that Column

Viglen's Bordon Tkachuk Embarrasses Himself on Apprentice 'Interviews' - Sugar may tell him "You're Fired", say sources

2010-12-16T00:32:00.002Z

On BBC 1's The Apprentice tonight, millions heard one of Lord Sugar's senior lieutenants embarrass himself.

Doing what ?   exposing his clear lack of knowledge of I.T. terminology...   not such an issue you might think, except the embearrassed head-honcho in question was none other than Bordon Tkachuk, CEO of Viglen Computers.

While grilling the apprentice candidate-you-loved-to-hate Stuart Baggs,   Tkachuk was clearly heard to refer to the term "ISP" (Internet Service Provider) by saying "....I know what ISP is - Internet Service Protocol " and talked of it allowing "....internet connection .. over Bandwidth (sic)".

This makes about as much sense as a plumber telling you he's going to install a gruntle-nirgle under your sink. The man plainly knows nothing at all about I.T. in detail - tens of thousands of IT professionals jumped on Twitter as soon as he said it, and started shooting from the hip:   " #WhatisanISP ?   Internet Sugar-Panderer ?   Internet Service Plonker ? ".

None of this would matter of course if he hadn't been arguing hammer and tongs with Stuart Baggs about whether he (Baggs) really owned a telecoms company: Tkachuk insisted he didn't - Baggs (correctly) said he did, and that he offered telecoms services to customers on his home island the Isle of Man.   Bagg's company, Bluewave, offers wireless hotspots and has a IP microwave link to the mainland to provide IP datacomms to businesses in the island.   That's definitely "telecoms" to anyone in the business: but plainly Bordon Tkachuk is not in the IT business - though he might screw a few computers together now and then.

This column cordially invites Bordon Tkachuk or Lord Alan Sugar to issue an open letter of apology to Stuart Baggs for treating him so badly.    Perhaps Bordon might like to hire Stuart as an I.T. adviser ?

A Cataclysmic Foul-Up of a Policy Announcement

2010-11-08T12:19:00.002Z

It's perhaps not so unusual for a new government to make a cataclysmic balls-up of an item of policy.   Or, occasionally, a cataclysmic balls-up of an item of PR.    But both, on the same weekend, on the same subject, is really pushing the boat out.

I'm not sure who is formally considered to be in charge of government PR, but whoever it is needs to be spending more time with his family. Or perhaps spending more time with a beginner's book on PR.     "...Forcing people to work... for nothing.." ?      Oh, well done.   What a finely-crafted image that is.

Poor old Danny Alexander on the World This Weekend sounded like a deputy head prefect trying to explain a new sanction against fourth formers caught smoking.     And 'sanction' - amazingly - was the word he allowed himself to use: thus opening the door for every left-winger to describe it as "forced work" and elicit all the chain-gang imagery which the redtops will revel in.     What on earth is Iain Duncan-Smith thinking in allowing this garbled, incompetent version (of his presumably originally sensible policy) to get out ?     Of course it is sensible to nudge the work-shy back to work - and let's not pretend the numbers of those are small, please - but for goodness sake, the message could be so much better put, than this unbelievable, ham-fisted mess.

The form of words needed for this policy is surely that, after a generous period of providing unemployment benefit for those fit and able and out of work to look for work full-time, we should simply invite people in order to still benefit from that same support and help, to contribute to earning the money they receive, by working for the state for some of the week (and continuing to look for better paid work the rest of the week).    All that needs doing, is to invite people to continue their receipt of benefit by working for the state, at the minumum wage. So £65 earned is worth about 11 hours a week (say three mornings).   That will still leave them plenty of time for job applications and it will get them out in the fresh air, in company with others and with the satisfaction of contributing something.

