Category: Uncategorized

The Middle East history reflects well on nobody:  the establishment of Israel – a Jewish state – derived in part from sympathy about the Holocaust.  Jews needed  a safe place.

However the Palestinians paid a huge price for this.

Ongoing enmity is no surprise.  Jews feel insecure – Arabs feel robbed.

The Palestinians and supporters really need to accept the existence of Israel, and it’s borders.

It is difficult to separate the concept of ‘the Jewish people in Israel’ and the Israeli government.  It is not a ‘secular state’ – albeit different Israeli political participate in their democracy – it is a Jewish religious state, it could not be otherwise.  So when the Isreali Government acts, it is acting as a ‘Jewish government’.

A diversion is to observe that Jewish people in other countries should not be automatically included in blame for actions of the Israeli government.

Some might be ‘hard line’ supporters of the Israeli government, others may well be more liberal and critical.

We need peace in the Middle East, and international guarantees and pressure to that effect. Both Israel and Palestinians need to live at peace with each other.

I believe however that there is a key issue that needs to be addressed.  Israel is trying to expand it’s borders by stealth.  It claims that Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank, is not an independent country, but under Israeli ‘protectorate’ control.  Or something like that.

As such it is allowing settlement of Isreali people on land on the West Bank.  It feels that the Arab people are getting treated rather like Black people in South Africa under apartheid.

We should immediately confront Israel, tell them to ‘reverse’ the settlements – leave the West Bank – such accommodation could be used for people displaced from Gaza.

We should start to put in place a boycott of all things Israeli – exports from Isreal, travel, supplies to Isreal of military goods, and so on.  We should encourage all countries to join us in this action.

This should continue until Israel withdraws from the settlements, and recognises Palestine and it’s boundaries

There is an unresolved issue at the heart of modern Physics.

Scientists can’t reconcile Einstein’s theory, gravity, and quantum physics.  Quantum physics ‘works’ – delivers accurate results – but nobody really understands the underlying science.  For example, entangled particles share characteristics – ‘spin’ is a concept they share, if it changes in one particle it instantaneously changes in the other.  This change is immediate, regardless by how far the particles are separated.  This implies an action faster than the speed of light, which is supposedly not  possible.

You can enlarge the areas of lack of understanding – how exactly do electrons ‘change orbit’ – how exactly do particles ‘attract’ or ‘repel’ each other.  And, at the photon level, what exactly is a photon? Is it a ‘blob of energy’, does it have a structure (let alone whether it is a wave or a particle).  If you had something like light, but with an even shorter wavelength, could you use it as a scalpel, and dissect a photon.  You can of course argue that our ‘sight’ is constrained by the wavelength of light, and by definition cannot ‘see’ anything smaller than a photon.

So, how can we ‘understand’ the phenomenon of something that travels faster than light, which in our current state of science is not possible.

It’s worth observing than this area of science appears to have ‘stalled’ – effectively no significant advances for a century.  It’s as if our present state of thinking cannot resolve these mysteries.  We can tidy them, find nuances, discover some more small particles, but no substantial progress since the 1920’s.  There was a fashion for  ‘string theory’ by way of example, but which hasn’t really progressed things.  CERN may have ’made a lot of progress’ but no real breakthrough.

I was mulling this over the other day – I’ve had a long term interest in small particle physics since my son died in a car crash at age 16 – is there anything ‘beyond understanding’ that might open the door to another world.

One option is that there is indeed an answer to this scientific mystery, but we’re not quite bright enough to grasp it.  Years ago, Einstein made his breakthroughs by being ‘bright enough‘  to see, question and understand things that were beyond the thinking of contemporaries.  Likewise Hawking had the ability to think in a different league to others.

My immediate catalyst was a poem sent to me from my four year old grandchild – she’d used AI and some key words (grandfather, special day, Malaga) and created a good poem.  Linguistically way beyond what she herself could write.  Amazing!

And then think about computers that can teach themselves chess, and beat grandmasters.  There are many areas where we can see that our level of intellectual operation is OK, but not amazing.

Think of a dog and his master (or goldfish in a bowl).  The dog might be capable of seeing than the master can drive a car,  It may think of it as almost a god like quality relative to a dog’s abilities.  And of course it won’t be appreciating the complexities of the engineering built into the vehicle.  The goldfish may well think of the world as round and wet, that food appears from nowhere, and not much beyond that.

