The news has been reporting that the British government is to reveal plans to provide “super-fast broadband”. Oh, good grief! We’ve had this back in March when Gordon Brown had the same idea.
I despair over our leadership as they seem rudderless when confronted with a changing world. I remember when PCs were becoming popular some idiot politicians thought that we should have typing taught as part of the national curriculum. This, at a time when kids were getting home games computers before they became teenagers and picking up typing naturally.
Now our government look around and see everyone talking about e-this and i-that and hits on some daft idea which they consider will prove their leadership regarding technological change. But copying Singapore is not providing leadership.
My broadband is quoted as about 6 meg download. I don’t get that of course due to contention ratios and other technical factors. The point is that my speed is usable. I work from home now and then without issues. If my work required faster speeds I could get it. I’d just have to pay more. I know that maximum broadband speeds are unevenly spread across the UK but I do not believe that this is a limiting factor to technological economic growth
As I said, I work from home now and then. Most of the time I join the nightmare commute north every morning to sit opposite another poor sod. We grunt “good morning” and then spend the day talking to people on the other side of the world. As soon as is permissible we join the commute back home and then slump in front of the telly.
This wokring from home is termed telecommuting. The reason I do use it most of the time is not technological, it is because of outdated management styles. British management like to see their workers sitting in the office; this makes them think that they are getting their monies worth even if the employees spend most of their time on Facebook. It can be no coincidence that for many years prior to Facebook the Japanese word for this time wasting has been “face time”. It is pointless and it costs industry millions.
The reason that facetime is so popular is that it is easier on the manager. He can hide in his office, then once his boss puts him on the spot, he can strut around giving instructions and demanding information. Having his staff scurry around makes him feel important and may impress his boss but this is poor management and detrimental to economic performance. Facetime should be eradicated irrespective of telecommuting policies but and telecommuting can help this process along.
Eradicating facetime means implementing effective achievement based management. The manager needs to plan his team’s activities, create schedules, allocate time and resources and them review progress. Employees should then be judged by the efficient and timely completion of tasks which they are set.
Many companies already have successful telecommuting policies but not enough. Achievement based management is more of a challenge as it involves the manager having to put in some effort. It is here where the British government could usefully intervene by providing training for managers and by implementing tax breaks for employers and employees.
The government encouraging telecommuting would also encourage achievement based management. Telecommuting would also ease transport problems, make industry more efficient and reduce CO2 emissions. It’s is a no lose proposition and would show real leadership.
Government should set policy and not get involved in implementation. This is where New Labour went wrong. The government should not use tax payers money to provide high speed broadband access to every shed on every mountain top in the country. Market forces can be left to supply broadband to where it is required.
Let’s not forget the last government technological big idea. Digital Audio Broadcast. OK, many of us have DAB radios but how many of us have them in our cars? And how long before the whole DAB experiment is shelved in favour of wireless internet access?
There is an interesting article in todays’s Independent blaming China for the failure of the Copenhagen climate summit. The article quotes a source who was supposedly in the room when the heads of state were drafting the document who says:
“If China had not been in that room you would have had a deal which would have had everyone popping champagne corks…..”
“The Chinese were happy as they’d win either way. If the process collapsed they’d win because they don’t have to do anything and they know the rich countries will get the blame.
“If the deal doesn’t collapse because everyone is so desperate to accommodate them that they water it down to something completely meaningless, they get their way again. Either way they win. I think all the other world leaders knew that by that stage and were just furious that they couldn’t do anything about it.”
Why am I not surprised?
Protestors? - pah!
China was admitted to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in December 2001 after the United States dropped it’s veto. Since that time trade with China has grown very quickly and the Chinese economy has grown massively. The generally accepted view is that China is now OK as it has accepted capitalism. This is wrong. The regime in power in China today is not substantially different from the regime which drove tanks over unarmed protesters in Tiananmen Square just two years before being admitted to the WTO.
The West too often confuses democracy with capitalism, they are not the same. It is possible to have a democratic government that is socialist. It is certainly possible to have a capitalist government which is non-democratic and China is the proof of this.
Both China and the West have gained from the flow of trade but we should consider that, having now allowed so much industry to move to China, we have become reliant on an authoritarian regime which cares for nothing but perpetuating it’s own existence. We should also keep this in mind when businessmen and political leaders talk of the necessity of allowing the free flow of trade to countries where there is “competitive advantage”. This competitive advantage is, very often, the absence of political rights, civil rights and the rule of law.
China may have legitimate reasons for not being able to commit to the climate change targets discussed in Copenhagen but it’s impossible to tell. The Chinese regime is not elected and therefore illegitimate and cannot be said to represent the views of the Chinese people. When one deals with regimes such as China one must accept that their word is worth nothing.
During the negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union to limit Nuclear Forces Ronald Regan frequently used the phrase “Trust, but verify”. United States president, Barack Obama, seemed to understand this when, during a speech at Copenhagen he appeared to upset the Chinese by implying that verification was key to any agreement. The fact that this was mentioned caused the Chinese representatives to throw a hissy fit and refuse to attend various meetings.
