The journal of a digital existentialist, pilot, analyst and columnist.
Saturday, 17 October 2009
One Plan and Another
I'm presently struggling with a new university course and with it, the impact of technology on our society and indeed, its future. For reader interest, I'm putting up a YouTube video, 'ShiftHappens' which is well worth watching for lovers of statistics.
Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan have also written a book, 'The Plan - twelve months to renew Britain' which I'm trying to read and finish this weekend. Already half-way through, I would recommend it to anyone.
I've just ordered the first of Amazon's 'Kindle' readers for the UK, so I'm looking forward to a future of being able to buy and download many thousands of books, newspapers, periodicals and publications, wirelessly into the hand held reading device, which can hold thousands of books in its memory.
The local Blogs seem very quiet at the moment. Either everyone has become very bored with the writing exercise or there isn't that much to report on the long dark slide towards Christmas and 2010.
Briefly, I stumbled across more evidence of the growth of our Police state this week, with two stories. The first from a friend of mine from Westgate, who visited the Natural History Museum in London and who like me, owns a Gerber multitool. In his case, rather like a Swiss Army knife, it was in his bag but the security lady at the museum concluded from the look of him, that he must be a dodgy character or potential terrorist, because she stopped him and asked him to turn out his bag.
Spotting the Gerber multi-tool, she said she would have to confiscate it as a weapon but he stood his ground and told her she had no right to do so. She insisted that she did and the Police were called. Ironically, when the Police arrived, expecting perhaps to find Osama Bin Laden, they took one look at the Gerber and told the security guard not to be silly as the penknife was within limits and that it was not being used or displayed as an offensive weapon. She then started arguing with the Police but in the end, my friend got his multi-tool back and was allowed to enter the museum. So this time around, the Police showed some common-sense, which is refreshing but it is a little worrying that Museum security guards appear to be losing theirs, in this example anyway.
The second example surrounds the 2012 Olympics. I've already had several enquiries about flying advertising banners around the Games from the United States but enquiring of the CAA and the 2012 Organising Committee, I was sent a rather large document to read and digest.
This explains that our Government will shortly be enacting secondary legislation to "protect" the commercial interests of the 2012 Games sponsors. In a nutshell, you need to think back to the Beijing Games and the heavy-handed approach of the Chinese authorities. This legislation will be 'catch-all' to prevent, 'Ambush Marketing' within broad geographically defined areas and the airspace surrounding them.
So, let's say you try and wear a Pepsi-branded T-shirt within that defined area of London or perhaps Weymouth or Manchester or any other sporting venue. You could, in principle be arrested. Try flying a banner or displaying a flag or a travelling road-sign with the same and you certainly will be and if it's a 'Free Tibet' flag then I suspect that will be caught under the legislation as well.
Just two days after the ecrime mid-year Forum in London, an unusual mission for me and my company, Airads, today, over Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire, organised by the supporters of Charles Bronson, with the message: “FREE BRONSON- ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”.
What can I say, other than it took a fair amount of liaison work between me and the CAA as well as the Police and Prison Governor at Long Lartin.
I see that Computer Weekly has run my column on social media and the public sector:
"The great Ernest Hemingway once said: "There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges", so when it comes to finding a really good read, local government publications can normally be found somewhere near the bottom of any bedtime book choice. Not that town halls don't try very hard to reach out to the public in every conceivable way but by its very nature, even the brightest and most positive news stories from the public sector rarely attract the traffic they might deserve.
Most lately, you may have seen on the BBC Politics Show, criticism surrounding Brighton and Hove City Council, which advertised for a new social media officer with "expertise" on both Facebook and Twitter at a time when other staff are facing pay cuts. The council offered the reason for this appointment as: "Increasing visibility, building our brand and learning about our audiences by utilising social media."
An interesting six hours or so in the air on Friday.
First stop was Calais and 'The Jungle' the sparsely wooded area adjacent to the port, for a national newspaper, having a good look at what was taking place in the refugee encampment below. I was struck by how many blue tarpaulin-covered shelters there were, lean-to's huddling miserably together in a relatively small and dirty space and the presence of scaling ladders visible and badly concealed on top of several.
Most surprising of all is how close the industrial estate and coach park are to the 'Jungle', quite literally on the other side of the bushes.
Below, there was evidence of organised activity, with one large group of men visibly being directed by a single individual in a leather jacket. Where they might have been going I can't say but there was no shortage of lorries or coaches within easy reach of any passing travel interest.
