crash.

T’was in the year of 24. On that old Westminster line. When the wind was blowing shrill. The polls closed. And the party would not hold. And Number 10 came racing down the hill.

I’ll bet someone can do better than me with that children’s favourite.

POST: Here’s why I made that reference from the 1960s-70s. Ed Stewpot Stewart’s Junior Choice ( 1OOO Tracks For Kidz Of The 60’s n 70’s ) – playlist by ANDREW HARRY BRIGGS | Spotify and Ed Stewart’s Junior Choice – playlist by Shaun Russell | Spotify

[1]Michael Holliday ‘The Runaway Train’ 1956 78 rpm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNgpzF9N3_M

Pheasant

It’s a wonder to me that common Pheasants[1] survive at all in the wild. I guess they are of a certain size that means there are not so many predators in the English countryside. Their greatest predator is us. Males are particularly colourful and stately in appearance. Quite unlike the Canadian Geese who inhabit the riverbank, Pheasants walk like well-dressed gentlemen on their way to the theatre. They rarely take to the air. It’s such an inconvenience. They don’t so much dive and swoop as much as hop and jump.

Here we have a bird that surveys the world from the roof of our small garden shed. He likes the garden fence as much as plodding around on the lawn. Never troubled by the other bird life, it’s as if he’s related to royalty. Male Pheasants are definite show-offs.

A lot of UK Pheasants are reared for shooting. They are “non-native” birds. That doesn’t seem so much like sport to me. It’s more like shooting fish in a barrel. Love that wonderful idiom. The lack of self-awareness exhibited by the male Pheasant that visits us suggests that shooting him would be a pointless exercise. It would just be a way of covering the ground with lead shot.

Now, that springs to mind a traditional tongue twisting rhyme, namely:

I’m not a pheasant plucker,

I’m a pheasant plucker’s son,

But I’ll keep on plucking pheasants

‘Till the pheasant plucker comes.

One thing to try is to say the rhyme slowly and then speed-up each time you repeat it. It’s bad enough for native English speakers to master that one.

That simple English rhyme has some heritage[2]. As a modern idiom the pheasant plucker can become a pleasant, well you fill in the next word. It has an “f” at the start. If we had wandering bands of minstrels in 21^st Century England, then I’m sure they would make something of those more challenging words. It would probably be done on an iPad in a blackened-out bedroom and launched on social media first.

Maybe we need a cyberspace version of a cobbled stone village square where such nonsense can be attempted. One that’s not owned by a massive corporate proprietor determined to scrape advertising revenues out of it. A place for off-the-wall acts to test their metal. And not one that’s a desperate scrolling fest for bored fingers. Not so much a Tick and a Tock but a gather round experience, I’ve got something interesting to show you. A curious audience gathers and stays for more than 10 seconds. A lively cultural experience is put-on to delight and amuse.

Let’s just say our structing pheasant inspired this thought. From birdsmith to wordsmith.

[1] https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/pheasant

[2] https://www.learnarhyme.com/tongue-twisters/pheasant-plucker

Mindset

Safety is a mindset. Having a sense of risks and which ones to accept and which to reject is something we all develop. It’s a big part of childhood. Most of us have had burns, cuts or bruises that have resulted in doing something we would now consider having been stupid.

Some are destined to be over-cautious, and others are more openly adventurous. In time, we settle around a frame of thinking that suites us best. That’s fine in so far as taking personal risk is concerned. Whether to cross the street every time you see a mean looking dog or to buy a powerful motorcycle later in life that’s a personal preference.

Where activities, positive or negative only impact the risk taker then that’s an area where society shouldn’t be too heavy handed. Naturally, there are boundaries. The classic one is motorcycle crash helmets. Mandating them led to a lot of heated debate. Yes, we are discussing a personal risk in respect of the rider but the risk to society is an unacceptable number of fatalities, brain injuries and publicly borne health care costs.