Gulf Oil Leak... Not So Dramatic After All

2010-08-05T14:40:00.002Z

So yesterday we hear from no less than the U.S Government, that the oil spill in the Gulf is... 75% cleared up already. And despite all the wailings and gnashings of teeth only a month or so ago, about the enviroment being "ruined for decades to come" and "the worst ecological disaster ever to hit America" and such hysterics, we hear that the actual amount of oil leaked was about 5 million barrels, or 200 million gallons.

And what is the sea volume of the Gulf itself ?      Well.... actually it's 693 Quadrillion gallons..   er..yes, that's 693 million-billion gallons... or if you prefer, 693 thousand-trillion gallons..... or just plain old 693,000,000,000,000,000 gallons (as compared with 200,000,000 gallons of oil).

Rather a lot less noughts in the latter figure. In fact, scaling the Gulf to an Olympic-sized swimming pool, this is like tipping just about one cupful of oil, into the deep end.    Not quite so devastating as earlier implied.

More importantly than the bald figures, what is crucially different about the Deepwater Horizon spill is that it leaked from more than a mile down in the ocean, rather than on the surface, which is where most spills occur - when tankers break up or hit reefs.    In the many major oil tanker disaters, like the Prince William sound spill of years ago, the oil was released right at the surface in those cases - so it ALL floated on top, causing great thick surface slicks which sloshed over huge areas of shoreline, choking and killing creatures in the tens of thousands.

But down in the Gulf, most of the oil has been streaming out at huge depth, drifting away in every direction as it slowly surfaced: so it has been truly distributed through quite a lot of that vast 693 Quadrillion gallons.   Add to that the fact that it is warm, and the oil light, it is evaporating and being consumed by ocean organisms massively faster than in the cold north of Prince William sound.

Perhaps the earth won't crack in two then.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/science/earth/04oil.html

A Letter to the Times and Sunday Times on their New 'PayWall'

2010-07-05T12:10:00.001Z

I emailed the papers the other day after the new (mad) regime was announced. I doubt anyone sensible will reply....

Hello Times and Sunday Times online Marketing Dept

Constructive Feedback on your new Subscription Scheme (and I why I will only join after you alter it....)

Who am I ?    I'm a regular, enthusiastic reader of the Sunday Times and (less frequently) the Times in paper format. I have been reading your papers for 40 years.      I am also a web-cognisant businessperson: I own several businesses in the IT sector and work in web-specific technologies so I am aware of the technical as well as commercial issues.

I'm sorry to say it but you have missed a very important point, in setting your present pricing scheme.

I might pay £2 a week -   but NOT in the form you're currently promoting - let me explain why.

1. When I buy a broadsheet, I buy it for a specific experience. It is to sit down with a whole newspaper, and luxuriate, in having the whole paper to pick amongst and choose from, over a period.   That period might last several days, even a week - but the reading has a minimum period too - any broadsheet buyer wants to sit down over a coffee and spend a minimum of 20 or 30 or 40 minutes in the sheer pleasure of reading, just to get started.    SO - when I do that, I don't mind paying £2 for that much enjoyment: the coffee I buy to go with it will cost at least that much.

2. However, when I read online, it is a completely different experience, and a different mode of reading. I can still read for pure pleasure: but never in the same way as with a physical broadsheet.   I, and a million people like me, am more likely to 'dip in' for single articles to get our updates in smaller snippets.    I'm also much more likely to arrive there from an aggreator link (NewsNow being my starting point most mornings) - impossible too if your 'paywall' blocks them   -   or I'm likely to go electively and search, to catch up on a specific story.

This being so, I and readers like me are reading much more incrementally: small fragments, not the 'big swig' of reading that the real paper gives.

3. So - CRUCIALLY: I DO NOT MIND PAYING for that incremental reading: I don't even mind putting my money on a credit with you:   but I want to SPEND the money, incrementally - same way as I read.     That means micropayments, not flat subscriptions.

I would be perfectly happy to put £10 on credit with my 'Times Account' :   but I don't want to be told it has 'expired' because I've been away.   If I've not read, then I've not spent:   a flat subscription is you taking my money when I'm not looking.   Micropayment (pence per article charged from pre-credit at the moment of opening) is spending electively.

