Category: Economy

Legacy, A Cautionary Tale

English is full of pithy phrases that echo through the pages of history. One of the greatest contributors to this phenomenon was Shakespeare. Lots of quips and quotes and snippets of wisdom come from his numerous plays (and other literary imitations).

The phrase or maximum that I have in mind is: “Beware of an old man in a hurry.” It’s not the only one on the same basic theme. My dad used to say that there’s “No fool like an old fool”. Honestly, as a child I had no idea what he was getting at. I guess it was to sum-up an observation of someone’s behaviour. It’s not a complementary saying.

There’re several ways of interpreting the “old man in a hurry” saying.

For one, and I’m just about to clock 65 years, the way the world seems is conditioned by the fact that one’s final moments are a lot closer than they were as an ambitious young man.

Another interpretation is that we might expect an older person, with more experience, will be guided to make better life decisions. However, in reality, the reverse is so often true.

I could go as far as to say that the “beware” part is to beware of imbedded prejudices and reduced peripheral vison that can come with age.

Doing a quick bit of research the source of this short English saying is not ancient wisdom from a Greek scholar or scribbling Roman sage. Not even a contemplative Medieval monk.

No, it’s a young British Conservative politician talking about an old Liberal. In fact, probably the most successful old Liberal that has ever graced Parliament. The one who left this county with the world’s biggest Empire. When he passed at 88 years, Britain was the most developed, most prosperous nation and biggest manufacturer the world had ever known. If we were ever to call to Make Britain Great Again, we’d call for an old Liberal. MBGA doesn’t exactly flow of the tongue. Anyway, GB (Great Britain) endures as a name.

The young British Conservative politician was Churchill’s father, Randolph, and the old Liberal was an energetic, fired-up Gladstone.

Can I now use “Beware of an old man in a hurry” as I reflect on the week’s News? Does President Trump see the world as a racing clock? Knowing that mortality looms. Knowing that any marks that are to be made need to be made – now. The “long-game” is for others to play.

When time is almost up the tendency to rashness can be understood. A lot depends on whether the subject of legacy looms large in the thinking of a leader. Through the millennia legacy has mattered a great deal to leaders.

Gladstone’s success was marred by the eventual destruction of the Party he led. He did transform government from a boys-club of privilege, at least in part, but the future of Ireland became his achillea heel. As a Liberal, he found building a powerful country didn’t mean granting privilege for politician’s and friends’ private businesses but ensuring that the working class were represented.

Trump’s haste, and lack of longer-sighted goals, appears real. Constitutions, democracy and the public good will endure. Mean-time hang on to your hats.

Pragmatism in British Politics

Pragmatism has long been a part of British life. Idealism too but to a lesser extent. That said, the shelves of literary works probably tip in the balance of idealism. There’s always an “insightful” quote to pull of the shelf and plonk into a speech or scribblings like this.

There’s a comfort in putting important decisions down to known facts and up-to-date realities. This way of working tends to favour short-term action based on weighing-up the here and now. What’s best for us where we stand at this moment? How much money have we got?

If you are an ardent socialist or committed liberal or dyed-in-the-wool right-winger, then pragmatism can make your flesh crawl. It leads to the question – what do you really believe in? Intellectual prowess is challenged by a call to make it up as we go along.

Pragmatism encourages hypocrisy. Now, that might be phrased as an uncomfortable negative. The truth is that no successful organisation has ever escaped a great deal of honest hypocrisy. Positions on even the most hard-fought issues do change. That’s not a negative. Just a couple of minutes surveying the history of the last half century, more than proves the case.

So, when I hear the UK Prime Minister (PM) talk of “ruthless pragmatism” I do wince a bit. It’s not that pragmatism per-se is an evil. No way. Mere survival in any political landscape and someone must react to the here and now in a way that doesn’t sink the ship.

PM Keir Starmer talking on Europe[1] is like listening to a rich Victorian woman having on extremely tight underwear. There’s no way she can loosen it in public. Her peers would disown her. When no one is looking an immense sense of relief can be gained in shedding the constraining garments. Behind closed doors the ridiculous restraints are shed.

