Carrier cost overrun

Perhaps not the most surprising news story of the year, the new aircraft carriers have added £1bn to their cost.

Digging a little deeper it seems to be the extended delivery time and the need to keep fixed costs running for longer is the cause. It is a lot of money though, in a time when every department is being asked to cut back.

I do not doubt that they will be built, but I feel sorry for the places that will see the cost cutting - presumably places in the military that could do with not losing funding.

Book read: The Great Crash 1929 by J.K Galbraith

I bought this book a few years ago but only read a couple of chapters. Returning to it now I've completed the 200 pages in one day.

A very concise and detailed history of the stock market boom and bust of the 1920s. It details the roles of institutions, the mentality of private investors, and the US government.

Essentially a stock bubble got out of control and investors never believed that a stock could ever fall. But of course it did with devastating consequences and a 10 year depression. Galbraith details the phases of the collapse from the panic selling, to the propping up by the banks, to the despair and acceptance of the permanent falls.

He goes into some technical details but these are never overwhelming, describing the practice of buying on margin, investment trusts that used leverage all of which worked well on the way up but made the situation worse on the way down.

There are some warnings and echoes for the current economic situation, particularly the relay of the reports of "things are getting better" when they seldom were.

The book itself was written 1954 and has remained a classic. I was intrigued to read the Galbraith himself lived a long life, dying in 2006:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith

Book read: Existentialism and Humanism J.P Sartre

I was lent this short book that covers a lecture given by Sartre in the late 1940s that attempts to explain existentialism to a wider audience.

I've been watching some lectures on the subject, and I think that made the material easier to grasp but it still needed careful thought. The lecture winds between the existence of a God who sets and guides our morals and actions, and the notion that we are in fact in charge of our own actions and framework of morals. It poses mainly questions, but these make you think and make you feel a little ashamed you have not thought of them before.

The book ends with a question and answer session, with one question running to many pages!

Overall a good read but only if you have some background knowledge first.

Iraq war inquiry

In the past week this has been announced. There are probably a few motivations for it:

• Bad poll ratings, and general poor performance of the government. As a friend of mine said if Brown was 20 points ahead in the polls we probably would not have an inquiry.
• Make some of the decision makers take account for their actions. It is an open secret that we went to war on the flimsiest of evidence.

In some ways it is not a bad thing to review the decision making, but it will be at great expense and I am sure many of the outcomes will already be obvious.

The behind closed doors aspect is a little weak, and the comparison back to the Falklands inquiry is bogus (this was also held in private). The world has changed too much for the public to trust an inquiry performed like that.

Walk away tomorrow

Gordon Brown was saying that he could easily do this and not miss the trappings of power. Sort of a move to make us think how lucky it is he is in charge.

Why wait until tomorrow, do it today instead!

On a more serious point I often wonder what drives these people to stay on in hopeless situations, I suppose it is a lifetime of ambition and not knowing when you are beaten.

Red button interactive

Or green button to cancel the icon and get the picture back of what you are watching (they don't tell you this as much, if at all).

This is the digital TV tension between trying to sell you something or value add in your front room versus allowing you to just watch the content you paid for.

This is where there needs to be a clear distinction between the broadcasting business and the supplier of the STB, platforms are tightly controlled now - but any DTV box needs:

1. Ability to turn interactive off.
2. Refusal to download content on demand (pushing stuff you don't necessarily want).
3. Disable live pause, useful for some, a pointless disk spinner for many.

Brown wagons in a circle

Brown has just about survived I think, just from the grace of a few cabinet ministers who want to stay on a bit longer before getting voted out at the polls.

I think at times like this there should be a way of triggering an election, beyond just party infighting. I'm not sure how it would work though, fixed term parliaments would be a better thing for one - maybe that would be enough.

So we have a year of an inward looking government that will not have full attention on running the country. I feel sorry for Brown in some ways, but he has bought it upon himself. The title of worst Prime Minister of contemporary times is yours.