The Anonymous Widower

A Control Engineer’s View On The Result Of The Scottish Referendum

I trained as a Control Engineer in the 1960s and applying what I learned then to everyday systems is fun.

Avoid Discontinuities

One of the first things, you should do in designing a system is avoid discontinuities.

Take riding a bicycle. One of the things you try to avoid is steps, as even a single one like a kerb is a discontinuity to be got around. It is much easier to ride along a nice flat, smooth road.

I live in London and as I walk around, I see more and more instances, where steps have been removed or made easier. Even our Class 378 trains on the Overground, are in most instances step-across to get in or out.

So whether the Scots vote for independence or not, the trend in life is to remove discontinuities, so Edinburgh and Westminster must work to remove them. Here’s a few that we should have, as we share an island.

1. An Interchangeable Currency
2. A Public Transport System, that is continuous.
3. A Legal System, where a crime in one country is a crime in the other.
4. A Health System with similar access.
5. Continuous Telephone and Internet

There are probably a few other things, but these don’t impact on the minutia of daily life.

We should be eliminating these, but politicians love creating a few more or are stopping the elimination of some. Take metrication and adjusting the clocks to European time, for two simple examples.

Avoid Large Control Movements

When you control a system, like our simple example of riding a bike, imagine you only had the options of turning the handlebars hard left or hard right. You’d soon fall off!

So in other words to make a system better, you do everything in a softly-softly mode. If you need to get from one state to another you do it in a smooth set of planned movements taking account of conditions over which you have no control.

Just think of the complicated process of landing an aircraft. It probably goes fine, until the aircraft gets struck by an unexpected lightning bolt. After that the experience and training of the pilot takes over.

Plan Ahead For Change

Changes can be difficult, if you don’t plan for them. That is why natural disasters like floods and earthquakes cause so many problems in the world.

But take some recent earthquakes in California and Japan. Some large cities like Tokyo avoided anything other than minor damage, because of good planning.

At present there are two mega projects in the UK; Crossrail and the Scottish Referendum.

I am surrounded in London by disruption caused by Crossrail, but everything has been planned minutely, to cause the smallest amount of pain. This planning was a long process taking many years.

Where is the planning in the separation of Scotland and the rest of the UK? Alex Salmond has decided to inflict all the pain afterwards.

In other words, he is like most politicians. Fuck you Jack, I’m alright and I’ve made my place in history!

The others are no better, as Devo Max should have been devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the first place. After all, the Isles of Man, Jersey and Guernsey seem to get on well with us all and isn’t that what they’ve got.

September 10, 2014 - Posted by AnonW | World | Politics, Scottish Referendum