U turns are good for you!

 For many years it has always seemd odd that people are praised for being single-minded and not being willing to admit to being wromg! Did Maggie Thatcher start this trend with her saying "This lady is not for turning". If she actually said that, I must admit that I have not checked. An interesting example was the recent statement by Paul Johnson, just retiring as head of the thinktank Institute for Fiscal Studies, who praised George Osborne for being single minded. I see no credit in being single-minded when the person is wrong. That is incerdibly dangerouswhen the individual has power. The opposite can also be dangerous as in Donald J Trump who has no mindedness at all.

As a mathematician being single minded can be helpful if the thing you are single minded about is true and you succeed. I have written two papers which showed that something that seemed clear was false. And once it is false it is false. Whilst some have become famous for their devotion to  one problem, famously Fermat's Last Theorem, Andrew Wiles, many have spent a lot of time and failed and probably and they have been forgotten.

What I fail to understand is that is seen as wrong to change or adapt a policy when it is not working. The implication that every policy will work out exactly as has been predicted is living in an unrealistic world. There is need to make plans and to base those plans are what one haopes is both a realistic analysis of the situation and a model of how things will turn out. Both of these are like;y to be wrong, hopefully only in minor ways, but the need to be flexible is essential. Why is this to be seen as failure rather than trying to get things right. 

Take a recent change of policy by the governement concerning grooming gangs. It would appear that the recent report, commisioned by the Labour government brought up issues that neirher Casey nor Starmer were fully aware of. Sensibly Starmer and the government have accepted and are going to implement the proposals made by the report they have commissioned. This might not have been needed if the recommendations previous reports had been acted on.

The only people who never makes mistakes are those who never do anything. This leads to the daft situation when those who do nothing and therefore make no mistakes are rewarded rather than rewrding those who get things right but make some mistakes. I was thinking about this when I was head of a mathematics and we were condifering who to make offers to. Departments were judged by how many students failed. Rationally one way to reduce failures is to only admit those who one thinks are 100% likely to pass. This has the disadvatage of meaning a significant group of students who would do welkl gat rejected. Another solution is to make the exams so easy that every student passes. I assume that the thinking behind the judgement is that deciding who will do well is reliable, anyone who believes such judgemnts is sadly mistaken.

Let us be proud of politiciams who have the ability to recgnise when things need to be changed and have the courage to make the changes. 

Facing north

 We moved into a flat nearly two years ago. One thing that was concerning was that it faced north. In the UK that seemed worrying as you rarely get the sun, especially in winter. But we thought that with global warming it might be a benefit, Had not thought it would be happening so soon. 

Over the last few days the flat has been at a consistent 24C which is very comfortable, no air conditioning needed so no power being used. The one problem is traffic noise when the balcony windows are open. Motor bikes are a serious problem. Our falt overlloks one of the main routes out of the city centre, one way out. Motor bikes are a special problem, they seem to love making as much noise as possible, is it part of the fun!

People who live in villages crying wolf

For many years I have lived in central Norwich. I also know poeple who live in nice quiet villages who like the peace and quiet and environment of their lives. However most of them work in Norwich and drive to work polluting my environment, this does not seem to ditress them. 

The recent arguments about pylons carrying electricity from offshore windfarms seems to have exacerbated their sense of privilege. They want me to pay to protect their view, they call it their environment. The question they do not either pose nor answer is why should I. Is there a quid pro quo for city centre inhabitants subsidising the views of those who dwell in rural areas? Will they stop driving their internal combustion vehicles through our cities? Are they willing to pay the price of only allowing electric powered vehicles through urban areas?

The answer would appear to be no to these questions, the right of people to drive their cars wherever they want seems to be important irrespective of others. For many people their lives might be difficult without being able to drive everywhere but surely that is the price that has to be paid for rural living. There are those who need to live in rural areas for work but very few, farms employ very few poeple now. Most of the poeple who live in rural arears work in the city. 