Back on this side of the Channel, it was back to nuclear reactors, taking in Bradwell Bay and Sizewell B, which I couldn't survey on Monday and then across East Anglia to survey building progress on two brand new prisons; one on the site of the old RAF Coltishall in Norfolk and the second near Peterborough. Mind you, given the present deplorable state of our criminal justice system, I believe we would need to build a prison a month simply to keep up with the demand for places which now sees even the most serious offenders swiftly released into the so-called 'Community' for rehabilitation.
The 'Jungle' is scheduled to be buldozed soon but this will simply displace the problem elsewhere as the French appear disinclined to police the problem in Calais vigorously and instead, blame us for our "Ridiculously generous" benefits system. However, as you may have seen in the news this week, the trail of human misery which ends in Calais at the opposite end of the Channel Tunnel, starts a very long way from Europe and passes through the barren desert of Libya on the way; one reason why our Government and the Italians are so very keen to seek rapprochment with Colonel Gaddafi, large oilfields aside!
I thought I would try blogging directly from Microsoft Word this morning as I haven't tried it before, normally making entries, 'on the fly' straight into Blogger.com, spelling mistakes and all.
This morning's weather is such that there's no great incentive to leave the house, other than to walk a reluctant dog and this gives me a good reason to finish reading and marking-up Cabinet papers for next week and finish a two thousand word feature on last Sunday's flight to Milan and the Gulfstream G200 for 'P1' magazine; a bit like 'Top Gear' and I'm no Jeremy Clarkson although I've attached a quick clip of the landing for anyone who might be interestedin such things!
Having flicked through the Sunday papers, I've decided not to pull-out any stories that caught my attention other than remarking that it's TUC Conference time again and Trades Union leaders were reportedly treated to beer and curry with the Prime Minister this weekend in a last ditch effort to gain their support and their funding as a defunct Labour party totters towards a General Election facing the threat of political annihilation at the polls. Listening to Union leaders on Sky this morning, several of whom I know because of the aerial banner work I do, I'm struck by the continued reluctance to grasp the real implications of the £175 billion deficit that Sky's Adam Bolton referred to this morning. There's not a person reading this who doesn't want better schools and hospitals and a decent pension for the elderly but the simple £175 billion question is: "Who pays?"
Elsewhere, Labour continues to try and put the "Class War" card into play, conveniently forgetting the immortal words of Tony Blair, " Were' all middle-class now." While Labour councillors castigate "Tory Toffs" who went to private and public schools, perhaps we could have a list of Labour Ministers or even MPs who haven't used every trick in the book to achieve the very best education available for their own children? Isn't it human nature to try and get the best for one's children, it's certainly a middle-class ethos to aspire or is this now politically incorrect with most of the other values that my generation was raised with; decency, personal responsibility, the work ethic, opening doors for ladies and more! Why I wonder should someone be blamed for being a product of the best education that money can buy; only in Britain does it appear to be a problem. In the United States it's celebrated!
Congratulations to King Ethelbert's School, here in Westgate, for achieving such a marked improvement in their GCSE results. I also went to school here in Thanet and by coincidence, Margate blogger, Tony Flaig was my classmate. I can't recall any of us boys at the time agonizing over our misfortune at not being sent to Eton or indeed, being bright enough to get into Chatham House and yet those were the seventies, when 'Soviet Weekly' was delivered in bundles to the classroom of every school and Margate was twinned with the socialist paradise of Yalta. Class war is a device that Labour uses every time it faces defeat; it's their worn-out excuse for not delivering on the promise to end child poverty, streamline the NHS or deliver a truly world-class education system. In reality the dismal record of this Government can be found in the pages of George Orwell's novel, 'Animal Farm', "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."
There's another quote from the same story which also rings true in the last days of Gordon Brown's premiership. One could imagine it coming from Ed Balls or Harriet Harman:
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
Over at Leicester today flying a promotional banner for the "Tigers" rugby team. Leicester is only 138 miles from Thanet as 'The crow flies' but I'm sure it seem rather longer by road.
From the air and on a lovely autumn day like today, it looks like a very attractive city with lots of green spaces and a very accomodating airfield to operate from too!
With the evening now starting to draw in, the banner season will soon come to end or at least quieten down until April of next year. It still runs through the winter but becomes increasingly more of a probability exercise, each time I fly as the winter weather depressions and shorter days make flying more challenging.
I found myself on a day trip to Milan on Sunday, as a member of the flight crew on a positioning trip of a GainJet Gulfstream G200.
