If you’re a member of the Labour Party in the West Midlands then you’ll already have had your ballot papers to select who is going to stand in next year’s European elections. It’s a list system and the papers are split between sitting MEP’s and others.

That means we have to decide in an order of preference who to place number one and number two of the current two sitting MEP’s Michael Cashman and Neena Gill which will determine who comes top on the final regional ballot paper.

I’ll be the first person to admit that I haven’t exactly took as much of an interest in the procedure as I have in previous years primarily due to being too busy doing other things but the ballot papers need filling in and sending off.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from Neena Gill. I’m presuming that I’ll get others from the other candidates and that the party is allowing them to send out their message to the members but I haven’t had anything from any other candidate yet. Apart from that, all I’ve had is an admittedly good quality leaflet from Michael Cashman and something today about some of the other candidates.

On the basis of the two, and bear in mind that I do take a keen interest in marketing and campaigning then I’d probably put Michael Cashman as my number one choice.

Within the context of purely their marketing approach, Cashman seems far more professional. I may still get some wonderfully professional looking piece of literature from Neena Gill but that will be too late because the ballot papers will be done tonight.

As I said, I take a keen interest in marketing, not simply just the message which is of course the most important part but style is equally important. The e-mail in question that I received was a simple plain text based e-mail which if you compare to the normal very professional looking HTML encoded e-mails that party members are used to receiving from the national party, it looked, well, just a bit crap. Incidentally the message didn’t say anything that appealed to me either and looked like it had been written as an afterthought following a night out on the lash.

One thing that did strike me though was the instruction and link at the bottom. In a vain hope that Neena might be getting down a jiggy with new technology it instructs you to go to YouTube and type ‘Neena Gill’ in the search. This of course I dutifully did and it returns only one result that is actually Neena Gill as in the MEP. Last night it had a grand total of 8 views which is now up to 50 odd so presumably a few other people have done the same.

I did watch the video. It didn’t exactly inspire me to vote for her either as the delivery was poor, wooden and still didn’t really talk about the issues that are important to me in a European context. Incidentally, here’s the video.

Me being the nosy sod that I am noticed that it had been posted by a user called ‘cafferty’ and was the sole video that he/she had posted to YouTube. Again being nosy I had a look at their profile and it reads as:

Name: caffie
Age: 21
City: Birmingham
Country: United Kingdom
Occupation: lazy-ass law student, professional slacker

Note to Neena. When embarking on an attempt at harnessing the marketing potential of the internet try to get someone who actually knows what they’re doing and not someone who lists their occupation as a ‘lazy-ass law student, professional slacker’ from Birmingham. It doesn’t quite give the right impression now does it?

Wondering then if Michael Cashman was on Youtube I dropped in a search for him. He doesn’t appear to have tried any kind of marketing approach as regards the use of new media (although he may yet e-mail all the members, who knows but it would seem a bit late to set up any kind of web based campaign) but there’s certainly nothing specific on YouTube. What there are though are a few examples posted by other people.

The first up is this one which at least to me comes across as a lot more fluid and professional a delivery on a subject that I do find important.

Incidentally, it’s been on YouTube a bit longer but has had nearly 4,000 views which isn’t exactly bad.

Yes, Cashman does have an advantage over Neena in terms of delivery on account of his previous profession before entering politics and just for you delectation here’s a snippet from his past.

Right, that seals it, anyone who goes to deck Pete in the Queen Vic gets my number one vote.

Sometimes in politics, at least for those of us who have been around for a fair time and have long memories, you come across politicians who you can only assume must think people are stupid or inhabit worlds where recollection doesn’t stretch back more than a fortnight.

When I first started becoming involved in politics, nothing more exciting than a bit of leafletting in the 1987 General Election the attack lines of the Tories back then after having been in power for eight years was very much to concentrate on attacking Labour for events in the 1970’s.

That’s a little taster about this post. We’re going to rake up something that one would presume David Cameron should be aware of and if not then here’s a little history lesson to go with his latest publicity stunt, sorry, meant to say informed and well thought through policy initiative.

From the BBC today. Cameron announces how the development of ‘green coal’ or to be more precise systems that allow the capture of carbon emissions from the burning/gasification of coal and subsequent safe storage, yes I know, not quite as catchy as ‘green coal’ but more accurate.

Your humble Penguin takes a keen interest in energy policy, in particular energy related security issues and this announcement by Cameron brought back a few memories from a conversation I had with my father in the early 90’s.

My father and I don’t always agree on every subject but I respect him as a very intelligent man who has an uncanny ability to see things long into the future. He also has an amazing ability to recall conversations and information from decades past, something I myself seem to have inherited.