Frankly, UK opposition to joining youth mobility schemes[2] in Europe is a stupid as stupid can get. I mean stupid times a billion. Now, some madcap idealists might be scared that British youth might, if taught early, be influenced in ways that would last throughout their lives. Such would be their indoctrination that eventual the push on the UK to join to European Union (EU) would be overwhelming.

There’s another word beginning with “p”. Take pragmatism and replace it with paranoia. The later seems to be fashionable just now. Forget the idealist approach where at least views tend to be based on a plausible creed. Paranoia is such that no previous experience is necessary. It’s all-over social media and more and more conventional media. Pragmatism is met with disbelief. So, is it wise for Keir Starmer to make that word a number one headliner?

A philosophical political pragmatism has been long practiced in the UK. I don’t see that stopping anytime soon. But what’s to be gained by headlining it? Not a lot I’d say. In fact, it gives ammunition to the light blue swivel-eyed loons[3].

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/keir-starmer-brexit-reset-europe-b2692118.html

[2] https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/youth-mobility-schemes/

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/swivelgate-david-cameron-goes-to-war-with-the-press-over-swiveleyed-loons-slur-8622277.html

Financial Pressures and Local Government Restructuring

It was a long time ago, but I remember the travails of local government reorganisation. A massive amount of councillor and officer time was consumed. Endless discussions going backwards and forwards. Loads of heat but little light.

I had my one term as a Surrey County Councillor between 1993 and 1997. Now, that is 30-years back. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since. That said, the issues are still hanging in the air. The outcome of that Conservative attempt at local government reorganisation was no change for the one million people in Surrey. That meant one large County Council and eleven smaller Boroughs and Districts. Not forgetting several Town and Parish Councils.

Having moved, my concern is now local government reorganisation in Berkshire. The situation here is that the two-tier structure of local government has already been swept away. We pay our council tax to one unitary local authority.

Here we are in a different time and place. Labour’s first six months in government behind us. A new era. All smiles to begin. Sadly, the write-ups of the last six-months are less than flattering[1]. It would be reasonable to think that during a period of opposition in Parliament. Those 14-years. The prospective future government would have put in place policies and plans that would have been “oven ready,” to use a term an unsuccessful past Prime Minister would use.

Just as it was 30-years ago, English local government is facing huge financial pressures. Residents are struggling to access good services. Local issues, like potholes, planning, special educational needs and social care are as intractable as they always have been.

So, is this the time to bring out local government reorganisation again? Regardless of what I think, it’s clear that Jim McMahon MP, Minister of State (Minister for Local Government and English Devolution) has local government reorganisation on his agenda[2].

From what I hear, existing county Boroughs and Districts are going to become history. Small unitary authorities had better watch out too. Council leaders are being asked to find ways of building scale. That means no English local authority smaller than a population of half a million.

Will this turn around performance? Economies of scale may have some benefits. The problem that strikes me is the notion that “local”, meaning a natural community, is generally much less than 500,000 people. Especially in rural areas.

The Government White Paper that sets out these plans is called “English Devolution”. An interesting use of that nice word. In the circumstances that the new Minister imagines it could be that local government becomes more and more an implementing arm of central government. No more or less. To some extent this is already the cases, but localism and community are not completely extinguished. The tension continues to be one between governance being top-down or bottom-up driven.

The Labour government might imagine this “silver bullet” will harmonise, sanitise and make local services run like clockwork. I wonder if it will.

[1] https://inews.co.uk/news/messy-muddled-starmer-struggles-worse-rebellion-3444812

[2] https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/event/government-2025-conference

Navigating AI

In my travels, I’ve seen derelict towns. The reason they were built has passed into history. A frantic fever swept through an area like an unstoppable storm. It might have been precious metals that excited the original residents. Gold rushes feed the desire to get rich quick. It doesn’t take the greatest minds in the world to figure out why gold fever will always have an appeal. The onrush of people joining the throng keeps going until opportunities have collapsed.

Breakthrough technologies, or their potential, can be just like a gold rush. There’s no doubt that 2025 will be a year of such phenomena. Top of the list is Artificial Intelligence AI[1]. If you want to be a dedicated follower of fashion[2], then AI is the way to go. Thank you, The Kinks. Your lyrics are as apt now as they were in the 1960s.

