Tag Archives: Ipsos Mori

June 1, 2018 · 11:50

Data illusions

Yesterday was an interesting day for a few reasons; one of the primary reasons was an opinion piece in the Guardian by Jay Watts (@Shrink_at_Large). Like many article I considered to be in opposition, yet when I reread it, this piece has all kinds of hidden gems and I had to ponder a few items for an hour or so. I love that! Any piece, article or opinion that makes me rethink my position is a piece well worth reading. So this piece called ‘Supermarkets spy on them now‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/31/benefits-claimants-fear-supermarkets-spy-poor-disabled) has several sides that require us to think and rethink issues. As we see a quote like “some are happy to brush this off as no big deal” we identify with too many parts; to me and to many it is just that, no big deal, but behind the issues are secondary issues that are ignored by the masses (en mass as we might giggle), yet the truth is far from nice.

So what do we see in the first as primary and what is behind it as secondary? In the first we see the premise “if a patient with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia told you that they were being watched by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), most mental health practitioners would presume this to be a sign of illness. This is not the case today.” It is not whether this is true or not, it is not a case of watching, being a watcher or even watching the watcher. It is what happens behind it all. So, when we recollect that dead dropped donkey called Cambridge Analytics, which was all based on interacting and engaging on fear. Consider what IBM and Google are able to do now through machine learning. This we see in an addition to a book from O’Reilly called ‘The Evolution of Analytics‘ by Patrick Hall, Wen Phan, and Katie Whitson. Here we see the direct impact of programs like SAS (Statistical Analysis System) in the application of machine learning, we see this on page 3 of Machine Learning in the Analytic Landscape (not a page 3 of the Sun by the way). Here we see for the government “Pattern recognition in images and videos enhance security and threat detection while the examination of transactions can spot healthcare fraud“, you might think it is no big deal. Yet you are forgetting that it is more than the so called implied ‘healthcare fraud‘. It is the abused setting of fraud in general and the eagerly awaited setting for ‘miscommunication’ whilst the people en mass are now set in a wrongly categorised world, a world where assumption takes control and scores of people are now pushed into the defence of their actions, an optional change towards ‘guilty until proven innocent’ whilst those making assumptions are clueless on many occasions, now are in an additional setting where they believe that they know exactly what they are doing. We have seen these kinds of bungles that impacted thousands of people in the UK and Australia. It seems that Canada has a better system where every letter with the content: ‘I am sorry to inform you, but it seems that your system made an error‘ tends to overthrow such assumptions (Yay for Canada today). So when we are confronted with: “The level of scrutiny all benefits claimants feel under is so brutal that it is no surprise that supermarket giant Sainsbury’s has a policy to share CCTV “where we are asked to do so by a public or regulatory authority such as the police or the Department for Work and Pensions”“, it is not merely the policy of Sainsbury, it is what places like the Department for Work and Pensions are going to do with machine learning and their version of classifications, whilst the foundation of true fraud is often not clear to them, so you want to set a system without clarity and hope that the machine will constitute learning through machine learning? It can never work, that evidence is seen as the initial classification of any person in a fluidic setting is altering on the best of conditions. Such systems are not able to deal with the chaotic life of any person not in a clear lifestyle cycle and people on pensions (trying to merely get by) as well as those who are physically or mentally unhealthy. These are merely three categories where all kind of cycles of chaos tend to intervene with their daily life. Those are now shown to be optionally targeted with not just a flawed system, but with a system where the transient workforce using those methods are unclear on what needs to be done as the need changes with every political administration. A system under such levels of basic change is too dangerous to get linked to any kind of machine learning. I believe that Jay Watts is not misinforming us; I feel that even the writer here has not yet touched on many unspoken dangers. There is no fault here by the one who gave us the opinion piece, I personally believe that the quote “they become imprisoned in their homes or in a mental state wherein they feel they are constantly being accused of being fraudulent or worthless” is incomplete, yet the setting I refer to is mentioned at the very end. You see, I believe that such systems will push suicide rates to an all-time high. I do not agree with “be too kind a phrase to describe what the Tories have done and are doing to claimants. It is worse than that: it is the post-apocalyptic bleakness of poverty combined with the persecution and terror of constantly feeling watched and accused“. I believe it to be wrong because this is a flaw on both sides of the political aisle. Their state of inaction for decades forced the issue out and as the NHS is out of money and is not getting any money the current administration is trying to find cash in any way that they can, because the coffers are empty, which now gets us to a BBC article from last year.