There I was, driving at less than the regulation speed (yes, I was) eastward on the M25 motorway. The details are stamped on a picture taken by my neat little Garmin dashcam. What’s in the picture? It’s a moveable building sitting on the back of a lorry. Nothing unusual about a lorry transporting stuff from A to B. What I saw was a large building on a relatively small lorry. When first seeing something like this on a busy road, my instinct is to give it a very wide margin.

The rectangular building was rocking gently. It was not a windless day. Not overly windy but a strong gusty breeze was blowing. Clear skies and dry tarmac. So, good driving conditions for a normal lorry with a normal load on a normal day. I’d estimate that this lorry was doing about 80km/hr. It wouldn’t be too difficult to do the sums in terms of the wind resistance of the building. It’s going to be significant. A large flat surface being pushed through the air at motorway speeds. As for sidewinds and gusts, this is a horrendous monster.

Back to safety being a mindset. My thought was – what on earth gave the carriers the idea that this arrangement for a wide load was a safe one for a motorway journey? No escort vehicle. No flashing lights. Just a couple of small red triangles. The straps and wooden blocks holding the load in place looked feeble. A powerful gust of wind on an exposed stretch of road and who knows what would have happen next. It wouldn’t have been pretty. I hope they got to their destination without incident.

Had this been done on private land then there would have been little public risk. Being done on a busy motorway – that’s a different matter. How do people convince themselves that such transport arrangements will be fine? I speculate:

Money. Maybe the haulage contractor undercut rivals to get the job. Maybe using a small lorry and ditching any escort vehicle saved money. Maybe there was time pressure and this was all that was available.
Bravado: A carrier imagines they have special skills and abilities so they can take risks that others would not take. Something uniquely puts them above others in the field. This cock-sure attitude is not uncommon.
Short Cuts. I’ve heard this argument used before – we did it last time and it worked, so we’ll do it again. That learned deviance is the source of many accidents. Past and present can have very different outcomes.
Shoulder shrugging: I’ve heard this argument used too – it’s legal, it’s within the rules so it can’t be wrong, can it? (The load maybe within the approved weight limits for the lorry. There may be no explicit rule on shape and size).

A good safety mindset means saying “no” when no is the right answer. All three of the above points can come into play and produce a toxic mix. Such is the way accidents happen. It doesn’t have to be this way but it often is. Before a critic says don’t be so high and mighty – yes, I’ve done foolish things too.

NOTE: The loading rules HGV maximum weights – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

AAM

This week, I watched an FAAs Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) webinar[1]. The subject was community engagement. AAM could be air taxies but it’s many uses of the new electric aircraft that are becoming a reality. The term eVTOL is used for those aircraft that have the capability of vertical flight. My reflection is that there are several aspects of AAM that need much more attention. Naturally, I’m taking the discussion of what’s going on in the US and thinking about it in relation to the UK.

Land Use Planning

Generally, National Aviation Authorities (NAAs) are consultees when it comes to land use planning. They do not determine planning applications. NAAs may well have set out policies and guidance on the subject but they will not be determining the site of vertiports.

It seems to me that there’s little chance that eVTOL aircraft routes will be established without sufficient community consent. Community engagement has been appropriately recognised as essential. The aspects in play are like those for existing aerodromes. Often for AAM applications proposals are for the use of new locations, hence a concern. Anytime there’s a serious proposal for a new aerodrome the opposition is up and running long before the proposers have got their act together.

The subject is complicated by the mix of public and private ownership of infrastructure. If the intention is to interconnect AAM with other transport services (bus/train/boat/road), then complicated agreements are going to be inevitable. It’s not just about buildings and tarmac but having a trained workforce available is a location dependent issue too.

Business Models

I’m about to sound as if I’m securitising the plans of a contestant on The Apprentice[2]. There are plenty of way of losing money in commercial aviation. It’s been a well-practiced art over the years. Great ideas fall by the wayside after huge amounts of money have been expended. Customers are key. People must want to fly the routes available, time and time again. And like London Black Cabs be prepared to pay the fare. Given the relatively small cabin sizes that are on offer these people are likely to be moderately prosperous groups or individuals.

