the 35-hours server

It turns out that, in the Public Sector, not even servers can be made to work outside office hours: I just tried to file online our accounts at Companies House, and I was unable to do so; not because of a sudden outage (regrettable, but it happens) but because they do not offer the service at weekends and between midnight and 7am.

I seriously tried to think of a plausible reason why it is so. I failed.

If anyone can think up of a good reason (technical or otherwise) why an online service should not run 24/7 can you please get in touch and take me out of my misery?

I work for Google - we consider it a serious downtime anything longer than a few minutes per year in one of our many data centers (users would barely be affected as the request would be instantaneously re-routed to another center - ok, maybe adding the odd millisecond) and, let's face it, for all the grand-standing about changing the world, we do not handle matters such as Company accounts and Directorship and share filing - were we to do so, I'm sure we would flinch at a few seconds downtime (planned or unplanned - it just wouldn't do).

But, hey, Her Majesty's Companies House thinks it is all good and well to be out of reach for about 100 hours each week - after all, those underlings can wait, can't they?

3,200 Brits are lost every year during airport transfers

Ok - so I've made that one up... so what?

It is well known the penchant of Labour Government for (mostly phony) statistics - usually taken either out of context, or derived from moronically extrapolating trends over ridicoulous lenghts of time.

Take the one that has made the headlines this week about the population of England doubling in size to 110 milion, by the year 2178 (or whenever): whoever came up with that number (most likely, a Government-funded research quango) simply took the population increase over the last, say, 5 years, added some exponential growth immigration factor, fired up Excel and "dragged" the numbers until it got where it wanted it to be.

However, rather than berating the stupidity of such approach, I decided to follow this sterling example and come up with some statistics of my own - and invite everyone to contribute.

• In London, you are never more than 2 yards away from a chav;
  (heard on Radio 4)
• In the year 2013, the average weight of single mothers in Luton will be 15 stones;
• There are more than 66m people with learning difficulties in Europe;
• The average donation to Labour Party is £4,567 - excluding those from dodgy businessmen;
• Each Public Sector worker contributes on average 2.5 tonnes Carbon emissions over the duration of her career, whilst providing a negative contribution to GDP of 0.35%;
• In the year 2030 the number of Public Sector workers will exceed the total number of private sector workers, people on benefits and dogs in the UK.

Who knows? some of these may even turn out to be true!

Losing the plot

So it is now official: the British Government is back with the Tories.

Yes, I know the Prime Minister and his cohort declare themselves to be Labour and - to be frank - the rhetoric and tax & spend attitude is that of a true left-leaning bunch, but, let's face it, the Tories now have just to announce policies (not even pledge to implement them) that Labour scrambles to implement them without even a hint of embarassment.

It may well be that it is truly because they are marvellous and wondrous policies that appeal to the left as they do the right.

Me, being the cynic that I am (no, Mr Blair, being a cynic is not so bad and, in fact, beats being a liar anytime) I tend to believe that they do it because (a) they run around like headless chicken chasing the latest opinion poll and (b) because they are now so ideologically lost in space that they have to wait for someone else to come up with something, anything, they can copy.

What a sad state of affair...

The true mark of a bureacrat

I've always felt that Mr Brown would have been more at ease in some obscure office somewhere deep in the bowels of Public Sector-landia - and, indeed, how so much better would have been for Country and wallet!

And now he has finally revealed the true mark of the bureaucrat - that is, that innate, congenital, irrational fear of accountability: the dread of coming to terms with one's acts, assuming responsibilities for all the deeds (or, indeed, the mishaps) one has committed whilst in office.

Hence, no election - the English people has been denied the right to make its voice heard.

It occurs to me that England is that most strange of places, where an unelected official can climb to the chair of Prime Ministership without ever having to stand to the English people's scrutiny: because, lest we forget, it is a bunch of few Scots, who, for want of better alternatives, one would assume, have chosen Mr Brown as their elected representative.

Those same Scots, lest we forget, who have kicked out Labour from their own Country's Government, whilst at the same time inflicting the tax & spend scourge upon us all.

What a joke - they must be laughing their socks off, North of the border!

The Land of Incompetence

Came back the other day from the US and was immediately confronted with the usual rain and gloomy weather that one should expect from the UK in October.

That, in general, fails to "rattle my cage" and I was not terribly upset by it - all after all, if it was sun what I was after, I could have as well stayed put in Italy and enjoy long, laid back days at the beach eating pasta and sipping Chianti...

What really depresses me is that, after more ten years of failed public sector projects and ideas, a bungled (and messy) tax credit system, the display of complete incompetence during the recent banking crisis, and, lest we forget, the Iraqi catastrophe, still Labour (and, of all people, "tax-&-spend" Gordon) still enjoys a lead in the polls.