At http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2017-39980793, we saw “A survey in 2013 by Ipsos Mori suggested people believed that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits was fraudulently claimed. What do you think – too high, too low?
Want to know the real answer? It is £1.10 for every £100“. That is the dangerous political setting as we should see it; the assumption and believe that 24% is set to fraud when it is more realistic that 1% might be the actual figure. Let’s not be coy about it, because out of £172.3bn a 1% amount still remains a serious amount of cash, yet when you set it against the percentage of the UK population the amount becomes a mere £25 per person, it merely takes one prescription to get to that amount, one missed on the government side and one wrongly entered on the patients side and we are there. Yet in all that, how many prescriptions did you the reader require in the last year alone? When we get to that nitty gritty level we are confronted with the task where machine learning will not offer anything but additional resources to double check every claimant and offense. Now, we should all agree that machine learning and analyses will help in many ways, yet when it comes to ‘Claimants often feel unable to go out, attempt voluntary work or enjoy time with family for fear this will be used against them‘ we are confronted with a new level of data and when we merely look at the fear of voluntary work or being with family we need to consider what we have become. So in all this we see a rightful investment into a system that in the long run will help automate all kinds of things and help us to see where governments failed their social systems, we see a system that costs hundreds of millions, to look into an optional 1% loss, which at 10% of the losses might make perfect sense. Yet these systems are flawed from the very moment they are implemented because the setting is not rational, not realistic and in the end will bring more costs than any have considered from day one. So in the setting of finding ways to justify a 2015 ‘The Tories’ £12bn of welfare cuts could come back to haunt them‘, will not merely fail, it will add a £1 billion in costs of hardware, software and resources, whilst not getting the £12 billion in workable cutbacks, where exactly was the logic in that?

So when we are looking at the George Orwell edition of edition of ‘Twenty Eighteen‘, we all laugh and think it is no great deal, but the danger is actually two fold. The first I used and taught to students which gets us the loss of choice.

The setting is that a supermarket needs to satisfy the need of the customers and the survey they have they will keep items in a category (lollies for example) that are rated ‘fantastic value for money‘ and ‘great value for money‘, or the top 25^th percentile of the products, whatever is the largest. So in the setting with 5,000 responses, the issue was that the 25^th percentile now also included ‘decent value for money‘. So we get a setting where an additional 35 articles were kept in stock for the lollies category. This was the setting where I showed the value of what is known as User Missing Values. There were 423 people who had no opinion on lollies, who for whatever reason never bought those articles, This led to removing them from consideration, a choice merely based on actual responses; now the same situation gave us the 4,577 people gave us that the top 25^th percentile only had ‘fantastic value for money‘ and ‘great value for money‘ and within that setting 35 articles were removed from that supermarket. Here we see the danger! What about those people who really loved one of those 35 articles, yet were not interviewed? The average supermarket does not have 5,000 visitors, it has depending on the location up to a thousand a day, more important, when we add a few elements and it is no longer about supermarkets, but government institutions and in addition it is not about lollies but Fraud classification? When we are set in a category of ‘Most likely to commit Fraud‘ and ‘Very likely to commit Fraud‘, whilst those people with a job and bankers are not included into the equation? So we get a diminished setting of Fraud from the very beginning.

Hold Stop!

