New England Coach

Well other than not speaking much English I'm sure Capello will be a good thing for the England international team. In all honesty was there a viable English candidate? It turns out there wasn't even an English speaking viable candidate.

Learning English in one month sounds tricky though. Just a few phrases "you're dropped", "you're in", should sort out the basics.

Education

An announcement today promising an overhauled education system. Interesting in theory but in practice?

Education since I was going through the system seems to have become highly over regulated, almost as if all of the learning has been replaced by targets and league tables. Maybe that's a good thing I really don't know - but the old adage of the act of measuring something affects it's value. I'm sure it's very hard to measure something intangible like a good education - but it looks like we try to.

I just hope this isn't a hot air announcement, I'm still getting over the promise of an integrated transport network in the UK within 15 years, announced 10 years ago - still 5 years to deliver.

Black box driving

The news has had reports of increasing the points penalty for speeding. It's a little harsh, but maybe good if it keeps people aware of limits. Too often though I think just better signs of a speed limit would work just as well, other than fixed/mobile cameras.

But is the day coming where each vehicle has a black box recorder, GPS tracked and speed measured. Each year you would have your road tax automatically include your speeding fines, so it would include everyone not just those who get caught.

Also insurance accident claims, black box recording would provide extra information.

A little far fetched maybe, great revenue earner in the name of 'safety' - more margin for the insurance industry, imagine a quote based on your average speed!

Party funding

The huge fuss over party funding has come up now that Labour have had some donations that made their way through a less than direct route.

I doubt it's the first time for any party and definitely won't be the last. We have to accept that large donations are probably to buy influence or for some later personal gain.

What I think should be avoided is that the taxpayer gets to fund parties - you can just imagine how much that would cost us. Of course then they'd have to work for us, but I wouldn't want to hold them to that.

Far better that occasionally a few red faced MPs have to justify some donations that don't quite meet the rules - cheaper for everyone.

Don't txt and drive

Did a short trip today that involved a bit of slow moving start-stop traffic. I was queued and the lane next to me had stopped suddenly and I heard the squeal of tyres as a car locked up and almost skidded into the back of the car infront. I looked across at the now stopped driver, still holding their mobile phone - probably responding to some vital message.

Unfortunately you see people all the time driving and using their phone. I'm kind of jealous because there's no way I could control a car and do that. But today's incident shows that I'm not alone, there's nothing more important than working the pedals and getting the steering right - surely that phone thing can wait until later.

24 Hour News Culture

I really like things like BBC News 24 for a quick news update. But such news channels have one problem, on a slow news day what do you fill your programme with? Worse still on a big story day, when no new information is available what do you do. Unfortunately speculate is all you can do, and this probably isn't that healthy.

Maybe on such occasions they should just have a "on this day" section to replay some news from history, bit like when they replay the tennis of yesteryear when the actual game you wanted to watch is rained off. It would be a useful history lesson if nothing else.

UK Defence Spending

So we spend too little on defence it seems and we have under equipped forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's quite shameful, it's almost breaking the contract with the people who've signed up.

I think the truth is we probably spend enough on defence but we squander it on multi billion pound projects (Eurofighter, future aircraft carriers) which while maybe necessary could probably be done more cheaply - then we forget that to win/control anything you need troops on the ground who have the support to do the job.

Government loss of data

So the Inland Revenue has lost details of all child benefit claimants in the country that were burned onto DVD and poorly secured.

I am puzzled why we always look for the top guy to resign in such cases and then create such a media frenzy that even higher up the chain might have to go.

I can just imagine that this was the "easiest way" to get the data to the party that requested it. It's a sad case of government's incompetence when it comes to IT that this is the case. We spend billions of pounds of taxpayers money investing in these systems, and things like this show they must be poor.

Maybe this is the reason the top guy's head should be called for, not for someone "working around the problem" like this. But I'm not sure the media will put it in those terms.

England expects

A typical headline you might see on tomorrows football pages. Now our destiny in qualifying for the European championships is back in our own hands - we've a much better chance of messing it up!

Not sure how true it is but the 'England Expects' thing is the signalling Nelson requested to be run up the flag pole at Trafalgar. He'd actually had a more flag intensive message, but was persuaded to change it to keep the flags easy.

Wikipedia says it was just confides replacing expects - I was thinking it was going to be some over long manager style request with a few too many buzzwords of the day.

The prisons are full?

Or so it seems, the last few months in the UK have on and off stories about the prisons reaching crisis point in numbers. It's a complex issue that's for sure. But then something struck me, there's often stories about pensioners taking a stand and threatening not to pay their council tax (a UK local tax that keeps rising and has little care for ability to pay).

You never hear in these cases the judge saying "dammit the prisons are full", they are always told they'll serve time. Makes me wonder if there's a part of the prison population just reserved for this, or maybe the more accountable you are to society the easier your offence is to solve through threatened or actual prison time.

Still an interesting paradox.

Gambling Advertising

If you watch any TV you can't help but see the increase in advertising for gambling activities. First it was slightly subtle, sporting events like snooker and cricket would carry in game advertising (presumably filling the void the cigarette companies left behind). But are we just replacing one addiction with another? Ok it won't kill you but it could ruin your life.

Now the stakes have been increased so to speak. I think it's now legal for mainstream adverts for the high street bookies. So we see ex-footballers advertising Ladbrookes for example. Nowhere in this advertising have I see some logic like "for every winner there is a loser", along the lines of financial companines having to say investments can rise and fall. It maybe there but I've not seen it yet ;)

So far I've let it pass me by, people should be allowed to make their decisions. Then I thought of a potential future where your online banking was partnered with a poker room - surely that day will come.

First entry

Never had one of these before, but here goes. It's taken me 5 years to build a maybe a weeks worth of material ;)

This is my first post, so just working it all out. The title of the blog? Well a manager from years ago said to a project team "Don't get demoralised, it's bad for morale!". The more you think about it the truer that statement gets. Certainly a big help in the IT industry.

Well I'll stop now, I might run out of material.