The Iron Lady Rides Again
I don’t think I saw Margaret Thatcher in a debate like last night’s, although I did hear her many times on the radio during Prime Minister’s Questions.
I was speaking to a Scot this morning, and we both felt that Nicola Sturgeon has a lot of Margaret Thatcher about her.
I’ll probably be sent to The Tower for treason or whatever the Scots do, for such a thought!
Last Night’s Mass Debate
The Times has a leader article entitled The SNP Challenge, where it discusses last night’s political debate between party leaders on the BBC.
It is very much a must-read and it sums the debate up like this.
There was a lot of discussion of what politicians will spend money on. There was very little on how money will be created.
I suppose that the parties, who took part last night will be borrowing it from foolish lenders!
Does Milband Want To Alienate Voters?
Ed Miliband today launched the Labour party’s manifesto in Manchester.
Knowing Liverpool as I do, I can imagine some of the chat in the pubs in that city. And probably in other cities like Birmingham, Leeds and Newcastle. And certainly, London!
Certainly, this Londoner feels it was not a good idea to launch in Manchester and perhaps the only worse place would be Scotland.
I think that the only policy you’d launch in Manchester would be one that is specific to the area. Surely, that way if you launched specific policies all over the country, you’d get the most good coverage.
Van Sales Are Rising!
I had a shipment today from IKEA and it was delivered in a new truck efficiently at the time they said it would come.
The growth in on-line purchases is according to this article on the BBC responsible for a rise in truck and van sales.
So are we spending more and boosting jobs in retail and logistics businesses? The BBC article says this!
Online sales in the UK hit £103bn last year, according to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, creating a booming market for home delivery of orders.
The figure is expected to rise by 12% in 2015 to about £1 in every £4 spent by Britons.
Could this rise in online sales be attributed in part to much better on-line systems and more confidence on the part of purchasers that on-line systems work?
I think it is and if so this will have other effects.
I processed a complex order on-line with IKEA, but why can’t I deal the same way with the NHS on simple repeat prescriptions and appointments?
In a few years time, citizens will want to deal with all health and government business on-line.
We’re getting there in parts, but when we’ve got all simple processes on-line we’ll see a large improvement in service and hopefully a reduction in costs.
It all adds up to another factor, that will ensure whoever wins the 2015 election will have a head-start to winning the next.
Whoever loses this election, will really be a loser for all time! Unless the Luddites make a late comeback!
The Oil Find That Will Settle The Result Of The Election
I’ve believed for some time, that which ever party wins the election in a few weeks time should win the next election in 2020.
This belief is based on the fact, that so many large rail and other transport projects are due for completion in the later years of this decade.
The report on the BBC of the large oil find at Horse Hill in Surrey, is one of many that describe the find as of national significance. This is said in the BBC’s report.
“We think we’ve found a very significant discovery here, probably the largest [onshore in the UK] in the last 30 years, and we think it has national significance,” Stephen Sanderson, UKOG’s chief executive told the BBC.
Many will worry that developing an oil field in rural Surrey could be an environmental disaster.
A friend of mine had a lot to do with the development of the last major onshore oilfield in the UK at Wytch Farm, which is the largest onshore oil-field in Western Europe. The new field could be bigger, but all reports get their millions and billions mixed up.
Wytch Farm is not your average oilfield, as it is in the heart of rural Dorset by Corfe Castle. Wikipedia says this about the environment of the field.
Most of the field is protected by various conservation laws, including the Jurassic Coast world heritage site, Purbeck Heritage Coast and a number of sites of special scientific interest, areas of outstanding natural beauty and nature reserves (including Studland and Brownsea Island), so the gathering centre and most of the well sites are small and well screened by trees. Directional drilling has also contributed to reducing the impact on the local environment, with extended reach drilling from the Goathorn Peninsula attaining distances in excess of 10 km.
But the field would appear to have been an impeccable neighbour, more conspicuous by its absence in the media.
So I think the UK has good form in the development of oilfields in sensitive areas and there is no reason to expect that the development of Horse Hill will be any more disruptive than that at Wytch Farm.
