Category: General

Warning! This is a cricketing blog so please ignore it if that is not your ‘scene’.

We all know, of course, that the DT is  not as good as it was. I first started reading it in the days when Slightly Grumpy’s dad, TE Utley, was a leader writer. The ‘Peter Simple’ column was unmissable every day and Andrew Alexander’s Parliamentary sketches were brilliant. Every day or so, you were privileged to read the obituary of some ordinary individual who had performed extraordinary feats of valour in their lifetime. ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven’ as the boy Wordsworth opined. Continue reading “In Praise of the ‘Daily Telegraph’”

“The only thing that really saddens me over my demise is that I shall not be here to read the nonsense that will be written about me and my works and my motives. There will be books proving conclusively that I was homosexual and books proving equally conclusively that I was not. There will be detailed and inaccurate analyses of my motives for writing this or that and of my character. There will be lists of apocryphal jokes I never made and gleeful misquotations of words I never said. What a pity I shan’t be here to enjoy them!”

Goodnight everyone, sleep well.

I see that the head of the National Audit Office has refused to sign off the House of Commons accounts because there is insufficient evidence to support exependiture of around £14m. Will they never learn?

These are some pictures of  an accident on St Johns Bridge on Thursday.

Continue reading “White Paint”

Assange is not a whistleblower and I wish people would stop dignifying what he has done with that sobriquet. A whistleblower is someone who works for, or with an organisation, discovers some wrongdoing, or apparent wrongdoing, and makes it known in a way appropriate to the alleged wrongdoing, and the consequences of its exposure. Most developed countries now have specific laws to protect such people and all reputable companies and organisations have Legal/HR/Security policies which both encourage and protect whistleblowers in the interests of good corporate governance – and the avoidance of severe legal penalties. So?

Donovan – The Universal Soldier

Recent reports indicate that the US government is preparing to put Julian Assange on trial in the US on espionage charges. Recently leaked photos have shown the delicate care with which the US government is proceeding.

I didn’t realise you were an Economic Historian. You might find this interesting, if you haven’t seen it already:

200 Years of Progress. (Illustrated in four minutes.)

I heard this morning that the British government plans to subsidise the purchase of electric cars, which cost far more than the petrol driven kind. This is simply the latest example of the state’s role in economic and technological development, a role denied by those who call for minimal government interference in the economy. Though this action may be anathema to believers in free-market capitalism, history shows us that it has been the norm in all the major economies. In truth, market forces only play a part, and often a bit part, in technological development. However, market forces play a major part in the West in losing the technological capacity once developed. American companies in particular have been guilty of outsourcing their core competencies on cost grounds, to the extent that the American military is now dependent on foreign producers for important systems.

Allow me to provide a simple case study of the process.

A government decides that it requires the development of X high-tech system. The contract to develop X is given to company A.

Company A approaches research establishment B, which is publicly funded, in part at least. The company and research establishment jointly come up with the answers, and company A produces the required system.

Company A then gains government agreement to the commercial application of the technology, and develops a product based on the technology. That technological capacity has now become a core competency, or part of one, for company A, and a range of products may emerge from it.

Some way down the road, company A decides that domestic production is expensive, and production is outsourced abroad.

A little further down the road, company A decided that continuing research and development associated with these products is better done alongside their production, and that R&D becomes outsourced.

The end of the road approaches.

This has happened in America. It is a process that post-war Japan rejected and became the world’s second biggest economy as a result. Pursue Thatcherite economics if you must, but don’t whinge about the outcome.

Try saying, ‘And it will be Amunugama Rajapakse Rajakaruna Abeykoon Panditha Wasalamudiyanse Ralahamilage Rajitha Krishantha Bandara Amunugama from the gasworks end.

It’s real.