A Greek Tragedy Unfolding

I chanced across this extraordinary interview with right-wing shock-jock Alex Jones interviewing Nigel Farage.

Farage tells the story of an elderly Greek man (an ex-Ambassador) coming to see him in Brussels who tells him that things are so bad, and that the country is in such a state of collapse that he is convinced richer people will have to start defending their property as so many poor people will have no choice but to start robbing and looting richer people's houses.

To defend his home he has just been out and bought himself a Kalashnikov for 100 Euro.. shocking.

The Emergence of the Real Conservative Party?

Yesterday Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home launched a massive broadside on David Cameron calling for the National Health Service bill to be 'killed'. Today, rather than dropping his bombshell and retreating as many would have expected, Tim has taken things further.

This morning Tim has delivered another savage attack with a piece headlined 'Defeat is the defining experience of Cameron's political career', which refers to yet another piece he has written for the Daily Mail titled 'Cameron thinks voters view the Tories as too Right-wing, too male, too white... but they're really seen as people who've never had to worry about money.'

Wow!

In the past Tim has often challenged the prevailing thinking of the Conservative leadership but he has done it far more subtly and in a far less divisive way. The methods he has used in the past have never really overstepped an invisible line of loyalty..

This is no longer the case.

Whereas in the past, Tim has challenged Cameron and implored him to do things in the future, in my memory he has never attacked him for really defining things he has done in the past - in other words, things that Cameron can't change even if he wanted to..

But now he has. In the Mail piece, Tim not only attacks Cameron but also attacks his approach for finding Parliamentary candidates while in opposition - and therefore also criticises the existence of many current Conservative MPs who won their seats at the last election!

So.Why the change of approach? What is Tim trying to achieve?

Does he really want Cameron to capitulate and drop the NHS bill? Or is he simply trying to force a real debate that will properly explore exactly what this bill is all about and what exactly it's purpose and potential benefits are?

Or is it less coherent than that? Is this just Tim expressing some personal frustration and hitting out wildly?

Or is it actually more serious? Has Tim reached a point of such complete dissatisfaction with Cameron Conservativism that he has chosen this moment to start an onslaught designed to eventually unseat him?

Here's a question. What is it that makes Conservatives, Conservatives? In other words who defines the agenda that others identify with and therefore support and vote for the Conservative party?

It's not a simple answer. It's partly the Conservative Leadership, partly the Conservative membership and the constituency organisations but it's also largely Conservative Home because they, more than anything else, represent and have built the grass-roots of Conservative activism and support.

Tim Montgomerie's efforts of the last few days signal great danger for David Cameron and the Conservative Party.

Tim's message boils down to this - David Cameron is out of touch. Worse, he has surrounded himself with people the broader electorate can't identify with and he is conducting himself in a way that will make the Conservative party fail and become unelectable in the future.

What I suspect Tim is also saying is that unless Dave wakes up and stops destroying what Tim built then he will have no choice but to do it himself... think about it.

'What Tim built"?

Yes. Conservative membership declined massively in the period of opposition preceding the last General  election yet the Conservatives were still able to form a coalition government. This was largely because the support base was built, not by the party machine, but by a parallel organisation - Tim Montgomerie's Conservative Home.

The Conservative party still has the major problem that it is lead by the Prime Minister but it has an entirely independent support base lead by Tim Montgomerie.

Ultimately, unless they can work together, a split is inevitable and then the question is simply, which is the Real Conservative Party?

Time for a cosy weekend for the two fellas at Chequers, or perhaps at Tim's house at Salisbury, I would suggest..

P.S. I cannot disagree with a single thing Tim has said.

Great Grandpa's Gift

A retirement gift presented to my Great Grandfather Arnold Holden on his retirement from the Daily Mail, where he worked as a journalist and editor, in 1945.

The Fourth Science

A couple of months ago I woke up, as is often the case, to the sound of someone on Radio 4 moaning. This particularly fella was from a campaign group called CASE who were campaigning for Computer Science to be taught in schools.

The item immediately caught my attention because it highlighted a huge problem that has long gone unrectified - the absence of any real serious efforts to provide kids with a basic knowledge and understanding of Computer Science - how computers operate and how to programme them.

When I was 12 years old my father had installed a ground-breaking computer system at the Architectural practice he worked for. It was leading edge - a huge investment made to help them design Terminal 4 airport at Heathrow. His early grasp of the importance of computer automation led him to make an equally fateful, at least for me, investment. My Dad bought one of Sir Clive Sinclair's ZX81 computers for home.