The field’s biggest effect will be on the UK economy, if as reports are saying, production will start in a few years time, it will be producing revenues and cutting imports by the next election in 2020.
Circumstances have left the incoming government with a very large dowry.
They will have to be really stupid to lose in 2020. But then that’s normal for politicians.
Newtonian Politics
Isaac Newton was a great man of many facets. To me though as an Control Engineer, his most important work is his three laws of motion.
The First Law states that every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless acted on by an external force.
In real life it is Newton’s version of the old maxim – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The Second Law states that the rate of change of mass times velocity in a body is proportional to the force applied.
Basically, in real life this means that the harder you push something the more it moves the way you want it to.
The Third Law states every action on a body has an equal and opposite reaction.
Newton wrote his laws as they applied to mechanical systems, but they also can be applied to people systems in a philosophical way.
If you look at the British economy for the last fifty years, two of the worst times were the Oil Crisis of 1973 and the Banking Crisis of 2008. Massive external forces distorted a British economic system, that was sitting reasonably happily in a state of rest as defined by the First Law. The application of the external force was a superb example of Newton’s Second Law, which caused the economy to move fast in the wrong direction.
In recent years too, the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 and the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011
In some cases the reaction of politicians the world over to these and other crises only made things worse. If we take September 11th, the United States had the moral high-ground after the atrocities and could have applied sensible policies to make sure that such attacks never happened again. Instead they illustrated Newton’s Third Law brilliantly, by in revenge invading Afghanistan and Iraq, which of course provoked the opposite reaction of Islamic terrorism we now see all over the world. If you poke a hornets nest, you get stung. Or in the case of the September 11th attacks, the rest of the world does.
So how do Newton’s Laws affect British politics and in particular this coming election?
I’ll use two simple examples from London.
The London Fire Brigade has closed ten fire stations in order to save money to help the city recover from the recession of 2008. There have been protests and local objections, but there has not been one story in the past year, of destruction or even death caused by the cuts.
Transport for London over the last couple of years, have swiftly moved totally away from cash-based ticketing to one that relies on contactless cards of one sort or another with the closure of lots of ticket offices. Politicians protested loudly at the announcement but there have not been any stories since about passengers protesting because they couldn’t get home or something similar. In fact the only comment, I’ve had from staff, is one off-duty bus driver, who said he’s convinced attacks on staff have reduced significantly.
I think that Londoners, staff and eventually politicians have realised that although the changes are massive, most have only been affected in a small way, so their reaction to the changes has been proportionately small. Probably the worst affected group are firemen, who’ve been made redundant and I suspect, that London’s booming economy has allowed those who need a new job to get one, as protests have been surprising by their absence.
I think that these two examples illustrate a facet of the British people. We may moan a bit about something we don’t like, but when the new system beds in and it doesn’t effect us too much, we accept it as a sensible policy. On the other hand, if something is manifestly wrong, like the Second Gulf War, we protest until the end.
People may complain about the parties being too similar, but as most politicians are decent reasonable people, who see the bigger picture, the middle way is often chosen by everybody.
In this current election there has been a defining theme, that could determine who is the next Prime Minister.
In the seven-party television debate, Nicola Sturgeon, showed the English a face of Scots, that they don’t like. All of the thoughts from north of the border is worrying the English that any Labour dog, will be wagged by a Scottish Nationalist tail. So will this cause a drop in Labour’s vote in England?
The poll today in The Sunday Times shows that Tory support is hardening. So has Newton’s Third Law taken control?
If Labour is to get the most seats they have got to convince a large number of house-owning working middle-class voters to switch allegiance.
But will these floating votes go for a party that is saying it will use their ISAs and other measures to fund and ease more house building, which will depress the value of their own properties?
Labour policy makers obviously don’t know that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, as many of their policies, as do those of UKIP and the Nationalists, only appeal to a very committed majority. Tony Blair’s strength in the polls, was that he mobilised the non-Labour voters to vote for Nulabor.
David Cameron on the other hand, generally kept out of the squabbles in the seven-party debate, which was a classic stance to give a message compatible with Newton’s First Law.
It is an interesting problem, which will only be solved in the very British way at the ballot box in a few weeks time.
The Anonymous Widower 