Cameron’s game

David Cameron may be an odious politician and the Labour leadership election suggests he is certainly a lucky one, but his EU referendum game may turn out well for him. Whether he saw this from the start I don’t know, but maybe he did. In which case well played David, you lying slimeball.

An in/out EU referendum might have been good for eurosceptics if UKIP had made a better showing at the general election. Even then it would have been risky because the EU has many advantages, not least the triple advantages of inertia, fear of the unknown and pots of money. As things stand now, a referendum isn’t so good for eurosceptics because there is too much to lose and losing is the most likely outcome.

Cameron knows this. Although there are risks in holding an in/out referendum, the gains make it worthwhile. A vote to stay in the EU may not get the issue off his back, but it will permanently weaken it and change the nature of the narrative. It will be marginalised politically and that must be his intention. It paves the way for his next career move too. I'm sure that is also his intention.

Allowing his ministers to campaign as they choose could be another smart move. There is little charisma available among ministers to damage the pro-EU narrative and allowing this amount of freedom claws back some democratic credentials. Not only that, but it may lob more leadership issues into the eurosceptic camp. If the vote goes Cameron's way then his victory becomes that much more personal and legitimate, the eurosceptic case that much less legitimate.

What persuaded Cameron to take the referendum risk in the first place? I don’t know but he could have been advised by Tony Blair - the game feels Machiavellian enough. Or he may simply be lucky. In responding to pressures he made it up as he went along and stumbled on a game worth playing. It still feels worthy of Machiavelli to me though.

Inserting the technology

The video clip is merely a commercial for KUKA Robotics. Although now past his peak, Timo Boll has previously reached number one in the ITTF world table tennis rankings. The average club player would still do well to take a point off him.

In this commercial we cannot see quite how the robot is supposed to score points against Boll, in which case it is safe to assume that in a real match it probably couldn't. Apart from anything else Boll would easily confuse it with spin.

Which is also what this clip is - spin. That's point one - the technology is being oversold. Amusingly oversold but still oversold.

Point two takes us back a few decades to the early eighties when our lab had a brand new laboratory computer system installed. Microcomputers such as the Apple II had only been around for a few years and in those days environmental labs such as ours relied entirely on calculators, graphs and paperwork.

Our super new computer system was part of a centrally coordinated IT project which unfortunately never got to grips with the realities of laboratory life. After lots of fanfare it turned out to be slow, inflexible and expensive. Nevertheless we managed to make use of it. There were no real benefits to using it, but the system had been imposed centrally with lots of senior clout behind it so we made the best of it.

Point three is the glaringly obvious lesson to be drawn from points one and two which are related anyway.

As technology invades middle class professional strongholds such as science, education, law, administration and many others, these two factors will play their part - inevitably. Firstly the technology will be oversold to decision makers and secondly people on the ground will adapt to it because that's what they do. There is no real choice, it's adapt or move on and when it comes to the point most of us adapt.

So gosh - didn't that robot play well?

Crap idea

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From the Telegraph comes news of technological insanity.

LG has wowed the crowds at this year's CES with the self-opening fridge, which senses when a human moves past it and cracks open its door.

The door cracks opens automatically when a human puts their foot in front of its low embedded sensor, meaning it can't be opened by opportunistic passing pets. However, you still need to fully open the door yourself.

I'm no technophobe but the search for novelty doesn't always take us anywhere worthwhile. Maybe the fridge is journalist bait, a product to write about rather than anything more practical. 

Or maybe not. Somebody will probably buy the thing. Midnight snackers for example.

All Hallows

Stories well told - they remind me of listening to the wireless and what we miss in the ghastly visual clamour we have so busily created. To my mind de la Mare's strange tale should be enjoyed by the flicker of firelight and a glass of something chosen with care. Something to salute Dry January perhaps?

Old gods are dying

Men of courage, with strong bodies and quick brains, men who have come of a strong race, have taken up what they had thought to be the banner of life and carried it forward. Growing weary they have stopped in a road that climbs a long hill and have leaned the banner against a tree. Tight brains have loosened a little. Strong convictions have become weak. Old gods are dying.

Sherwood Anderson - Windy McPherson's Son (1916)

As ever it pays to be realistic about cherished ideals and our ideal of Britain as an independent nation seems destined for the chop. It’s a tragic spectacle for many, but that’s no reason to deny the reality of it. Devolution is merely a stage in the process, the shadow of the axe.

There may be a few moves left such as a solid rejection of the EU in our forthcoming referendum, but if that one fails surely it is game over. It appears to be our last move with nothing else on the horizon. The demise of Britain won’t happen quickly but if current trends are any guide then happen it will. In which case the Britain many of us grew up in will have gone forever so we may as well get used to it. Goodbye Britain, hello whatever.

So what to do? There is little one can do other than look after personal and family interests, enjoy life and say what ought to be said within those ever tightening political limits. Apart from considering the possibility of emigration that’s about it.

The world is changing because that is what it does and here in Britain we voters have put far too little effort into working out how to guide the changes to our national advantage. We were too complacent, too lazy, too happy to park our trust with those who never deserved it. As a result Britain has all but gone and there is no point in piling all the blame on the political classes. We voters did our share simply by knowing nothing and doing even less.

For now the names and the history remain plus misleading echoes of business as usual, but all that seems likely to change as the global net tightens, as freedoms are forgotten, as people are forgotten, as you and I must one day be forgotten.

Superseded by machinery

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He was one of that large class of purely mechanical and perfectly mediocre persons connected with the practice of the law who will probably, in a more advanced state of science, be superseded by machinery.

Wilkie Collins – Man and Wife (1870)

The other day I received an email from our electricity and gas supplier asking me to submit a new meter reading. Of course the email was composed and sent by a computer. I duly read the meters, entered my readings online and the machine calculated our latest statement. Mine was probably the only human role and a subservient one at that. One day smart meters will get rid of my job too.

Early in the New Year I’ll receive another email from another machine reminding me that our credit card payment is due. I’ll pay our credit card bill via the online machine and another machine which is our bank. Nobody else involved here either.

Later I’ll probably visit Tesco and pay for some groceries using that same credit card. When I reach the checkout a Tesco machine will validate my credit card and issue a receipt allowing me to take the goods. If I buy a bottle of wine a machine will tell the Tesco checkout operator to confirm that I’m old enough. One day it will already know.

At some point I may take the car to the unmanned fuel station at Asda to buy some diesel from yet another machine. Some machines have permanent human minders, but that may change. Supermarkets alone give us some pretty strong clues about our future – machine minders.

Picture a solicitor behind a desk a few years into the future. On the desk is a computer and this is where the solicitor’s professional expertise really is. The solicitor consults the machine but it is the machine which really sorts out the legal work. The solicitor is merely its trained minder, its human face.

How about teaching, job interviews, accountancy, driving a car, lorry, taxi, bus or train? How about delivery drivers, journalism, supervision and even management? How about politics? In many ways David Cameron is a machine minder. He looks after that little cog in the global machine, the cog we used to call the United Kingdom.

First quote of 2016

Here is the Puritan in full flower. The night has come.
Sherwood Anderson - Many Marriages (1923)