Send in the tanks!
And that’s another thing, China too often uses tantrums as a negotiating tactic. We are told by Chinese watchers that this anger is related to the difference in culture. Perhaps it is. Perhaps the Chinese fly off the handle so often because they are not used to having to justify themselves.
I wonder how the Chinese regime would have responded to the demonstrators in Copenhagen? Rather than explaining their position perhaps they would simply have sent in the tanks.
A tedious week at work. I reflected on the way the English language has been debased by commercialism when I read the words “Loyalty payment” and “Highly competitive exclusive offer”.
The ducks are still on the pond. The two males can be seen most days and mid week the female waddled out of her hut
2 ducks
and the two males sped after her. A tremendous fight ensued and at first we were unsure what was occurring. It became obvious that one male was earnestly pursuing the female while the other male tried strenuously to fend him off. After a while the female achieved some distance and the two males finished their fight with one chasing the other away. The hierarchy restored the female was left alone and the two males returned to being good buddies. A Pakistani colleague commented: “Just like the America, once their authority is established they want to be your friend”.
I watched an interesting documentary on Network Theory on Tuesday evening. Six degrees of separation and all that.
This year I ensured that I would see some of The Brighton Festival by drawing up a plan and booking in advance. Mostly this has been theatre but I was asked by some friends if I wanted to see some dance and I thought: what the hell, I’ll give it a go.
So on Wednesday evening I saw Aphasiadisiac at The Dome. This was not what I had expected and was inspiring. There was not much that most people would call dancing about it. The performance was created by a guy named Ted Stoffer and performed by a Belgian dance company named Les ballets C de la B.
I know very little about dance so I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe it. I was impressed by the ability of the performers to use their bodies to communicate. I was amazed at their ability to create a mood or a feeling by the choreography. They played the music themselves using a trumpet, a saxophone, drums and an accordion. The music itself was very good and at one particular point the performers all came together and sat and stood in a very tight group of five directly in front of us while they played. I found the proximity disarming and became self conscious. It felt strange to go from being a passive observer to somehow being observed and almost part of the performance.
Other parts were good in different ways. The awkwardness of a couple sitting together was portrayed perfectly through body language and facial expressions. A girl played an instrument and looked around while two of the men ran around as though desperate to remain in the spotlight of her gaze. Extraordinary stuff which opened my eyes to the world of dance. The Youtube vid below is of a different performance.
On Friday British Gas turned up to survey my loft prior to getting it insulated. B&Q are currently doing some very good deals to insulate your loft with parts and labour included for £198.
I began cogitating on how it is not really in the economic interests of the gas company to insulate my loft. It is in their interest to encourage me to consume as much gas as possible while it is in my interest to consume as little as possible while ensuring I am conformably warm.
I read somewhere that companies are much better at cutting their costs than individuals are. This makes sense. Companies makes plans and prepare budgets to control costs whereas most individuals are not so rational.
But panning back a bit and considering climate change and The UK’s dire economic condition it is in the Global Interest and National Interest that I consume as little gas as possible.
So surely we have the pricing model wrong. The model is currently configured so that the agent which is most efficient at controlling consumption (The gas company) actually benefits from excess consumption.
I recall a similar conversation on the subject of taxation. Our politicians tell us we should be saving energy and cutting CO2 emissions yet the greatest part of our taxation is placed on work. Taxation has two effects, firstly and obviously, it raises money to be spent by the government but secondly it deters the activity which is taxed. This has been known for centuries from windows to tobacco.
So the effect of our taxation system is to deter work. Surely we want people to work so why not lift all income tax and place it on petrol? If it were done intelligently I could still afford to drive my 2 litre car 90 miles a day to work. It would just make it painfully clear how much money, and therefore petrol, I am wasting.
It seems to me that there are three entities who can control costs: The seller, the buyer and the government. With conventional pricing models the economic motivation are for the seller to increase sales and the buyer to reduce sales. The government is the third entity and currently pays for services which are deemed communal such as waste disposal.
And waste disposal too has a dodgy pricing model. It is currently in the interest of retailers to bulk our their products with wasteful packaging as this helps to sell more product and the waste disposal costs are bourn by the tax payer. There have been attempts to makes consumers pay for the amount of waste that they produce but the problem with this is that consumers can cheat by fly tipping. Far better to charge the costs of waste disposal as a tax to be paid by retailers.
I have thought for a while that the main deficiency with socialism is the lack of a feedback mechanism. Command economies continue to manufacturer products which consumers do not want and fail to manufacture products which they do want because the production is not influenced by the consumer. Capitalism gets around this problem but the current capitalist model encourages and rewards over production.