We might take a slightly condescending view of the dog’s abilities and likewise of the goldfish.  We are clearly in a better intellectual league.

But what if our scientific problem is really that we are just not bright enough to take the science further.

I am not suggesting a god, but what if there is a ‘being’ that is intellectually league’s above us, like a puppetmaster pulling our strings.  Not only do they understand more than us, but maybe monitor or control it too?

AI and other things give a hint that there could be a world infinitely more sophisticated than what we perceive and understand.  For example, that maybe could understand not only a little about genes and DNA, but actually completely understand all the processes in everybodies bodies.   And predict with certainty which cluster of cells might turn cancerous and when.  Likewise, totally understand the world’s climate, and predict all weather changes with total accuracy.  Many things currently are based on ‘chaos’ theory and probability – for a trivial example think of the throw of a dice.  What if a machine could exactly model all the variables, and thereby predict with utter certainty how the dice would land.

My thought is that there may be a world in effect beyond (above) our understanding.  And in that world, understanding how communications can happen faster than the speed of light could be understood and explained.

So, I offer two thoughts.  The first is that ‘all can be explained’ by a more intelligent being.  The ability to think in more than three dimensions is an example – we can manage to think in three dimensions but trying to understand  and think in more than three is difficult.  Maybe the entanglement problem is trivial for a bigger brain (like Einstein outthought his contemporaries).

The second is that maybe this whole world as we see it, is just a low level plaything for some superior being.  They created our world, a bit like letting us see the car, and drive it, but not giving us the information and understanding about the engineering.

So, a bit like the dog and the goldfish, we can operate in the world that we see and understand at our level. But actually there is actually much more to this world, that we can’t understand. But the ‘being’ does.  The ‘being’ sees and understands a much more complex structure.  Maybe manages much of it.

Maybe people’s search for a ‘god’ is an instinctive search for this being that understands more than we do.

All of it is complex, maybe the ‘being’ understands our world and possibly our universe.  Maybe there are other beings for other universes.  Maybe even they struggle to understand the origins of the universes, which requires an even greater intellect.

I was reflecting on whether your daily paper – if you still read one –  influences how you think.  I now live in Spain, and El Pais and El Mundo carry different stories with different slants.  Obviously ditto for the Times, Guardian and Telegraph.  Not only will they take a different line on stories, but also choose which to cover.  Read the Telegraph and it will be about immigrant crime, read the Guardian and you will get stories about poverty and so on.  Not only may they influence your view, and but they also determine what topics you focus on.

Given that you also use social media you are exposed to algorithms.  So if you read about crime, you’ll get fed with more crime stories.  Read about poverty, and you’ll get a stream of more poverty linked stories.  This is bound to reinforce your interests, and the slant you take on them.

Trying to stand back and take a balanced view is difficult.  So the danger is that people become ever more polarised, sharing bunkers with like minded people.

The U.K. currently has a political schism – of extreme left and right – each feeding off the dissatisfaction of UK residents.  In addition, we have the ‘woke’ lobby, the ‘trans’ lobby and others on the left, and extreme right wingers who are anti immigation (actually anti ‘foreigners’). 

And the centre left have nothing to offer – they’ve blown the money on pay rises and welfare. We can’t tax or borrow more, so it’s hard to think where growth might come from.

One idea would be to establish a new ‘consortium’ of ‘families’

Thank god it’s still normal for a lot of people to want to be in heterosexual couples, and then to have children.  They want, quite reasonably, to build strong family units.  Reasonable income – ‘bread on the table’ – a strong work ethic.  Well brought up children with good values.  Normally with tolerance being on of these values, likewise resilience.

Many of these family people work in the private sector – exposed to real life – competition – working hard to secure their and their employer’s future – not feeding off the ‘magic money tree’ in the public sector indulging ‘woke’ policies and so on.

We need to provide these families with good support – they should be seen and recognised as the backbone of our society.  A tax break for marriage would be a small positive guesture.

They are inclined to work rather than look to welfare – and to reinforce this positive thinking we need to stop welfare being an easy option.

