Don’t Write Off British Manufacturing and Engineering …

 General  No Responses »
Jul 212013
 

It sometimes seems fashionable to put down British manufacturing and engineering such as when the well known idiot Jeremy Clarkson announced: “We don’t manufacture anything any more”.

Whilst it is true that Britain no longer makes more goods than the rest of the world combined, if you take the trouble to look you will find a surprisingly big industry. The trouble is that we all too often look backwards and compare today with the 19th century. Time to stop doing that, and actually look at today’s industry.

To quote the Wikipedia article (which has some other quite dated figures): “manufacturing output has increased in 35 of the 50 years between 1958 and 2007” and “output in 2007 was at record levels, approximately double that in 1958”. And: “In 2008, the UK was the sixth-largest manufacturer in the world measured by value of output.”

We may not make as much stuff as we used to, but what we do make is a lot more valuable.

A few points that illustrate just how well Britain is doing :-

  1. Of 11 constructors within Formula-1, 8 are based in the UK. Including teams such as Mercedes which you would quite reasonably assume were based in another country.
  2. Despite a series of governments that believe that spending money on space is a waste of time, the UK space industry is still worth £9 billion a year.
  3. BAE Systems is the third largest defence company in the world.
  4. GlaxoSmithKline is the fourth largest pharmaceutical company in the world.
  5. Of the 100 companies in the FTSE-100, around 33 can be regarded as manufacturing companies of one kind or another.
  6. A lesser known company (ARM) designs what is probably the most successful family of computer processors ever – ARM-based processors are found in 95% of all smartphones.

 

Should We Allow Ian Brady To Commit Suicide?

 General  No Responses »
Jun 292013
 

To ordinary people, the odious Ian Brady is as mad as a hatter. Nobody who commits the kind of crimes he is responsible for can be “all there”. Whether he is mentally ill, or legally insane is only relevant as far as deciding whether he should be kept in prison or in a secure hospital.

According to the reports on his mental health hearing, he wanted to be declared sane so he could return to prison where he would not face enforced feeding. He claims to be on hunger strike as he no longer wishes to live. For whatever reason, secure mental hospitals will force someone refusing to eat whereas prisons will not.

In terms of deciding whether he was well enough to be returned to prison, it is probable that the right decision was made. Whilst we should not blindly trust mental health care professionals, when they say he is too ill to be returned to prison, we need a very good reason to disagree.

However if Ian Brady had asked a different question; to be allowed to starve himself to death without being force fed, we would have a very different question to answer.

Normally there are very good reasons to force feed someone who is mentally ill and attempting to starve themselves. Some mental illnesses result in depression so severe that suicide seems like the only way out. But after appropriate treatment, the patient can be quite different.

Is Ian Brady suffering from this sort of mental illness? Apparently he is diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, so the answer without additional information is perhaps. If he is not subject to episodes of clinical depression then there may be grounds for stopping the force feeding.

Now of course there is another question to answer here: Should we allow him to commit suicide before he has owned up to his crimes and detailed where the last undiscovered body of known victims is buried?

If we decide that Ian Brady should not be allowed to starve himself to death, it seems reasonable that we let him know the reason why and how he can work towards changing our minds.

Are Modern Houses Too Small?

 General  1 Response »
May 202013
 

Are modern houses too small?

The Daily Mail is always a good bet to get the blood pressure up but the one that took my eye today dovetails nicely with some thoughts I’ve been having about modern houses.

The first thing that comes to mind when reading the story, is why didn’t it occur to them that the garage was too small when looking at the house? I mean, I’m no garage expert – I don’t have one, nor anything to park in one – but even a quick look at the photo caused me to think: “Cool. A garage door to the garden shed … making it easy to park the lawn mower. But why is it pointed in the wrong direction? And where’s the garage?”.

But anyone moving house knows that you get swamped with details, and anyone without OCD is likely to miss a detail or two.

But why were the developers building garages too small for cars? It’s not as if garages are difficult to size sensibly. Just walk down the street someday measuring a random selection of cars, and you’ll soon have an idea of how wide a car is. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you need a bit of added space on both sides to let people out. Hell, I thought of it, and I’ve never used a garage.