What did I just say? Well, there is method to my madness. Two sources, the first called Slashdot.org (no idea who they were), gave us a reference to a 2009 book called ‘Insidious: How Trusted Employees Steal Millions and Why It’s So Hard for Banks to Stop Them‘ by B. C. Krishna and Shirley Inscoe (ISBN-13: 978-0982527207). Here we see “The financial crisis appears to be exacerbating fraud by bank employees: a new survey found that 72 percent of financial institutions say that in the last 12 months they have experienced a case of data theft by one of their workers“. Now, it is important to realise that I have no idea how reliable these numbers are, yet the book was published, so there will be a political player using this at some stage. This already tumbles to academic reliability of Fraud in general, now for an actual reliable source we see KPMG, who gave us last year “KPMG survey reveals surge in fraud in Australia“, with “For the period April 2016 to September 2016, the total value of frauds rose by 16 percent to a total of $442m, from $381m in the previous six month period” we see number, yet it is based on a survey and how reliable were those giving their view? How much was assumption, unrecognised numbers and based on ‘forecasted increases‘ that were not met? That issue was clearly brought to light by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2011 (at https://www.smh.com.au/technology/piracy-are-we-being-conned-20110322-1c4cs.html), where we see: “the Australian Content Industry Group (ACIG), released new statistics to The Age, which claimed piracy was costing Australian content industries $900 million a year and 8000 jobs“, yet the issue is not merely the numbers given, the larger issue is “the report, which is just 12 pages long, is fundamentally flawed. It takes a model provided by an earlier European piracy study (which itself has been thoroughly debunked) and attempts to shoe-horn in extrapolated Australian figures that are at best highly questionable and at worst just made up“, so the claim “4.7 million Australian internet users engaged in illegal downloading and this was set to increase to 8 million by 2016. By that time, the claimed losses to piracy would jump to $5.2 billion a year and 40,000 jobs” was a joke to say the least. There we see the issue of Fraud in another light, based on a different setting, the same model was used, and that is whilst I am more and more convinced that the European model was likely to be flawed as well (a small reference to the Dutch Buma/Stemra setting of 2007-2010). So not only are the models wrong, the entire exercise gives us something that was never going to be reliable in any way shape or form (personal speculation), so in this we now have the entire Machine learning, the political setting of Fraud as well as the speculated numbers involved, and what is ‘disregarded’ as Fraud. We will end up with a scenario where we get 70% false positives (a pure rough assumption on my side) in a collective where checking those numbers will never be realistic, and the moment the parameters are ‘leaked’ the actual fraudulent people will change their settings making detection of Fraud less and less likely.

How will this fix anything other than the revenue need of those selling machine learning? So when we look back at the chapter of Modern Applications of Machine Learning we see “Deploying machine learning models in real-time opens up opportunities to tackle safety issues, security threats, and financial risk immediately. Making these decisions usually involves embedding trained machine learning models into a streaming engine“, that is actually true, yet when we also consider “review some of the key organizational, data, infrastructure, modelling, and operational and production challenges that organizations must address to successfully incorporate machine learning into their analytic strategy“, the element of data and data quality is overlooked on several levels, making the entire setting, especially in light of the piece by Jay Watts a very dangerous one. So the full title, which is intentionally did not use in the beginning ‘No wonder people on benefits live in fear. Supermarkets spy on them now‘, is set wholly on the known and almost guaranteed premise that data quality and knowing that the players in this field are slightly too happy to generalise and trivialise the issue of data quality. The moment that comes to light and the implementers are held accountable for data quality is when all those now hyping machine learning, will change their tune instantly and give us all kinds of ‘party line‘ issues that they are not responsible for. Issues that I personally expect they did not really highlight when they were all about selling that system.

Until data cleaning and data vetting gets a much higher position in the analyses ladder, we are confronted with aggregated, weighted and ‘expected likelihood‘ generalisations and those who are ‘flagged’ via such systems will live in constant fear that their shallow way of life stops because a too high paid analyst stuffed up a weighting factor, condemning a few thousand people set to be tagged for all kind of reasons, not merely because they could be optionally part of a 1% that the government is trying to clamp down on, or was that 24%? We can believe the BBC, but can we believe their sources?

And if there is even a partial doubt on the BBC data, how unreliable are the aggregated government numbers?

Did I oversimplify the issue a little?

Issues of weights and responses

We are forever weighted into a situation, we are always adjusted and often enough we are never one, but anywhere between 0.3 and 25.9. That is the consequence of market research. So when I saw the title ‘You’re wrong Michael Gove – experts are trusted far more than you‘, my initial worry was who these ‘experts’ are. The article (at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/09/michael-gove-experts-academics-vote) has a few quotes that are funny to some, hilarious to others and all kinds of BS to another group. I reckon that none of them regard this to be reliable or trustworthy.

Why is that?

when you consider the quote “rarely in British politics has independent, impartial analysis been so necessary“, people might agree that it is a requirement, but whomever is behind those analyses are for the most all working for someone else’s agenda, which makes those claims equally pointless. Let’s illustrate this: “A separate Survation poll for British Future even found that 63% thought economists could be trusted“, the link is there, so let’s take a look.

