Re-booting the Economy

I've embedded a conference presentation from TED.COM by Juan Enriquez that I recommend watching, as it delivers considerable insight into the problems facing the global economy and the technologies that may soon shape our future.

Although he refers to the US recession, much of what he says in terms of leverage and debt applies to our own economy, as closely linked as it is, to the uncertain fortunes of the mighty dollar and a globalised financial system.

Slightly Cloudy

After almost two weeks away, I see the battery life on my Amazon Kindle reader still shows half charge and that's after wading through Dan Simmons' novel, Ilium, and having started the sequel Olympos as well. If you can imagine, Homer's 'Iliad', Shakespeare's 'Tempest' and some advanced quantum physics, all shaken vigorously together, then you've the basis for a rather imaginative novel of both the distant past and far future. The great thing about the Kindle device is that I can also load for free, the complete Iliad, Herodotus' travels in ancient Egypt and a great deal more besides and so in a very short period, it's completely changed my reading habits.

I can see a near future where devices like this one actually have liquid crystal pages as the technology now exists. So you buy perhaps a six-page device or twelve-page device to suit your budget and the first page is wirelessly synchronized with your email, several more display word or PDF documents, another is the book you are reading and so on. Soon they will be as cheap as any other commodity device and with electronic paper cheaper than the real thing, children will carry them to school in the place of books and will have access to everything and anything mankind has ever published in their schoolbag as well as everything and anything they have ever written during their school years at their fingertips.

It was the kind of idea I was giving a talk on in Spain a week ago, with the rapid evolution of what is called virtualization or cloud computing, where technology is delivered as a utility, much like electricity, a model we are already seeing with the evolution of a number of products from Google and Amazon. Anyway, given the exponential growth in computing power, still doubling every two years, thanks to Moore's Law, Christmas in 2015 is going to have on display some quite remarkable technology in PC World and Comet that we haven't even thought of yet!

Back in the real world, I'm confronted by boxes of Christmas cards to sign and seal. One day, someone's going to come-up with a process that automates that too, I'm sure. Just supply the names and addresses and a scan of your signature(s) and season's greetings will become as magic as a Jamie Oliver Christmas. Me, I'll have to make do with inky fingers for now as my fountain pen leaks and I'm running short of stamps. Yesterday, I visited Westwood Cross on my motorcycle to buy some presents. Given the frenzied seasonal madness that now surrounds it; I plan to avoid the roads around it now until the New Year if at all possible

Climbing Away

I haven't blogged for almost a week and so I'll start this entry as my Etihad flight from Abu Dhabi, flings itself over the desert coast and climbs away towards Bahrain and London Heathrow, several hours away.

I can't praise the quality of service on this airline enough. I'm sitting in economy and yet Etihad is superior to business class in most other airlines, such as Iberia, that I flew with last week to Madrid. The digital entertainment system, all touch screen, is quite remarkable with enough to keep me busy for hours; I watched 'Ice Age 3' and 'District 9' on the way out and I plan to start today with 'Dillinger' once I settle down after typing this.

The flight attendants on this new Airbus look as if they've freshly arrived from a beauty pageant. I suspect that if they were suddenly exposed to the harsh winter light and charms of Cecil Square, they might wither away instantly; like delicate tropical flowers. On the way out to the emirates, I was chatting to the young First Officer, also neatly pressed into his uniform, who had recently joined the company from Virgin Atlantic. Apparently he had been laid off at the start of the recession and fallen straight back on his feet with a job offer from Etihad and a change of lifestyle, living in Abu Dhabi. Given the legions of airline pilots who have also lost jobs recently, he considers himself very lucky indeed.

As one might expect, the place is spotlessly clean and tidy and no sign of even a single marauding 'Pit Bull' terrier to remind me of home. I did see one discarded water bottle during my time here but the local people take considerable pride in their city and litter just doesn't seem to happen in the way we understand it; the city authorities also being very efficient in removing it. No graffiti either but then I suspect that nobody has ever tried to test the law in this respect, given that the country is not a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights and anti-social behavior is treated very seriously indeed by the courts.