Predications range from the best thing since sliced bread to the end of humanity. Somewhere along that line is realism. Trouble is that no one really likes realism. It can be somewhat dull.

I’ve always viewed advancing technologies as a two-edged sword. On the one hand there are incredible benefits to be reaped. On the other, costs can be relatively unpredictable and devastating. I say “relatively unpredictable” as there’s always the advantage of knowledge with hindsight. Lots of commentators love to practice that one.

In desperation to gain the economic benefits of AI the current utterances of the UK Government may seem a little unwise[3]. Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with wishing to build a significant domestic capacity in this area of technology. What’s concerning is to always talk of legislation and regulation as a burden. Particularly when such language comes from lawmakers.

The compulsion to free-up opportunity for a western style gold rush like scenario has a downside. That is all too evident in the historic records. Ministers in this new Labour Government remind me of Mr. Gove’s past mantra – we’ve had enough of experts. Rational dialogue gets sidelined.

Even now we have seen generative search engines produce summaries of complex information sources that are riddled with holes. This experience reminds me of past work cleaning up aviation accident databases. Removing all those 2-engined Boeing 747s and airport IDs with one letter transposed. Data by its nature isn’t always correct. The old saying, to err is human, is always applicable.

The concerning aspect of AI output is its believability. If error rates are very low, then we stop questioning results. It gets taken for granted that an answer to a question will be good and true. There we have a potential problem. What next. AI to check AI? Machines to check machines? There lies a deep rabbit hole.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/08/1109188/whats-next-for-ai-in-2025/

[2] https://youtu.be/stMf0S3xth0

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/11/uk-can-be-ai-sweet-spot-starmers-tech-minister-on-regulation-musk-and-free-speech

Political Challenges: A 2025 Outlook

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s dive to an incredibly low level of popularity is notable. In fact, it’s a bit more than that. It’s record breaking.

A commonly held view seems to be that we elected the Labour Party government in July as the least bad choice. The Tory years had got so utterly terrible that even their devoted supporters bulked at giving them yet another term in office. Combine that with an inexplicable inability to frame a simple story about what Labour stands for and the problem is less surprising.

Keir Starmer is no fool. He’s an intelligent and experienced politician. He’s taken the hard knocks. He’s climbed the slippery pole. But, and there’s a but, something doesn’t jell.

I my humble opinion, the ingredients missing or in excess are categorised like so.

Charisma. It’s so much easier if leader has that indefinable quality. I remember this of Paddy Ashdown. One: you know when they are in the room. No question. People look. Two: they never lack inspiring ideas. Even if they could be off-the-wall. Three: what they say makes an impact.

Eloquence: That ability to coin words and phrases that resonate with lots of everyday people (not just supporters). To speak persuasively, in a way that says we are going on a great journey together. Scripted or not, fluency that appears natural and unforced. Lightness of touch.

Managerialism: Everyone expects confident, capable, competent governance (although we rarely get it). However, we don’t want to see it live on the mainstage, all the time. That phrase about political policy and making sausages is a good one. Lots of people like sausages but few like to know how they are made.

Now, the question I have is: are the “local difficulties” of present fixable?

2025 is going to be a roller coaster of a year. We have washed away any residual millennial mysticism that hit the world in 2000. A whole generation has slipped by. Babies born as London’s Millennium dome was both viewed both with amazement and distain, have jobs that didn’t exist as the fireworks went off.

The so called “smart” phone, and tablets have carved a way into our lives that’s deep and unmovable. Even if the next leap in technology will surely leave them as obsolete.

So, what’s the narrative for 2025 – 2050? Will we sink into the quicksand of nostalgia or herald a new era full of promise? I don’t know. I’ll just keep topping up my glass to ensure it’s half full.

Risks of Pruning Government

Everybody likes a good analogy. I don’t know if this one qualifies. We communicate by saying this thing is like this other thing. The first one being easier to understand than the one second. It’s a basic part of storytelling.