4. MICROPAYMENT.   Think about it: there are lots of models of Micropayment already proven working.   Anyone with a Pay As You Go phone ( a massive acknowledged commercial sucess as a charging model) is using micropayment: they don't get charged when they don't make calls: they pay WHEN they make calls.    Exactly the same with pre-credit VOIP telephone accounts: we put credit up ahead for the next few months use, but only spend the money when we make calls: businesses all over the world now use VOIP instead of legacy telephones and they all pay like this.

I do hope you see the light.   Else no-one will read your columnists ever again.    The site does seem 'dark'.   Whatever will Jeremy Clarkson do if he thinks no-one is listening ?

CHARGE ME UP FRONT, but let me spend on a per-article (repeat-read allowed once paid) basis, and I'll join tomorrow.    So - not till you institute micropayments.

No reason not to really:   why not just offer both options ?

Good luck
ThatColumn

Are Peter Oborne and Peter Hitchens in fact the same person ?

2010-05-15T10:42:00.003Z

Well any reader of their rants this week might think so ... both growling and grumbling and groaning on, about how terrible it is that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have formed a coalition, and what dreadful moral failures the various participants are to do so, and both of them full of self-righteous certainty that they predicted the whole thing.

Peter H applies a lot of "... and then add the number you first thought of.." arithmetic to assure us that Labour has cost us £2,000,000,000,000. Yes Peter. For your information we are not all fools out here, we can do our own mathematics and yes we do know that the country is deep in debt. But it is pure scare tactics to quote figures like the one above.

The broad numbers are as follows :

We have annual government spending (budget total) of around £700 billion ;
We have current government annual income of something under £600 billion at present ;
We are hence borrowing annually over £100 billion to fill the gap (£163Bn this year).
Some of that was due to the large outlays in stimulus during the 2008-9 crash ;
The structural part of it, the overspend level before the crash, was nearer £70-80Bn a year.

So - we have to SAVE something like £70Bn a year in the long term - about 10% of government annual spending.

And in the short term we could do with saving a good bit more than that: say 20% of government annual spending.

The real question is - can we stomach that ? Yes - we can - split the 20% in two and you have the simple, stark reality we all need to get on with : tax take needs to go up about 10%, falling back over a few years; and government spending needs to come down 10%, at least for a few years.

Can we cut 10% off the £170 Billion welfare budget ? Yes.

Can we cut 10% off the pointless investment in illegal wars ? Yes.

Can we haggle down supplier prices 10% for most government outlays (by not taking no for an answer) ? Yes.

And the tax ? A one-tenth increase in the major taxes would be :

Personal tax up by about 3%
VAT up by 1.75%
Capital Gains Tax up by about 2%
National Insurance up by about 1%.

Can we afford this ? YES. WE CAN. It is not the cataclysm that the Peters and other ritual moaners would have you believe. Every small business has already cut back massively more than that as a matter of ordinary daily planning.

Now get over it and stop moaning. And good luck to our interesting new government.

Cameron and Brown Share a Common Policy... But Neither Realise It

2010-04-24T08:46:00.003Z

Cameron and Brown go on blasting away about the National Insurance increase without actually listening to each other. If they did, they might realise their supposedly opposite policies, are actually the same in effect. Permit me to illustrate.

Cameron berates Brown for "wasting £6Bn" which he doesn't need to, and for planning an N.I increase next year which he calls a "jobs tax".     And Brown rips into Cameron, claiming that to "take £6Bn out of the economy" would be the worst thing to do before the recovery is sound.

But Brown is mis-describing mercilessly (innocently I think).    For, with regard to "taking money out of the economy", that is exactly what taxing the populus with the extra 1% on National Insurance, is. Tax takes money from the economy to pay for government.    So he's describing the exact opposite of what would happen if a new Tory government cancelled his 1% tax rise:    rather than "taking £6Bn out",   that £6Bn would be left within the (commercial) economy.

