LONDON Life

It’s going mad out there. No-one knows the rules of the road or no-one cares at least. Speed limits are utterly flouted, everyone jumps lights unless there are cameras, sometime even then. Right turns - pass to the rear of the car on the other opposite side of the road- forget it! Why do that? It would make everything a bit easier and safer and quicker. Parking? Why park, it just gets you hooted at for inconveniencing the poor drivers who may have to wait or worse pull out to pass you and prevent you from parking whilst they force their way by. There are so many Ubers on the road that you cannot ever escape them and the appalling standard of driving they exhibit. Stopping in front of you to let a passenger out without pulling over, coming out of side streets and turning the wrong way down a one way road and then getting angry when told by a taxi driver.

Since I last wrote anything the world has bone completely mad. AL Qaeda has morphed into ISIS or ISIL, thousands of refugees stream into Europe every day and are herded into cold damp miserable camps, a referendum to leave the EU is actually taking place, a completely bombastic self satisfied, smug, bigoted nutter is the front runner for RepublicAn presidential candidate and the traffic in London is mad. There are no visible police on our streets and unless there is a camera visible the rules of the road, and the law, have gone walkabout. We have witch hunts about rich tax avoiders in the media and Parliament and I have had to listen to more uninformed claptrap about tax in the last three months than I have had to for many many years. Ad hominem attacks have replaced informed debate. The Leave campaigns have produced no coherent arguments in favour of leaving The EU but no-ne seems especially concerned about that. ir reminds me of the campaign for Scottish Independence. Use the pound as currency following independence? HM Treasury says no. SNP says they're wrong we can use it. REjoin EU at once? EU leaders say no, you will have to reapply in usual way which could take 12 years, SNP says you are wrong we can rejoin at once. And so on and so on... Like I say the world has gone completely mad.

2014 and J S Bach

I have been rather slow to follow up my last post! So many things to write about that a state of fugue set in and nothing actually emerged in print. I am trying to catch up on myself now.I am currently writing this listening to the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle performing Bach's St John's Passion, a wonderful piece which I love to bits. The amazing thing is not that I am listening to it but that I am also watching the performance on my iPad through the Berlin Philharmonic's digital concert hall. The subscription to this amazing app was my birthday present from Rebecca and Henry. The performance is brilliant both musically and visually. The choir start off lying on their backs on the ground and gradually rise to seated and then to standing. You have to see it to appreciate the effect this has. It's surprisingly gripping. It's actually semi staged but is far more powerful to watch than those words suggest. The photography is in full HD, beautifully lit, filmed and edited. It is really quite distracting from my work but I can't really get too worried about as the improvement in my mood brought about by the beautiful Bach far outweighs the distraction! If only I didn't have to work.....

2012 has come and gone

What more can I add? I meant to post more and failed.Doing better wasn't even one of my new year resolutions. Maybe it should have been. Why start again now though? Well, it's a grim, wet and grey day out there so I decided to edit my blog and make the layout a little fresher. That turned out to be relatively easy. Writing something interesting is perhaps a little harder. SO, that follows over the weekend.

Catching up

Well, my excuse is a second knee operation and lots of physio. Two operations like that in a year makes for poor blogging. I am going to try to rectify that from now on. So much has happened that makes me incensed that I have to put fingers to keys somewhere and grumble about it all.

Where to start? Suggestions on a postcard please...

Kicking Horse Canada

Well it's nearly 4000 feet up. The roads are interesting, up hill and down Dale(well mountain) and there is still snow on the verges and fast moving meltwater in the streams. It's 20c outside but the breeze has a sharply cold edge to it and in the shade the temperature drops 15c instantly. Wildlife on the roads round here includes 2 young black bears grazing oblivious to the cars roaring by and to the row of cameras held by mesmerised photographers scarcely able to believe their luck. It's amazingly quiet everywhere. Parked cars are all unlocked and bikers roar up on their Harleys, take off their helmets and leathers, leave them perched on their bikes and, revealed as normal late middle aged couples, walk to the supermarket. I suspect they are buying gin and tonic....

More of the same

Well, the accident in Japan has been upgraded to a 7, the same as Chernobyl. More and more people are being moved away from their homes but despite the 7, all we hear is a comforting gush of PR saying that things are under control and its just a matter of time. Time before what?

Well, I suspect most mean before it falls out of the journalistic target zone for good stories and becomes a once in a while "whatever happened to..." update. After that I suspect the nuclear brigade are hoping that we will all forget that the most basic rule of big engineering has been broken once again.

What do I mean? Well, in the Challenger disaster, the Columbia disaster, Texas CIty, Macondo and now Fukushima, the engineers were not quite as confident as management, didn't want to jeopardise their positions or weren't consulted and the unthinkable happened.

Key ingredients:

No assessment of the impact of very high impact, very low probability events

No Plan B

A corporate culture lacking focus on process safety

Poor management information and weak reporting structures

Unnecessary corporate complexity

Arrogant management used to getting their own way or politically influenced decision makers

Who next?