Given the significance of the implied admission, Turkish prime minister Erdogan's recent statement has received remarkably little coverage.
There is a graphic reminder of the "pain" of the Armenians in Robert Fisk's article in the Independent's 1914-18 series published yesterday, or of this touching piece from 2010. The rhetorical question attributed to Hitler, "Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?", appears to be a fabrication, but Fisk places German army officers as witnesses of the 1915 genocide. It would clearly have been in the back of the minds of Hitler, Himmler and their senior executioners, even if not spoken of.
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
Tuesday, 29 April 2014
Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS)
Now that the worst of the flooding has subsided, it is time for the relevant authorities in the affected areas in Yorkshire, the Thames valley and the south-west of England to plan against the next inundation, which cannot be long away. So should the Welsh Government and Welsh councils - we were unbelievably lucky in 2013/14.
Expert advice is that dredging of rivers may be part of the solution, but may also make situations worse. Speeding up flows may increase the trouble for communities downstream. However, the authorities seem to have used that advice as an excuse to do nothing, not even the active land management which experts also recommend.
Anything which can slow rainfall on its rush to the sea is valuable. Wetlands, ground-cover (trees or scrub) or even garden ponds in built-up areas help. As an article in the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust magazine Waterlife magazine puts it:
We all need somewhere to live, somewhere to work and somewhere to shop; many of us want a place to park our cars and outlets for our leisure activities. As our numbers increase, so we must continue to build.
Yet the amount of water on our planet remains constant, forever falling from the sky, making its way to rivers, flowing to the sea, evaporating, forming clouds and then falling to Earth once more.
The more we build, therefore, the fewer places it has to go. [...] By increasing the capacity of landscapes, whether rural or urban, to capture and store water, we slow the rate at which those landscapes drain, helping to avoid the disasters of too much water reaching conduits such as rivers at the same time. It's all about building and maintaining catchment levels.
Restoring wetlands, and making those that exist more effective, is part of that process, so is introducing wetlands into areas where they don't currently exist. WWT's SuDS programme is part of that latter thinking.
An initiative by a mid-Wales farmer would also help in rural areas. He planted some trees originally to provide shelter for sheep to lamb outside, and thus save electricity bills. Other local farmers took up the initiative. They found that a beneficial side-effect was the reduction of water run-off.
Expert advice is that dredging of rivers may be part of the solution, but may also make situations worse. Speeding up flows may increase the trouble for communities downstream. However, the authorities seem to have used that advice as an excuse to do nothing, not even the active land management which experts also recommend.
Anything which can slow rainfall on its rush to the sea is valuable. Wetlands, ground-cover (trees or scrub) or even garden ponds in built-up areas help. As an article in the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust magazine Waterlife magazine puts it:
We all need somewhere to live, somewhere to work and somewhere to shop; many of us want a place to park our cars and outlets for our leisure activities. As our numbers increase, so we must continue to build.
Yet the amount of water on our planet remains constant, forever falling from the sky, making its way to rivers, flowing to the sea, evaporating, forming clouds and then falling to Earth once more.
The more we build, therefore, the fewer places it has to go. [...] By increasing the capacity of landscapes, whether rural or urban, to capture and store water, we slow the rate at which those landscapes drain, helping to avoid the disasters of too much water reaching conduits such as rivers at the same time. It's all about building and maintaining catchment levels.
Restoring wetlands, and making those that exist more effective, is part of that process, so is introducing wetlands into areas where they don't currently exist. WWT's SuDS programme is part of that latter thinking.
An initiative by a mid-Wales farmer would also help in rural areas. He planted some trees originally to provide shelter for sheep to lamb outside, and thus save electricity bills. Other local farmers took up the initiative. They found that a beneficial side-effect was the reduction of water run-off.
Blast from the past
An early editor of Personal Computer World, and respected IT and management guru, David Tebbutt, has put a large chunk of his pre-WorldWideWeb writings on his web pages. It is a searchable archive which I look forward to dipping in to in the months to come, but I just had to seek out his first editorial:
Written by David Tebbutt, Personal Computer World 09/79 - scanned
First Editorial
One of the hallmarks of PCW has always been the lively participation of its readers. You are out there doing interesting things, developing new software and hardware devices, setting up clubs and societies - perhaps even getting concerned about the likely implications of the coming technological revolution.
Where better to broadcast and share the wealth of your knowledge, ideas and experiences than in the pages of a respected and widely distributed journal? If you are concerned about style of presentation - read our `guidelines for contributors', if you are unsure about content - there are very few restrictions. Obviously, though, an unusual or radical contribution has more chance of being published than, say, yet another program for `Mastermind'*.
We'd be particularly interested to hear from people who have installed a personal computer in their own business, from people who have hooked-up something unusual - perhaps through an analogue interface (but, please, no more analogue to digital converters), from people who wish to `soapbox' their views and from people still at school or college. Also, if you want to tell us something but prefer not to go into print - fine. Just write in anyway because we'd love to hear your views, good or bad. Remember, this is very much your magazine and its future direction should, and will, reflect the views and desires of its readership. We look forward to hearing from you.