The ZX81 was a horrible little lump of plastic encased electronics with a nasty, flat, barely touch-sensitive keyboard that was absolutely hopeless to use. It had a tiny 1k of memory (less than a billionth of the memory in my current mobile phone) and stored computer programmes by connecting to an audio tape recorder and stored them by recording bizarre, unforgettable screaming noises on the tape.

I absolutely loved it.

The ZX81 was a strange computer by today's standards - because it didn't actually do anything. Instead it was equipped with the computer programming language BASIC which consisted of 20 or 30 commands that were combined in lines of code to create computer programmes.

I was fascinated with the challenge that this new device represented - I.e. making this unbroken device work for some useful purpose. I spent every penny I got on computer magazines and books and learned to programme it. I was utterly captivated with the extraordinary power that now rested in my hands to create a computer programme to do absolutely anything! It was staggering and truly breathtaking.

I wrote computer programmes for everything. My first commissions included a programme for calculating damp penetration through different materials, a bus time tabling programme and a raft of original games and copies of the first arcade games - space invaders, pacman, defender, donkey kong, etc. the list was endless. I wrote programmes for computer magazines and had them published and a friend of my father paid me to fill an audio tape with programmes because he had bought a ZX81 but couldn't be bothered to learn how to programme it.

The future potential for what I was doing was limitless.

One day when I was 15 I went into school and told a teacher I wanted to do an O level in Computer Science. He laughed, literally. The school despite having over 2000 pupils only had one dusty BBC microcomputer that was mainly kept on a trolley locked in a cupboard because no-one knew how to use it.

I was told that my idea of doing Computer Science was impossible largely because the final O level consisted not just of written exams and submission of some computer programmes but also some coursework which I would be unable to complete - because the school didn't have a teacher who could provide the course..

I asked if it were possible to pass the O level without doing any course work.Laughing boy tittered that it was technically but only if someone managed to get close to 100% in the exams and from their submitted programmes... A task that was insurmountable. I gave him my hardest Paddington stare and accepted the deal. To cut a long story short he finally agreed to enter me for the exam some time later.

I went home, typed out some of my computer programmes on a type-writer (I didn't own a printer!) and sent them to the examining board with some notes to explain how they worked.

On the day of the exam, I turned over the exam paper with some trepidation. For one reason or another I hadn't got around to revising. In fact, I didn't actually know what was on the syllabus. Having managed to talk my way into the exam, I was now taking a bit of a flyer. I was slightly concerned in case the exam would require me to illustrate a level of knowledge usually only possessed by mad professors not nerdy gobby schoolboys.

It was my turn to laugh. I still remember the first question. It was - 'What is a BIT?'. Ask anyone who knows anything about computer science and they will tell you, it's the equivalent of asking a student taking an English O level what the first letter of the alphabet is..

Anyway. Back to Radio 4. As I slowly gained consciousness I realised I was listening to someone describing the same problem I had encountered at school but it still existed nearly 30 years later!

Today schools are teaching ICT. ICT basically teaches kids how to use computers. They mainly fiddle about with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Rather than using these sort of tools in every other lesson as tools for writing, managing information and presenting it as they will do later in the workplace, they have a discrete 'lesson' for learning how to use tools and acquire very basic skills that they have NO opportunity to use and develop in the rest of their learning time at school.. Madness.

There is still a complete absence of Computer Science teaching in schools. As someone observed recently it's like teaching people to read but not to write or perhaps more simply it's like learning how to drive a car but without having any understanding of how a car works.

But so what? Why do you need to know how a car works?

You don't If you only want to drive cars with engines and thousands of othe components that others design and make. But if you want to build future industries based on technology then you better at least gives kids the basic ABC building blocks at school and ignite their minds to the limitless possibilities that harnessing the enormous power of computing represents. I would never have gone on to build an IT company, an Internet business or been able to conceive the IT based projects I am currently working on if it had not have been for the ZX81.

So to say I am in support of Michael Gove's recent announcements that he is overhauling the teaching of a computer Science in schools would be a huge understatement. It is absolutely vital.

But to really understand where we, as a nation, went wrong with failing (so far) to harness Computer Science for the betterment of our Country, you have to take a visit to Bletchley Park the home of the first computers developed by the extraordinary Alan Turing - the subject of a future post. Ever since the 1940s we have failed to exploit the fruits of this genius. But I am convinced, it's not too late.

P.S. A bit is a Binary dIgiT. B.I.T simple as ABC.

The Solution to the Financial Crisis

Just chanced upon this rather fascinating interview on BBC Hard Talk with an Economist called Steve Keen. I know that's a fairly unlikely sounding statement, the words 'fascinating' and 'economist' don't normally co-exist in the same sentence. But for once I think it is justifiable.



