Food security : framing the real problem

An interesting article in the Economist special report on food security a week or 2 ago. One of the inset boxes contained a short article about food waste at various levels. The developed world waste about 50% of the food produced and the developing world about 20%.

Making agriculture more efficient would be trying to solve the wrong problem. Are vested interests at work to promote the culture of increased production as the only path or is it seen as too hard to change the culture of what and how were eat to cut waste.

I tried to come up with a bias that might explain some of this, but decided I did not know enough about the subject area. Maybe that is a bias in itself?

BCS talk : Lessons from America - Obama's Healthcare IT Programme

I attended this lecture last night at the BCS mid Wales meeting. Its was quite depressing really regarding the extent to which WAG gave failed to grasp the IT nettle, Edwina Heart was the best out of touch quote. I think this was recorded and if you are intested in Healthcare IT, it would be well worth the hour to watch.

Lessons from America - Obama's Healthcare IT Programme

Date: Monday 7 March 2011, 6.00pm - 8.00pm. The talk will start at 6.00pm and tea/coffee will be available from 5.30pm.
Venue: Computer Science Department, Aberystwyth University. We expect to be able to offer a live broadcast of this event via the internet. Details to follow when this is confirmed.
Speaker: Tom Brooks

The UK has a poor record of implementing major national IT programmes especially in the public sector. For some 20 years, various Audit Office and Parliamentary reports have been produced to describe the “failures” and some of the reasons for them. Few lessons appear to have been learnt bringing into question on the world stage the competence of IT professionals in the UK.

This presentation compares elements of the NHS IT programmes in England and Wales with the Obama healthcare IT initiative in the USA. It identifies principles that could be deployed, with advantage, in the UK.

Tom Brooks, a committee member of the BCS Mid Wales branch, has worked on national IT programmes in several parts of the world. He has supported the National Audit Office and the Audit Commission and given evidence to several Parliamentary Select Committees. In 1995, he was seconded to the Department of Health to lead the successful ‘new NHS number’ programme forEngland and Wales. He worked for 7 years for a leading US advanced systems supplier and still makes regular study tours to the USA.

Newtown Traffic : The case for a protest vote on Thursday

I am working in Prague this week and was on holiday in the Lakes last week, so I have already voted in the referendum to give the Welsh Assembly Government the ability to make laws in devolved areas without recourse to Westminister.

Certain events which are quite minor make you think if this deserves a protest vote. I am quite supportive of WAG, they have done some good work and have many good A.M.'s but on somethings you have to wonder how capable the underlying civil service really is.

Returning from the Lakes on Friday at about 2pm, we spent 90 minutes crawling through Newtown. Having a phone with Internet I looked up the Powys Highways number and found out that the design work for the new junction layout was paid for by Tesco and done by an external consultant. W.A.G. should have overseen the work. I normally travel through Newtown before 7am or after 8pm, so its the 1st time I have seen this chaos. Talking to a few people who travel that way regularly they say it has been bad for a long time, but got much worse as Tesco opened.

A quick Google search yields this, this and this, plus lots more. This is a high point though

I was told today that the Assembly’s experiences elsewhere indicates that traffic flows will improve as drivers become familiar with the new layout and that WAG does not intend therefore to make any fundamental changes immediately. I accept that flow will improve a little as drivers get used to the layout, but WAG are just not in touch with what is happening here in Newtown and are making excuses.

I understand that is a a report by an interested party, but if this really is true, then it shows a complete lack of understanding of the problem and its impact. The cost to mid-Wales in lost productivity must be in man years per week.

In the world I work in that size of mess would have resulted in the responsible person at worst being sacked and at best getting a serious roasting and moved to somewhere they can't do any damage. If W.A.G. were responsible for oversight of this, how can they

1. have let such a scheme be implemented by Tesco
2. To have ignored the need to short term remedial measures [if shutting Tesco till the underlying issue is resolved is the only option, then so be it, this is a trunk road after all]
3. To only have a long term plan of a by-pass which looks to be at least 3 years away

This is not the only case where WAG has let itself down. Traffic modelling is not an exact science, but to have got it so far wrong and failed to even try to provide a short term solution (6 months is more than long enough) shows a serious weakness.

Its unfortunate that some people will think about voting no on Thursday because of serious deficiencies in WAG's Civil Service capability.

Banker Bonuses : the case for no restraint

So let us assume that a Banker get a bonus of exactly 100,ooo pounds to make the sums simple. We can quite safely assume he is earning more the 37,000 pounds for sure and almost certainly more than 150k, so they will be paying 50% income tax.

12% for class 1 national insurance contributions, but lowered to 9.4 as they are probably contacted out in terms of pensions, so lets assume 10% for easy sums. They will probably be NIC class 1, so that is 10% the employer has to pay.

They could avoid having to pay any tax by making the 100k a pension contribution which would also avoid N.I., but only for the 1st 50k.

V.A.T. is 20%. We might assume that the bonus pot is being spent on fast car or some other luxury because all bankers are flash gits (other than the ones I have meet who seem to be mostly grounded people, but I suspect this is self selecting subset).

So after tax they get 40k to spend, the government gets an other 18k in tax take from the employer and from VAT (if they spend it). Thats a total of 78k for every 100k of bonus, so apart from the way that bonuses distort the behavior, why the hell do we care?

I suspect 2 reasons

1. Bankers have found a way of avoiding various taxes that I am not party to.
2. Bankers are an easy media and political target.