They want proactive policing – a focus on minor offences, graphiti, stealing phones, shop lifting.  What you might call cleaning up society.  Stopping drunken behaviour.

They want good education for their children, followed by technical and professional skills training, with job opportunities to follow.  Sadly raising the minumum wage too high,  and increasing employment taxes does not help.

They want a strong defence force – would probably support some kind of national service, along with strong encouragement of Reserve and similar service.  They’d like to see strong bonds with the ‘old commonwealth’ countries that volunteered to fight with us in the past – alongside for example strong links to Poland and other Eastern European countries.

They understand the ‘green’ and climate change issues – but would go for a more pragmatic approach rather than a brainless idealistic one.  Solar panels seem like a ‘no brainer’ – enforcing electric car quotas much less so – politicians don’t seem to live in, or understand how terraced houses and flats work, you can’t just park outside and run out a cable….

They recognise that smoking is not good, likewise excess alcohol, and that obesity is a real health issue – linked to diabetes problems.  They would debate whether the NHS should be entirely free to people who don’t look after their own health.

As I write this I realise it sounds a bit like a Conservative pitch, which I guess it is.

Our government is failing to get results.  It might ‘tick boxes’ – but doesn’t follow through to ‘making a difference’ – it doesn’t get to the desired end result.

This is largely a consequence of poor project management skills.  When I started building houses, the first thing I did was get a roll of lining paper, and wrote down . in order, what I thought needed doing to build a house.  I juggled the order until it made sense (you can’t dig trenches for utilities under scaffolding – so you either do the service connections early or late…).  I then identified what I thought was the  ‘critical path’ – a set of jobs that followed on from each other – and put a timescale on that sequence of events.  That determined how long things might take.

Some elements of Government can be handled like this.  What needs doing, how long will it take – alongside looking at the finances, the cash flow and so on.

However, government is really about the big decisions, and these need handling in a slightly different fashion.

Take defence for example.  Arguably we face existential threats at the moment, at a minimum the possible invasion of parts of Eastern Europe by Russia.  Proceeding in a ‘in due course’ to policy is not adequate.  Increasing defence spending by less than is necessary is not the answer.

What the Prime Minister needs to do is actually decide ‘what is necessary’.  That means properly funded existing defence forces, plus planned developments in the pipeline (eg nuclear upgrades) plus the increased funding/expansion tha tis necessary.

You then need to commit to that figure, then have the conversation about how to fund it.  The options are limited, assuming no more borrowing or increased taxation.  It means hard decisions about other govevernmetn spending, which in this context, and by definition, is less of a priority.  This includes welfare spending, that needs to be cut.

There is however a second, crucial element to this decision making.  There is no point in increasing defence spending if it will be too late to be of any use.  The ‘in due course’ approach is not good enough.

So we need to determine when all of this needs to be done by.  If we were actually at war there would be a real sense of urgency.

My view would be that all the key developments should be given very short, tight, deadlines.  In general, a three year project time seems necessary.

So any new ship type, for example, needs to be launched in three years.  Design would need to be streamlined, likewise the procurement process.  Manufacturing would need to be on a 24/7 basis – three shifts a day, seven days a week.

Clearly there are design options – obviously keep it simple – adopt an existing design – buy it in from overseas – if necessary. 

In terms of procurement, it’s no good having a committee of civil servants deciding ‘what they fancy’ and going out to tender.  There’s no time for that.  The best bet I think would be to use a large defence contractor, and pay them a management fee to manage the contracts, buying in the components as cheaply as  possible.

Any associated processs need the same sense of urgency – any regulatory processes need to be dealt within within the ‘critical path’ framework – so approvals might need to be done with days not months or years……. Other such organisations would also need to work 24/7.

It is possible that some people could not share the sense of urgency.  Employment contracts need to be changed from ‘a set weeking week’ to ‘whatever hours are needed to deliver’.

Those that can’t deliver need to be replaced.  There should also be a clear legal obligation – criminal law – that any failure to deliver would be an offence…….

Many other examples spring to mind of long timescales that are unacceptable.  HS2 for example – by the time it is open it may have been overtaken by autonomous transport on the motorways, even electric drone type transport.