Ninety minutes was all it took, followed by several hours of aviation hell, as I caught the 16:50 (delayed to 18:00) Easyjet from Milan's Linate airport back into Gatwick with all the other poor souls squeezed on-board.
From the cockpit of the Gulfstream, the view over the Alps was breathtaking from 37,000 feet, giving way suddenly to the flat plain of Northern Italy and then a sharp right-turn and a radar-vectored descent into Linate.
It's easy to understand why Manchester United Football Club and the super wealthy prefer executive jet travel whenever possible. Passport control and travel formalities are a polite nod at both ends and the interior of the aircraft is lavish in mahogany and leather with all possible comforts supplied.
This particular aircraft was scheduled to go on to Frankfurt in the morning and then Istanbul and beyond, finishing-up, I think, in Moscow.
In contrast though, I have to tow a banner for Leicester Tigers rugby club this week, not quite the same excitement as exploring Istanbul but another challenge none the less!
In 1876 the young Charles Doughty set out to cross the interior of the Arabian Peninsula. His goal was the "lost" Nabatean city of Madain Saleh the magnificent sister city to Petra in Jordan. Several years of his life were spent in what were later called his "wanderings": explorations of a terrain little known to Europeans, the discovery of the remains of the sought-for city and detailed accounts of what he discovered there, with particular attention paid to the local geology.
I've noticed that the BBC 2 documentary, 'The Frankincense Trail' with the embrassingly naive, Kate Humble, looks as if she is to visit this same spot in the northern desert of Saudi Arabia. I was once lucky to see this almost thirty years ago, while following the path of T.E Lawrence and the abandoned remains of the Hejaz railway; carrying a well-thumbed copy of the 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom'.
Thirty years ago Saudi Arabia was even more closed than it is today and while unlike Burton or Doughty, the risk of discovery didn't carry the automatic risk of execution, simply getting to the site, even with the permission of the Minister of the Interior, was a struggle, on account of many local Bedouin police being quite unable to read, the tense situation with Israel and the unnerving habit of checkpoint guards of wanting to confiscate the travel authorisation document.
The only means of travelling around at the time was in rough local disguise, camping out in the desert to avoid attention. Today, with the remains of the city now a world heritage site, it's a little easier if the Saudis will grant a visa and you don't have to grow a beard either!
There is a third Nabatean city along the spice route as well but this one is almost completely unexcavated and I forget its name. I stumbled across it mountain biking in Jordan about ten years ago.
What the BBC's Kate Humble will make of it all is anyone's guess and I would be surprised if she spots the old railway engines from the First World War, gathering dust in the remains of the Turkish garrison station.
While ideas on trying to be as cost-effective and practical as possible with our ICT budget may have proved a little tedious for Thanet's Labour opposition during last month's council meeting, I see that this week's Computer Weekly has picked-up the broader public sector theme that: "We need to be more joined-up, increasingly smarter in the way in which we integrate different processes and innovative in the way in which we use our existing solutions and partnerships with other authorities."
With the year now accelerating into increasingly darker evenings, I read today that “Demand for power from homes and businesses will exceed supply from the national grid within eight years”, according to official figures.
Apparently, our problem, here in Britain is caused by the scheduled closure by 2015 of nine oil and coal-fired power plants victims of the EU directive designed to cut pollution.
In the next couple of weeks I have to visit Bradwell, Sizewell and Dungeness, nuclear reactors also scheduled for decommissioning and over the next decade, one third of Britain’s power-generating capacity needs to be replaced with cleaner fuels.
As it is most unlikely that any new nuclear power stations will be built before 2018, any drive for renewable forms of energy in particular the wind farms springing-up around our coast here in Thanet, is unlikely to meet the gap left.
The admission that Britain will face power-cuts is contained in a document that accompanied the Government’s ‘Low Carbon Transition Plan’, which was launched in July.
I can still remember studying by candlelight in the 1970’s and perhaps history may yet repeat itself in 2018?
The last Bank Holiday of the summer and the weather looks to be a little unpredictable for the work I have ahead. Among the flying jobs between Thanet and the Isle of Wight, I have two marriage proposals, one wedding and happily no funerals!
If this blustery wind persists overnight, then two nervous suitors with big plans are going to be very disappointed and I'm doing my best to manage their expectations in view of the weather forecast.
I've always had an unfortunate tendency to pick interests which are weather dependent. in the early 1990's I ran Submariner Consulting Ltd and had an interesting time contributing to the development of the early industry surrounding mixed-gas deep diving; writing extensively for several specialist publications such as aquaCorps.
