Thanks to the wrong sort of jetstream- that's the summer version flowing to the south of the UK rather than the north,- the country and other parts of northern Europe have continued to enjoy a summer of records,- the wettest, greyest, coldest for many decades. The national spirit could certainly do with a lift but this definately isn't it. What's worse, the forecasters are beginning to make precautionary pessimistic noises about August ,-and that means the OLYMPICS (if we aren't breaching copyright by mentioning the word. If we are, sorry, convert it to "THE EVENT") .We have carefully built the main stadia, waiting areas, Q ing areas and almost everywhere ,apart from the big big 1,500 seater McDonalds, with no roofs. Never will so many unwillingly purchased big Macs with fries have been eaten as slowly as "guests" spin out the undercover time their purchases have bought. Fair risk you might think, it's summer after all. We did the same for the British farewell part of the Hong Kong handover pre-ceremonies in July 1997 . This led to a right royal soaking for everyone from Prince Charles downwards and from that we discovered that massed umbrellas don't hack it. In fact , thanks to a fascinating dynamic, they guarantee not a steady drizzle down the back of the assembled necks and the front of assembled dresses but real all-penetrating deluges delivered at irregular but ever more frequent intervals. We don't learn though. We can only recommend to our many guests that to deal with the situation they adopt that weary British expression " Mustn't grumble" as their Olympic experience, along with the McD's fries, descends into a soggy nightmare.
Other things though have been flitting across our field of view. The banking fraternity has been at it again,- or was in 2008. This time they stand accused of chummily rigging the Libor short term inter-bank interest rates and presumably not to the customers' advantage. Cosy emails are said to flitted across desks, thanking colleagues in other banks for their help and promising lots of free coffees , no doubt exchangeable for Bollingers, for the nod or wink. Chief baddy in the dock this time was Barclays and it's flamboyant leader Bob Diamond (see previous Twigaview). He went down to face a group of investigating MPs at Westminster, irritatingly patronised them all, but was certainly not about to say "Yup, I dunnit. I'll go". It was others shortly afterwards declared " You dunnit, you're going". The whole thing has caused much excitement in the Westminster village/fourth form, the highlight being an Osborne/Balls front bench slugfest. All entertaining stuff and enough to make ever polite Scandinavian MPs and ever passive (Farage excepted )MEPs cringe for its lack of quiet finesse.
Some sensible things have happened though. Defence Minister Philip Hammond's undertaking to slim the British Army down from around 120,000 to 80,000 makes good sense despite all the sensitivities about cap badges, past glories, victories, valiant defeats and proud but now antiquated divisions and loyalties. Some brutal cuts have been imposed in the Ministry Defence and not all of them wonderful or even immediately sensible. They have been necessary though to jolt the Ministry and the armed forces leadership (still some donkeys about just as a hundred years ago) , into new ways of doing things. The need for a new cost effectiveness and post WW 2 ways of fighting are obvious. Hi tech weaponry, sophisticated surveillance systems communications and pilotless aircraft are amongst the game changers .The structure and numbers deployed in more traditional roles have been slow to adapt so there is no alternative now but to force the pace and achieve a sharp focus on how to accomplish the tasks with less money, less manpower but higher technology and cleverer project definition and negotiating/contracting/purchasing skills to make sure that now a cent is wasted.
Over in the Home Office there have been some more bad days. Track has been lost of 120,000 people who should have left the UK and apparently haven't, though they may have. That sounds like an underestimate. There is no way of knowing. Why? Very simply , John Major's government abolished outbound immigration checks. Every other country or group of countries (eg the EU Shengen area) in the world counts non nationals in and then counts them out. This way they have a record of for how long all are admitted and, usually computer based, systems flag up who hasn't left when they should. The arm of the law goes after them and does the job. The UK though has no idea who has left and when. At one time there was talk of outbound checks being restored by 2012 but there is no sign of this and no additional manpower appears to have been recruited to do them. The Conservatives created this situation. Labour the did nothing about it for 13 years and now the Conservatives again, hoisted by one size fits all public sector manpower cuts, appear unable to cut through the confusion and say " Just do it".
On the roads it has been revealed that our crumbling infrastructure is indeed crumbling. The knackered concrete of the M4 flyovers linking the west and Heathrow Airport with the centre of London has again been found to have worrying cracks and has immediately been closed again in the hopes that at least temporary repairs may be possible before, yes, the Olympics. The world's busiest international airport is thereby devoid of its direct road route into town. The government is said to be looking for "shovel ready " infrastructure projects to help kickstart the economy. The west London overhead sections of the M4 need a complete rebuild and could even be widened at the same time.There are few similar projects available. Most take years of planning applications, enquiries and appeals before it's even possible to buy a shovel. Heres's a big one ready to go. It could probably get away without planning approvals as technically it is just a massive repair. Again an opportunity for "Just do it" . Chances? Such urgency is not British and doubtless a line of Sir Humphreys await with extended feet.