Who understands how government and its institutions grow? I’ve no doubt there are huge textbooks full of detailed analysis and complicated theories. Sitting on dusty library shelves. Written by knowledgeable and venerable academics.

I’m coming from a background that’s more practical. One of having mixed with and worked in bureaucratic structures built to serve a public good. Bureaucracies that have both traditional administrative and technical elements.

Here goes. Government, or rather the administrations, institutions and services are like a large oak tree. It’s kind of human pyramid in the sense that there’s a top and bottom. An upside-down tree minus the roots.

Oak trees are long lived. They have branches that are substantial so that they can carry a heavy load and suffer the battering of the wind and rain. Out on the furthest limbs they are young, spindly and vulnerable.

Today’s media is full of stories of what might come. There’s a new year in prospect. Across the Atlantic a new President is about to take-up office. Speculation is rife. One part of that speculation concerns the future of the large administration that is the federal state.

The Presidents favourite billionaire has ideas to take a chainsaw to the tree of administration. Generally speaking, a chainsaw isn’t the best tool for the job, but it certainly is scary. Maybe that’s the point. Keeping a huge, embedded administration on its toes.

My point, and I have one, which is more than I can say for Rory Stewart, a former minister, talking on the BBC this morning. My point is that pruning a tree requires the pruner to be competent. That’s having the attitude, skill and experience needed to make a good job of it.

Lopping off limbs of a working administration with the sole aim of saving money isn’t such a sound idea. Each branch has a purpose. It’s as well to have a comprehensive understanding of what that purpose is before the pruning starts. From that understanding can come a sound reason to prune.

Ideally, pruning should be good for the tree and good for everyone who depends upon it. Weak branches that suck-up energy even though their days are numbered should become firewood. Fledgling young branches that are heading out to explore new territory may need encouragement and support.

So, it is with government. There’s a lot of truth in Parkinson’s Law[1]. He knew a thing or two about bureaucracies. The clever bit is finding out where this phenomenon has taken off. Where the tree has grown way out of balance.

Will Musk be competent in pruning? Who knows. One thing is for sure. The potential for loping off a branch that is vital to health, wealth and happiness is all too real. Let’s watch and see.

[1] the law – “Work expands to fill the available time”

Revitalising Manufacturing

Yes, it’s good to have good trading relations with other countries. With a degree of pragmatism – as many as possible. Naturally, there are lines drawn in cases where countries share little of the UK’s values or are dictator run aggressors. Counting the hundreds of sovereign countries there are around the globe, a majority are friendly and mostly interested in mutual wellbeing.

However, post-2016[1] we are still living in strange times in the UK. In the same breath as some people talk of sovereignty and surrender, they say an extremely wealthy man in the US can solve all the UK’s problems. This nonsense defies any kind of logic.

There’s a peculiar celebration of the UK joining the Asia-Pacific Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) bloc. As if we didn’t have a huge trading block on our immediate doorstep. Joining one that offers a tiny gain overtime whilst leaving the other has cost a massive economic hit. The one thousands of miles away is significantly culturally different but the one next door is one where we share a common history.

I learn that there’s no point even thinking that logic has any influence on a Brexit supporter. Non whatsoever. Their view of the world comes from some lost imperial age.

Sadly, Brexit talk is only mumbled in darkened corners. That whopping great elephant in the room continues to get ignored. Even the UK’s new Labour Government is carrying on as if there were the former Conservative bunglers. There’s some woolly talk of reconciliation. There’s a lot of right-wing scaremongering. Practically, not a lot is changing.

In real terms, both UK exports and imports of goods are lower than in 2016, having shrunk by 1% and 2%, respectively[2]. Which is crazy given the new economic horizons. Especially in the switch to the need for more environmentally responsible goods. We should be modernising and strengthening UK design and manufacturing. Not just a bit but putting a rocket under both. Half hearted nice words by minor Ministers don’t cut it.

International trade fantasies will not build a stronger domestic economy and that illusive positive growth that’s often talked about in political speeches. With the coming of highly advanced computing, like artificial intelligence, countries with predominantly service based economies are gong to struggle. Basic service orientated jobs are going to get more automated. Like the traditional factories Henry Ford would have recognised, office complexes are hollowing out.