Regular schedules air services can produce a reliable income. Airport-to-airport connections seem like a good bet. Problem there is the conveyancing of weighty luggage. Busy airspace could be a challenge too. That said, with tens of thousands of people at both ends of a route, no doubt some people will choose a comfortable, speedy direct connection.

There are good possibilities for major event driven transport services. Getting to and from a motor race or horse race event or a concert or festival can be hell when tens of thousands of people are all trying to get to and from a location or venue. The numbers may well stack-up to make eVTOL a premium way of dodging the crowds in an environmentally sound way.

Batteries, Batteries, Batteries

Everything in respect of aircraft performance depends on power density. How much oomph can you get out of a small, light weigh physical space. Recharge and go. Do it, again and again. It’s as simple as that. Not only that but aircraft battery packs must be affordable and available. Whizzy technology that cost a mountain of cash and can only be use for a few hundred cycles is no use at all.

Power distribution infrastructure must be up to the job too. Who will pay for this is up for grabs. There’s a good case for public funding given that there are multiple uses of enhanced electrical supply. Given the monopolistic nature of power generation and distribution this will not be easy or quick.

That’s only three issues that require a great deal of attention. Not the attention of researchers. Not the attention of academics, Not the attention of political policy wonks. Connecting entrepreneurs and public bodies needs practical stimulus. The possibilities are exciting.

[1] https://youtu.be/1sfVuJlPQoY

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/the-apprentice-2024-winner-pies-b2531331.html

Responsibility

What do I have in common with former Prime Minister Liz Truss. Well, not much, I hope. Only I will stop myself from jumping on the band waggon and rubbishing the entirety of what she has to say. It’s astonishing to think that she was once a fully paid-up Liberal Democrat member. Her exit to the dark side is the stuff of decades past pulp fiction.

Truss’s published plans are clearly as mad a bag of frogs. Damming and disbanding anything and everything that you personally don’t like is a page out of the Trump playbook. Oh yes, there’s a community of enraged folks who will not read the detail and pied piper like follow the music. That will sell a tiny number of books before they pile-up in the high street charity shops of the country. Even they might flinch at stocking her castoffs in print. 10p would be too much.

Now, comes the; ah but. If I go back to the mid-1990s, I was writing about the proliferation of QANGOS[1]. Being a local Councillor at the time I felt a great deal of irritation in finding that so much government policy was focused on taking power away from elected local government and giving it to appointed bodies with no local accountability.

The Liberal Democrat approach has long been that power should be decentralised from central to regional and local government. A great deal of what we have seen in the last three decades has been exactly the opposite. Devolution in Scotland and Wales being the exception. Although, that didn’t make much difference when Brexit came along.

Giving specific powers to executive agencies is not the problem. You might think I’d say it was. No, the problem is the relationships between elected bodies and those who act as its agents. Once a democratically elected body has determined a course of action there’s benefit in having expert agencies, given clear terms of reference and a job to implement specific policies.

Politicians, generally make lossy managers. This is where the Truss / Trump doctrine, that politicians should control or manage everything as being extremely foolish. Centralisation does help when unified action is needed but for the most part keeping all decision making in-house degrades administration and enables it to become detached from reality.

Politicians are great critics. Their skills are best used to scrutinises activities at a high level. To exercise oversight and provide feedback derived from real life experiences (The Post Office scandal being an exception to this general assertion).

The former Prime Minister who holds the record for being the shortest in office had to take responsibility for her actions. In that most peculiar way, UK democracy worked. No well, but at least corrective action was taken in reaction to a calamitous situation.

Take back control in my mind means returning powers to regional and local government. Where QANGOS are necessarily then make sure they are kept under effective scrutiny. A lot of what I have said here is better said in a policy paper from 2007[2]. We know what to do but rarely do we do it.

[1] In the UK, the term QUANGO addresses “arm’s-length” government bodies, including “non-departmental public bodies” (NDPBs), non-ministerial government departments, and some executive agencies.

[2] https://www.libdemnewswire.com/files/2016/02/77.-Green-and-Prosperous-Communities-Local-Regeneration-for-the-21st-Century.pdf