What he means to say of course, but fails to, is it would take the £6Bn out of government funds - which he wants to re-spend inside the economy.

Equally though, Cameron is mis-describing : he implies that cancelling the N.I. tax increase next year if he comes to power, would somehow "ease" the load on businesses by not adding to 'jobs taxes' -   but the difference is, he won't spend that money back into the economy from government (because he is so adamant that we must cut the budget defecit more quickly), while Gordon would.

This shows that both of these two policies would in fact have the same net effect.     Cameron wouldn't take the £6Bn in extra tax, but wouldn't spend it back in the economy either; and Brown would take the extra tax, but would re-spend it all back on public services.

So, despite their protestations that they are so different, this particular sample of policy would produce results not a jot different from one another.

One thing is sure - those spin-doctors of theirs obviously do think we're all stupid.

AT LAST...... Someone Points the Finger at the Ratings Agencies

2010-04-23T09:24:00.002Z

AT LAST..... when the financial crisis bit us all in the backside, and the documentary programmes started to be made, one massive truth seemed to emerge. Among all the greed and double-dealing that doubtless went on in the banks, one big, unmentioned fact seemed to be lurking in the background, particularly in relation to how otherwise uninvolved financial institutions were dragged into buying these "repackaged" mortgage-debt instrument, CDOs.

The Credit Ratings Agencies. Standard & Poor and Moodys being the best known, these are the outfits whose job it was to "grade" the risk of all those obsure investment products. But they seemed to have run out of labels - except for "AAA".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8639224.stm

Conservatives reveal their 'Big Stick' to beat Sun Readers with

2010-04-22T10:27:00.003Z

This week the Conservatives revealed their 'Big Stick' - and with it, the truth about where they're going to cut all those needed billions from, among Government spending.

First sign I saw of it, was seemingly a Conservative PR Tweet (Twitter is just a PR machine, after all). At first I thought it was a spoof : surely the Cons were not being so crude ? But yes - they were - and are - and a few clicks over to their blue blog on the Conservative website, and there was their own press release for it - this is it verbatim:
"This new poster underlines our positive agenda for welfare reform - http://twitpic.com/1h3db6 10:54 AM Apr 20th via Echofon"

And there too was Theresa May banging on about all those terrible welfare dependents too :
http://blog.conservatives.com/index.php/2010/04/20/we-need-to-tackle-welfare-dependency/

Well blow me down. So the Tories are going to slash and burn in the welfare budget.. no big surprise really.

It was always clear that all the parties would have some serious cost-cutting up their sleeve : and we're not surprised that no political party wanted to show their cards in that area before the election. And with the Tories, you just knew they wouldn't funk it: they would have some serious cuts in mind.

Now no-one would dispute that we do have some perfectly fit, but yet work-shy people lolling around in this country..   just pop into the betting shop or a high street pub at ten to eleven on a Tuesday morning, and see who's propping up the bar.    Not retired folk, that's for sure. And no-one would dispute that at a running cost - the UK welfare budget - of £170,000,000,000 a year at the moment - one-third of all government spending, or about £500 million per day (yes, per day) - that there is doubtless some fat to be cut off.

But these are going to be sorely painful cuts, and some of them will fall on people who thought the Tories were their natural political choice: all those Sun readers for example.   So why did the Tories admit it so openly before the election ?

What makes me smile is that Boris Johnson made a joking reference at the start of the campaign to the Tories being misunderstood - saying in so many words that   "... after all [we're] not a load of boss-eyed maniacs ... seeking to grind the face of the poor into the dirt....".

Only the Lib Dems give their figures... and even they are still £157,000,000,000 short

2010-04-15T11:19:00.004Z

Yesterday the Liberal Democrats released their manifesto in the UK general election and were the first to put their figures in the back.

But, like the Conservatives and Labour, the only actual contribution that they show, to the cutting of our enormous Government spending defecit of £167Bn, is around a flat £10Bn a year, from next year.