So back in 1993 when Michael Heseltine as Trade Secretary was announcing what was in effect the death of the British coal industry, my fathers reaction was this:

“The stupid f*ckers! You wait and see, in 20 years time when all the North Sea gas is running out and we’ll have to import it all from bloody Russia they’ll realise they’ve dropped a b*llock. It’s all very well saying these new gas power stations are cleaner than coal but we’ve (as in British) been developing clean coal technology for years and you mark my words if the b*stards don’t pull all the funding on that too. You watch, in 20 years time we’ll have to go back to coal and we’ll pay for it because the mines will have flooded and we’ll have to buy the technology that we started back off some other country because those b*stards (the Tories) are too f*cking stupid to see what’s coming.”

You can probably guess that my father felt quite strongly on the issue and no, he’s not an ex-miner.

OK, it’s now almost 15 years later but apart from the timescale, I think my father pretty much got it right. The Tories through what I can only deduce was a political motivation, brought about the demise of our coal industry. They didn’t foresee what, if it was obvious to my father back then, presumably some expert at the time might have told them. Put simply, policy decision made back in 1993 following on from what occurred in the 1980’s led us into a position where we as a country are in an increasingly difficult position regarding our ability to generate our own energy requirements and more specifically threatens our future energy security.

With this recollection in mind I decided to have a little look around about what happened and came up with some interesting articles well worth a read. First up comes from the archives of the New Scientist in April 1993. That June, this article also appeared in the New Scientist by Ian Fells, professor of energy conversion at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, of which I particularly like the final couple of paragraphs:

” For a country with extensive coal reserves, why isn’t Britain developing its technology by way of a demonstration plant? On the idea of building a clean-coal demonstration plant in Britain, the White Paper points out that such a venture would ‘not materially affect the number of coal mines kept in operation in the UK this decade’ and so could not justify supporting it.

So, Britain watches its initial lead in this vital area slip away to its competitors. Long-term R&D is the major casualty of the ’short termism’ engendered by a market-led energy policy. Britain is in danger of destroying its innovative industrial base and becoming an offshore ‘banana republic’ buying licences for high technology engineering from its European partners. The government will be forced to balance the books by turning UK Ltd into a gigantic theme park with tourists visiting sanitised coal mines and gas works to see how Great Britain was in the old days.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself really.

So what did exactly happen to Britain’s leading edge technological advantage in the area of clean coal? The actual process wasn’t all that new. The original concept dates back to the 1960’s but in the days of the nationalised coal industry there was the Coal Research Establishment which formed part of the National Coal Board then British Coal Corporation. However with passing of the Coal Industry Act in 1995 it became the Coal Authority and was subsequently privatised.

Back in 1993 the research arm, the CRA found itself in difficulty because a substantial amount of its funding came from the industry which with the massive closure of pits led to less income meaning that for a short period the Government injected some funding with the usual reassurances that come before things get closed down.

Questions were asked in Parliament, notably on the 22nd March 1994 where the clearest indications of the level of importance the then Tory Government had regarding the development of coal technology can be seen in the statement by the Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin MP after the token bit about how much money the Government is putting in:

“Precise funding needs after that will be agreed following the planned review of the programme involving the industry in 1995. We are also establishing the new Advisory Committee on Coal Research, to replace the coal task force and advise on United Kingdom coal research needs across the board.”

For those of a cynical nature you’ll probably all know what happened next. Industry wasn’t interested in the research and development after privatisation. They’d got the assets that they wanted and true to form the CRE (actual research part of it) closed in 1995, I think it still exists in name as some quango but as for actually doing any research it’s long gone, along with the clean coal technology that we had a chance to lead the world in. If you’re interested in a visual representation of what the Tories did to our research into clean coal technology you might want to have a look here. Caution, it’s depressing.

Of course it has been developed by other countries, notably Germany where they implemented the first ‘clean coal’ station but there again, the German’s didn’t have a Government that systematically went about destroying their coal industry like we did. Sad to think that Britain was in a prime position to dominate this emerging technology and now we’re reduced to buying back the fruits of that technology from the development of other countries into an area that we started. Let’s not get on to tilting trains either shall we?

In my current location there’s two wheelie bins outside, a 240 litre and a 120 litre bin. I’ll just do a little disclaimer. I know next to nothing about how waste disposal is organised in Germany but I’m enquiring. Whether my current location is typical of the whole country or whether there is great difference between the different states of the Federal Republic I don’t know so what we’re doing here is just taking a snapshot of this particular bit of Brandenburg that I happen to be in.