At least the new Labour Government isn’t pushing wholesale reopening coal mines or returning to a dependency on North Sea oil rigs. That said, I’m unsure what their attitude and policy is to rock fracking and imported gas supplies.

To make real economic progress we (UK) must make Brexit history. With our colleagues in Europe, we can be an innovation powerhouse. Making home grown products for the world markets of the future. Not languishing in a tepid imperial past or tugging at the shirt tails of some mega weird pugilist.

[1] UK referendum result: Of those who voted, 51.89% voted to leave the EU (Leave), and 48.11% voted to remain a member of the EU (Remain).

[2] https://personal.lse.ac.uk/sampsont/BrexitUKTrade.pdf

What If Semiconductors Didn’t Exist?

There are moments when it’s dark and grey outside. Moments to ponder a what-if. That’s a what-if something hadn’t happened or physical laws aren’t what they have been found to be.

In my youth I do remember making a “crystal” radio receiver[1]. A relatively fragile germanium diode and a couple of other components scraped from junk radios, record players and TV sets. It worked quite well. It was a good introduction to the theory of amplitude modulation (AM). The diode detector demodulates the radio signal and provides a faint signal to listen to. The whole arrangement is crude but cheap and simple. It depends on that useful device – a semiconductor diode.

My what-if is right there in plain sight. Let’s put aside the physical laws that give certain materials their properties. What-if the whole world of semiconductors didn’t exist?

The most immediate repercussion is that this keyboard, screen and computer would look entirely different, if it existed at all. What I’m doing now is dependent upon millions of semiconductors all doing exactly what they’ve been designed to do. Easy to take for granted – isn’t it. Our modern world is enabled by semiconductors.

Electronics would still exist. Before semiconductors were understood thermionic valves provided the ways and means to control electrical signals. Don’t think that valves[2] have disappeared in the 21st century. There’re enthusiasts who prefer them for amplification. The sound is better (different) – so they say.

Unlike semiconductors, thermionic valves don’t lend themselves to miniaturisation. A world without semiconductors would be populated by machines that are considerably larger and heavier than those of today. But it wouldn’t be a world without sophistication. Just look at the English Electric Canberra[3]. An incredibly capable aircraft for its day. It lived a long life. Without a semiconductor in sight.

It’s difficult to imagine e-mail without semiconductors. It’s difficult to imagine the INTERNET or the mobile phone. Not that such key markets wouldn’t be satisfied by some other means. The transition to a global dependency on digital systems would probably have been considerably slowed. Maybe the pace of life wouldn’t have accelerated so much.

I don’t think we would have been trapped in a 1950s like society. Only that patterns of work would have taken a different developmental path. Would it have been the one painted in the grim tale of 1984? No. Even that takes a position of a freezing of the state of human progress.

A non-semiconductor existence would have meant less proliferation of electronic devices. It might have led to a less wasteful society where repairing equipment was given more weight.

I suspect that large global corporations would inevitably have a hold over whatever technology was most popular. That side of human behaviour is technology agnostic.

[1] https://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/remembering-the-crystal-radio

[2] https://brimaruk.com/valves/

[3] https://www.baesystems.com/en-uk/english-electric-canberra

Societal Change and AI

Societal change is inevitable. It seems hack to analogise with reference to the printing press. Look what happened, an explosion of communication. Dominance of the book for centuries. Expanding literacy. Progressive shaping of society resulting in this era.

We are only where we are because we stand on the shoulders of the giants who went before[1]. Not just the giants. There is massive amount of human contribution that is never accounted. The unseen heroes and the occasionally rediscovered thinkers and doers.

Along the way of history those who battle the battle of glass half full or glass half empty chatter away. We are either in a glorious age or a minute away from Armageddon. Polar ends of our future, both stories have merit. Who has a crystal ball that works?

I’ve been aware of neural-networks and joked about Bayesian Belief Networks for at least two decades. Having been involved in the business of data analysis that’s no surprise. Even so the rapid advance of a multitude of different forms of artificial intelligence (AI) is a surprise.