For the first ecrime congress (Middle-east), I've been staying at the Armed Forces Officers Club, which is unusual in having a mosque and a sophisticated, air-conditioned shooting range next door to each other in the complex. There's also a small bank tucked in between them. I imagine that if one applied for planning consent for the same layout, in say Manchester, there might be rather more difficulty in gaining approval from the city council once they saw what was on the plans. There's also which an Olympic size swimming pool and a gym to match with a very impressive Turkish bath should one get bored.

I toddled off to the indoor range with my colleagues and was reminded of the scene in the first Terminator movie, when 'Arnie' visits the gun store and asks for a 'Gas Plasma rifle.'

"Have you shot before sir," asked the nice girl behind the reception desk.

I replied that I had and surrendered my passport and filled in the appropriate waiver. When this was done I selected what I wanted to shoot from the menu and opted for a semi-automatic SIG 226 and 50 rounds of 9mm ammunition. The SIG is a highly reliable piece of Swiss engineering and I've never had one experience a blockage. The range appeared to be used both by locals and the small groups of American advisors and it was clear that the country is spending a great deal of money on both military hardware and training, I assume because Iran is only a matter of miles away across the disputed waters that saw a racing yacht out of Bahrain impounded last month.

While Dubai's economy went rapidly down the tubes last month, it's clear from the short time I had in Abu Dhabi this week, that it's apparently unscathed by the financial turmoil that surrounds it. From the sheer size, ambition and opulence of the surroundings, it's clear that 'the winner is the one that finishes with the most toys' and I'm looking forward to a return visit in the not too distant future. It's hard not to wonder, for a fleeting moment, what some of that fabulous wealth could achieve around my own sea-front, town, Margate, here in Thanet, rather than around the cornice in Abu Dhabi.

Come Thursday

With the prevailing fascination in ‘New media’, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and more, for political communication, Brighton & Hove City Council being one good example, I’m interested to see that I’m sharing a platform in Caceres, Spain, in December, with Rahaf Harfoush, the author of “Yes We Did: An Inside Look at How Social Media Built the Obama Brand.” Whether I will have a chance to chat over lunch on what we can learn from the Obama campaign over here I don’t know but I’m sure her presentation will be rather more interesting than my own talk on disruptive technology and ‘Cloud’ computing, which at present has rather too many slides and is likely to subject the audience to ‘Death by PowerPoint’.

Staying with Obama for a moment, I see an old friend has been appointed Obama’s interim Cyber-security Coordinator at the White House and I dropped him a note last week to congratulate him and ask him how he was finding it. “Very interesting and very busy” was the short reply.

Come Thursday and the Dane Valley by-election, I’m sorely tempted to put a nice red-letter banner over Margate and help Labour’s campaign by flying the slogan: “BRITISH JOBS FOR BRITISH WORKERS – VOTE LABOUR” or any number of tongue-in-cheek themes, as in the present political and economic chaos at Westminster, I’m sure the party could do with all the help it can get. However, I think the weather will be against me and I suspect that many voters would prefer not to be reminded of Labour’s quite remarkable record of achievement over the last ten years.

Ted TV

I've been trekking back and forth to the Chatham campus on a regular basis since September doing a course on education. It's a subject that interests deeply me for a number of important reasons both intellectual and political and in particular because of its vital importance to the future of our society and our place in the world of the 21st century.

Much of what I've seen so far is beautifully summed-up in this very good and humerous video lecture by Sir Ken Robinson. It's well worth watching. I also recommend www.ted.com which is a sort of intellectual YouTube, with lots of lectures by well-known people, such as Richard Dawkins, Al Gore, Brian Cox and many more.

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.

Night at the Museum - Almost

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.

Coca Cola and Nike are of course OK!

Free Charlie Bronson?

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.

No Rule on How to Write

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."

Read on....

The Jungle Below

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!

Orwell Was Right

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?"

Tiger Tiger

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.

Into Linate

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!

The Hejaz Trail

Not many people have heard of Charles Montagu Doughty, the great desert explorer and a contemporary of the equally famous Sir Richard Burton.

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.

Joined-up Smart.Gov

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."

When the Lights Go Out

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?

Deep Blue

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!