The 240 litre bin, akin to the one that sits outside my front door back in Willenhall is solely for paper, nothing else. Its smaller counterpart is for generally non-recyclable materials. Also out of site in the outhouse are a further two other 240 litre bins that are yellow and are for plastics.

This sparked off a thought I’d had for a post before I left that I simply didn’t get round to. There was an article in the Express & Star about fortnightly collections in Walsall. A couple of weeks previously, our wonderful Cabinet Member for Environment in Walsall, Cllr. Rachel Walker had announced that Walsall would not implement fortnightly collections when the Express & Star did a survey of the local authorities in the Black Country. However just before I left she announced that Walsall Council would be looking at fortnightly collections and there’s going to be some public consultation on the issue.

By the way, when we say public consultation, we actually mean according to the article in the Express & Star that Walsall Council will ask residents whether they want a 240 litre bin that will be collected once a fortnight or a 120 litre bin which will be collected once a week.
This poses some interesting questions some of which are specifically related to Walsall given its other policies.

Now for myself personally, we never get anywhere near filling our 240 litre bin primarily down to us already being quite conscious about recycling and avoiding as much packaging on the things that we buy as we can or to the annoyance of Mrs Penguin, my own obsession with finding ingenious ways to re-use the packaging for other purposes.

However when it comes down to it, there is no choice that Walsall Council is giving residents. Whether you want a big bin or a little one, you’re going to be limited to producing 120 litres worth of waste a week as opposed to the current 240 litres and that is what it amounts to, nothing more, nothing less, Walsall Council wants to cut down on the waste it collects. I myself would prefer one of the small bins and I am rather keen on weekly collections. Some local authorities have switched to fortnightly collections and it’s obviously an issue that certain sections of the media are building up as an issue to bash local/national Government with.

When the likes of the scream sheets are building up a bit of a bandwagon against fortnightly collections and in defence of weekly collections it almost sparks off a questioning of my own views but we’ll deal with thatanother day, back to Walsall Council’s policies for a bit.
What does intrigue me about this plan by Walsall MBC is that Cllr. Rachel Walker appears to be indicating that people will have a choice between two systems that are in essence the same in terms of what you’re going to be able to chuck in the bin in terms of quantity, halving it to be precise. I have for a long time taken a great interest in public policy implementation. Those that know me well, know I’m a stickler for efficiency, I don’t like waste so please indulge me while I get my head around this policy.

As a resident of Walsall MBC, I can choose and I probably would, to ditch my 240 litre bin for a 120 litre bin that Walsall Council will empty every week. Lets say hypothetically that my neighbour and for arguments sake, everyone else in my street retain their 240 litre bin that Walsall Council will empty every fortnight.

If I’m due for a weekly collection that means the binmen have to come to my street every week just to collect my bin but nobody else’s. That at least from my perspective smacks of a very inefficient use of public resources. So will there be a quota? A set percentage of properties needed in a street to justify a weekly collection, if so then that’s not real choice or as this humble old cynic suspects, is this a case of attempting to introduce fortnightly collections by the back door without the Tories in Walsall having the bottle to go to the public openly with the policy at an election or stand up and justify it?

Then we move on to the issue that is very much an individual case for Walsall as it doesn’t affect any of the neighbouring authorities.

In Walsall, residents who require a new/replacement for broken/stolen wheelie bin have to pay Walsall MBC £18.50 (I’m doing this from memory, could be £18 but that figure somehow sticks in my mind). Strangely enough the Express & Star seems to have started up a bit of a campaign on this issue after a few pensioners got rather miffed about having to cough up for nicked bins. I’ve no idea why this has suddenly happened because having to pay for bins has been Council policy for at least the last six years, the only difference being that prior to this year Walsall Council subsidised the cost by a whopping £2. I happen to know this as when I moved into my house over five years ago there was no wheelie bin and I had to cough up £16.50 (again from memory, have the receipt somewhere) for my bin.

So here’s a few questions. At present, pretty much everyone has a 240 litre wheelie bin except for various flats and new-builds, some of which either have communal bins or 120 litre bins. So if I chose to have a 120 litre bin, would I have to pay for it? Get one in part exchange for my 240 litre bin, in which case would I get a refund as presumably a 120 litre bin would cost less or if the new bin is free, can I keep my old one for other purposes as I’m presuming it’s my property after I had to fork out money from my own pocket to pay for it and then because there are all these potential differences in terms of those who own their bins/those who got them for free, does Walsall Council either have a database knocking around to tell the difference or the organisational competency to deal with it? I will leave you to decide on that one.