The picture on the left was taken on a dive on the cruiser Wilkes-Barre, which lies off the Florida Keys in over 250 feet of water and some other equally interesting adventures included visiting Comex in Marseilles for their 800 metre record, exploring central Florida's 40 Fathom Grotto on air in the years before new technology made it more accessible, and introducing Trimix procedures to the Israelis, 100 metres down off Eilat.
When I was a much younger I used to test my kit at high tide off St Mildred's Bay but one day, between it and West Bay, I was hooked by an excited angler from the promenade, so never tried that again!
The sad thing about the days, pre-circa 1995, is how so much useful information is now buried in boxes or archives and will never find it's way on to the internet. Cosquer Cave for example that I once wrote about, a fascinating prehistoric mystery, a cave which is now only accessible from a narrow entrance under the sea near Marseilles and which has wall paintings and carvings dating back to Upper Paleolithic.
In the attic, I have a volume of aquaCorps magazines which are now collectors items, as they chart an important period in the evolution of underwater exploration technology on a par with advances in the computer industry at the same time. But these and so much more interesting items of history simply don't exist in our modern world unless your'e prepared to go looking for them in a dusty archive or someone's attic
Two of the greatest underwater explorers, I knew well, are dead along with several others. The unassuming and professional Sheck Exley who reminded me of a test-pilot and our own adventurous and fearless Rob Palmer, who now lies somewhere at the bottom of the Red Sea. I wrote reams of material about such adventures but you won't find the stories anymore, unless perhaps you go searching in the British Library
The internet is a wonderful thing but sometimes we forget there was a time and a world that existed before it!
Reportedly "A black day" and "A gentleman's agreement" now join many others in the growing list of prohibited and/or politically incorrect expressions, identified at enormous public expense by quangos, tirelessly working day and night for a better and more equal society. Am I surprised? Of course not.
I'm not yet sure of the status of "White collar worker" or indeed "Black humour" but perhaps one of my readers has the answer?
As most of us know, our great nation totters on the edge of bankruptcy but Treasury statistics revealed by The Sunday Times, show that the UK's net contribution to the European Union will increase from £4.1 billion this year to £6.4 billion in the next financial year (2010-2011).
Can we afford it, certainly not. Would the public support it? Of course not and it's now only a matter of weeks before the Irish Republic are forced to vote again on the 'Lisbon Treaty' they only recently rejected. This time around and sweetened in an effort to reverse the decision of the Irish people, a "Yes" vote would put the controversial treaty – which transfers national powers to Brussels and creates a powerful new EU president – on course to become law in all 27 member states.
Perhaps then, we can look forward to Tony Blair being President of Europe by Christmas, with Peter Mandleson, to all intents and purposes running Britain as Gordon Brown gnaws on his fingernails in anticipation of a Spring General Election. There's something vaguely Faustian about the whole idea!
I'm told the 'Blogosphere' has been busy today but in such glorious weather, I've been above it all, at a scorching Cranfield for much of the day.
After close to three years of unrelenting study, flying and fourteen written technical exams, today, I finally succeeded in obtaining the CAA's instrument rating to add to my commercial pilot's license and so in principle at least, I could perhaps apply for a job tomorrow flying tourists to Malaga; unlikely though as I'm getting on a bit now and there's a recession in the airline industry, as the anti-Manston group like to remind us.
No doubt, I'll discover elsewhere in the Blog comments that this too exists only in my imagination but the unrelenting stress of the practical flight test exam at least will stay with me for ever. I certainly don't want to experience anything like it ever again.
Time then to break out a very cold beer and catch up with all the paperwork I now have to complete and fees I have to send in for the change in my license. The CAA have a great deal in common with serious and organised crime but the latter are far less expensive and bureacratic to deal with in my opinion .
Tomorrow, I've been asked if I can arrange an air display for one of the young 'Paras' killed in Afghanistan. A very sad occasion as I'm sure everyone will agree and my deepest sympathy goes to his family and the families of so many others who have lost their loved one to the Taleban.
Finally, all Bloggers who allow unmoderated and anonymous comments and those who make such posts, might be well advised to read the landmark ruling against Google reported in the newspapers today.
If you want living proof that forecasting the future is best left to the experts, such as Nostradamus, then read my predictions for the Britain of 2010 in The Observer newspaper in January of 2001.
Gazing deeply into my 400mhz crystal ball, I rather lavishly forecast "This country is poised for a wealthy new era as the Venice of the information age" but never counted on the presence of Gordon Brown or the arrival of the worst global recession since the 1930's either.
