The London Film Festival is marvellous. It showcases lots of interesting films, many foreign films that you wouldn't otherwise get a chance to see. But should it be renamed The Insiders Film Festival? Even if you can get on-line to them just after booking opens most of the best films are already sold out - which means that the tickets were pre-sold to insiders. The festival seems to receive a public subsidy, so how about making a fairer share of tickets available to the public?
I've just seen 'Africa United' at the festival, a sweet and well made advernture story about a bunch of African kids journeying through Africa, and their dreams, to get to the World Cup in South Africa. It addresses serious issues like child soldiers, incompetent officialdom, bribery, sex slavery and does do so in a context that is generally uplifting so that the continent is not made to seem like one huge rolling disaster. The film is worth seeing but too many big issues dealt with in passing to make a serious impact. Despite all the hype at the showing, and that I suspect is about to explode upon us, it is primarily a film for kids. Lots of not terribly plausible plot with the children somehow avoiding death and some mawkish sentimentality. Which does not have to be a bad thing if handled well. Comparison was made with Slumdog Millionaire but that, despite negotiating some of the same problems and issues, is a far more assured film.
Whilst on films, saw The Social Network last weekend. Its good reviews really are justified: a brilliant film about the founding of Facebook - amazingly just seven years ago. What distinguishes the film is that it is about people and relationships and it paints those people as complex and not as one dimensional. So whilst the precise way Mark Zuckerberg, for example, founder of Facebook, is portrayed will inevitably colour your judgement, nonetheless the film-makers try to show a person in a situation, leaving that judgement up to the viewer rather than trying to force you to a particular response.
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Thursday, 14 October 2010
Public Sector Waste
I just came back from a short trip to Italy's Marche region (food, beautiful and historic cities, beaches) to find I had missed Sir Phillip Green's announcement on public sector waste; so I am catching up. Of course, he's right and he's wrong. He's wrong because much public sector procurement simply can't be aggregated. The specifications of computers or paper or printing quality really are different. So the headline figures of half of expenditure of £191bn being wasted is plain silly. Still it caught your attention. But he's right on two counts; firstly much of the uncoordinated and inadequately overseen expenditure could be coordinated and controlled much better; and secondly, public sector expenditure is often astonishing in its waste and incompetence. Examples...
The government's Building Bridges to Work initiatives are designed to help the long-term unemployed get back to work. After two years of unemployment, people are required to attend a centre full time for 13 weeks, where they receive help and advice or must take up work placement opportunities (unpaid). It is laudable to try to break people out of the cycle of dependency and despondency. But does this particular scheme work? The private sector firms who administer these schemes think so. It works for them. A highly qualified HR professional of my acquaintance volunteered (unpaid) to help out at one of these centres. He found himself chatting to these people but actually unable to offer specific help. The participants are mostly obliged to sit around doing little they could not do at home - just a bit more like a daily version of the workhouse. But those private sector firms get paid and the government claims it is doing something. But who collects the data to show it works and what data do they compare it with? My understanding is that the firms themselves provide the data to demonstrate what good value they provide. Hmmm.
Or someone who worked at an outer-London local authority who told me they paid/pay a firm to provide and maintain computers- £1,000 per machine per year, which they don't do very well. Blimey, I'll do it for half that...less if necessary. Does the authority have any idea how little computers cost nowadays? Good business if you can get it.
Or experience of computers provided by Barnet council to assist the educational needs of dyslexic young people at university. Another great scheme... except that the computers often did not work properly and (literally) years of continual complaints got nowhere in persuading the external provider to sort the problem. The local authority, councillors, central government were all chased, only to find that it appeared to be nobody's job to check that the provider was actually carrying out the service they were paid for. And no, they were not doing what they were paid to do. To be fair, a different scheme is now available centrally through universities rather than local authorities and does work much better; but how many millions of pounds were wasted in the old scheme that was nobody's responsibility to check on?
So yes, Sir Phillip is right, there is lots and lots of waste in the public sector...and that it is all before we even consider overmanning (try comparing numbers employed in human resource departments with private sector norms) and unecessary jobs.