Apparently the timescale for the new modular nuclear power plants is to have the first one open in ten years time.  This is utterly ridiculous.  They should be given the same three year timescale – start work on site immediately, complete design work urgently, start fabrication, plan the nuclear fueling process.  Get all the approvals through without project delay – planning, impact on the environment, technical approvals.

So, terminate the ‘open ended’ thinking of start now, see how it goes, complete in due course, and change to announcing the opening date, book The King for the opening ceremony, then make it happen.

I know one great team that could do this, with the ’can do’ attitude, there must be others……

Our government is failing to get results.  It might ‘tick boxes’ – but doesn’t follow through to ‘making a difference’ – it doesn’t get to the desired end result.

This is largely a consequence of poor project management skills.  When I started building houses, the first thing I did was get a roll of lining paper, and wrote down . in order, what I thought needed doing to build a house.  I juggled the order until it made sense (you can’t dig trenches for utilities under scaffolding – so you either do the service connections early or late…).  I then identified what I thought was the  ‘critical path’ – a set of jobs that followed on from each other – and put a timescale on that sequence of events.  That determined how long things might take.

Some elements of Government can be handled like this.  What needs doing, how long will it take – alongside looking at the finances, the cash flow and so on.

However, government is really about the big decisions, and these need handling in a slightly different fashion.

Take defence for example.  Arguably we face existential threats at the moment, at a minimum the possible invasion of parts of Eastern Europe by Russia.  Proceeding in a ‘in due course’ to policy is not adequate.  Increasing defence spending by less than is necessary is not the answer.

What the Prime Minister needs to do is actually decide ‘what is necessary’.  That means properly funded existing defence forces, plus planned developments in the pipeline (eg nuclear upgrades) plus the increased funding/expansion that is necessary.

You then need to commit to that figure, then have the conversation about how to fund it.  The options are limited, assuming no more borrowing or increased taxation.  It means hard decisions about other govevernment spending, which in this context, and by definition, is less of a priority.  This includes welfare spending, that needs to be cut.

There is however a second, crucial element to this decision making.  There is no point in increasing defence spending if it will be too late to be of any use.  The ‘in due course’ approach is not good enough.

So we need to determine when all of this needs to be done by.  If we were actually at war there would be a real sense of urgency.

My view would be that all the key developments should be given very short, tight, deadlines.  In general, a three year project time seems necessary.

So any new ship type, for example, needs to be launched in three years.  Design would need to be streamlined, likewise the procurement process.  Manufacturing would need to be on a 24/7 basis – three shifts a day, seven days a week.

Clearly there are design options – obviously keep it simple – adopt an existing design – buy it in from overseas – if necessary. 

In terms of procurement, it’s no good having a committee of civil servants deciding ‘what they fancy’ and going out to tender.  There’s no time for that.  The best bet I think would be to use a large defence contractor, and pay them a management fee to manage the contracts, buying in the components as cheaply as  possible.

Any associated processs need the same sense of urgency – any regulatory processes need to be dealt within within the ‘critical path’ framework – so approvals might need to be done with days not months or years……. Other such organisations would also need to work 24/7.

It is possible that some people could not share the sense of urgency.  Employment contracts need to be changed from ‘a set weeking week’ to ‘whatever hours are needed to deliver’.

Those that can’t deliver need to be replaced.  There should also be a clear legal obligation – criminal law – that any failure to deliver would be an offence…….

Many other examples spring to mind of long timescales that are unacceptable.  HS2 for example – by the time it is open it may have been overtaken by autonomous transport on the motorways, even electric drone type transport.

Apparently the timescale for the new modular nuclear power plants is to have the first one open in ten years time.  This is utterly ridiculous.  They should be given the same three year timescale – start work on site immediately, complete design work urgently, start fabrication, plan the nuclear fueling process.  Get all the approvals through without project delay – planning, impact on the environment, technical approvals.

So, terminate the ‘open ended’ thinking of start now, see how it goes, complete in due course, and change to announcing the opening date, book The King for the opening ceremony, then make it happen.

I know one great team that could do this, with the ’can do’ attitude.

 There must be others.

Nicola, thank you for agreeing to this interview.  Can I start by confirming that you are a qualified lawyer – what are your financial skills like – where do you get financial advice?