They offer to raise the threshold of personal tax to £10,000 - but that costs a staggering £17Bn in itself. So, dutifully, they scrape up an odd £17Bn to pay for that from a mix of some cuts and from some tax increases.

Then over the page, they set out their "Savings". But look all down this list, and you'll find about £10Bn saved - next year, not this - and then about the same for four more years ahead. But this defecit of ours is an annual committment - we're not short £167Bn once, we're short that much every year. So saving an odd ten off the top is good, but barely a fifteenth of the pain we'll need to inflict to solve this problem eventually.

This is the problem with all three parties. None of them can bear to show us the true horror of that much cash needing to be saved. In truth, since the gap is around £170Bn now and annual government spending is around £700Bn, we need to somehow reduce the cost of government by around 25%. Yes 25%. A quarter. Or, to split it between taxes and expenditures, we need to raise tax revenues by at least 10-12% and cut spending by at least 10-12%. But that is still massive on both sides of the equation. And none of them will explain any of this.

Will we find out more in the third (economy-focussed) TV debate ? I doubt it.

Google's Buzz Screw Up Reveals a 'Childlike' View of Society

2010-02-17T13:54:00.002Z

Having only recently cleaned the merde off their shoes from the Google China embarrassment, here they are stepping in it all over again with Buzz.

What exactly have they done ? Keen to join the 'social networking' mainstream they launched Buzz - an easy-to-get started network, linked to Gmail (Googlemail) accounts. Their mistake was to by default make up a "starting friends list" based on the most frequently mailed parties in your Gmail address book (stored on their servers, of course).

This meant that new users trying it out, found that lots of people they communicated with using Gmail were unexpectedly introduced to each other by appearing in the user's network. A recent interviewer described reaction as ranging from "furious" to "extremely furious".

This is no surprise, as the gurus of social networking - across all the networks - fail to recognise a simple reality of grown-up relationships : adults have networks of friends and contacts, yes, but we don't automatically "pool" them all as one - there are a host of reasons why we don't wish everyone in our circle to know everyone else.

The simplest reason for this is business: many of us associate and socialise at whatever level, with people we do business with: but I certainly don't want all my suppliers, to know who my customers are: nor frankly do I want all my suppliers to know about each other - that changes my relationship with them radically.

This is true of course in personal relations too - one alarming concern instantly raised with Google over Buzz, was the potential number of women with past abusive partners, who might now be provided with information about their new partners and friends and so cause new trouble or threats.

The root cause of Google's pratfall over this is simple : social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and the like all started life in the innocent, simple society of students: indeed Facebook takes its very name from the Harvard fresher's introduction book. But students are at a time of life when they are happy developing a big pool of 'mates' : they're early in life and so free of relationship baggage, and have few worries about what people read about them. Those of us a few years further down the track know that revealing everything about yourself online is very far from a wise route. Perhaps over time these networks will 'grow up' enough to be useful to the adults.

Accept it, Carbon Reduction is a Lost Cause: 2

2009-12-07T11:49:00.001Z

Monday 7th December 2009: "Copenhagen summit urged to take climate change action".

Yvo de Boer there tells us encouragingly that an unprecendented number of new countries are pitching in with positive action - like South Africa: they've promised to "reduce the rate of growth of carbon emissions by a third in the next decade".

Did you you spot that ? "reduce the rate of growth of ... carbon emissions ... by a third...". Oh goody - so instead of their emissions increasing steeply as industry develops, they'll only now grow two-thirds as steeply. Excellent. Lots more toxic smog, just two-thirds of the amount of extra smog toxic per annum, that was previously contemplated.

It's this kind of double-talk - like China's new reductions in "carbon intensity" - i.e. increasing carbon emissions annually, but at a rate a bit less than industrial output grows - that devalues this whole enterprise.