The government's Building Bridges to Work initiatives are designed to help the long-term unemployed get back to work. After two years of unemployment, people are required to attend a centre full time for 13 weeks, where they receive help and advice or must take up work placement opportunities (unpaid). It is laudable to try to break people out of the cycle of dependency and despondency. But does this particular scheme work? The private sector firms who administer these schemes think so. It works for them. A highly qualified HR professional of my acquaintance volunteered (unpaid) to help out at one of these centres. He found himself chatting to these people but actually unable to offer specific help. The participants are mostly obliged to sit around doing little they could not do at home - just a bit more like a daily version of the workhouse. But those private sector firms get paid and the government claims it is doing something. But who collects the data to show it works and what data do they compare it with? My understanding is that the firms themselves provide the data to demonstrate what good value they provide. Hmmm.
Or someone who worked at an outer-London local authority who told me they paid/pay a firm to provide and maintain computers- £1,000 per machine per year, which they don't do very well. Blimey, I'll do it for half that...less if necessary. Does the authority have any idea how little computers cost nowadays? Good business if you can get it.
Or experience of computers provided by Barnet council to assist the educational needs of dyslexic young people at university. Another great scheme... except that the computers often did not work properly and (literally) years of continual complaints got nowhere in persuading the external provider to sort the problem. The local authority, councillors, central government were all chased, only to find that it appeared to be nobody's job to check that the provider was actually carrying out the service they were paid for. And no, they were not doing what they were paid to do. To be fair, a different scheme is now available centrally through universities rather than local authorities and does work much better; but how many millions of pounds were wasted in the old scheme that was nobody's responsibility to check on?
So yes, Sir Phillip is right, there is lots and lots of waste in the public sector...and that it is all before we even consider overmanning (try comparing numbers employed in human resource departments with private sector norms) and unecessary jobs.
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
The Kindle and the electronic age
The new version of Amazon's Kindle, electronic book reader, has been released and we were debating its virtues and demerits around the dinner table at a friend's house. Well, I can't help it, I am probably a member of the chattering classes.
One of us argued that electronic book readers lead to the death of libraries that, in turn, provide social spaces as well as books, expert advice and inspiration. She further argued that such devices kill imagination and creativity. Finally she argued that they exclude the poor from the information age. Others countered that libraries are already glorified computer centres and that ebooks lead to different types of creativity but creativity nonetheless. I said that we should consider paper books for what they deliver, which is information, entertainment etcetera and that electronic books simply provide the same benefits in a different way, as well as being more compact, cheaper in the long-run and offering extra benefits such as instant gratification via immediate downloads.
But I did not express a niggling reservation. What happens if the electricity is turned off? Now, I know that if that happens we are all stuffed because, just 62 years after the transistor was developed, we depend utterly on computers. I mean utterly. Our food supply chain, our payment systems, our public services (think water, sewage, heat, light, hospitals, transport, fuel etc) would all just stop if all our computers turned off. We would, literally, starve and freeze even before the world economy collapsed if they did not come back on pretty damn quick. So, in those circumstances, it would scarcely matter if the learning of our entire civilization was lost.
Of course none of this will happen. Cyberwarfare by enemy states or terrorists will be kept at bay. But what about a Carrington event? In 1859, Carrington, a British astronomer recorded a solar flare that, if repeated today, would cause at least $2 trillion of damage in the USA alone and leave 130m people without electricity. A 2009 report by the US National Academy of Sciences (which has been taken down from their website since I read it) explains how the extreme electrical activivty would be captured by our electrical grids as if by a huge antenna. The damage could take ten years to repair. The frequency of these events is unknown, possibly only once in a thousand years, possibly less; who knows?
One of us argued that electronic book readers lead to the death of libraries that, in turn, provide social spaces as well as books, expert advice and inspiration. She further argued that such devices kill imagination and creativity. Finally she argued that they exclude the poor from the information age. Others countered that libraries are already glorified computer centres and that ebooks lead to different types of creativity but creativity nonetheless. I said that we should consider paper books for what they deliver, which is information, entertainment etcetera and that electronic books simply provide the same benefits in a different way, as well as being more compact, cheaper in the long-run and offering extra benefits such as instant gratification via immediate downloads.
But I did not express a niggling reservation. What happens if the electricity is turned off? Now, I know that if that happens we are all stuffed because, just 62 years after the transistor was developed, we depend utterly on computers. I mean utterly. Our food supply chain, our payment systems, our public services (think water, sewage, heat, light, hospitals, transport, fuel etc) would all just stop if all our computers turned off. We would, literally, starve and freeze even before the world economy collapsed if they did not come back on pretty damn quick. So, in those circumstances, it would scarcely matter if the learning of our entire civilization was lost.