You were the accounting officer for the SNP = what did signing off the accounts involve?

Did you meet with the auditors, or see their reports?  Were they happy with the income and expenditure accounts – likewise the balance sheets – likewise the ‘ring fenced’ £600,000 – did they have any concerns about governance?

When did you hear about concerns about the ring fenced monies – and what did you do?

What were your and Peter’s salaries? Presumably these are on the public record?

The ‘elephant in the room’ more or less literally is the ‘motor home’ – you would have seen this at Peter’s mother’s home.  Was it on the balance sheet for the SNP?

Who determined your and Peter’s salaries?   Did he receive any bonuses or other payments and who signed these off?

Who signed off Peter and your SNP expenses?  Who signed off your government expenses?

Did you ever receive donations or other payments from anybody?  Who paid for you r ‘work clothes’?

When you heard that the Treasuer and the Finance Committee members fo the SNP were not allowed access to the figures, what did you do?  Did you question this?

Peter brought home expensive items, and had many delivered direct to the house.  Did you not wonder how these were paid for?

Likewise the cars – especially the Jaguar.  Was this a ‘company car’?

Given that the £600,000 disappeared into current expenditure – clearly the SNP was running a deficit – presumably of about £50,000 a year – much of which was down to Peter’s thefts…….  Clearly the SNP had to be losing money for the £600,000 to disappear – what did you think and what questions did you ask?

It is reported that you  had some expensive weekend breaks – money no object according to reports – and holidays in Portugal – how much did these cost and who paid for them?

Final question – clearly there was a lack of financial control – no ‘checks ad balances’ – do you think the accounting officer was exclusively to blame for this lack of control – or do John Swinney, the two Treasurers and others share the responsibility?

 

Looking at one of our Cabinet Ministers, it looks like they rather llke sitting down and eating cake. They do not look lean, mean and hungry. Rather they look comfortable, complacent, relaxed maybe, easy going, happy in their success. Luxuriating in what success has brought – not driven to achieve more….

Most of the Cabinet have a ’rounded’ look – double chins, carryng a bit of weight. Starmer looks flabby to the point of unwell. Can any of them get into their clothes from when they were younger?

Think of people like Wes Streeting…..

If they are long on self-indulgence – how likely is it that they are also self disciplined? Favourite quote is ‘ I’ll just have one more pie’….

They do not look fit, energetic, full of vim…..

And therefore how likely is it that they will make tough decisions – tough on themselves and tough on others – such as reducing the welfare bill?

And as unhealthy people, they are in the diabetes waiting room, and generally about to become burdens on the NHS. They just do not look right

So presumably they will continue to waddle around in their comfort zone…… .

The U.K. is living beyond it’s means. We are spending more than we earn. The government is blowing money on welfare and other things.

National debt is huge and becoming more expensive to serice. Taxation as a source of funding is at it’s limit.

Rather than reduce expenditure, the ‘left’ have developed the spurious ‘borrow to invest’ argument. Heaven forbid they would agree on sensible or tough decisions. They just want to go down the ‘never never’ route……

It sounds attractive, does it not? We can access more dosh by borrowing it on legitimate grounds. Unfortunately the rationalisation is nonsense.

You could possibly borrow extra money for a toll bridge. But even then the (in that form generally) extra borrowing, will overall, increase the interest rate we pay on all our borrowing. Thereby making the economics ever more difficult.

But let’s assume the bridge is built, and lots of people use it. If it helps expand the economy that would be good. The toll revenue can pay back the borrowing, like a house mortgage, over a number of years. But if there is no more economic activity, and people just use the bridge as it is more convenient, they face higher living costs – the tolls – so are worse off.

If you are lucky, a new road or power grid can help expand the economy. There can even be a multiplier effect – the new road generates more journeys, which can then increase demand for fuel or vehicles and so on…… If the economy propspers, higher productivy, the return can exceed the borrowing cost, and we make money (growth!).

However, ask yourself what kinds of projects a socialist government is likely to prioritise?

Is it going to be ‘hard headed’ business investments – for example that might increase productity but reduce jobs (for example investment in robots, AI, and so on)?

It’s east to speculate the likely favoured projects.