The developer has responded to the house buyers with the standard advice: Why didn’t you use a tape measure? But you have to ask why the developer chose to build a garage so small that anyone using a tape measure would run a mile rather than stump up the cash. Probably there’s an element of stupidity and lack of oversight in the design department. Plus pressure to make houses as cheap as possible – a big garage takes more bricks, and more bricks cost more money.

And if you look at modern homes, you see that the inclination to make homes cheaper has resulted in smaller homes.

Average Home Sizes

At least it does in the UK. Why are our homes so small?

But instead of pure floor area, there are other aspects to home sizes. Why are modern ceilings so low ? In an age when very few people are shrunken by childhood malnutrition, we are far taller on average than we were in the 19th century. Yet to get a decent ceiling height, I have to choose a Victorian era maisonette to live in. Low ceilings make modern houses feel cramped to me.

And why are doorways still too narrow for wheelchairs? Adjusting doorways and hallways for a wheelchair user – either on a full-time or part-time basis – must be a complete nightmare. So why not size them sensibly for new builds ?

Reducing housing costs is sensible in itself, but being mean in terms of size is the wrong answer. The real answer is to be smarter but perhaps property development companies are too busy making money to be smart.

Does Google’s Glass Herald The End Of Civilisation?

 Computing, General, Security  No Responses »
May 192013
 

Executive summary: No.

According to some, the introduction of Google’s latest product – the Glass(es) – will undoubtedly herald the end of civilisation as the we know it and the survivors will be skittering from bunker to bunker in a forlorn hope of evading surveillance. Actually the biggest threat Google’s Glass(es) have to the world, is the threat to proper grammar – they’re glasses!

The strange thing about the lists of problems encountered with Google’s Glass(es) is that they are “problems” that are already here. Google has done something nifty with their product, which is basically to integrate possibilities into something a non-geek can use. And it is not as if it is particularly revolutionary – people have been looking at augmented reality on smartphones for years and thinking that it was pretty cool, but wouldn’t it be better if you didn’t have to hold up your smartphone all the time?

The big problem is the threat of pervasive surveillance, and threats that come about as a result of that pervasive surveillance. If Google were never to have invented these things, we would still have a problem with pervasive surveillance. As other have pointed out, the use of video (and still) recording on smartphones is already bring in an age of pervasive surveillance; or at least pervasive surveillance under the control of individuals as we already have pervasive surveillance by corporations and government.

It is true that there are negative aspects to pervasive surveillance, but it is also true that there are positive aspects too. Street crime becomes a far riskier proposition if everyone around can just say “Ok. Start recording video.”. People getting up to foolish activities being “outed” on Youtube? The more it happens, the less the pain.

And of course make laws to punish the publication of privacy invading video but not the recording of it; with a proper public interest imminity. That is what the public should be interested in, not what it wants to be interested in.

There are those who say that publication of embarrassing activities onto social media sites may make it harder for people to get employment. The fault here is not what is published to social media sites nor people who take part in such activities, but with the employers who insist on having employees so squeaky clean. If you never employ people who have danced naked on top of a table, you’ll end up with boring employees.

And I’ll bet that there is a high incidence of naked table-top dancing in the past of anyone whose thinking is inventive, creative, and out-of-the-box. Or in other words, employers should be going out of their way to hunt down and employ the naked table-top dancers (No I probably haven’t).

There are those who say that it will somehow increase bullying. It is true that this will be an extra tool in the arsenal of bullies, but in can also be an extra tool in the arsenal of those targeted by bullies. To stop what happened to Amanda Todd (and others), we need to stop bullying whether assisted by technology or the old-fashioned kind.

And of course we have the argument that Google is powerful enough already, and Glass(es) will make that worse. Well, first of all Google Glass(es) won’t be the only product of this kind out there. And if Google is too powerful, it is time to chop them down to size rather than blocking this product.

At least the hysterical reaction of some businesses is giving me a new retirement fund possibility. When I eventually get around to getting some, mine will have prescription lenses in, and any business that wants to ban me will get sued for discrimination against the “disabled”.

We need to be careful of condemning a technology for the poor behaviour of people, when it is the poor behaviour that is at fault.

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