Of course none of this will happen. Cyberwarfare by enemy states or terrorists will be kept at bay. But what about a Carrington event? In 1859, Carrington, a British astronomer recorded a solar flare that, if repeated today, would cause at least $2 trillion of damage in the USA alone and leave 130m people without electricity. A 2009 report by the US National Academy of Sciences (which has been taken down from their website since I read it) explains how the extreme electrical activivty would be captured by our electrical grids as if by a huge antenna. The damage could take ten years to repair. The frequency of these events is unknown, possibly only once in a thousand years, possibly less; who knows?
What Price Crime Prevention
The London Borough of Harrow claims, on its website, that street lights are inspected every two weeks in winter and every four weeks in summer. So a friend of mine who lives in the borough was surprised that one such street light in particular was out for 18 months. This means it was, apparently, inspected at least 30 times with absolutely no effect whatever. The failure of the particular light, at the end of an alleyway used by many pedestrians, was reported to the borough on many occasions because it was perceived as a threat to personal security. Still nothing. It was reported to councillors. Still nothing. It was reported to the councillor who takes responsibility for street lighting, who was told by council officials that it had been fixed. No it hadn't. It was reported to the police as a crime threat. Apparently that particular policeman has better things to do than deal with street lighting. Well, now that someone has been stabbed at the end of that particular alleyway and beneath that non-functioning streetlight I wonder if the police or the council see street lighting as part of their remit?
Monday, 6 September 2010
Sustainable Business
I am writing a book on corporate governance, due for publication in spring 2011 (thanks for asking), and my research is bringing me across references to 'sustainability' everywhere.... and it drives me up the wall. I have no idea what the term means; which is mostly because the people who write it have no idea what they mean. Whilst it is fun to look up on the internet the handful of businesses that have been around for a thousand years or more, few businesses last more than a few decades, even the most successful. That is inherent in the whole capitalist model of the corporation. They merge, change their activities, change their names, change their ownership, go bust. Businesses themselves are not sustainable.
Of course most of these references mean conducting business in a manner that is more environmentally friendly. This is a relative idea - not environmentally friendly just more so than the alternatives. And, because that is a bit of a mouthful, the phrase is shortened to 'sustainable business'; which is ok. I recycle at home. I put food waste and cardboard on the compost heap; cans and bottles in the blue bin for the council to collect: I suspect they just put these in landfill but I still go to the trouble of separating out those bottles and cans.
And let us be clear, the second law of thermodynamics tells us that the universe is not sustainable. It is gradually winding down. But ok, I accept that is happening over billions of years and life is short. But oil and mining companies are fundamentally in businesses that are not sustainable, whatever it may say in their annual reports about sustainability. They are using up scarce resources that cannot be replaced and will eventually run out. When they are gone we will have to think of a plan B. And it is not obvious or simple to decide whether this is wrong. Many rare earth metals, for example, are used in high tech products today but are running out too. There is no certainty that new deposits will be found. It is not just a matter of digging deeper into the planet: they only exist near the surface. Should we conserve them for future generations or should we use them now and leave it to our descendents to invent new technologies that make use of materials that are available then? Why not just have as much fun as we can now? If a benefit can be had now or in two hundred years it is not obvious that we should leave it for that future generation. With the spread of nuclear weapons, those future generations may not even exist. Bear in mind that few species have lasted on this planet for more than a couple of million years - that seems about par for the course - so we are unlikely to be here forever. Also bear in mind that the extraordinary technological advances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been powered, literally, by the completely unsustainable use of fossil fuels. Without using these up at a prodigious rate, our standard of living and quality of living would be very different, we would still live in a limited and largely agrarian society. It would still take months to cross continents and few people would do it; the electronic revolution would probably not have happened.
What about other businesses, perhaps ones that claim to be carbon neutral because they plant trees. Well, it is all just so much nonsense. It is whistling in the wind. If the UK saved carbon dioxide, for example, by stopping all motor transport then the benefit to the world would be less than the offsetting detriment of a single year's growth in China. So a sense of perspective is good. None of which argues against sensible conservation policies, energy efficiency, reductions in pollution but, however good these things are they also have a price - a world that is 'sustainable' for a bit longer is a trade-off with more poverty, ignorance and disease.