As I was working with the Office of the e-Envoy at the time and if memory serves, had just returned from a mission to a bitterly cold South Korea the previous week, you can almost smell the optimism that still surrounded the arrival of the internet, that particular bubble still having a year to run before it burst!
One thing though hasn't changed and it's as true here in the outlying villages of Thanet as it was in 2001:
"Bandwidth is, he believes, a critical issue: 'We need to ensure that people have the opportunity to take advantage of the bandwidth. If there is a key point, it is that the country needs to have in place all the infrastructure that allows those who wish to join in the information economy to do so."
I suspect that Michael Child may have an original copy of Nostradamus' predictions in his Ramsgate bookshop alongside other classics such as "Quantitive Easing, Fiscal Prudence and Golden Rules' by Gordon Brown' and Mark McCormack's 'Whatthey Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School', the book that heavily influenced my own start in business twenty-something years ago!
Nine years on, one prediction involving the internet does seem to have come to pass:
'Moores’ Law of Digital Governance” (London School of Economics - June 2000)
- One to Many Represents a Political Opportunity - Many to One Represents a Political Challenge - Many to Many is Evidence of Subversive Behavior
The expression that springs directly to mind is ‘SmartGov’ and for me at least, it describes what is going to be a very difficult time for local government in the years ahead.
I was fortunate to be present at the very beginning of the eGovernment revolution which changed the face of public services. Generous investment, the internet and the arrival of new technologies, gave the public unprecedented access to local government and streamlined, processes, such as planning and benefits, which had once been Byzantine and impenetrable.
In 2009 one might argue that local government now finds itself at the wrong end of two financial cycles. The first involves the growing costs of a ‘technology refresh’ and the second, the more serious implications that now surround the public sector financial crisis; the worst since the end of the Second World War.
Councils are now struggling to cope with the fallout from the recession and are facing the prospect of as much as a 30% cut in their central Government support if Treasury forecasts for the economy prove too optimistic. This in turn could lead to even larger cuts for some public services as the more essential are protected.
With the public sector now facing a period of unparalleled financial austerity, the effective use of technology becomes even more of a driving force in maintaining services, as both the budget and the workforce come under threat. Collectively, we need to genuinely re-think aspects of public service design and the pivotal role that technology plays in its consequent operation.
We have however very limited room to manoeuvre and I was at a meeting of several neighbouring councils last month, where we spent half a day exploring the shared services route. Having had an alarming presentation on the prospect of ‘Financial Armageddon’, it was made clear that we had a very limited time window in which to both achieve harsh cuts in our budgets and create, from near thin air, a cost effective shared services plan.
My own council, Thanet, has just published its 2009 strategy and in its pages, you will find not only a commitment to the development of shared services to exploit Kent Connects and the Kent Public Services Network (KPSN) but the introduction of Thin client computing technologies , Open Source Software and a long-overdue migration from Novell’s GroupWise. All of this will have to be implemented within the budget I have available.
It’s my own experience that the very nature of the public procurement procedure, invariably means that in contrast with the private sector, what we have available in terms of ICT is frequently behind the curve, a result of the lowest bidder process and often several years out of date. As a consequence, we need to be more joined-up, increasingly smarter in the way in which we integrate different processes and innovative in the way in which we use our existing solutions and partnerships with other authorities.
I had the Lowestoft Airshow to do this morning and there's a full council meeting this evening, so trying to fit in a 'spectacular' for the RMT Trades Union in between, presents a bit of a challenge.
Last night I was asked, if I could drop food parcels into the Vestas' UK, Newport, Isle of Wight wind turbine facility, which employs about 600 people in blade manufacturing and where 25 or so workers are into the fourth day of a sit-in protest. I explained that unlike the Berlin Airlift, the only thing you can legally drop from an aircraft in this country are poppies or cremated human remains, and as neither are particularly edible, that particular avenue for relieving the siege was closed.
This afternoon, I had another call from Newport. This time, would I fly a banner with "SAVE OUR JOBS - SAVE OUR ISLAND" past the facility at 6pm tonight to coincide with a visit and a speech from RMT Union leader Bob Crow.
Pulling the stops out, I can do it but as I'm due at our full council meeting at the same time, I have had to pull in another pilot to take my place. He's making up the banner now while I type this entry and wade through the council documents for this evening.
Once the banner's finished and he's en-route, I have to call Bob Crow with an ETA and so as long as the strengthening wind speeds don't get in the way, I might catch the result on the late evening news.