I read an article in The Economist a while back about the British aviation engine manufacturer Rolls Royce. This was deemed a successful company because of the innovative pricing structure it had adopted. Rolls Royce does not make it’s profits from the sale of engines and can make a loss on engine sales. Instead it charges it’s customer (the airlines) for engine air time. Each engine is fitted with various computer systems which relay telemetry back to a control centre in Rugby. Engineers can then detected potential problems early and perform preventative maintenance when an aircraft next lands.
This is an excellent idea. Rolls Royce can become a successful engine maker, gain market share and earn greater profits. But at the same time the manufacture of engines is not the driving force. In fact it would be in Rolls Royce’s interest to keep engines airworthy for as long as possible and therefore restrict engine manufacture.
I suggest that we could do with this sort of thinking when designing pricing models for all sorts of goods and services. We still use capitalism but design the system in such as way that production is not the driving force for profits.
On Saturday afternoon I visited The Old Municipal Market to see an artwork by Anish Kapoor entitled The Dismemberment of Jeanne D’Arc
The Dismemberment of Jeanne D’Arc
Yeh Anish, nice name!
The big blobby bits are the bits I’d seen clips of but I found the big red elipsical hole in the ground most effective. It appeared that Mr. Kapoor had opened up the ground to reveal that beneath the first few inches of dirt the living flesh of the planet Earth had been exposed. The Earth is alive!
On Saturday night I saw another small theatre production named Bane at The Three and Ten in Brighton. This was described as a “One-man comedic film noir parody.” Part thriller, art comedy the single actor played a plethora of characters and pulled it off brilliantly.
No round up of last week can be complete without mentioning the MP expenses scandal currently bubbling away in British politics. Last week The Daily Telegraph revealed that John Prescott had claimed for repair of a broken toilet seat twice. – You couldn’t make it up.
Art Photography
fast broadband wont stop facetime
Tags: achievement based management, “face time”, British government, British management, broadband, changing world, CO2 emissions, commute, dab, Digital Audio Broadcast, e-this, economic growth, Facebook, facetime, Gordon Brown, home working, i-that, idiot politician, leadership, management styles, managers, plan, rudderless, super-fast broadband, technological change, telecommuting, the office, their monies worth, transport problems
Facetime not facebook
The news has been reporting that the British government is to reveal plans to provide “super-fast broadband”. Oh, good grief! We’ve had this back in March when Gordon Brown had the same idea.
I despair over our leadership as they seem rudderless when confronted with a changing world. I remember when PCs were becoming popular some idiot politicians thought that we should have typing taught as part of the national curriculum. This, at a time when kids were getting home games computers before they became teenagers and picking up typing naturally.
Now our government look around and see everyone talking about e-this and i-that and hits on some daft idea which they consider will prove their leadership regarding technological change. But copying Singapore is not providing leadership.
My broadband is quoted as about 6 meg download. I don’t get that of course due to contention ratios and other technical factors. The point is that my speed is usable. I work from home now and then without issues. If my work required faster speeds I could get it. I’d just have to pay more. I know that maximum broadband speeds are unevenly spread across the UK but I do not believe that this is a limiting factor to technological economic growth
As I said, I work from home now and then. Most of the time I join the nightmare commute north every morning to sit opposite another poor sod. We grunt “good morning” and then spend the day talking to people on the other side of the world. As soon as is permissible we join the commute back home and then slump in front of the telly.
This wokring from home is termed telecommuting. The reason I do use it most of the time is not technological, it is because of outdated management styles. British management like to see their workers sitting in the office; this makes them think that they are getting their monies worth even if the employees spend most of their time on Facebook. It can be no coincidence that for many years prior to Facebook the Japanese word for this time wasting has been “face time”. It is pointless and it costs industry millions.
The reason that facetime is so popular is that it is easier on the manager. He can hide in his office, then once his boss puts him on the spot, he can strut around giving instructions and demanding information. Having his staff scurry around makes him feel important and may impress his boss but this is poor management and detrimental to economic performance. Facetime should be eradicated irrespective of telecommuting policies but and telecommuting can help this process along.
Eradicating facetime means implementing effective achievement based management. The manager needs to plan his team’s activities, create schedules, allocate time and resources and them review progress. Employees should then be judged by the efficient and timely completion of tasks which they are set.
Many companies already have successful telecommuting policies but not enough. Achievement based management is more of a challenge as it involves the manager having to put in some effort. It is here where the British government could usefully intervene by providing training for managers and by implementing tax breaks for employers and employees.
The government encouraging telecommuting would also encourage achievement based management. Telecommuting would also ease transport problems, make industry more efficient and reduce CO2 emissions. It’s is a no lose proposition and would show real leadership.
Government should set policy and not get involved in implementation. This is where New Labour went wrong. The government should not use tax payers money to provide high speed broadband access to every shed on every mountain top in the country. Market forces can be left to supply broadband to where it is required.
Let’s not forget the last government technological big idea. Digital Audio Broadcast. OK, many of us have DAB radios but how many of us have them in our cars? And how long before the whole DAB experiment is shelved in favour of wireless internet access?
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