The Editor
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. Thank you, David, for the happy memories.
* A popular game at the time.
Written by David Tebbutt, Personal Computer World 09/79 - scanned
First Editorial
One of the hallmarks of PCW has always been the lively participation of its readers. You are out there doing interesting things, developing new software and hardware devices, setting up clubs and societies - perhaps even getting concerned about the likely implications of the coming technological revolution.
Where better to broadcast and share the wealth of your knowledge, ideas and experiences than in the pages of a respected and widely distributed journal? If you are concerned about style of presentation - read our `guidelines for contributors', if you are unsure about content - there are very few restrictions. Obviously, though, an unusual or radical contribution has more chance of being published than, say, yet another program for `Mastermind'*.
We'd be particularly interested to hear from people who have installed a personal computer in their own business, from people who have hooked-up something unusual - perhaps through an analogue interface (but, please, no more analogue to digital converters), from people who wish to `soapbox' their views and from people still at school or college. Also, if you want to tell us something but prefer not to go into print - fine. Just write in anyway because we'd love to hear your views, good or bad. Remember, this is very much your magazine and its future direction should, and will, reflect the views and desires of its readership. We look forward to hearing from you.
The Editor
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. Thank you, David, for the happy memories.
* A popular game at the time.
Monday, 28 April 2014
Less outsourcing, more professionalism in the civil service
We are virtually back in a pre-Gladstonian age of public administration, almost as if Northcote and Trevelyan had never reported. Special Advisers (SPADs) whose qualifications and experience could be negligible may be recruited to take over some of the duties of civil servants, thus re-creating an arena for patronage. The regular civil service has been stripped down, and favoured private companies, whose policies of pay and conditions may not match those of public servants, have taken over responsibility for swathes of administration.
Andreas Whittam-Smith, co-founder of the Indy and no socialist, inveighed against the process back in February:
Andreas Whittam-Smith, co-founder of the Indy and no socialist, inveighed against the process back in February:
Remember that from the middle of the 19th century until the early 1970s, we had what was widely believed to be the best Civil Service in the world. It saw the nation through two world wars, the General Strike, the Depression, the Cold War, the liberalisation of the 1960s and into the age of globalisation and high technology. A parliamentary committee recently concluded that a strong Civil Service “remains the most effective way of supporting the democratically elected Government and future administrations in the UK”.
But, alas, we don’t have that any more. Career politicians with little experience of life outside politics have wrecked it. One way, is by suborning civil servants into serving the propaganda needs of the government of the day. Thus, our Whitehall Editor, Oliver Wright, reported recently that senior Tory strategists in Downing Street have issued an edict to government departments effectively banning them from highlighting speeches, initiatives and events that are not central to the party’s key election themes. Charming. At the same time, a civil servant whistleblower alleges that in the Ministry of Justice, the Secretary of State has instructed political special advisers to review every single response to a parliamentary question to ensure that a favourable reply is presented. The whistleblower adds: “As you might imagine, this has infuriated officials at all levels with constant requests for redrafts of accurate answers and by dragging them into the spin machine.”
A second problem is the tendency for Government ministers to scapegoat individual officials, rather than to learn lessons from such failures as the West Coast Main Line franchise fiasco and the debacles at the UK Border Agency. This may be one of the reasons why there has been a very high turnover in senior staff.
Coupled with this unduly negative attitude to the Civil Service is a naïve admiration for the commercial sector. With the political class having, for the most part, zero experience of running business enterprises, it has had difficulty in imagining what could go wrong with outsourcing. Even government departments themselves often fail fully to grasp the nature of the public services for which they are responsible. So they don’t really know where market mechanisms are appropriate to drive service improvement and where they are not.
Then there is the serious problem that outsourcing suppliers often seek to game for their own benefit the reward structures created by commissioners and regulators. Typically they will find ways of “parking” users with complex needs – in other words, unprofitable cases – and of creaming off those who are easier to support, and therefore more remunerative.
For too long, the political parties have believed that public service is bad and private sector is good. It has seemed intuitively correct. But take my experience just yesterday. I went down to my local Marks & Spencer and, as usual, found the staff helpful and the people working at the checkout unfailingly polite and cheerful. Earlier in the day, I had visited my local hospital for a blood test. As I was examining the list of departments inside the entrance to find out where I had to go, a young woman with a clipboard came up and asked if she could help. Which she did. I proceeded to the blood-testing department, ready to read my newspapers while I waited. There was no delay. I was in and out in five minutes. Private service good, public service good.
So this is the question. Can we recreate an effective Civil Service and public service, well regarded by Parliament and voters alike, in which people are proud to serve? It needn’t be more expensive. Then we could largely dispense with outsourcing and the difficulties it brings.
