There is a huge amount to be said for a shifting in the balance of power from the employer to the employee. Covid genuinely brought home to so many people that whatever we had previously believed – there simply is more to life than work. That wonderful phrase, hard to top: nobody ever said they wanted this on their gravestone, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office”…
I’ve always tried quite hard to maintain several strings to my bow, and I do not consider them strings unless I am actually competent at them. Fitness helps enormously with depression – yet standing in front of a mirror doing repetitious biceps curls, is itself depressing. So, I very much believe the skill is in combining fitness with an activity that has a progressive and deep culture all of its own. This is fitness with a purpose; fitness with an outcome… Lots of professionals do physical sports, whether they be team sports or individual pursuits. I’ve done martial arts for several years, and believe me it’s said with pride not arrogance, that I can jump up spin round and kick higher than my own head height, at 54!! But… much more than this, and I believe with a far greater read across to my broader fields of Economics, business and politics, is Mountaineering. Trying to discern undulations in gradient change on a landscape, in a whiteout, requires the same type of instinct that an Economist would apply in understanding the integration of a new technology into a previous flat industry…
So how do we value the non monetary facets of our life? You don’t need to be an industrial psychologist to realise that it is likely to bring with it financial gains. A happier employee/ independent…is likely to be a more productive worker. A more productive worker is a more profitable worker. Combining these two is also likely to give you a more insightful worker. Stepping away from the coal face affords you mental clarity, and a bit of distance to gain a new perspective… This is not rocket science – even if you’re a rocket scientist! 😊
Where have you been for the past 15 years or more, whilst you have been happily accepting Government contracts of between £200M and £400M of UK tax payers money per year? I’m not a database expert yet even I know that if you have a maintenance contract, with ongoing monitoring and supply management – that if your bespoke product has even the inkling of giving wrong readings – that given your client is a nationally recognized and household brand, in The Post Office, and given that the expedition of your service is conducted through third party small business subcontractors, who actually are your client base – then for me, equal culpability to that of the Post Office, lies with Fujitsu.
Companies have been speaking about Corporate Social Responsibility for over a decade, and yet there can be no other case with as much social responsibility, liability, or moreover moral obligation, as this Post Office scandal? The fact that Fujitsu have not lead from the front in terms of any visible attempt at restitution whatsoever, let alone a corporate PR mea culpa, is in my eyes absolutely astonishing. Were I a legislator, I personally would recommend they be excluded from tendering for future Government contracts for a period of at least 10 years – or arguably as long as the time that has elapsed since the first warning of their systems failure was brought to their attention.
These IT behemoths cannot take it as a given that UK Government – or indeed any government – is beholden to their services. This is what a competitive tendering system is for. Every facet of contract management in the promotion, maintenance and continuation of the Horizon platform needs to be scrutinized by forensic IT and legal specialists, and I would propose a framework for the exiting of the use of the Horizon platform, and its replacement. This is what database management companies do when they take over legacy systems, no matter how complex those systems are, and I am skeptical that the Post Office settlement system is anywhere near as complicated as legacy NHS patient databases, that have been in the process of migration for many years.
It is possible. As the outrage that has finally been provoked and the furore that this has caused, it is also necessary. Every single penny UK Government pays sub-postmasters in compensation should be refunded directly by Fujitsu, and I would argue, more.
Fujitsu should have been all over this; their corporate reputation should not survive, and there are numerous other cases were companies have imploded when they are guilty of such commercial and arguably, moral, failure.
To start with such a comment as, “Israel has the right for self-defence”, is now, in my eyes, an act of apologism.
Of course Israel has the right for self-defense. What it doesn’t have the right of, is unimpugnable, repeated, and State directed acts of war crimes. Disproportionate to the extreme: essentially war crimes themselves, as an act of military offense. Collective punishment and forced displacement are war crimes. The legal minutiae of justification is indeed complex, such that there are those skilled in the Law of Arm Conflict, who state “the estimated offensive outcomes prevented, by attacking a place of (otherwise) safe harbour, if the enemy are known to be hiding in such a place, are justified in the Laws of War, if the estimated acts’ prevented are greater than the offensive act on the (otherwise) safe harbour.” This is offense in regards to proportionality and preemption – which of course has its place in warfare. However given the sheer level of disproportionality, this means in practice, Israel is conducting its war with one eye on constructing a future defense to the International Criminal Court.
Yet this is not how the court of public opinion works, and there is such a court, and it’s important. If, in Israel’s eyes, moral equivalency exists here – then each Israeli Jewish citizen is worth six and a half Palestinians, at the current death rate. And given that roughly two thirds of Palestinians are children, this equates to 6,000 children dead, of the estimated 9,000 total. Very few of these children, I would suspect, are trained Hamas mercenaries.
1400 dead Jewish Israelis is indeed an atrocity – a terrorist atrocity. Collective punishment is not the correct response. Death ratio’s such as this, justified on grounds of moral equivalency, are also perceived in more simplistic terms – and that is racism. It says to the outside world, “I am worth more than you.” The average death ratio of Palestinian to Israeli Jew, roughly across the last 20 years of conflicts, equates roughly to 13-1. On current trajectory this means Israel needs to kill 9,000 more Palestinians, just to get to the average. Is this not ridiculous? Yet how much more so than the 9,000 currently dead?
This is not to even mention the economic cost of devastating infrastructural destruction, to the tune of perhaps, who knows – but a fair guestimation from previous conflicts would be of the order of $50 to $80 billion dollars in infrastructure cost? This is also to not account for the productivity lost in the absence of such industrial capacity – even if this capacity is indeed represented through the actions of small traders and mercantilism, typical of the way a Gazan economy, whose access to a more sophisticated and modern world of production and financial transactions, necessarily has to conduct itself.
