This story; from China is predictably horrible: Chinese authorities have sentenced two women in their 70s to a year’s “re-education through labour” following their application to hold a protest demonstration during the Beijing games, a relative said yesterday. Officials said this week they had not approved a single permit for a demonstration, despite designating three…
Read More Can’t we be more helpful and appropriate?I’m about to propose something to make Daniel Davies cry. Specifically, it’s a solution to a problem we currently deal with by a cash transfer through the tax and benefit system. But I think I’ve made a good case that trying to deal with high energy prices by paying the poor to burn more energy…
Read More The Harrowell Plan (Or, No Christmas Card from Dsquared)Remember when the Airbus A380 was delayed and it was an example of the total bankruptcy of socialist Europe’s way of life? Look what’s happening with Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner (and BA’s fleet)… Boeing blamed the delivery delay on continuing problems with flight control software, being produced by Honeywell International, and integrating other systems on the…
Read More 0x05B7Y: Out of Bolts ErrorRemember this post on how the NHS National Programme for IT was doomed? Chatter is circulating that the whole thing might be scrapped, or at least subjected to a major review. Against this background, the big chief, Richard Granger, is leaving and has said some surprising things. E-Health Insider reports; and it’s somewhat disturbing. Apparently,…
Read More NPfIT: Still a disaster. Still a disaster in the same wayRob Farley has reviewed a book I’ve just been rereading, Marc Levinson’s The Box. It’s a history of containerisation and how it had a massive impact on the economy – Levinson argues that port and cargo handling costs were so great pre-containers that containerisation itself was enough to bring about a huge reorganisation of world…
Read More Big Big Steel Boxes!Ziff-Davis Baseline carries a huge report on exactly why the NHS National Programme for IT is a disaster. (Thanks, Charles.) First of all, a reiteration of a past point: they mention as one of the few successes the N3 tranche of the project, which turns out to be the deployment of DSL lines to GP…
Read More HOWNOTTO build a computer systemD2’s post on statis (it’s the new change) and crap government IT brought something to mind. Dan mentions the success of the Bank of England-run Crest settlement system for the London Stock Exchange, contrasted with the hellbroth of disaster the NHS National Programme for IT is descending into. One thing I think he should have…
Read More Why BT’s bit of the NHS IT contract worksThe Grauniad yesterday interviewed David Nicholson, who’s just been appointed chief executive of the NHS. The text is illuminating in the extreme, especially in terms of managerialism and technocracy. David Nicholson, the new chief executive of the NHS in England, took up the reins of office last week and set about dispelling the notion that…
Read More A case study in managerialismAll right then, can anyone tell me why we are suddenly in a crisis regarding illegal immigration? We weren’t, as far as I can tell, yesterday. Now we are, and the BBC is running BNP-it’s-OK-to-like deep stater Andrew Green’s pet thinktank and a special feature from resigned-on-principle-five-minutes-before-his-line-manager-got-there IO Steve Moxon, intercut with fuzzy video of…
Read More Crisis!