Moving back to a comparison in recylcing/waste disposal between home and my current location and broadening the debate slightly. The 120 litre household waste bin is quite common across many parts of Europe, other waste being handled by a variety of different recycling initiatives. Here for example, there’s the paper bin which is collected once a month. The plastics bin is emptied once a month and the general un-recycled waste bin, once a fortnight. However things like the plastic bottle (coke, orange juice, water types) don’t go in the plastics bin which incidentally you can also put things like glass jars in, but it’s not compulsory, these can just go in the un-recycled waste bin as well which I find strange because at least in theory even Walsall Council is keen on compulsorily recycling glass jars.
I say in theory and please indulge me another little dig at the professional incompetency of my local authority but I’ve had my ‘recycling box’ for about four years now. It’s never been emptied and where as I’ve just accepted this in the past as being part and parcel of life in a crap Borough, a couple of months back we all got stickers plastered on our wheelie bins reminding us to recycle using our boxes.

I plucked up the resolve to waste some of my time and money by calling Walsall Council to inform them that they’ve never collected my box. I was assured by the lady on the other end that my street does get collected and when asking if they could guarantee if I put it out now I’ve reported the issue that it would definitely be emptied, I was told yes. I did put my box out on the basis of this assurance, I’ll leave you to guess what happened.

Moving back to waste in general. I should also note that things like milk cartons made from Tetrapak can also be recycled by being put into the plastics yellow bin. So just to recap, we’ve got three different types of bin. A 120 Litre generally un-recyclable waste bin which is emptied once a fortnight. A paper bin which by the way, unlike back in Walsall, you can also put cardboard in as well so pretty much any paper based products except for Tetrapak can be recycled this way. Then there’s the plastics bin which can take all the plastic packaging from things like cheese, butter, yogurt pots, meats and plastic bags. On the whole, there’s not a lot I can think of that can’t be recycled in this system with the exception of polystyrene and hazardous waste like batteries.

However, things like cans, (these are a lot rarer in Germany, they don’t seem to have our propensity for shipping beers in them that we do, they tend to use bottles) glass bottles, primarily beer and plastic bottles for soft drinks and water aren’t handled by household collection. These are handled through the supermarkets. Yes, in theory we sort of have a similar system for glass in the UK. You can find the odd bottlebank tucked away in a dark corner of the car park but this is hardly putting the principle of recycling in focus.

In Germany, much the same as I wrote about the same system being in operation in Finland when I lived there nearly a decade ago, they have these big green machines:

usually by the entrance to the supermarket. Simple solution, it reads what you put in it, whether it’s a can, a glass bottle or a plastic one and once you’re finished it prints out a slip that can be counted against the cost of purchasing in the supermarket. There is also a more basic system in the case of using what are more akin to our cash and carry stores whereby you would buy say a crate of beer. You keep the crate to store the bottle in and when you take them back you show the crate to the cashier and they give you a token against future purchases. 3,50EUR for a crate of 24 bottles which doesn’t seem a bad incentive.

Of course such schemes aren’t completely altruistic, the cost of the refund is absorbed into the purchase price so it amounts to a system of coercion on the consumer to introduce an incentive to recycle. It does however work. There’s a little grassed/bushed area just along from my house and on a daily basis you will find discarded plastic drinks bottles and cans in amongst the bushes. You don’t see that in Germany, I haven’t spotted a single discarded plastic or glass bottle in the bushes here and I’m sure that this attributing a monetary value to the empty vessel has an important part to play. In Britain, once the contents have been consumed then it’s monetary value is zero, it just becomes a burden to carry or dispose of properly and sadly this leads to some members of our society determining that they are happy to chuck it anywhere in the street that they wish. If we were to introduce such a system that would add a monetary value to such objects then we could go a long way to addressing this issue. There is a rather recent precedent working in the opposite direction in the Republic of Ireland. They introduced a tax on plastic carrier bags and the rates of bags discarded plummeted.

I like the German system of using the supermarkets to achieve greater recycling rates. It seems strange that we haven’t picked up on this idea in the UK. They after all have the distribution networks in place, the experience of ruthless efficiency in their organisation and make massive profits out of UK consumers. It wouldn’t be too much to require them to put a little something back and take up responsibility for waste management, something of which they are directly responsible for producing in the first place.

Let’s take an example. Supermarkets are renown for their overuse of packaging, plastics in particular which is hard to recycle. If it is the responsibility of the supermarkets to deal with the end waste product then they would have a direct incentive to either reduce their own contributions to that waste or to pressurise the producers that they deal with to reduce packaging.