Beyond racism and enforced economic dislocation, we come onto the fundamental question of Survival.
By such disproportionate actions, Israel is blithely damaging its future security. The Abraham Accords are a series of treaties designed to integrate Israel into the economics and international politics of its Arab neighbours – surely a wholly wonderful thing? These are likely, almost certainly, suspended – if not even to be rescinded. Palestinians have often been treated as the poor cousin within the Arab brotherhood, and yet the neighbouring nations are almost surely likely to embrace again their claim for Statehood within a State. In my view a one state solution is actually more problematic for Israelis, as it can only function with equal rights for all citizens. If Israel believed in equal rights it would never have annexed such swathes of the West Bank.
You cannot kill an ideology – nor should you appease it. In the United Kingdom, the Bloody Sunday atrocity was a calling card to the IRA. Undoubtedly this led to a lengthening and deepening of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Never in modern history, has a war, on its own terms, been conducive to a lasting peace. And the only way prior to modern history that war was indeed conducive to securing a lasting peace – was to kill the entirety of one’s enemy. Given that Israel seems unable to differentiate Hamas from civilian Palestinians, is this something that she is willing to do? If not, the only show in town is a negotiated and diplomatic solution.
Benefit Cost Analysis is an astonishingly powerful appraisal mechanism, whose continued use is more than justified; even its place integrated into Treasury Green Book thinking. Where it falls down however, can clearly be seen in the fumbled handling of HS2.
Whilst nominally an infrastructure project, it is more than this: it is a statement of intent. A nod to our future, our nation saying to itself, “We are one country, not an association of disparate regions. Despite the wealth of the South, it is no more important than the North” (By the way, the North doesn’t stop at Manchester…)
Benefit Cost ratios below 1 are normally a dead duck, for very simple and valid reasons. HS2 is not a simple infrastructure project, but rather one aspect of national solidarity. I, along with so many of my peers, left the North when I became an adult – essentially never to return. This is an intra-national siphoning of intellectual capital that the country simply cannot afford….Generation after Generation – nor should it wish to seek to do so. The resulting concentration of power, wealth, professional occupations and International representation, can only present a picture to our trading partners as a nation that isn’t really a nation…
Sophisticated global conglomerates can play the periphery off against the center – such as Nissan, decades ago in the Northeast – or only last week, Tata Steel, in Port Talbot. The government gives investment grants and tax relief to these behemoth companies, as if feeding a pet, in the filial relationship it conveys to its regional, poorer, cousins. It says, “Don’t worry, we’ll look after you…” Yet of course these regional geographies do not want to be looked after. They want to stand proudly – be their own tall poppy. Stopping HS2, at it’s halfway point, doesn’t indicate national fraternity. Even if the Benefit Cost ratio is below one, I don’t believe this is written in stone for all eternity, as cultural integration, and the economics of agglomeration take seed.
I should add, as more than a footnote – despite this righteous outrage, I actually felt HS2 was always a misconceived idea, given that rail journey times have reduced so drastically over the last 20 years anyway. It was a solution to a problem that no longer existed. Rather the funds would always have better been allocated to the Northern Powerhouse rail schemes, of West / East integration, so completely vital for pulling the North together.
Yet as HS2 has gone ahead – to stop it halfway, after having already cut off it’s Eastern half, from Birmingham onto Leeds, were HS2 Birmingham to Manchester to be scrapped now, surely it would be the worst of all possible outcomes?
I’m not a scientist, but even I realise that whether or not we achieve “Net Zero” by 2050, is very much secondary to the fact that if we have decided as a nation to emit more CO2 as a gas, in volume terms, up to that point – then that is all that matters.
There are the economics of climate change, and then there are the politics of climate change, and whilst both these are enormously important in day-to-day pragmatism, and the representation of policy outcomes, the very simple fact is that the physics of climate change don’t care about the electoral chances of Rishi Sunak.
This back peddling, couched in terms of an appreciation of the reality of people’s day-to-day expenses, is genuinely shocking in 21st century politics – after nearly a decade and a half of increasingly inept Conservative rule.
All of the points outlined here are not only correct, they are quite simply deterministic. Why would a business invest now in seeking to comply with government legislation, if that legislation has been pushed further down the tracks? Even though it seems to be the case, business itself realises that it is not in its best interests to comply with this delay. Just like California, at the State level, moved ahead with all kinds of climate sensitive policies, whilst at the Federal level, the US Government hadn’t decided whether or not climate change was a systemic threat.
However, I should swing back around to the politics of this policy reversal: they’re simply amateurish. By all accounts, on polling from this week, three quarters of voters have now lost trust in Rishi Sunak’s competence on climate policy, and rather than achieve the solidarity with voters he was aiming for, he has simply shown himself to be opportunistic and incompetent, surely not a winning combination after Truss and Johnson…
Why is this chain saw £130 pound when it does the same job as a £600 one?
What is Price Discovery; what is Differential Pricing? What is Price Elasticity of Demand? Why are some safety products orange… Can I still use a chainsaw with one less leg?? (Why it’s best to buy the right safety equipment…)
How much will this chainsaw go up if it is the product of nearshoring… Did I mention the one less leg thing? Should I pay somebody else to do this job? Why is the wood so expensive when there is so much of it lying around in the park? Why am I having a fire outside my house, when I have a perfectly good house with central heating…? (The rationale for choice and the interlinkages between psychology and economics…) Can anyone use a chainsaw? (Is there a role for Regulation and who determines what they regulate…)
MERCIAR BUSINESS CONSULTING 