OK, let's Talk

Inspired by: BBC article on the St Paul's protest

Reading on the BBC website today about the occupation of St Paul’s by the, apparently peaceful, protesters at the way our country is being run for the benefit of a few rather than that of the many, it seems time to make my own statement.

I note with relief that the effect it is having is to get people talking about the problem rather than starting more fires in the London streets. And this is a good thing. It is about time this was discussed in a constructive fashion. The time for finger pointing and party politics is past, and we need to find ways of dealing with the situation locally, nationally and globally.

In fact the time passed sometime around the turn of this century when the economic bubbles kept forming and popping. When the governments first realised that, to keep people voting for them they had to promise things they couldn’t deliver. When the final pieces of the family silver were sold off by our government to pay for these promises, and they had to fall back fully on the private sector to bail them out, which they did by encouraging businesses to show bigger and bigger profits that were lapped up by the hedge funds and pension funds on promises of yet further wealth for the masses.

I remember thinking at the time; “how can this work, where is all the money coming from?” But I had no economic qualifications and was bad at writing my thoughts down and who would listen anyway? Besides, this was such an obvious question that surely those in the know were asking it too. Well, maybe they were, but it seems as if vested interest was skewing the answers. It turns out that my question was a pertinent one. I wish I had asked it out loud at the time.

Anyway, here we are, in a pretty awkward situation which appears to have no solution. This is, of course a false impression. There is clearly at least one solution – that of economic meltdown and the slow rebuilding of confidence and wealth. I don’t like that solution, partly because I don’t think we will learn anything new that way, but mostly because it will be extremely unpleasant for very many people (including me) and there is no guarantee that the final result will be a place where any of us would want to live.

So, let’s not blame, let’s not get angry, let’s not despair. Let’s just see what we can do.

Legislation is important. But it needs to be the kind that will work and build confidence and not a rushed stop-gap measure. This really does need to be talked through in detail and this will take time. But we don’t have to wait for legislation. We can start now by engaging the businesses, in particular the finance sector and the large funds, to start to make a difference voluntarily. Without the backing legislation in place, this means that it needs to be somewhat in their interest to make such a difference. For this, I am sure that a proper public awareness campaign of the sort of things that will work in everyone’s favour will help nudge businesses in the right direction.

So, discussion is important too. But this discussion must not be restricted to the economists, businessmen and politicians. We need articulate people, of good temper, from the rest of society to join in as well. And not just to be consulted, but intimately involved in all the committees and other meetings at all times. We need the results of those discussions to be as public as possible so everyone can see that they are directed towards a solution for everyone. This is not about politics or vested interests, but about what can and must do to restore the faith of the masses.

For the record, here are a few ideas that we might start with from a non-economist. I am by no means certain that they will make the required difference, but they seem to be pointing in the right direction and could at least form the basis of some discussion.

The customer is the first priority of a business.

Shareholders need to learn to take second place. In theory they are low down the pecking order in a case of bankruptcy, so I would guess that the original intention was that they should not be able to turn the direction of a business from its core competency to that of making money for the shareholders. But in reality, since they ultimately own the businesses, they can and often do force a business to concentrate more on paying good dividends and keeping their share prices going up than on what their customers actually want. This can only be bad in the long run.

We need to be creating things that are tangible, not ephemeral

The allure of selling serivces and other intangible things is that the raw materials are cheap. But, in the end, what creates wealth is things. If there is nothing tangible to show for our work there is very little to fall back on when things go badly. The trend of cutting back on manufacturing over recent decades needs to be questioned and reversed by some means. I know materials are expensive and manufacturing traditionally works because the manpower requirement is relatively cheap, but some radical thinking in this regard needs to be done. If the world goes sour, we need some real things that we can call our own.

A business without any customers is not a business

There is a trend to invent various businesses whose only purpose is to satisfy some specific or regulatory need for the people who created the business. These are the so-called ‘special purpose vehicles’ (SPVs).  Any attempt to create an SPV should be looked into rather thoroughly by regulating authorities and by the businesses themselves to find out what they are really doing to the company and if they are distorting its books in any way. Companies should strive to simplify their structure in this regard and operate with the minimum number of these vehicles. If a company structure doesn’t fit on to one side of an A5 sheet of paper, people should ask why.