Steve is an Australian economist who predicted the financial crash and, in economic circles, shouted quite loudly about what was about to happen - before it actually did. In a world full of people who were wise after the event Steve deserves some credit and also deserves to be listened to.

When asked if we are in danger of a depression, Steve calmly explains that we have already entered one, it's just that people don't tend to recognise these sort of things until afterwards - hmm. He then goes on to talk of the economic miracle that Hitler achieved in the 1930's following the Great Depression. Again..hmm.

Steve then touches on a solution to the financial crisis that involves quite a radical rethink. He explains that the Bank bailouts were a complete mistake - 'Governments bailed out Banks and then expected them to lend to people and businesses. Instead they should have bailed out the debtors not the lenders'.. It's a stunningly simple point.

Steve basically points out that the debt crisis was created by banks lending ludicrous amounts of money to people based on raising asset prices - it was basically a dodgy 'ponzi' scheme. E.G. Property prices increase because banks start lending more money to people who buy property, which in turn leads them to lend more money as prices rise etc etc and the cycle continues. The banks created their own destruction and innocent people got caught up in it.

Steve's conclusion is that debts that were unreasonably imposed should not be paid off. His solution is mass default causing the banks to collapse. Then, the government takes over all the banks (temporarily) nationalising the whole system and then gives everyone a big bag of money.

Yes really, I am absolutely serious. That's what he proposes. Basically everyone gets a load of cash. Those people in debt have to use it to pay off debt and those who don't get to keep it and spend it on whatever they fancy..

I am no Economics Expert but...

Actually I have just thought. Given that I did an A-level economics course 20 odd years ago and I guess probably less than 5% of the population have ever done an economics course, I probably am, relatively speaking to 95% of the population, an economics expert! (That's a very scary thought) So, in my now 'expert' opinion I reckon Steve is on to something.

But bizarelly, the major stumbling block that Steve has come up against is that he doesn't think there are any politicians around who have the balls to do what he suggests.

Eh?

I really cannot imagine a more electable manifesto pledge than 'We will give everyone a free bag of money'. It's an absolute guaranteed vote winner. Any politician would love it!

You really should watch the video.

Steve also has a blog here (a bit technical - I didn't understand a lot of it and I am an expert remember).

Murdoch Offloads

Rupert Murdoch sold 4.5 million shares in News International on Wednesday last week and then another 1 million on Thursday - yeilding him a total of in excess of $58,000,000.

Why would he would have done that I wonder?

The Absence of Outrage

Sometimes it's truly shocking how little outrage there is when something truly horrifying occurs.

In the last two weeks, the leaders of Europe's most historic democracies have been forced out of office and both been replaced by illegitimate, unelected leaders. Greece, the cradle of democracy, has seen democratic process destroyed. The will of it's people has not simply been ignored, they were not even consulted.

Similarly in Italy, where many of the central founding concepts and principles of democracy were developed, democratic process has been violated. The EU has replaced National Leaders with it's own puppets, for the furtherance of it's political objectives

But do we feel a sense of shock and outrage? - A national outpouring of stunned shock, dismay, anger, fury?

Why, when for generations our people have given their lives for the ideal of democracy, do we feel so little sense of anger at what is unfolding in Europe - all for the sake of continuing down the road of yet another failed European political project.

I shudder to think what those who died for their independent European nations in the 1940's would feel today, not just to see Europe again in turmoil as the result of another set of expansionist ambitions, but at the tragic apathy of so many of it's people.

There was a period in the 1930s when 'concensus' government and public disaffection for politics lead many to ignore the growing threat of fascism in Germany. Similar to today, most people failed to make sense of the sequence of events that was unfolding. If it hadn't of been for that incomprehension, apathy and inaction perhaps many of the horrors of the early 1940's and the millions of deaths would have been avoided.

The moment of realisation came when a great force was assembled with territorial ambitions to unify Europe and began the process by invading the weaker nations and replacing their governments with their own. But this realisation was made real by the images of war - soldiers, tragic scenes of war-torn civilians, death and destruction.

Today a similar process is sanitised because, barring a bit of civil unrest in Greece, there have been no scenes of violence. There has been no shocking event that has woken people up and forced them to question exactly what is going on. Thus the insidious creep of the destruction of democracy continues unabated.

In the 1930s, one politician sounded constant warnings about the rise of a forceful political group with ambitions to dominate and control all of Europe. Churchill was derided as an extremist lunatic by many - but his warnings of the dangers that were unfolding proved prescient.

Here another individual from our time  provides similar warnings:



Farage is regularly derided as an extremist. So complacent are we that many dismiss him as a misguided ranting fool.

Is he? Or is he simply pointing out the obvious truth that we as yet fail to fully recognise?