There is of course already a precedent for this approach. Forgotten which piece of EU legislation implemented it but it related to producers having to take responsibility for the end waste product. This related primarily to the producers of automotives, white goods and electrical consumer durables. I remember the scare stories run at the time by the right-wing press that this would be a yet another piece of EU bureaucratic legislation that would cost British consumers more. No doubt the same scare stories would be run if we put the onus on supermarkets to play their park in addressing this problem but I haven’t noticed a few years on since that piece of EU legislation came into effect that prices are any more for the end consumer, they appear to have simply been absorbed by efficiency.

I’ll finish on a last point. This idea of introducing 120 Litre waste bins in general across parts of the UK. I picked up on an article on the BBC about this where the issue was framed as ‘introducing Euro bins’. I really do have to say give it a rest on this anti-EU nonsense. They had the usual rent-a-mouth from the Tories saying how we didn’t want yet more EU regulation and interference in Britain. Can I phrase it another way. It’s a 120 litre wheelie bin. It’s not some over-arching EU regulation, it just happens that lots of other countries on the continent happen to use bins this size. What this Tory (apologies for not remembering his name, they are on the whole instantly forgettable) is saying is that whereas those continental lot are capable of organising systems of waste management whereby they can get down to only producing 120 litres (60 litres in this bit of Germany because of fortnightly collections) of non-recyclable waste a week, us Brits can’t do it. I happen to have a lot more faith in our nations ingenuity, our ability to adapt to new circumstances. I don’t think we are a nation incapable of ditching our addiction to chucking everything in the bin and forgetting about it. We should look around, pinch ideas from our near neighbours where they’re useful and efficient and rather than saying we can’t do what other already are. That’s not the challenging and aspirational attitude I’d expect from a party that wants to be in power. We should set our goals further, only then can we rise to the challenge and be leading the way rather than simple following.

[Timestamp altered]

I thought I just had to blog this one that’s been going out on the German news all day that George Bush has been out pressing the flesh in Albania today. You know the usual stuff, handshaking with the amassed crowds.

Well it would appear that while George was enjoying the welcome he was being given by the locals, one of the little thieving gits nicked his watch straight off his wrist. N-TV in Germany have it. The actual video being broadcast on the news is better but sadly not available as yet.

Update: OK, it hit Youtube, here you go, keep an eye on the left wrist.

Quick post having spotted this. It seems incongrulous that as a nation we have considered breastfeeding in public to be an obscene act. Somehow a hang up on priggish Victoria values of decency that mark our country as being out of step with our European neighbours.

Thankfully there’s some forward thinking people about who can look beyond the shock of a possible glimpse of a nipple in public, imagine the horror and corrupting influence on the young.

Oh, still busy by the way, back soon.

I’ve not posted much for the last few days. Actually nothing as I’ve been doing a few other things so I thought I’d do a little bit of a round up of events/issues.

On Tuesday the Penguin household braved the border patrols and sneaked into the Sandwell Borough to attend the launch of the Jon Cruddas Deputy Leadership campaign. Bob Piper did a good summing up of the event and in truly photographic genius style, managed to get the backs of the whole Penguin household in the frame. I learned one thing from that; I need a hair cut.

On the serious side it was refreshing to see Cruddas talk about issues that seem to have not got the attention they deserve in recent years, primarily that of social housing. The problems have been brewing for a generation but even if the debate is finally up there where it belongs, then perhaps we can start address an issue that affects many on lower incomes.

Following on from that, and it does beg the question: “where do we get these people from”, the comments made by Margaret Hodge. Short of making a play for the Leadership of the BNP, it makes you wonder how some people get to where they are on the basis of such awful political nouse. Perhaps it’s a lack of imagination but her comments have been rightfully condemned by many as they should. If she is concerned about the gains made by the BNP in her own constituency, not helped of course by her own last rash of daft comments then she should learn at least one thing of which I would have thought someone who has got the position of being an MP should already know.

You cannot win on the basis of using the argument of the opposition. Especially when that opposition are the horrid bunch of toe-rags that the BNP are. You cannot appropriate the blame for a lack of social housing by accepting the arguments from the far-right that it’s all these naughty East Europeans invading the country. She should know, unless Barking is a very strange place indeed that migrants rarely end up in council houses. The vast majority end up in low quality private sector accommodation or the equivalent of shared dorms of workers. They’re not holed up in nice 3 and 4 bedroom council semi’s because although if they are in the UK, earning and paying tax then they should be entitled, there’s a shitload more people ahead of them on the waiting lists who’ve been there for years and short of a very exceptional circumstance, they ain’t going to be able to jump the queues.