So what we have are people camapigning to protect their view whilst damaging other people health. Driving fossil fueled vehicles through our streets creates pollution that damages peoples health, I would suggest more serious than putting up pylons. There is serious argument for only allowing electric vehicles in urban areas in the medium term, say by 2035.  This would lead to significant improvemnts in health for many in urban areas, especially hgtos eliving near busy roads. Note that many of those will be the least wealthy.

Long time absent

 Not sure anyone ever read anything I wrote but just thought so much is going on that perhaps I should put my thoughts down before they are gone. Sometimes verything I read makes me feel frustrated, there is such a lack of thought in so much discussion. Perhaps discussion is the wrong word to choose so much discussion seems merely to be two people making statements but no attempt to engage with what the other person is saying.  A bad habit I developed was to call people stupid when they said things which  clearly seemed wrong. But perhaps it is the failure to think it is peoples unwillingness to think pass the first thought. 

An example might clarify what I am trying to say. Governments are fond of trying to change peoples or companies behaviour by taxation. The second question should always be how will the tax be avoided or exploited! Never have I noticed this being discussed but it should be considered as part of the intial thinking.

There has been much discussion of the cuts in the winter fuel payments, let me be clear this was the correct decision. essentially it was increasing the state pension by £300. If you pay your fuel bill monthly the payment can be the same each month so there is no increase in the winter so should I bve paid the £300 in 12 monthly instalments. The policy was badly introduced but also it was a all ore nothing cut. There was no attempt to reduce the amount as the income went up, if you received pension tex credit you got the payment otherwise you did not. If you had £10 more that the linit you lost £300. Such sharp divisions lead to situations which are clearly seen as unfiar.

A similar situation applies to carers allowance, earn £1 more than the limit then you lose all you carers allowance. The system could just reduce the allowance by the amount you earn, or perhspas even 50% so taht the system would not be so draconian. This is just a simple idae which would make the system much more fair and reduce the ridiculous situation where being paid £1 too much can lead to having to repay large sumhs of manet

 Alan 8th June 2025 

     

Democracy as mob rule

   It is sad to see "democracy" being abused by many sides in the political debate. Perhaps it is me being naive but democracy to me only functions efficeints as a means of changing those in power not as a method of making complex decisions. It then becomes arule by the majority, or if you prefer, the mob.
  If I remember once before I blogged on this but it is early in the morning and too tired to check. Democracy, in the form od a simple majority made Northern Ireland a mess because the Protestants always won. Some stability and fairness only came in with a power-sharing agreement.  
  There are two situations now where "democracy" is being used to justify a particular course of action. The first is Brexit where people are arguing we have to accept the majority vote. We had exactly the same vote 40 odd years ago. but that was obviously not binding, although a much bigger support for staying in then. So why is this vote binding? There is an argument that there was a simple and clear choice but there was not. Nobody knows what the consequences of leaving are and nobody knows how hard it will be to reverse the decision. In one sense coming out is easy, we can just say get stuffed to Europe and spend the next 10 years negotiating various deals though as far as trade goes we would revert to basic WTO rules. As  to many other things who knows and in some cases who cares. Probably on any one issue very few but for those few it could be life changing.But a more serious complication is what happens if in 5 years there is a majority who want to go back in! Will we have to start entry negotiations again, will we have yet another referendum. Would UKIP have accepted the decision if is had gone the other way, 16 million vote to leavse and 17 million to stay? Of  course not they would have resolved to fight on and would have found another pretext to campaign again. The only honourable thing to do is to fight for another referendum before we finally leave.
  Next we come to the Labour Party and the claims that Jeremy Corbyn cannot be challenged because he won a clear majority in the election for leader. He has been leader for over 6 months and clearly many people who have to work with him in parliament feel he has failed. Does that mean that they have to support him despite this just because he was elected? If Britain had elected Roy Hodgson as manager of the England football team would it be wrong to have called for him to go just because he had been elected. If the vote of no confidence had been 110-100 there might be an argument for  him staying but to have managed to alienate some many Labour MP's shows disastrous leadership qulities and suggest to me that he would be a disastrous Prime Minister. Whether members of the Labour Party like it or not, I am a member, MP's see much more of him than we do and it would be unwise not to liten to them. I used to work in a University where heads of departments were elected by the faculty in that department. On the whole it worked well because those voting knew the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates at first hand, They did away with it because the system removed power from the Vice-Chancellor, sometimes they voted for someone the VC didn't approve, though the two most notorious examples were very successful heads.
 Democracy should never be used to justify mob rule or a claim to legitmacy that doesn't exist.