Elsewhere on the transport infrastructure scene, the largely Chiltern based anti-High Speed (railway) lobby have been delighted to hear that the passenger forcasts for HS 1 (the link between the Channel Tunnel and St Pancras ) were highly overoptimistic and the line's debt will increase by over £4 bn by 2020. They are very much in "Told you so mode" and back to shouting "There is no business case for HS2". Wrong- there is of course a very good one. Forget some of the inept calculations about the economics of working time saved en route. The simple facts are that we need to build for the 21st century, we have an expanding population and economy, rail track capacity to "the north" will be full by 2020, we need to separate long distance express services from short haul, slower moving commuter trains and even slower but also increasing freight trains , all of which get in each others' way. Adding tracks to additional lines means that there are huge , efficiency draining, complications so that solution which is often claimed to be easy is impractical. Lastly those who confuse this project with the need for additional Heathrow runways or a new airport are mistaken. The two projects are entirely separate and neither removes the need for the other.
Those were some of the features of another rain sodden British summer week. There will be more in the next seven days.
Other things though have been flitting across our field of view. The banking fraternity has been at it again,- or was in 2008. This time they stand accused of chummily rigging the Libor short term inter-bank interest rates and presumably not to the customers' advantage. Cosy emails are said to flitted across desks, thanking colleagues in other banks for their help and promising lots of free coffees , no doubt exchangeable for Bollingers, for the nod or wink. Chief baddy in the dock this time was Barclays and it's flamboyant leader Bob Diamond (see previous Twigaview). He went down to face a group of investigating MPs at Westminster, irritatingly patronised them all, but was certainly not about to say "Yup, I dunnit. I'll go". It was others shortly afterwards declared " You dunnit, you're going". The whole thing has caused much excitement in the Westminster village/fourth form, the highlight being an Osborne/Balls front bench slugfest. All entertaining stuff and enough to make ever polite Scandinavian MPs and ever passive (Farage excepted )MEPs cringe for its lack of quiet finesse.
Some sensible things have happened though. Defence Minister Philip Hammond's undertaking to slim the British Army down from around 120,000 to 80,000 makes good sense despite all the sensitivities about cap badges, past glories, victories, valiant defeats and proud but now antiquated divisions and loyalties. Some brutal cuts have been imposed in the Ministry Defence and not all of them wonderful or even immediately sensible. They have been necessary though to jolt the Ministry and the armed forces leadership (still some donkeys about just as a hundred years ago) , into new ways of doing things. The need for a new cost effectiveness and post WW 2 ways of fighting are obvious. Hi tech weaponry, sophisticated surveillance systems communications and pilotless aircraft are amongst the game changers .The structure and numbers deployed in more traditional roles have been slow to adapt so there is no alternative now but to force the pace and achieve a sharp focus on how to accomplish the tasks with less money, less manpower but higher technology and cleverer project definition and negotiating/contracting/purchasing skills to make sure that now a cent is wasted.
Over in the Home Office there have been some more bad days. Track has been lost of 120,000 people who should have left the UK and apparently haven't, though they may have. That sounds like an underestimate. There is no way of knowing. Why? Very simply , John Major's government abolished outbound immigration checks. Every other country or group of countries (eg the EU Shengen area) in the world counts non nationals in and then counts them out. This way they have a record of for how long all are admitted and, usually computer based, systems flag up who hasn't left when they should. The arm of the law goes after them and does the job. The UK though has no idea who has left and when. At one time there was talk of outbound checks being restored by 2012 but there is no sign of this and no additional manpower appears to have been recruited to do them. The Conservatives created this situation. Labour the did nothing about it for 13 years and now the Conservatives again, hoisted by one size fits all public sector manpower cuts, appear unable to cut through the confusion and say " Just do it".
On the roads it has been revealed that our crumbling infrastructure is indeed crumbling. The knackered concrete of the M4 flyovers linking the west and Heathrow Airport with the centre of London has again been found to have worrying cracks and has immediately been closed again in the hopes that at least temporary repairs may be possible before, yes, the Olympics. The world's busiest international airport is thereby devoid of its direct road route into town. The government is said to be looking for "shovel ready " infrastructure projects to help kickstart the economy. The west London overhead sections of the M4 need a complete rebuild and could even be widened at the same time.There are few similar projects available. Most take years of planning applications, enquiries and appeals before it's even possible to buy a shovel. Heres's a big one ready to go. It could probably get away without planning approvals as technically it is just a massive repair. Again an opportunity for "Just do it" . Chances? Such urgency is not British and doubtless a line of Sir Humphreys await with extended feet.
Elsewhere on the transport infrastructure scene, the largely Chiltern based anti-High Speed (railway) lobby have been delighted to hear that the passenger forcasts for HS 1 (the link between the Channel Tunnel and St Pancras ) were highly overoptimistic and the line's debt will increase by over £4 bn by 2020. They are very much in "Told you so mode" and back to shouting "There is no business case for HS2". Wrong- there is of course a very good one. Forget some of the inept calculations about the economics of working time saved en route. The simple facts are that we need to build for the 21st century, we have an expanding population and economy, rail track capacity to "the north" will be full by 2020, we need to separate long distance express services from short haul, slower moving commuter trains and even slower but also increasing freight trains , all of which get in each others' way. Adding tracks to additional lines means that there are huge , efficiency draining, complications so that solution which is often claimed to be easy is impractical. Lastly those who confuse this project with the need for additional Heathrow runways or a new airport are mistaken. The two projects are entirely separate and neither removes the need for the other.
Those were some of the features of another rain sodden British summer week. There will be more in the next seven days.