Talking generally, we have this foolish mental picture of the world that everything is linear. Progression from one state to another takes proportionate steps forward. It’s a hangover from the analogue world which is where we were until the 1960s/70s.

This fetish for straight lines and normal curves is deeply embedded. It’s odd. Although a lot of rules in nature do have a linear form, one that Sir Isaac Newton would recognise, there’s far more that follows other rules.

In the last few weeks this fetish played out at a global scale. We are all treating climate change as if it’s a water clock. Drip, drip by drip the climate changes. A reaction to a progressive degradation. Yet, environmental reality might have a step change in degradation ahead.

In my view it’s right to try to vision ahead about the path AI technology might take. It’s right to consider more than progressive development and evolutionary change. Information systems have a habit of either falling into disuse or marching on at the pace of Moore’s law[2].

Another example. The math of Fourier transforms has been around a long time. Doing Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) in the 1970s required a couple of chunky cabinet full of power-hungry electronics. For the few, not the many. Today, every smart phone[3] in the world can crunch FFT algorithms. For the many, not the few.

Can we use a simple graphical representation to say where AI is going[4]? Will “intelligence” double every year or two? Well, I suspect that developments will go faster than a doubling. Like Moore’s law these conditions tend to become self-fulfilling. It’s a technological race.

[Why? To a machine there’s no sleep. To a machine there’s 86,400 seconds in a day. Everyone is meaningful and useful. To a complete and successful electronic machine only a tiny fraction of its operating time needs to be spent fixing itself. Or that might be one job left to us.]

POST: The impact of this high speed race makes interesting study U.S. Should Build Capacity to Rapidly Detect and Respond to AI Developments – New Report Identifies Workforce Challenges and Opportunities | National Academies

[1] Sir Isaac Newton, English scientist, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

[2] https://www.asml.com/en/technology/all-about-microchips/moores-law

[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38320198

[4] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03679-6

John Gray’s Critique

If a dose of despondency is your Sunday morning tipple, I recommend BBC Radio 4’s “A Point of View[1]”. I often catch it as an alternative to listening to the driving rain bashing against the window as I wake-up on a Sunday morning.

What I dislike the most about John Gray’s analysis is that it dismisses all the hard-working people who daily strive to make the world a better place. I know, you are asking who John Gray is and what does he know? Well, he’s a British philosopher and author of a pile of serious books. He dabbles in political thinking and doom mongering.

On Sundays in the past, I relied heavily on Will Self creating an air of depressed inevitability that all the bad things about humans will eventually overcome us. A dower British journalist and political commentator who always seems to see the dark cloud instead of the silver lining.

Despite the grim tales of these speakers, they often have, lost in their rhetoric, a smidgen of wisdom. This morning John Gray argues that we need a new response to the growth of the right-wing charlatans who are rapidly climbing the greasy pole of national political life.

Naturally, a lot of us thought that’s what the UK General Election last July was all about. A reoccupation of the centre ground of British politics by the Labour Party. A renewed liberal democratic political consensus would emerge and save us all. Strangely, it doesn’t seem to be working out that way. Although, it might be a bit harsh to judge after only a few months.

Last night, I watched the second episode of the BBC’s period drama Wolf Hall[2]. My God, it’s good entertainment. A little heavy in places. Sharp and brilliantly executed. That last word being the key one. Tudor history is a reminder of how vicious political manoeuvring can be. Having a master, a King, who is determined to make the world turn around him and no one else.

So, should I agree with the likes of John Gray? That a darkness slithers around in human hearts. That we’d better be prepared, shake-off the status-quo and look for new ways to head-off the marketing men’s populist politics. Voiced by bombastic demigods and radical twerps.

He’s right in the sense that today’s politics is behind the curve. British political parties were forged in a different age. Largely, baring the virtues they espouse, they are outdated. Sure, fairness, liberty, and equality have not fallen out of fashion. But maybe the language surrounding them belongs in the 19th and 20th centuries.

One thing is for sure, Willo the Wisps, like Kemi Badenoch offer nothing new. Reform is just a cover for the populist worst of human nature. Yes, we do need someone to break new ground in British politics.

Oh, for a more cheerful Sunday morning.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00254hz

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002473m/wolf-hall