The laughter should start at slide 2, where we see the question “which of the following best sums up your current voting intention?” the question might seem relevant and the percentages might look good, but the graph is a joke.

– What was the population of that survey?
That is a question that was never given, on none of these pages. It makes the entire paper look like an unreliable joke! A place like Ipsos MORI should know better! And perhaps they do, because they were named regarded another survey, this is done by I know not who. Is that not an interesting fact? I know that Ipsos MORI knows better, because some of them have been my students in the past (if they still work there).

– Were the results weighted and how?
None of these facts made it into that paper, making the results unreliable to the largest of degrees and in addition to that, the fact that the article does not give any clear indication on what is what gives additional reasons for worry.

The people at large are being duped by a media machine that seems to be more profitable to remain connected to the EU, as such, most media options will not give you any decent part of the facts and the truth. So, does this mean that Michael Gove is right?

I feel decently certain that is equally not the case. Most people, especially those connected to politics tend to take an approach towards ‘their’ goals! In that Michael Gove would be no exception. The media is a lot worse in this. It is my personal view that have kept people in the dark of events when it suited either them or their advertisers. How can that be reliable?

As for the ‘economists’, when this system falls apart, most of them will be without a job. As such, what will they preach you think? The older economists all know that no job equals retirements and many of them will soon thereafter no longer be riding the juicy gravy train. Once you have been on that one, we all would do whatever we can to remain part of it. In addition to that, when we look at the so called 63% part. The fact that the answers are Alan Sugar, CEO of a big company, Boss of a small business, a farmer, a fisherman and an economist are part of this is another matter. Was this for ‘light entertainment’, was it serious? If so, was the designer not entirely in a decent state of mind? It could be that these were the most significant groups, but that is speculation because the graph has so much missing information that the entire interpretation of it becomes matter of non-perspective. Just consider that these were the most significant groups, why is there no clarification on the graph? There is so much wrong here that it also makes me question the entire article by Anand Menon and Jonathan Portes. This might be an opinion article, but it is in the Guardian, the Guardian should have followed this up by the Guardian themselves. The fact that Anand is ‘labelled’ as ‘Anand Menon is a director of UK in a Changing Europe’ and Jonathan is labelled as ‘director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research and former chief economist at the Cabinet Office’, so are they would be or wannabe politicians? The fact that they ‘rely’ on items from ‘Survation for British Future’ makes this all an issue, it should be an issue for all of you!

There is another quote that needs to be dealt with. The quote “the idea that academics are biased in their research because they get “EU money”. In our careers, we have conducted research funded – usually through competitive tender processes – by the EU, the UK government, companies and trade unions, and never been shy of telling any of them things that they didn’t want to hear. Our professional reputations depend on it” sounds nice, but we can agree that ‘academics’ with their papers regarding the economic viability of Iceland were accepted without question. The evidence was seen in the Oscar awarded documentary Inside Job (2010). It is one of the most visible pieces of evidence, but in no way the strongest one. Another piece of evidence is seen (at https://www.ifw-members.ifw-kiel.de/publications/the-financial-crisis-and-the-systemic-failure-of-academic-economics/KWP_1489_ColanderetalFinancial%20Crisis.pdf), with a clear abstract. Which in part is “The economics profession has failed in communicating the limitations, weaknesses, and even dangers of its preferred models to the public. This state of affairs makes clear the need for a major reorientation of focus in the research economists undertake, as well as for the establishment of an ethical code that would ask economists to understand and communicate the limitations and potential misuses of their models“. You see, a statistician, a politician and a barrister have something in common. They answer a very specific question. Their reaction to that specific question becomes their paper, which we saw in the Iceland situation. In case of the politician we have another element. You see, when the answer doesn’t suit them, they will change the question. That is where we are, we see answers, but the clear questions that leads to them is not in that presentation (or the numbers and weights).