There may be a good case that the bonus culture should not be constrained provided they do pay their tax and there is sufficient moral hazard (here is one option I can warm to) to manage the risk of systemic banking failure and the associated wider implications.

Can the 3(I guess) people who read this blog cite specific example of how paying tax on a bonus can be avoided other than the obvious 50k of pension and buying a VCT?

Time to reserect cognitive bias of the week

I have let my mild mannered battle against my seething mass of cognitive bias slide a bit. New job, starting BGR training again lost some focus on it. So lets wonder off to Wikipedia, look at the list and see if we can find a bias that I am willing to admit I been guilty of in the last few weeks.

So this week in a glass 1/2 full spirit lets look at negativity bias. So I was guilty of it this week when I had an interaction with the office of a Plaid Cymru A.M. (not the building, but the press officer). I was with an equal measure of self interest and community spirit offering to help raise some issues with B.T. I basically got back flannel from the press officer with a email which could be read at least 4 different ways, none of them positive.

I see this as a lack of understanding by the A.M. of the importance of effective Broadband to workers like myself (there is an Oracle manager lives about 5 miles as the Red Kite flies I found and an Animator works from home in the next village). Other possible explanations abound, but it is the one I drew as most likely.

I was reading this by the Druid who writes about Ynas Mon issues and the link I made was that Plaid from top to bottom just don't get business and how to promote business at any level from someone working from home to seeding a business environment for large companies.

Now these two bias views may or may not be true, thats not the point. What is the point is that my minor negative experience with 1 A.M. who has previously been only positive in their dealing with me lead me to see the rest of the party in a negative light. Short term and recent negative experiences outweigh positive and longer term interactions.

Still bloody annoyed with the A.M. and her press officer.

Why I won't become a Tory

I am a big fan of reducing the budget deficit, live within your means and keeping the markets on your side. This applies to a country or an individual in my book. So I am broadly in line with the need to cut the structural deficit over the next n years. What I don't quite get is why the Conservatives need to go the ideological next step in an effort to hack moderate sections of the population off

• Tuition fees. The may make sense as a party policy as few students vote Tory
• Sell the national forests. I can't get my head round how this is anything other than an attempt to get rid of voters. Lots of people will feel strongly about this.
• Modernization of the NHS. Talking to people who work in the NHS and I know a few, the big problems they face is poor management and struggling to keep up with change. Radical structure change is the last thing they need and most view it as privatization by the back door. Claire Rayner will be coming back to haunt you Mr Cameron.
• High speed Rail through the Chilterns. So we have a huge deficit, lets spend lots of money on a railway we don't need though countryside that our votes live in. It makes no sense to me either.

It really feels like as a party, the Conservatives think they may only have 5 years and are going for bust in the hope that 'the Ed's' will make such a mess of their economic policy that voters will have to vote Tory because Laboura are unelctable. Lib Dem's will be easy opposition in the post tuition fee's world in most seats with opponents playing the "Lib Dem's go back on their word" card.

There is no doubt they are bright people and have well thought out their strategy, but with so much broken you would think they would focus on fixing the very broken parts of the economy and society and leave the sub-optimal bits alone for now in case they upset yet more votes. Balls of steel I guess as they are willing to go places even Thatcher judged it unsafe to tread. However, I expect David will have to work very hard to be hated more Tony and Maggie.

How bloody sad must people think I am, don't answer

So article number 2 now up on the Wales@home comment site. Trains and pensions don't really give the sense of someone you want to strike a conversation u with. Article 3 in the brewing is about Fell running in Wales. Better or worse who knows.

Trainspotting and pensions

I have been a reader of the Wales@Home comment site for some time. I don't agree with the viewpoint of all the articles, but that is part of the joy of reading it. It draws articles on a very wide variety of subjects, usually with a Welsh flavor, from politics to pub and now pensions.

Not getting out enough

Nothing has annoyed me of late (at least nothing I can talk about here). Little interesting I could write about which has not been covered better elsewhere has happened in the last few weeks.

Little travel(work or running wise) since before xmas and head down at home, with kids and work has lead to little out of the ordinary that is worth writing about. I am part way through a few books and nothing in the economist has sparked great thoughts. This may be Twitter time, where anything you want to say can be condensed into 140 characters. A blog for me is a medium to organize your thoughts, set out ideas in a concrete form so at least you can question them and maybe someone else will chip in with their thoughts.

I have also written an article for a comment web site which took some time and writing a 2nd at the moment. One thing I did not grasp is how important the visuals were and a photo of yourself. I am now just about healed from my pre-xmas rock in face episode, so probably about as photogenic as I can get.

New Year : No Change

2010 was the year I failed to get round the Bob Graham Round. This was significant and a few hours of feeling a bit sorry for myself, a lot to eat and a good sleep, it has been nothing but a positive event. Many things changed as a result, I changed jobs and have a slightly altered outlook on life. I still get angry by people or organisations being class stupid (e.g. tuition fees, Ceredigion council failing to empty bins for 6 weeks, #twitterjoketrail, I could go on), but if you don't get angry, then indifference is the only other real option and that is far worse.

A couple of people have asked me about new year resolutions. I don't have any. My 3 main projects of home, work and BGR leave precious little time for other projects. Maybe I am learning that the important thing is to work out what to stop doing, rather than focus on new challenges. Maybe even more important for someone like me who is very goal focused and driven to achieve them, trying to do too many things at once means you don't enjoy any of them.