Perhaps mergers should be discouraged for now

Not stopped altogether, but the motives should be understood thoroughly and approved before allowing them.  What we need more of is competition. This is the one of the few incentives that companies have to keep the customer at the forefront of their daily business. Mergers can be used to inhibit competition. As far as the customer is concerned, lots of smaller businesses should be a better deal than a few mega-businesses. Also, as long as the shareholders allow a business to put their customers first, a customer centred approach need not necessarily cut into the company’s finances. There are surely more ways to attract customers than simply having the lowest prices. Let’s get inventive here.

We need small businesses

Small businesses are good for the economy. They have to be – they create jobs and they have to serve their customers well or they don’t survive very long. We need to make it less scary to start up a business. There have to be more ways than venture capital, prohibitive loans and putting your house at risk. Maybe banks can start up business savings packages in the way that we used to save up for that deposit on our first home. Save now to be able to start your business at favourable rates in 5 years’ time.

We need a gesture of faith

Company directors and the wealthy need to indicate that they are with us in this situation. No amount of quoting numbers at us will dispel the feeling that they have let us all down badly. Even if a director’s pay is a fraction of a per cent of the company’s expenses it merely seems to most of us that they don’t care to help as long as they can cream off enough of the company funds to make their lives easier. In most cases, even if the company collapses, they will be alright. The same cannot be said for all the other employees. Maybe, if, instead of taking a bonus, that same money was paid into some employee support fund, it would show that they care. And who wouldn’t want to work for an employer who cares for its employees? I am sure that an inventive board could think of additional ways to show their solidarity with their workforce.

The public also needs to be responsible

Yes, we benefitted from the bubbles as well. There was high employment and cheap gadgets. There were also suspiciously cheap loans. We had the ability to put our hands on more money than many of us would have earned in a lifetime. We should have asked how this was happening. I suppose we didn’t because we liked it and because we were assured by the governments and financial institutions that it was due to brilliant and innovative strategies and that there were sufficient and rigorous controls on what was being done. Ha ha.

As the majority shareholders in our world, we owe it to ourselves to look more closely at any miracle that comes along from now and ask what the true cost might be. We should not buy everything simply because we are told we want it and should conduct our financial transactions with a view to being able to afford what we buy.

Close the poverty gap

This is hard on those with a low income. Somehow we need to make it easier to move both up and down the social ladder. This means more opportunity for the less well-off and less fear of moving down the ladder for those with money now. There is, after all, only a finite amount of wealth. Most of the apparent growth in the available wealth has been to make the numbers bigger, but that doesn’t always mean you can buy more. If someone gains wealth someone else is certainly losing it. The more we close the gap, the more manageable and bearable this fact will be. However, I don't think there is any magic wand. Because wealth is finite, we all need to be prepared to donate to this cause.

In conclusion (for now)

These are just ideas and points for discussion. I don’t know if any of them are new. What is important here is that those with the expert qualifications clearly need some new ideas and those will not necessarily come from within their ranks, nor should they. Let’s not be angry at them, they are doing their best and may well come up with the working solutions. But let’s join in the debate too without shame and without fear of being called stupid. Who knows what chance remark will be the seed to our renewed and prolonged stability?

The Bloggy, Bloggy Me

So, let me see now...

So far we have an introductory paragraph, an admonition for everyone in the world to try harder to be nice, an excuse for not writing anything much and a few moans about being tired and cooking the right food. Clearly, the true Bloggy Me has yet to crystalise from my disorganised brain.

When I originally intended to start writing things (a long time ago) the plan was to write a new article each day that was inspired by a previous article or by some current event that took my fancy. That seems a good plan and better than randomly taking a snapshot of my mood each day. So, as a start let me lay down a bit about who I am, or at least what interests me.