Of course most of these references mean conducting business in a manner that is more environmentally friendly. This is a relative idea - not environmentally friendly just more so than the alternatives. And, because that is a bit of a mouthful, the phrase is shortened to 'sustainable business'; which is ok. I recycle at home. I put food waste and cardboard on the compost heap; cans and bottles in the blue bin for the council to collect: I suspect they just put these in landfill but I still go to the trouble of separating out those bottles and cans.
And let us be clear, the second law of thermodynamics tells us that the universe is not sustainable. It is gradually winding down. But ok, I accept that is happening over billions of years and life is short. But oil and mining companies are fundamentally in businesses that are not sustainable, whatever it may say in their annual reports about sustainability. They are using up scarce resources that cannot be replaced and will eventually run out. When they are gone we will have to think of a plan B. And it is not obvious or simple to decide whether this is wrong. Many rare earth metals, for example, are used in high tech products today but are running out too. There is no certainty that new deposits will be found. It is not just a matter of digging deeper into the planet: they only exist near the surface. Should we conserve them for future generations or should we use them now and leave it to our descendents to invent new technologies that make use of materials that are available then? Why not just have as much fun as we can now? If a benefit can be had now or in two hundred years it is not obvious that we should leave it for that future generation. With the spread of nuclear weapons, those future generations may not even exist. Bear in mind that few species have lasted on this planet for more than a couple of million years - that seems about par for the course - so we are unlikely to be here forever. Also bear in mind that the extraordinary technological advances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been powered, literally, by the completely unsustainable use of fossil fuels. Without using these up at a prodigious rate, our standard of living and quality of living would be very different, we would still live in a limited and largely agrarian society. It would still take months to cross continents and few people would do it; the electronic revolution would probably not have happened.
What about other businesses, perhaps ones that claim to be carbon neutral because they plant trees. Well, it is all just so much nonsense. It is whistling in the wind. If the UK saved carbon dioxide, for example, by stopping all motor transport then the benefit to the world would be less than the offsetting detriment of a single year's growth in China. So a sense of perspective is good. None of which argues against sensible conservation policies, energy efficiency, reductions in pollution but, however good these things are they also have a price - a world that is 'sustainable' for a bit longer is a trade-off with more poverty, ignorance and disease.
Monday, 31 May 2010
Review of The Pajama Men, London 2010
These two comedy actors from Chicago have just finished a week of performing at the Soho Theatre. A few years ago they were nomuinated for the Perrier Award whilst performing at the Edinburgh Fringe. They have been widely and, almost universally, proclaimed as brilliant. So I think that it is time for my balancing, counter-view to be published. Maybe it's just me and my family who don't get it, because many other members of the audience on the last night were clearly ready to fall off their seats with uncontrollable merriment. Meanwhile I was consoling myself with the knowledge that it really had to end sometime, and eventually it did. I simply could not see what was funny most of the time. The jokes were laboured, involved a lot of 'funny faces' and 'funny voices' and went on for an interminable time. One, with sound effects, of someone shuffling cards (you get the idea...brrrrrrring noises as the invisible cards were bent and released and flew through the air) must have gone on for five minutes. They do tend to signpost jokes so you knew that when it seemed about to end that it was bound to pause and then start again...which it duly did...and again...and again. Being generous, it ceased to be funny after about thirty seconds, which made the next four and a half minutes a nightmare of tedium. Before anyone goes to a future show I urge you to check them out on Youtube because if this is not your kind of humour then you will learn all about the relativity of time, as in how a minute can feel like a ten year sentence.
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Brussels bank levy framework
I must rename my blog 'Mr Angry' because there is so much out there to make one hopping mad. The latest thing to get my goat is the EU's 'let's get the bankers' tendency. So they announce today details of their plan to introduce a bank levy to ensure that national governments will not have to bail out failed banks in future. What is so wrong with that? Three things;
So, in summary, it is a proposed policy that will not noticeably protect anyone, is an effective tax on everyone and acts counter to other EU and national government policies. Smart huh?
- The UK's bailout cost hundreds of billions of pounds: will the proposed fund really have that much in it? I doubt it - I think this is just political posturing.
- If a massive fund is established which has to be parked in government bonds then this will reduce average returns and hit their profits, which will reduce the value of those banks, many of which we now own through direct government stakes and all of which we own through our pension schemes.(so it is a tax on all of us)
- The fund will also reduce funds available for lending at a time when governments are demanding increased lending (slightly contradictory policies here?)
So, in summary, it is a proposed policy that will not noticeably protect anyone, is an effective tax on everyone and acts counter to other EU and national government policies. Smart huh?
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