More on the ‘great reset’ meeting

Kier Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen in a conference room

In an article/podcast in inews, entitled "Starmer's Government sees closer ties with the EU as a key part of plans to ramp up economic growth",  the issue of deals with global partners to be a key part of trying to make Britain a more attractive destination for investment is allegedly discussed. See the full article at 'RemovePaywalls.com'. I made some notes inspired or provoked by this article, which was published in late July. Although much of this is extracted quotes, I make some comments. For more, use the 'Read More' button ...

Happy birthday

a chocolate birthday cake

Today, is the 21st anniversary of starting this blog. The first article called “Online at last” is still available.

Back then I promised or hoped that some of what I put here, about IT issues, business and Computer Games (including Baldur’s Gate 2) will be interesting, innovative and useful. I also expect to just put some simple stuff up; stuff that does not warrant a web page, maybe I’ll x-ref my amazon book reviews and put up some that I don’t expect to publish elsewhere. I doubt I’ll be writing about either cooking or DIY. [It took a while but for various reasons I took up both although usually publish my thoughts and research on these topics a separate subsite. ] I am still writing about games too.

I catalogue the history of the site on my History & Aims page. It’s gone through phases, and today is mainly about politics and technology and technology regulation. The more personal stuff is currently posted to the wiki, and the technical stuff is often previewed on my linkedin blog. I usually cross post to Medium, where I can be followed, if you are a member and would like to follow me there.

Random
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Tariffs and other trade barriers

image of the alaskan highway

Last night I watched a video about Canada raising a large toll on lorries travelling from the Lower 48 to Alaska, and it documents and forecast the impact on the fragile Alaskan economy. It reminded me of the trade barriers that the UK has put in place due to Brexit. This is potentially disastrous for Alaska, and is clearly so for the UK where today the FT reports that according to the ONS, the UK economy shrank for the second quarter in a row.

The trade to GDP rate in the UK is 63%, which seems enormous to me, but it seems to be merely above average and yet it illustrates the UK’s dependency on the rest of the world to feed itself and keep itself warm and sheltered. The US rate is 25% which is low by international comparison and may be one of the reasons that Trump can afford to be as foolish as he is with his tariff policies, noting that it’s the US consumers who ultimately pay his tariffs. Source: World Bank.

The EU flag, before castor and pollux,

But for the UK, this is another piece of evidence that the UK needs to rejoin the EU’s single market, but even if this common sense actually strikes this Labour government, I doubt that the Eire/Holland/France traffic will return to the UK. …

Creative incompetence

Creative incompetence

I wrote a piece on the Peter Principle and Creative Incompetence on my LinkedIn blog.

The Peter principle, suggests that people are promoted to levels of incompetence. I the article I argue that this is aggravated by the fact that management values management and often values task and financial management more than people management skills.

The overpromoted are often unhappy and the insightful are either lucky and work for organisations that seek to avoid these traps by recognising and rewarding individual contributors or employ a strategy of “creative incompetence”.  …