It's clear - and it's absolutely no surprise at all - that given every chance to look "green" while sidestepping the real, difficult action needed to actually reduce emissions from current or even 1990 levels, every slippery politician on the planet will take the easy route. From here on, expect to hear about a lot of "...reduced rates [of growth].. of emissions.." and "reduced carbon intensities". All the way to the cosmic ashcan.

Kyoto was meant to be committment to hard reductions targeted up to 2012. The Americans trashed that by turning their back on it. Now here they are again stitching up a deal to point onward to .... where ? 2020 ? No doubt at that stage more brows will be furrowed, and more earnest calls to action made - in a scheme probably then targeting 2050.

Obama has found a new way to insult the process, much more elegant in form that George Bush's "we will do nothing that will damage the American economy". He's going to pop in to Copenhagen... but just for one day. Then a little light shopping for gifts and off back home. How more completely could he damage this event except by staying away altogether.

Perhaps the subject will begin being taken seriously when Obama's and Hu Jin Tao's ankles start getting wet.

Accept it, Carbon Reduction is a Lost Cause: 1

2009-12-04T12:10:00.002Z

India today reveals their "carbon reduction" plans for the decade ahead and, big surprise, they've borrowed China's bright idea of "carbon intensity".    Never heard that term before last week, did we ? the trick being to define "carbon intensity" as your carbon emission per unit of GDP : thus neatly allowing industry to claim earnest best efforts in eco-sensitivity while keeping on growing and belching smoke.

This neat ecological hip-swivel allows grimy economies to go boldly on growing, provided the new industries are just a little less stinky that the ones which grew in previous decades... not hard, really.

And overall ? it is just another confirmation that carbon emission reduction, as a general premise for supposedly saving the planet, is just not going to happen.

That truly is the reality : the 'BRICs' economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China) - who together have half the population of earth within their borders - are going to enjoy their own industrial revolution this century : and there just will not be the political will to give anything more than lip-service to the idea of reducing carbon emission radically.

For those of us not just recently out of the nest, this is old news: it was plain in the 1970's that we were on the road to gently wrecking the atmosphere and the time to have started doing something about it was then : it's just too late now.   Modern economies hose carbon into the atmosphere like cash into a wall street [b]anker's wallet and they are not about to cease doing so.

And Joe Public doesn't have the will either : to really cut back on our emissions, would mean closing down most of our productive industry and reverting our mode of living back to the eighteenth century: it's just not going to happen.   There are six thousand million of us seething like locusts on this planet, everyone loving their modern appliances and cars and warm homes. Want to save some energy ? put on a thick sweater and turn the heat down.   Is that going to happen in middle America ? No.   Is China going to stop building power stations ?   No.   Is Brazil going to stop industrialising ?   No.   Is India ?   No.

SO : if carbon truly is a lost cause, what then ?    Well we will have to adapt, that is all.

Adaptation is the real option (and one we could be getting on with now instead of the political time-wasting over carbon which will go on for the next decade or two). Yes the temperatures will shift a bit (they do anyway).    Yes the water levels will rise a bit, and some island nations will have to move.    Yes some coastal regions of Europe and North America will flood a bit (stop press ! house price drama in southern England .... ).    JUST GET OVER IT.

Later, when it is patently obvious our options for fixing the problem are nothing to do with dreaming hopelessly that the world will fall out of love with energy, there will be some practical answers : some quiet scientists have already been looking at ways of altering the opacity of the upper atmosphere and actually reducing the amount of incident solar heat in a practial way.   Politicians will dismiss these ideas as crackpot for a few more decades - because they find it easier to waste a few hundred billion on pointless wars than on actually building the industries that really could do something useful toward fixing some of these problems.

And what is the most exasperating aspect of this collective governmental stupidity ? If instead of wasting two or three hundred billion dollars on the illegal invasion of Iraq, America and the west had spent that money on fusion research, we would by now have cracked that difficult but marvellous technology.    By now we would be beginning to deploy that final, clean electricity generation technology which will be the one which finally allows us to stop emitting carbon.