Really - what on Earth possess the British public?

Can the vast majority of Englishmen and women be so totally blind to the astonishing incompetence that permeates now all walk of the Public Sector?
Can the youths be all so busy getting drunk and getting laid that they are ready to forgive a Government that lied to the Country and allowed hundreds of thousand of lives to be lost?
Can the elderly have all gone so hopelessly senile that they have completely missed how their health is being jeopardised by the awful mess the NHS is in?

I will accept that Cameron's Conservatives can hardly lay claim to competence and infallibility (what in the name of God are the Tory right-wingers up to? giving Labour another ten years in government?) but it would be extremely difficult (I'd say impossible) to beat Labour on incompetence, failed Public Sector projects and generally wasting taxpayers' money on a grandiose scale.

Lest we forget:

• Metronet - the poster-child of the PFI, the very creature of Mr Brown's warped economics - going bust, after sucking (and wasting) £11bn of public money, leaving London's Tube modernisation programme in total disarray;
• the IT upgrade of the Benefits Department, that had to be abandoned after spending hundreds of £'m, and getting absolutely nothing;
• the Dome (need I say anything?)
• the Olympics budget - nearly quadrupled (and we are still 5 years away) with very little to show for it;
• the complete failure to modernise the NHS, which, after £'bn of investment, still boasts the worst rate of cancer survival in Europe and the worst record in fighting infections (MRSA, anyone?);
• the tens of £'m wasted on the ID cards project, with realistic estimates of the costs at more than 10 times the Government's estimates (and it hasn't even started yet...)
• tax credits for working families (as if the others are sitting idle...): quite apart from the absurd complexity of the scheme (another brainchild of Mr Brown) it has resulted in hundreds of £'m lost in "overpayments that cannot realistically be recovered, ever" (even by the Inland Revenue's own admission);
• the Home Office - a sick joke of incompetence, waste and complete lack of accountability: now multiplied by two, with the likely duplication of most office functions with the creation of the Ministry of Justice (as it's obvious to anyone, but the self-serving politicians, by multiplying the number of bureacrats one only multiplies the level of incompetence and waste);
• and on and on and on...

But then, maybe, it is quite possible that after ten years of bureacratic incompetence people have become so used to it to consider it an acceptable norm - no longer to be outraged by officials wasting, literally, billions of pounds on ill-conceived, and worse-executed, initiatives and projects.

The Land of Incompetence, indeed.

Saving the banks

So, last week, to save Northern Rock from a devastating "run" (that would have, as panic runs go, naturally have ended with the bank running out of cash and being declared insolvent) the Chancellor -- with enthusiastic support of the FSA and the Bank of England -- stepped in and, essentially, said that taxpayers' money was at hand to guarantee all depositors' moneys.


Nothing wrong with it, surely?
These are, for the most part, ordinary people, like you and I, and deserve to be protected by the nasty consequences of global finance markets turmoils, and the greed and incompetence of the 'fat cats' bankers. Do they not?

Well, yes, in a sense, but the real question is, at what price?
The immediate consequence is that the 'run' has ended, Northern Rock has been spared more dire consequences, other banks (C&G and Alliance & Leicester were rumoured to be next) have escaped unharmed, and ordinary folks are safe in the knowledge their hard-earned money will be there when they need it.

An unqualified success for all involved, then?

A well-known concept in economics is that of 'moral hazard': that is, investors and bankers are more likely to take greater risks than would be rational (sub-prime lending, anyone?) if they know that someone with big pockets (the State) will step in and save them if things go horribly wrong (as they do, almost invariably).

In other words, we have witnessed today that some banks and institutions are "too big to fail" and that the Government, for political expediency, is well prepared to squander taxpayers' money to protect the above-mentioned 'fat cats'.

These bankers, in fact, by investing large sums in riskier assets have indeed generated excess returns in good times, and pocketed large bonuses (the last 3-4 years have seen monumental increases in City bonuses, usually paid around Christmas' time) - but, when the time came to pay for the deed -- that is when these 'riskier' assets prove to be, well, riskier, and the most foolish were exposed, big Nanny State intervened to save their necks.

it is only too easy to predict that, next time round, the bets will be bigger, the risks greater and the heights from where to fall higher - but, no matter, our Tax monies will be there to save and protect City bankers, no matter how greedy, incompetent or foolish.

Well done, Mr Brown - indeed a worthy achievement for a Labour PM.

Tides and waves in the financial market

...it just occurred to me whilst reading the Economist about recent turmoils in the financial market: one could paraphrase Mr Buffet of Hathawy Berkley (aka "the sage of Omaha") and say: "it's when the tide goes out that one can tell the boats from the turds"

Rude, I know ;-)