Funding political parties

 There is a row going on about the funding of political parties in the UK. Can I make a simple suggestion, political parties my only except donations from individuals. Further only individuals who are on the register of electors in the UK can make such donations.

 Firms and businesses do not have democratic rights and thus should not be allowed to interfere with the democratic process.

delusions of gandeur

   It is a long time since I blogged. This is because nothing seems to change and therefore there is nothing new to say. However reading about the splits in the Labour Party and the Conservative party almost take me back to my youth.  Consider Trident and wars and the fighting within the Labour part party.

  Why do we get so worked up about these issues/ Because we have delusions of grandeur and think it matters what we do. Would the Iraq war been any different if Britain had not get involved. Whether we bomb Syria or not will make absolutely no difference to the outcome. It might give some succour to the USA and the French but for the people of Syria the label on the bombs is irrelevant. Similarly Trident is an irrelevance in terms of world nuclear weapons. I am reminded of Bevan's line about going naked into the conference  chamber, what conference chamber.

 Corbyn and his allies are stuck in the rhetoric of the late fifties and early sixties. He is right but we need a different approach. We need to be more internationalist and try, and it it will not be easy, to move the United Nations so that it becomes more effective. The first step is to remove the permanent members of the security council and their vetoes. I have not heard one British politician making this point, hopefully I have merely missed it. The second step would be a properly trained permanent United nations force. People would join this force, not be seconded at the whim of national governments. The funding would come from a levy on each countries defence spending.

 Neither of these objectives would be easy to achieve but if we want as a Labour Party and as a country to move towards a more peaceful world this is the only way I can see us moving forward. Let Corbyn et al come forward with some genuine new proposals to move us forward and stop arguing about whether we renew Trident, which I am opposed to, which is largely a minor pimple and the backside of a minor country. The most influential country in Europe seems to be Germany, perhaps not having nuclear weapons is relevant.

Now let us turn to the issue that is tearing the Tory apart and hopefully will not tear the Labour Part apart. Whether we remain in the European Union. This again is based on delusion of grandeur that Britain as an individual country is so important that everyone will be knocking on our door as supplicants if we are not part of the European Union. Most of the other countries want us to stay and will bend on some minor issues to help Cameron campaign but do not think the Tory Party will support staying in. Those against staying in somehow think things will get better, I am not sure what things will get better. We will become a supplicant in the antechamber of Europe, much as we seem to be with respect to the United States.

Bankers Bonuses

  This morning on the news there was some good news, The government has just announced that it is giving £3 million to help research on on prosthetics. Trying to improve the feeling in artificial limbs. Obviously this is good and I wish the researchers well. But we should get this in perspective, £3 million sounds a lot of money but it wouldn't by the bonus for the chief executive of HBOS, who has salted it all away in some offshore fund.

  How can a banker be worth more that serious research into helping people. At the sort of rewards that bankers are given, it would be hard to use the word earn, they must be classified as leeches on society. How have we allowed our society to drift into this situation? Are we all sleep walking into a nightmare without realising it? I am not sure I know the answer but my suspicion is that those with excessive amounts of money can spend a lot of it buying propaganda to tell us that they are need it and it would all be a disaster if they didn't get it.

 We have to believe that  advertising and propaganda work as most firms spend a lot of money. Once the rich are rich it is easy to stay rich. If you get a £5 million bonus and waste half of it you are still rich.