In rough order of importance, what grabs my attention consists of:

1. Music (mostly classical)
2. Games (mostly board games, but others also get a look in)
3. Me
4. Maths
5. Physics
6. Other sciency things
7. Books (a large proportion of which are science fiction)

That should be enough to get started with. Let the associations begin.

But to begin with, let me see if I can stop the site giving my time of posting as if I lived on the West coast of Ameirca instead of the UK.

EDIT: Success! At least on getting the right time stamp.

Sleep, sleep, sleep

Sad to say, I did not cook the fish sauce as promised yesterday. Instead I spent most of the day asleep.

Again.

In the end I survived on some of the leftover curry I cooked a couple of days ago and some apple confection my wife made, which was delicious. The fish is in the fridge defrosting ready for its ordeal tomorrow.

I did manage to get out of the house for a bit though so that was one good thing.

I'm feeling OK right now, but it is 12:30am and not really that much left of the day. Ho hum.

Onwards to tomorrow.

Soy Sauce Remedy (update)

For those out ther who are chewing their nails wondering if I managed to cook anything sensible today, you can relax a bit, for I can proudly reveal that I did just that.

It was a fine lentil soup (well my wife said it was...) which, despite the name is not vegetarian. It is a sort of vegetable soup with lots of lentils and a smoked pork sausage which gives it most of its flavour. Yes, OK, I confess that a smoked pork sausage does not count a fresh ingredient, particularly because it has preservatives in it, but it is vital to the flavour of the finished product. I should probably find an alternative though.

There is plenty left so we can have some more tomorrow for a snack (with a dash of soy sauce), while I cook my fish sauce - in preparation for lunchtimes next week when I am back at work. I am fortunate in that I can get home for lunch, but most of the cooking needs to have been done in advance otherwise it all takes too long.

This is all getting terribly incoherent and burbly. Stop now before it gets any worse.

The Soy Sauce Remedy

My body seems to be in some sort of chemical nightmare state, and has been for many years. I can't remember the last time I felt completely rested and fully in touch with the world for longer than a few hours.

I don't take drugs, and I hardly drink. Whenever I mention this to a doctor they instantly test me for diabetes with univarsally negative reults (i.e. I am not diabetic). So I have been at a bit of a loss as to what can be done about it.

It is almost certainly something to do with food intake. If I take care only to cook my own food with fresh ingrediants, and keep this up, things are noticeably better after a few days. But, despite my best efforts, I don't ever seem to keep it up for more than a couple of weeks before I 'run out of time' to cook things. Then, once I start on prepared foods, it all goes down hill again. Because of the constant tiredness and disorientation, I am eating more than I ought to in an effort to give my body the chemicals it needs to function properly - though my weight is stable (but still too high).

Well, I put 'run out of time' in inverted commas because I am sure I could find to time to cook every day, but I end up choosing not to. Right now, I am at the start of a session to cook again so hopefully things will get better. We shall see. The goal is to keep this up for a prolonged period and see how much difference it makes. This will definitely cut into my 'time-wasting' time as I will need that to prepare the food.

So the goals are:

1. Stop wasting so much time.
2. Cook good food
3. Get better.

"But what", you say, "does all this have to do with soy sauce?".

Well, for some reason, it seems to help. A lot. When I am feeling clumsy and out of touch with the world, a small amount of soy sauce (specifically LIGHT soy sauce) with my food has a pretty immediate effect in getting my body parts working in synchronisation again and getting me to feel less out of phase with everything. This may all be complete bunkum, of course, and the efficacy entirely in my mind, but I'm going to keep going with it because, for me, it makes a big difference.

Must... Write... Something...

It strikes me that if this is to evolve beyond a mildly condescending set of admonitory posts, I need to be writing on a wider spectrum of topics than names and being nice. Trouble is, I know intimately what writer's block means having been unable to write much at all for these past many years. It's not about not knowing what to say exactly, rather it's about having too much I want to say and when I start trying to put it down, it all tries to come out in a tangled blob and I end up fighting a desperate battle to ogranise it into something coherent - which is a futile effort, because it just isn't.