She would have been far more productive in addressing the reasons for this lack of housing and it’s underlying causes, rather than effectively writing the BNP’s next leaflet campaign in Barking for them.

I spotted this during the week too. I just have a few thoughts on this, none of them complimentary towards Microsoft as regular readers will have probably guessed. So here’s the scenario, Microsoft want there to be a professional body for IT people in the UK because there’s too many out there doing dodgy fixes or bodged jobs on systems.

First point being that this is a bit rich given the output of Microsoft in terms of ‘good’ programming is laughable. They release software with bugs in them, highly unsecure systems and quite frankly are not the people to lecture others about high levels of competence.

Secondly, they’ve helpfully inferred that their own Microsoft accreditation programme would be very useful in assessing and registering IT ‘professionals’. Well, no it woudn’t, it would tell people that they know how to use one of a myriad of different systems available, and the poorest of those to boot. Are they seriously thinking that the UK Government would fall for what is patently an attempt to sew up the market by being supplier and effective registrar of those who work in the industry. Come on, no Government Minister is going to fall for that one. On the other hand this is IT so it’s always possible, but thankfully it appears the Government is very cool to this idea of a professional body anyway.

Thirdly, and finally, I’ll admit it, I’m a bodger. Not so much these days but in a past life of being surrounded by Microsoft’s products at work. There’s two reasons you have to bodge around with systems. It has nothing to do with your level of expertise and everything to do with Microsoft. Apart from the software they produce being unstable and a complete security nightmare at times (yes I do remember manually having to hack a rather pernicious virus of computers across the UK via remote access and manually having to do every machines registry system because none of the tools that were supposed to work did, or they allowed the machines to re-infect each other before you could isolate them) but as with everything with Microsoft, you never 100% know what you’re dealing with. I can happily mess about the registry of a system, that thing they tell you never to touch because a character in the wrong place can happily kill a machine but despite this knowledge, I still don’t know exactly how Windows works. Why? Well, because they don’t release the code, it’s all secret so at best you’re dealing with educated guesswork or previous experience. You can never know exactly what’s going on because it doesn’t get outside of a building in Redmond.

I think that’s pretty much it for the weekly review. Apart from Mrs Penguin has nicked my ‘good’ computer, I’ve spent a lot of time enjoying watching my son learn to run and I’m looking forward to my first trip to the cinema to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 since I went to see Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith, from which you can deduce I don’t go to the cinema very often. I’ve also took advantage of the brief bit of good weather to do some of the jobs I haven’t been able to do outside or that require sunshine. Sadly this opportunity seems short-lived as it’s decidedly pissing it down again. Good night to one and all.

Just before I head off out on the campaign trail I thought I’d drop this distinctly non-political post.

Apparently 35% of Europeans have no concept of physical laws.

The article I’m referring to is this one about a survey carried out by Motorola regarding European online viewing habits. The bit I’m particularly bemused about comes right at the end.

“Other findings of the survey included 45% of respondents expecting to be able to make video calls via their television by 2012 while 35% wanted to be able to pause, rewind or fast forward live broadcasts.”

Now unless 35% of Europeans are convinced that by 2012 the human species will have risen to such technical heights as to be able to port future images to the present then they’re just simply daft. Pray tell, how does one fast forward a live event? It by its very definition is live, therefore circumstances that may be viewed through the use of fast forward simply haven’t happened yet, so short of circumventing physical theory it remains completely impossible. One then has to wonder what credence one gives to a survey in terms of if the option was provided by the survey taker Motorola or indeed the responses to it.

It’s been a strange week in comparison to normal. My enforced housebound status due to having my toenail removed on Monday has meant I haven’t got out. This has meant I’ve completed lots of jobs (mainly techie) that I’ve been meaning to do for a while and I’ve completely exhausted every one of my RSS feeds in terms of my media consumption.

Every blog I read has been read, every media feed I have has been read, I’ve polished off Zelda the Twilight Princess and gone back through it to find all the hidden stuff, built my Lego Star Destroyer and have found myself at a loose end.

This led me to hunt out some new stuff to consume. I rarely get round to reading the online sections of newspapers, save for the dear old Express and Swastiki for pure frustration at how bad journalism can get but I found myself at the Guardian’s comment is free section. More precisely at this article by Polly Toynbee.

Haven’t read anything by her for years, which may sound odd being a leftie politico type but it’s true. However it made me remember that I’d been planning to write a piece about the impact of consumer society values on expectations of public services. I wasn’t planning on concentrating on the health service in particular but it is a very good example.

