OK, you asked for #savileweek and here it is. I’m determined to write him out of my head anyway. So, I read In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile, Dan Davies’ critical biography of Jimmy Savile. Before going any further that’s not our Dan, but rather a journalist who felt he was…
Read More #savileweek: the icon of unpopular populismThe Adam Smith Institute is trying to make itself right about rail privatisation with this chart: Because it goes up and to the right! And if you forget the whole 14 year bit from 1981 to 1995 where it was going up and to the right, you can claim this is down to railway privatisation…
Read More Here is a chart illustrating some data. Watch me say the exact oppositeThere’s something wrong with the Lib Dems isn’t there? I mean, apart from the whole “inflicting David Cameron on the country” thing. Pearce said that she would remain in the party in a more modest role. “So at the moment, not knowing quite where I fit in the party, I have still decided to remain…
Read More the token person who sits and smiles in the backgroundHere is a horrible piece of work. Tory MP Charlotte Leslie in the Grauniad says stuff. But Norman Warner is “brave” in a good way, though I disagree with him. Lord Warner, the former Labour health minister, has suggested that if we are to preserve our NHS, we should charge a £10 “membership fee” to…
Read More making TV programmes to make policy to go on TV withI’m currently reading Oliver Campion-Awwad, Alexander Hayton, Leila Smith, and Mark Vuaran of Cambridge Computer Lab’s case study on the NHS National Programme for IT, an old topic of this fine blog’s. There is so much in common here with Think Defence‘s epic blog series on the disastrous FRES project it’s not even funny. In…
Read More The West Yorkshire snack vortex, his personal shopper, NHS computing, and FRESSo, ISIS. Through the open newslist it turned out that a lot of you could put off reading about Jimmy Savile until later if it meant hearing about the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and why it seemed at the time to have the beating of the Kurds. Let’s begin with the geography, or…
Read More ISIS: thinking on a scale set by the landIt’s a little while since we did one of these. Candidates include: Think Defence has finished their epic series on the disastrous FRES procurement. It has much in common with classic IT project failure, for example, the NHS NPfIT. Also, we wanted to have at Eric Pickles on a related issue and we might yet…
Read More Open newslist 7LinkedIn’s algo just recommended me this: The Cherie Blair Foundation for Women’s Mobile Technology Programme works on a wide range of exciting initiatives – from conducting independent research and developing bespoke mobile apps to forging innovative public-private partnerships and implementing regional projects – all with the aim of utilising mobile technology to support women entrepreneurs…
Read More Career opportunitiesSo an Indian TV crew managed to film a Hamas rocket team doing their thing. First of all, wow. That’s the use of the gazebo in urban warfare, right there. More seriously, I reckon the launch site is in dead ground from two or three sides, covered from view by the buildings and trees, unless…
Read More Watch an actual Hamas rocket launch, with #combatgazeboOne for Erik: Woollard’s writing suggests a more tragic story, where these principles were well understood in the factories of Britain’s industrial heartland, only to be lost in the decades that followed. It seems likely that the principles were preserved or possibly rediscovered by Toyota…
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