Tag Archives: thoughts

current affairs, thoughts

Thoughts on the Political System

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I don’t generally comment on politics and current affairs, but I’m going to offer the following two (probably unpopular) thoughts.

Thought 1

The author of The Empty City Blog contends that:

Getting rid of six Prime Ministers in ten years is a sign of a working political system. It is that we keep appointing poor Prime Ministers that is the problem: an input issue not an output issue.

Wrong!

It is the product of relatively unthinking, sheep-like MPs not understanding enough of the system**, naïvely believing the grass is always greener on the other side, and being preyed on by self-serving commentators and billionaire media owners with their own divisive agendas (after all it sells copy and makes them money). The media have forgotten what their role is: to report what’s happening, not to wage personal vendettas.

[** Unless they’ve worked very closely inside Number 10 no-one has any idea of the complexity at that level. And no new Prime Minister has a flying clue what’s hit them.]

We’ve lost the understanding of peoples’ role and place in the system (and that doesn’t have to mean rigid, traditional roles); the ability to see beyond the brick wall; and the confidence to allow people to get on and do the job they’ve been entrusted with. Meanwhile the media have run off with the sausages.

But this isn’t new. Just in my lifetime we did it to, inter alia, Alec Douglas-Home, Ted Heath and Jim Callaghan.

And it is stupid that we have eight (soon to be nine) living former Prime Ministers. Two or three maybe, but nine shows just how dysfunctional the system is.

FFS grow some spine and learn to tell the media to f*** off.

Thought 2

If Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister it will be a disaster and he’ll not last two years.

He’s out of touch with Parliament, and will effectively have to relearn the ropes. Most new MPs seem to have a tough time adjusting to the role and finding their place in the system. He should not, and should not expect to, walk straight in and carry on as if he’d never left.

This means that should he become Prime Minister in short order, he will have even less clue than most as to what has hit him when he walks into Number 10.

But worse …

He seems to be divisive (which is what’s got him here). He’ll overtly favour the North with no thought about the South – regardless of the fact that the South is well over 50% of the population and GDP. And it’ll be all about his ideas – aka. the only right ideas – with little or no regard for advice or experts.

So it’ll be another government along the same lines as Boris Johnson – somewhere between farce and fiasco.

Plus watch the vanity projects for the North.

All of which could just result in a backlash in favour of Farage and Reform, which will be an even bigger disaster.

A good Mayor, doesn’t ipso facto make a good Prime Minister!

medical, science

Is AI Useful?

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Is there any good use for AI? Yes, of course there is.

For example, this is what we should be using AI for …

New protein-folding AI predicts the structures of 1 billion proteins
[paywall]

… not writing stupid stories, making fake videos, or doing kids homework for them.

Protein folding diagram

There are an increasing number of medical and scientific applications from assisted note-taking to analysing complex CT scans. And then, of course, there are applications like industrial & medical robotics.

There are many ways in which AI can be useful, but sadly most of what it appears to be being used for (or at least that which is getting the most media attention) is at best pointless and at worst dangerous. Please let’s concentrate on the useful applications.

This is what we should be using AI for!

current affairs, thoughts

On the Sexing of Toilets

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Unisex toilets? I’m not sure that shouldn’t be uni-gender toilets!

The powers in this country are getting their collective knickers well tangled over the Equality & Human rights Commission (EHRC) guidance on the use of single sex toilets, changing areas, hospital wards etc. which is now before Parliament. This follows on from the April 2025 ruling by the UK Supreme Court that sex in the Equality Act means only biological sex (as defined at birth). This means ipso facto that single-sex toilets etc. end up excluding transgender people. (That in itself seems daft in the extreme, but that’s the law as presently laid down.)

I’m not going to spell out the details, partly because it looks a mess largely created by conflicting self-interest groups. If you want more background then there are countless media reports including from The Guardian and BBC News.

FFS guys, get a life! And grasp the nettle! There’s a very simple solution which I’ve been advocating for years, and which we know works. (See for example the last paragraph of my post from February 2013 and this longer post from May 2018.) What is this solution? …

Make every facility unisex. Yes, toilets, changing rooms, student accommodation etc. At the end of the day, as I’ve said before, where’s the problem: we all know what’s under each other’s t-shirt and jeans. But no, it doesn’t have to be quite that open – and yes, I do understand why some people feel the need for privacy.

My local swimming pool has had one single sex changing room for over 15 years to my knowledge. It is a single space used by men, women and children. For privacy there are lockable cubicles (of varying sizes to accommodate single people, parents with kids etc.) to change in, and lockers (in the open area) for your belongings. That way no-one should be blocking a cubicle for more than a few minutes while changing. So anyone can arrive dressed, choose any free cubicle, get changed and put their stuff in a locker; on return pick any free cubicle etc. etc. There are more lockers than cubicles, and cubicles can’t be locked from the outside, so you can’t block the cubicles.

It works. No-one in my experience even considers walking around the open area clad in anything less than a towel or swimsuit. There’s a choice of showers, either “open” or in cubicles – but all cubicles would be easy. And toilets can be easily arranged with just cubicles. Everything can have floor to ceiling partitioning if felt necessary.

Oh, and by the way, most accessible toilets are already unisex. So you can do it!

The one place it might be difficult is hospital wards; but then there’s a question of medical privacy to consider as well. A mix of alcoves with two to four beds and single rooms would seem doable – and if properly designed probably no less space efficient.

So, guys (of all sexes and genders), stop having conniptions and get a life. The solution is easy and it could/should have been universal decades ago.

current affairs, thoughts

HS2

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I’m deeply sick of the vanity project called HS2. And today Simon Jenkins has a piece in The Guardian also decrying the project.

I’ve been saying this, or something like it, since the outset. This money could have been (and still could be) much better spent on upgrading the existing rail infrastructure across the whole country and likely at half the cost. Instead we have a Tory party (from recollection it was George Osborne) vanity project, which has conned every successive government, and for which IMO there was never a business case. It’s not too late to pull the plug and avoid an even greater waste of money and environmental destruction for something we don’t need.

Moreover we must be the laughing stock of the world when it takes us 30+ years to build a railway line.

I despair of this country!

current affairs, environment, thoughts

On Oil and Ethics

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“Europe will suffer jet fuel shortages in just three weeks if the Strait of Hormuz does not reopen”, Airports Council International (ACI) Europe has said, “particularly with the approach of the summer tourism season”.

Oh good!

We have to find a way to stop people, and freight, flying. We’ll never get close to Net Zero if we don’t.

Forget all the hype around Aviation Biofuel; opinion suggests that there will be too limited a supply and it will be too expensive (see here, for example).

Flying people and stuff around the world to the unnecessary extent we do is just not sustainable.

Moreover, although it is slowly being cleaned up, shipping is no better, given the bunker fuel most big ships still run on.

No, I’m not saying we have to stop flying (or shipping) entirely, but we need to be much more circumspect and use it only where really necessary. We need to go back to making and growing as much as we can as locally as we can – accepting that there are some (pseudo-)essentials of modern life that we can’t.

As I’ve asked before … Do you really need to fly to Australia, or USA, just for a 2 hour meeting with a client (which could just as easily be done over a video call), because the client says so? That’s a question of skewed business and management ethics.

Why do we ship, for example, wine, apples and lamb from the Antipodes – or airfreight runner beans from Kenya – to UK when we have lots of these commodities on our doorstep in Europe, if not at home. In reverse why do we fly long-haul for a few days break? These are questions of skewed marketing and consumer ethics.

We need to update our ethics – both personal and societal. Maybe an oil crisis will help the paradigm shift.