Nationalisation – money borrowed to ‘buy back’ utililies and transport services. Under the dead hand of government bureaucracy they may perform worse than as regulated private sector monoplies. And certainly not generate extra revenue to repay the borrowing.

State subsidisation – nationalisation by another name, for ‘dead duck’ industries. Think of steel, ship building, the car industry. The money would please the trade unions, short term. But in fact of course it is being ‘pissed away’, with poor managers failing to turn round the businesses. Probably they are simply a dead loss, the end of a road……. And of course will not make the commercial return (profit) to repay the borrowing.

The left will try to argue that public sector investment, for example hospitals and schools, are good for the economy. However, productivity in the NHS appears not to be managed, so capital investment is just another ‘pot to piss in’, promising something that will never be delivered. So where would the revenue come from to repay the borrowing?

Mad Ed Millibrand would argue for ‘green’ investment. We have solar water and solar electricty at home – in sunny south spain – and if the installation costs are managed (ie DIY) it works well. By contrast, Ed proposes more wind generation, for example, when we already have to pay people not to generate too much electicity on windy days.

Clearly ‘green’ is akin to ‘kindergarten’. You need as a priority an enhanced ‘national grid to get electiricity where it is needed for AI centres and to meet the electric car strategy (which of course in itself is nuts). And of course what about nights and cloudy, windless, days? You need battery (or hydro-electric) power as backup.

So an incoherent ‘green’ strategy will not work, and not payback the borrowing. Such peole should not be trusted to borrow money on our behalf.

Let me finish with two examples. I assume Gordon Brown borrowed money to build two aircraft carriers. They may have been good for politics in Scotland. Were they good ‘investments’? Given the ongoing technical problems they were not a good technical project. We do not have enough support ships to escort them at sea.

So the ‘left’ that supports defence as a concept might spend money this way. But will they ‘make money’ to pay back the borrowing. Obviously not, it just makes us more indebted, and dependant on foreign lenders in the bond market.

The crowning glory is of course HS2. The totally gormless people involved in HS2 should not even be allowed to manage their own money, let alone borrow on our behalf. Their rhetoric about ‘cost benefit analysis’ is a complete joke – you might get to a city five minutes earlier, but does this have a collective value of ‘a billion.a year’? If we can’t manage projects we shouldn’t borrow to fund them. By all means blow our savings – wasted money – but don’t borrow more……..

Clearly HS2 is a disaster, over cost, over time, reduced specification. Covid showed you don’t need to travel, so the whole concept is to some extend out of date. Self driving coaches will probably be a real competitor. A relative just paid £334 for a day return rail ticket from Chester to London. HS2 will probably be more expensive, with just a fast ride from London to Birmingham?

What chance is there that it will make a good return on the investment, so we could repay the borrowing?

And you can imagine a left wing government ‘investing’ this borrowed money in ‘woke’ projects – extra ‘alternative’ toilets in government buildings for ‘non binary’ people. Buying pink coloured police cars. Building new prisons for those that elect, post conviction, to ‘change gender’. None of which of course will xzgenerate money to pay back the borrowing.

All of this course just gives an excuse to borrow more, to spend more,and the hell with the long term….. Maybe please the electorate at the next election, unless the problems come home to roost more quickly

Clearly you can’t change sex, Idon’t believe you can change gender. You could become ‘like a woman’ but that doesn’t make you a woman.

If you’ve had your penis removed, and hormone treament, you get closer to being ‘a woman’. But it’s a joke to suggest you can be a woman if you still have your penis (and beard……).

There has to be something wrong with such people (with a penis) that want to ‘self i.d.’ as a women, and use women’s facilities (and participate in women’s sport).

There is an argument that there are social norms to which people should conform……

Imagine that someone wants to ‘self i.d.’ as a dog. Some teachers would support this with a child, and not tell the parents….. A bit like self i.d. as the opposite sex…..

So far so good. You have a right to ‘self i.d.’ as anything. But what happens when you say that self i.d. as a dog means not wearing clothes? Is that o.k.?

If you then argue that you should be able to urinate in the streets – and then argue that defecation in the streets is o.k.? Because you are a dog.

Presumably at some stage sanity prevails, and limits are put on self i.d.?

It probably starts with not putting male rapists that self i.d. (for a more congenial prison existence) in femlae prisons……….