It follows by a reversed psychology quote “if we were self-serving and intent only on personal enrichment, our interest would be very much in a leave vote. If auditors are those who “arrive after the battle and bayonet the wounded” it is professional economists and political scientists (not to mention lawyers) who would rake in the consultancy cash in the uncertain atmosphere of a vote to leave“, it is reverse psychology because the statement is quite the opposite of factual and Brexit could destabilise the Euro, after the UK, France is most likely to leave, which will push Germany out too. That is what they all fear, because when the Euro goes, the Dollar (the US currency) will take a massive dive, well over 30% of economists will be out of a job. There will be no funds for any in any of the so called ‘vulture’ industries. You see, what currency would the consultancy cash be in? There is a realistic danger that the US will lose well over 20% of its value, those who get out and move into their local currency would take no less damage, but after that, the only damage they would take are local based issues. The US with minus 19 trillion would have little option other than default on their loans. It would (speculatively speaking) drive debt from 19 trillion to 23 trillion almost overnight. The timeframe that this impact on is harder to calculate. You see, politically speaking Obama would want to stretch any event to the last day of his administration, so that the mess ends with the next administration, which is also speculation from my side. This would also impact the total US debt, which is speculated to be well over $60 trillion, but a clear reliable number is one I do not have at present.

All these factors will be impacted and Brexit will have a definite impact on all of it. Should you doubt that, do you think that the US president would have made the trip for some remembrance speech involving WW2? Brexit is the real nightmare Wall Street faces. If Brexit was a singular issue, it would not be that big a problem. Yet, that is the one part that is partially a given. You see, this is not a thought that just popped up. I wrote about this in May 2013 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2013/05/15/a-noun-of-non-profit/), in the article ‘A noun of non-profit‘, I voiced it as “Consider a large (really large) barge, that barge was kept in place by 4 strong anchors. UK, France, Germany and Italy. Yes, we to do know that most are in shabby state, yet, overall these nations are large, stable and democratic (that matters). They keep the Barge EU afloat in a stable place on the whimsy stormy sea called economy. If the UK walks away, then we have a new situation. None of the other nations have the size and strength of the anchor required and the EU now becomes a less stable place where the barge shifts“, this is the danger Brexit poses. As governments and large corporations have been playing with safety margins, the three anchors will not be able to keep a clear stability. That will cause waves and the EU barge will start to shift all over the economic ocean, impacting all currencies linked to the Euro, the US dollar ending up being hit the hardest. It is a danger governments and economists fear, because their cushy lives will end. In that same frame academics are not equipped to deal with the aftermath. The abstract quote “the limitations and potential misuses of their models”, the question then becomes whether misuses of their models were intentionally allowed for. It is not an accusation, it is a question. I do not claim to have the answer, I am merely asking the clear questions a former chief economist at the Cabinet Office seems to be avoiding in his opinion piece and the Guardian is equally not asking questions on more than one level.

Are you starting to feel the breeze?

This is why I was initially on the Brexit side, I am still not convinced that Brexit is not the solution, but Mark Carney clearly pulled me away from the idea that Brexit is the only solution. It still might, but there will be consequences. You see I believe the UK debt to be manageable, to total debt that the EU is pushing the EU in is not a solution, other than that it takes pressure away from the American debt. Since when is Europe responsible for that? The US has not taken any responsibility for too many events from 2004 onwards. The EU is in another weak position, having one trading partner is one thing, when the US will have to deal separately with UK, Germany and France, these individual nations might get a much better national deal.

One part that remains a given is that there are no assurances. I believe the UK would stand up stronger after a few years and there will be hardship for that time, hardship for a lot of people, yet at present there is absolutely no evidence that the quality of life in the UK is improving, most models are speculative and after a year they end up showing to be inaccurate. That is also the side that requires additional addressing. Even though we should not act on our needs, it ends up what people do, economists and non-economists alike.

Which gives us the final quote “but if the public is better informed than it otherwise would be about one of the most important issues in this campaign, we’ll have done our job“, which is the one thing they did not do, basically they misinformed you, because the numbers without proper support of numbers are empty and pointless. You see, if the question was given to 2-3 thousand people it should not count towards the choice of 68 million people. Weighted, the chance of unbalanced clustering is too large to consider, meaning that these numbers should be regarded as highly unreliable. In my opinion, the article misinformed you, showing that everyone has an agenda. I can only personally state that I have no agenda and you would not be wrong to ignore that part. Believe me or choose to not believe me. I only hope that you will look at what is presented and question every part you see. Let’s take one more look to the initial evidence that the writers used. In the first (at https://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/ipsos-mori-business-and-brexit.pdf), the Ipsos MORI part. In the second (at http://www.britishfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/The-EU-referendum-and-public-trust_Survation-for-British-Future-2015.pdf). We can clearly see that the Ipsos MORI gives much better (being it incomplete) information. Slide 6 does show a nice part, Journalists and Politicians are at the bottom of trustworthiness. Yet without clear response numbers and weighting, this data is not reliable enough and the vote might take a different direction in the end. In my view, the power used here is to use the numbers to sway the undecided into the direction they want them to go, into the Bremain direction. Can I prove it? No!