I’m not going to reiterate what Polly Toynbee has written, just read her article to get the jist but what struck me most was the comments to her article. I managed to get about half way through before I gave up in despair at the number of people slagging off the NHS, moaning about how much taxes they pay for it or doing down what we have in the UK and comparing it to other countries that have ‘better’ health services.

So I thought I’d share a bit of my own personal experience of the NHS.

I don’t use the health service much, I’ve only ever had one procedure done and short of a few trips to the GP for a bit of professional opinion and the odd bottle of jollop that’s about it. The only procedure I’ve had is the one that took place on Monday to remove my ingrowing big toenail. I visited my GP about five weeks ago because it was painful, he diagnosed it, referred me for the operation that should have been in about four to six weeks so five weeks is pretty much on the money and I had it done. I went back today as the operations are carried out at my local clinic in the town, a walk of about 200 yards to have my dressing changed and that was it. I don’t know how much this procedure cost the NHS nor the cumulative cost of my few visits to the GP over the years but I’d hazard a guess hardly anything compared to the proportion of the taxes that I’ve paid into the system to pay for its running.

The strange thing about this, at least if you are to believe some of the comments on Toynbee’s article is that I’m quite happy about this situation. I am quite happy to pay taxes to run a service that I do not wish to use. I’m happy because I’m not able to predict and control everything in my life. I do not know that one day one the arseholes who speed past my house isn’t going to knock me over and I end up in A&E with the requirement for a lot of treatment. I don’t know if I may suffer from an illness like cancer or suddenly have a heart attack but I do know that I quite like the idea that if I do, then I don’t have to worry too much about it because I won’t have to suddenly fork over thousands of pounds to cover the cost or find out suddenly there’s a clause in my health insurance that “doesn’t cover that condition or illness”. Such as I don’t mind that from my own perspective up till now I’ve paid thousands into the system for other people’s care and treatment, because come the day I may need treatment for something serious, those very same people may be the ones paying in to cover for my treatment. Personally however, I’d be quite happy to pay into the system for the whole of my working life and never have to have had another procedure done other than the one I’ve just had.

There were also numerous comments about waiting times for procedures and of course of a negative nature so I thought I’d add a few examples. I waiting five weeks to have a minor bit of surgery done relating to a condition that caused me minor discomfort but nothing agonising. I’m reminded back to about 16 years ago when a relative of mine had the same condition. He waited over six months for his operation and apparently that was a reasonable time to expect to wait in those days to have an ingrowing toenail removed. I think I quite like the way things are now because despite my condition being a minor discomfort for the period of five weeks, I don’t think I would have fancied it for six months, not even taking into account how the condition can get progressively more painful the longer it is left.

Second example. My mother had a problem with her ear a few months back. She went to the GP who referred her to a specialist at New Cross hospital in Wolverhampton which took about a fortnight. He saw her and asked her if she’d like to come back the following day to have the procedure done. Not sure about how other people might see that, but having the procedure done the next day seems rather a good service by my standards.

I’ll touch on a bit of comparative health provision which always comes up in these arguments usually about why our health service isn’t ‘as good’ as for example the French, German or Nordic ones. I won’t go into the old debate of comparing it to the US system of individual health insurance as it’s been done to death apart from noting that purely from an administrative cost analysis our system wins hands down in terms of efficiency. It’s simple, one form to fill in, if you’re registered as living at an address in the UK you can get an NHS number and that’s about it. You don’t have to pay for treatment at the point of need and whether you’re taken sick in Wolverhampton, Edinburgh or Machynlleth you can get treatment at the nearest hospital without any hassle. I use that example deliberately as you will see in a minute.

Now I will admit to not knowing much about the French health service apart from it’s based on a combined system of people paying for it through taxation and private health insurance. Germany is pretty much the same which I do know a bit more about for obvious reasons. Is it better? Well yes if your measurement of comparison is in terms of the potential wait you may have for things to get done. Perhaps this is part of the national psyche of the Germans? They don’t tend to like to wait for things, something very evident in Mrs Penguin and with their combined state funded and private health insurance system they get a faster service than we do. Of course they pay for it, not only through higher taxes but also having to afford private health policies on top and we are back to the old adage of getting what you pay for. Whatever rubbish is spouted by the right of British politics we have it fairly good in the UK in terms of taxation, both personal and business. What we have is a health service that is effectively done on the cheap because of the conditions under which it is expected to run. Despite its detractors it’s a pretty damn efficient organisation, of course more could be done but given how we pay comparably less for our health service than our near neighbours on the continent we get a pretty good deal.