Today, for instance, while mulling over what to write I came up with titles like 'Hands off my Chips' (a discussion about the roles of giving and taking in our soeciety, using the metaphor of sharing a portion of chips), 'Sport for Everyone Else' (a homorous description of sitting in a restaurant surrounded by work colleagues mad on sport, when I am not), 'Pension Trouble' (an epistle explaining how difficult it is to do long-term financial planning in a political environment that demands short-term solutions) and 'Mad marsupials' (a commentary on some of the oddities of Australian wildlife).

The articles are all in my head. Every word. But they won't come out separately. They will insist on disgorging themselves into the same essay. So if it ever does get written, it will have to be called 'Hands off my Pension, you Sporty Wombat' and will probably end up being about long term plans for breeding racing wombats on a pension, while snaffling bar snacks to keep alive.

Better luck tomorrow.

World Peace

As if we could.

Well, maybe we can. We can’t do it yet because there is no real will to do so, but, if we can manufacture the will, we can surely achieve something in that direction.

Right now, we appear to be an angry world. The basic news is mostly about protests incorporating varying degrees of fatality. In extreme cases people all over the world are blowing themselves up to make a point, while trying to kill as many other innocent people along with them as they can. The whole show doesn’t make any of us feel comfortable.

An obvious question to ask is ‘why can’t we all be friendly and just get along with one another? The trouble is, we know the answer. We are good at being angry. We are good at finding fault. Feeling that you have the moral high ground is such a nice sensation and it appears to give us  leave to commit any degree of hurt on those we are accusing of occupying the lower ground. This is Righteous Indignation and fuels much of the cruelty we observe in the world.

With the modern mechanisms of disseminating information so quickly and so selectively, we have created a paradise for two particular people-types. Those that enjoy causing alarm, anger or hurt in others, and those who get high on being angry, alarmed or hurt. The two types can both exist within the same personality, but quite often people are one or the other. And before we all get self-righteous and count ourselves lucky that we are not one of them, think of the times that you have wished to hurt some person or group of people simply because you have been angry or just got the wrong end of the stick. Think of those who recently called for the families of the UK rioters to lose their benefits. That is a Righteously Indignant response. It’s a revenge response. It can’t make anything any better. It is something people suggested because they were angry and thought they were morally better than the offenders. Actually, the real difference between most of us and the truly harmful in the world is that we just think about these things, we don’t carry them through. 

So how can we have world peace? Well, I don’t know that, but I do know a few places we could start.

First, with the semantics (this particular trick only works for the English speaking countries, other language speakers need to think of a similar redefinition where appropriate). We will choose to re-express Righteous Indignation as Destructive Indignation. Then, armed with our new definition, we will go out and about looking for it in ourselves and others. When we find it, we quietly inform ourselves: “Ah, that is Destructive Indignation, something I am trying to have none of.” (Take care at this point not to adopt a moral-high-ground position)

A second thing we can all do is look at humanity and accept what it is and what it is capable of. Yes, we do get angry and we do have a tendency to hit out when it happens – there is probably a very good evolutionary reason for us to have this behaviour wired in.  Then we need to add the rider: “And now it is not good enough; we need to get better at some things; we need to move ourselves on.”

Most importantly, this is not about governments or human rights movements haranguing us or forcing us to improve our ways. It is about each of us, individually, deciding to make the difference.

A Name

I have been searching for an enticing nom de blog for a while now, and, hopefully, have hit upon a name that is completely unused according to Google (well, it is used a bit, but by me, so it doesn't count). Given that I do a lot of role-playing-type fantasy gaming, I end up making up a lot of names and you'ld think that some of them would be original. But not so. Most of the names I conjure out of thin air, end up being perfectly common words in some language that I have never spoken. Which is the joy of a British education. But, now, I do believe that I might have found a 'nom' which, possibly, perfectly sums up what I might stand for, if such could be summed. Hooray. Here I am.