But I am asking questions regarding this that those who should aren’t. I personally believe that makes my view more reliable, but I am biased here. Make sure you ask the right questions and it seems that there is nearly no one left to trust in this matter, isn’t that the saddest part of all in this?

Where the Wild Geese go!

It is so nice to read about how the EU migration is a fact that is here to stay. The subtitle containing ‘56% support in Britain for remaining in union‘ gives a pause for thought, yet what pause should there be and who should be pausing (at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/23/juncker-tells-cameron-cant-destroy-eu-migration-rules)?

Party 1, Jean-Claude Juncker on free movement of people and how this is not to be destroyed! Well, Mr Junker, that sounds like a nice option, but when the population of Poland, Bulgaria and Romania moves into the UK, the UK ends up having a massive problem, which is what it boils down to. When we see “three million people from Bulgaria and Romania living in other European Union member states“, we do have an issue to deal with. Then we see the quote “more than 60 MPs are backing a campaign to extend the restrictions for a further five years, saying the British economy has not sufficiently recovered from the 2008 recession to cope with the change and that it will put pressure on public services and reduce job opportunities for British workers” (at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-25549715), these two facts seem to be ignored by many parties. We see some papers on the let them in side and some opposing that view, yet none of them give us a clear number of who is coming from where and how many from all over are arriving in the UK. Let’s not forget that London is still the place to be (I know, because I still miss it). What the Guardian article only casually reports is the fact that the 56% comes from an Ipsos Mori poll. Now for the good stuff, this comes from 1002 respondents, whilst the UK counts 64 million. So which person signed off on that little part? Perhaps some should consider that anything like this requires a few thousand responses, like, more then at least 5000, not 1002!

Party 2, Alisdair McIntosh, director of Business for New Europe. Many seem to see the benefit of staying within the EU, well nobody is debating that, but you see, Mr McIntosh is speaking for ‘his’ lobby and those people need a level of non-accountability, people in movement are in many ways interesting for exploitation, this has been seen in the Netherlands where immigrants hoping for a new future, willing to work hard are exploited in most inhumane ways. In addition there are also the views on how the influx of immigrants also came with a large influx of smaller crimes (theft and pick-pocketing). The good and the bad is a given fact, yet business is above such accountability, not stating that they are accountable! So yes, Alisdair McIntosh likes the borders to remain open.

Party 3, José Manuel Barroso stated “What I can tell you is that any kind of arbitrary cap seems to be not in conformity with Europeans laws. For us it is very important – the principle of non-discrimination“, but is that really correct? (at http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/19/jose-manuel-barroso-david-cameron-eu-migration), “the number of Portuguese looking to settle in Britain was up by almost ten thousand people last year, climbing to 30,120 official arrivals who were recorded at British national insurance offices“, which comes form http://theportugalnews.com/news/portuguese-workers-flood-britain/30837. So as we see, the Portuguese unemployment rates are going down, but how many from leaving Portugal and where else are they going to? So, we see that José Manuel Barroso has two hats on, one is still all about Portugal, which we cannot fault him for, but the information is unclear as many ‘hide’ behind percentages, when we see the mentioning of numbers the face changes, like 560 Britons willing to stay in the EU, but what do the other 63,999,440 want? You see, 1002 weighted is in no way a real usable number, not when it is compared to the size of a nation.

These clear thoughts give us two dangers

What is ACTUALLY the best for the United Kingdom?
These simple realities only enable the growth of UKIP (which is not really good for the UK).

Some numbers consider the NHS the most important issue, yet consider what the influx does to an already stumbling NHS, when this falls over, there will not be any support remaining, with all the consequences of those trying to stay healthy when the doctor is not available and those who need help will only get it for a fee, which gives us a clear view on the dangers for the future. David Cameron needs to stop the massive influx that the current infrastructure is less and less able to deal with.