National catch-the-bus week
- where you have one. But I would like to give what publicity I can to the efforts of the Bus Users UK organisation.
The branch in Wales (email wales@bususers.org) is supported by the Welsh Assembly Government. They should be the next port-of-call after the bus company itself if something goes wrong with your journey and you have cause to complain. (If you prefer to use the post, their address is Bus Users UK, c/o PTI Cymru Ltd, Leckwith Offices, Sloper Road, CARDIFF CT11 8TB.)
With the exception of Cardiff and Newport, whose bus operators are municipally-owned, buses in Wales are now run by private bus companies, ranging from small local family-owned firms through to plcs running both buses and trains. Once a company has a licence, it can run buses where it likes, so long as it tells the local Traffic Commissioner eight weeks beforehand. Traffic Commissioners are appointed by the Government to make sure services are run in accordance with the law. The Traffic Commissioner for Wales also controls the English West Midlands, and their office is in Birmingham.
Some services (savagely cut recently as a result of a reduction in subsidies both by the Welsh Government and by local authorities like Neath Port Talbot) are contracted out as a public service. The council is the place to complain if you know that the bus service that has given you trouble is a subsidised one.
[Thanks to a Bus Users UK fact sheet for some of the extracts above.]
The branch in Wales (email wales@bususers.org) is supported by the Welsh Assembly Government. They should be the next port-of-call after the bus company itself if something goes wrong with your journey and you have cause to complain. (If you prefer to use the post, their address is Bus Users UK, c/o PTI Cymru Ltd, Leckwith Offices, Sloper Road, CARDIFF CT11 8TB.)
With the exception of Cardiff and Newport, whose bus operators are municipally-owned, buses in Wales are now run by private bus companies, ranging from small local family-owned firms through to plcs running both buses and trains. Once a company has a licence, it can run buses where it likes, so long as it tells the local Traffic Commissioner eight weeks beforehand. Traffic Commissioners are appointed by the Government to make sure services are run in accordance with the law. The Traffic Commissioner for Wales also controls the English West Midlands, and their office is in Birmingham.
Some services (savagely cut recently as a result of a reduction in subsidies both by the Welsh Government and by local authorities like Neath Port Talbot) are contracted out as a public service. The council is the place to complain if you know that the bus service that has given you trouble is a subsidised one.
[Thanks to a Bus Users UK fact sheet for some of the extracts above.]
Sunday, 27 April 2014
Disestablishment
There are two good postings on the subject of disestablishment of the Church of England in England: http://www.libdemvoice.org/breaking-antidisestablishmentarian-times-and-telegraph-reveal-new-danger-posed-by-150-yearold-liberal-pledge-for-separation-of-church-and-state-39501.html and http://lordsoftheblog.net/2014/04/25/money-not-morals/.
Coincidentally, we have just passed the bicentenary of Angela Burdett-Coutts, a great patron of the Church of England. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography relates that "Her will stipulated that all her Church of England endowments would be nullified in the event of its disestablishment." I wonder if over a hundred years after her death this would still be significant.
Coincidentally, we have just passed the bicentenary of Angela Burdett-Coutts, a great patron of the Church of England. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography relates that "Her will stipulated that all her Church of England endowments would be nullified in the event of its disestablishment." I wonder if over a hundred years after her death this would still be significant.
Friday, 25 April 2014
Forthcoming elections
Our attention is (or should be) on 22nd May and the European Parliament elections. However, in addition to the Indian general election which began on 7th April and will not be complete until after 16th May, there is an important election in the southern hemisphere. South Africa goes to the polls on 7th May. It is an election which the ANC led by Jacob Zuma is expected to win easily, but it appears that the party's hopes of a two-thirds majority in parliament are diminishing slightly. The Democratic Alliance, successor to the multi-racial Liberal Party among others, is the major opposition party, but will do well to achieve 25%.
Thursday, 24 April 2014
UK Business response to UKIP posters
British Influence puts the case against Nigel Farage and his multi-millionaire backers better than I could: http://britishinfluence.org/press-release-farage-racist-hes-much-dangerous/
Footnote: in his TV debates with Nick Clegg, Farage stated that the House of Commons Library figures understate the amount of EU-dictated law because they cover only primary legislation. However, even if Statutory Instruments (subsidiary legislation) are taken into account, the total is less than half - probably no more than 40%.
Farage presents himself as a disinterested patriot, but it is clear from closer examination of his policies that his aim is to create a Britain with minimal protection of the interests of those Labour voters he seems to be seducing.
Footnote: in his TV debates with Nick Clegg, Farage stated that the House of Commons Library figures understate the amount of EU-dictated law because they cover only primary legislation. However, even if Statutory Instruments (subsidiary legislation) are taken into account, the total is less than half - probably no more than 40%.
Farage presents himself as a disinterested patriot, but it is clear from closer examination of his policies that his aim is to create a Britain with minimal protection of the interests of those Labour voters he seems to be seducing.
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