Moving on to the Nordic model of which I know more about, in particular of the Finnish system having lived there. Theirs is in essence more comparable to ours in that it’s a directly funded for by the tax-payer system unless things have radically changed since I last lived there.

However here’s why I used the example of our own where it doesn’t matter if you’re in Wolverhampton, Edinburgh or Machynlleth when you need treatment. Much as the Finnish health system could be considered better than our own, less waiting times, better facilities etc etc, it’s not a ‘national’ health service. It’s funding comes through local taxation which on one hand is good in terms of being able to tailor treatments to more specific local areas but if for example you live and pay taxes in Tampere and just happen to be visiting Helsinki when your appendix starts to burst and there have been some examples of this. The doctors in Helsinki have been known to ship the patient 120 miles north back to Tampere so that they pick up the cost.

Personally if I happen to be in Sheffield and my appendix starts to burst I’d quite like to be taken to the local hospital and it done as quickly as possible there than be shipped back to Wolverhampton and that of course raises the issue of what is the overriding priority? As much as the Nordic system is very good, it doesn’t preclude the possibility of costs and funding overruling clinical patient care. I’ll just add that there’s actually another type of health service structure in Finland that I haven’t mentioned, that for students which is completely different and funded through membership of the local student union which is compulsory and has to be paid for. I won’t go into too much detail but over there students unions are very much a part of the social welfare structure as opposed to the organisers of piss-ups at universities over here. (that is a deliberately flippant remark for humorous value, yes I know they do some very important student welfare stuff here too before someone complains but in comparison it is nothing to the extent that they do in Finland)

What’s the conclusion? Well much as we would all want our treatment done the next day, it’s quite clear that in Britain people are not willing to fork over the extra money in taxation to pay for it. We have a pretty good and efficient health service that operates on significantly less money than those in France, Germany and the Nordic countries so we can’t really complain that much. We are spending more on the NHS now than we were under the Tories and the improvements in service and significantly lower waiting times are there to see but for some reason people seem not to understand this expecting everything to be done yesterday and of course not willing to cough up the extra cash to achieve this aim. Something for nothing I think that is called and it’s a very childish perspective to take which perhaps is a sad reflection on the society in which we live.

[note] I’d originally titled this article “In pursuit of happiness” and intended to go on to other areas but I’ve decided to keep it more focused on health issues. I’ll do the more general theme another time.

This looks like really good news doesn’t it? Microsoft, bless them, are going to be investing £14million in the Black Country, setting up academies in each of the four local authority areas to train 35,000 people.

I’m sorry to sound like a miserable old critic on this one but I thought it might just be useful to explain a few things here. Firstly, Microsoft are stumping up £14million which as far as they are concerned as a company is absolutely nothing. They’ll be getting by 2010 these four academies and 130 learning centres.

Now that’s a lot of centres irrespective of staffing them so just on a rough estimation taking in things like running costs, buildings, land and tax, I don’t think £14million is going to go that far so who’s putting up the rest of the money?

Equally, can someone tell me what these people will be learning in these centres? Somehow I doubt it will be anything outside of the world of Microsoft which raises an important issue. FOSS (free open source software) is rapidly overtaking the proprietary stuff like Microsoft in terms of it’s growth. Across Europe the signs are there and various countries have been actively encouraging it’s use and development. No matter how many people at present use Microsoft software the sheer weight in terms of numbers and more importantly the vastly quicker development times of FOSS will eclipse it because the proprietary model cannot compete.

Other countries recognise this and are already going down that route of equipping their workforces with the IT skills for the future. It’s sad to see we are doing the opposite and equipping our workforce with the skills for the present (just about) and the past.

Here’s an analogy. It’s 1989, the Eastern Bloc is crumbling. Lada come to the Black Country and offer to train a whole load of people how to maintain/repair/work with their cars. Would that have been an investment for the future? Oh, and Lada aren’t stumping up all the money so actually you’re going to have to find the cash to train people to only be able to maintain/repair/work on their cars.

Sorry, I’m all for investment but this one not only promotes the interests of a single company which somewhere along the line we will be paying for because there is no way £14million is going cover this for the 30 year period they’re talking about. It also promotes and equips people with the skills to use systems that are not as productive as other alternatives, don’t have a viable long term future and because these ‘trained’ people will obviously adopt what they’ve learned, it will also mean that while companies in other countries are using far more efficient/robust systems, we’ll be lumbered with rubbish that will have a detrimental effect to our competitiveness against them.

I haven’t embedded this YouTube clip for a very good reason. Suffice to say, those crazy Danes have some novel methods of trying to get people not to speed.

Not a clip to be viewed at work, you have been warned.