A weakness that gets pressed forward by the UKIP engine, which seems to be driving the people in an incorrect direction. In the end, I feel that there is no way that UKIP is a force for good, but the other parties have been stumbling all over the field trying to statistically trivialise and ignore the issues as reports are posted left right and centre. I truly hope that Scotland was not an empty lesson for the parties at large.

If we are not careful about the game some play and many observe, we will see that soon after the stumbling becomes irrecoverable we will see the people leave for other shores, then what will happen? Because when the system collapses we will soon see that the ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ was not just an imagination, consider the cost of living in India and what will happen when a million retirees take their money and move to sunny shores with living expenses at 18% of what it is now. So, what else are some ignoring? Let’s not forget that these people will also cause the brain drain that will hamper growth down the track. Those who ‘rely’ on cheap youthful labour will soon learn that there is a downside to that. In addition, a million retirees spending THEIR money out of the UK is also a coffer drain the treasurer has not fully considered, or the consequence of such a shift.

Well, personally I see an issue that some seem to ignore, but it is the most dangerous one that many face. You see, several politicians, especially in the labour side, will get these scientists to make economic predictions, after which the analysts will get a go to agree with. Yet, all is not clear here, the politician (the absolute worst of referees) will decide, what information the two parties will receive and as such we get skewed results, moreover, there will not be an open debate and we see reusing of certain ‘weighted’ metrics, which will make too many people walk too close to the edge and as such the damage will be done and the politician will start to emotionally scream and hover BEHIND the ‘miscommunication’ sign. The approach of ‘if the result does not fit, change the initial question‘. There is only one problem, the damage will be lasting and debilitating and whilst Mr Politician has a nice dry income with zero risk to him/her self.

All this comes to fruition when we take a look at the NHS issues. You only have to look at the BBC News and look for NHS articles on the site and you are treated to a myriad of voices all with their own street in the passing of the voice. If we go back to 2013, whether it is just NHS, code 111 or GP, there are all kinds of thoughts, each with their own percentage of validity, but in what regard?

When we look at the Article by Hugh Pym, where he talks about punch packing documents (at http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29731646), we see the following: “He is signalling a big shift in the way the NHS in England is managed and organised, in some ways the most radical since the service was born in 1948“, “There should, in his view, be no more top-down reorganisations, but instead the development of new models to suit local needs” and “For Westminster and the political parties, there is one key message – you have to find more money. Blanket demands for cash at a time of government austerity were never going to cut much ice. But Mr Stevens, with the support of the health regulator Monitor, has done some careful financial modelling“.

Of course it is about the money as the NHS costs more than just two bundles of cash, but when we consider terms like ‘careful financial monitoring‘ and ‘no more top-down reorganisations‘ we see a jump in the width with a financial picture that is nowhere close to be estimated. In addition, if we regard my article ‘Concerning the Commonwealth!‘ on June 19^th 2014, where we see several options, take especially my quote ‘the Labour IT systems of the NHS have proven that ten billion pound invoice, and yet doing nothing is another non-option‘ to heart! So as we change an NHS model, how much more will it cost and how is IT not ready to deal with that part?

Yet, is Simon Stevens wrong? No! In the foundations of it all he is correct, the NHS needs a massive overhaul, but here we see that part of the politician, the economist and the analyst. It takes but a whiff of ‘miscommunication’ and the UK is down a few more billion, whilst it is dealing with 1000 billion pound overdraft. So, here we see the reason to change the NHS, but not in drastic ways, yet in ways where we see the successful dealings with basic errors which will cost the NHS hundreds of millions a year. the expression ‘he that cannot keep a penny shall never have many‘, comes to mind, we need to make massive changes, but we need to close holes too, If we can save first, we get change to implement iterated evolution, one that does not cost the taxpayer. The problem for Simon Stevens is that this is not sexy and that is not good for (his) image. This is why I have been in favour of a stronger evolution involving Indian generic medicines, it will not help GlaxoSmithKline and its 14 members of the board, but it will make a massive impact on the 12 billion pound bill the NHS is getting and the kickback that is called quality of life for tens of millions of patients. We can never get around loads of medications, but if we get a cheaper generic option for an increasing number of them, the NHS might end up with a much lower bill, yet that part is often not shown in clarity, I wonder why?

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