Tag Archives: UK

A day of fun

Some people are just too funny; yes this is about yesterday’s blog. I have been accused of having moments of grandeur, well yes, we all have those, but the setting I described is not new, and it is happening right now (not by me alas), there are people who take all that feigned ability for ‘no guns to Saudi Arabia‘ and turn that into a business in their need for green, in this 4 places were historically plentiful, I mentioned three but I left Guernsey out of consideration, it has a few benefits, but it is still a commonwealth nation. So it cannot indiscriminately deal with everyone from there, even in transit law application.

It is also why I laugh at places like ‘Campaign Against Arms Trade‘, the government stops dealing directly and starts dealing indirectly, the only thing that places like CAAT guarantee is that the government gets a smaller piece of the pie, It is a laughing situation and the people are not getting informed because the media will not inform them. Do I want to be a part of it?

Of course!

This is an industry that gets the top dog $100M plus (annual) and his disciples (hopefully at some point me) will get around $25M a year for all the hard work, which is about 50% less work then I do for $65.800, so presently there is all the reason to be of service to people in that business. Let’s be fair, with their work and these invoices, when you get the chance between $66K and $25M, what will you choose?

And that is merely when you look at 1-3 customers, there are close to 3 dozen customers and you could get the up and up for up to 2 years, so you won’t get a job afterwards but you retire with an amount that could be up to $55,000,000 (and a house, and a boat, and a model and a car) which is by the way $54,000,000 more then you ever would have made in any other way and more importantly you are not breaking (bending extraneously most likely) any laws. Transit laws are all about location, location, location and location. So you optionally get to redo it three times afterwards, park the money in a nice account and live the life of non-stop being lazy eating 5 star meals.

That is your life in a republic, monarchy and a corporatocracy. Their laws tend to be the same in all nations and the nice part is that it pretty much always works, so why I am not doing it? Without a first contracts and a first contact there is no starting this solution.

So moving to a place like Monaco without any contacts and business on your way, you will end up having no options. You have better options in Lichtenstein and Andorra, whilst living expenses are a lot lower, the amount of contacts will also be close to zero. Guernsey is the one out of bounds, it has commonwealth laws, and even as it has tax benefits, it does have a few setbacks in the arms trade, not for traders initially.

Then there are a few other places where you can trade like there is no tomorrow, yet you need to have your lawyer on standby 24:7 (which is tedious, let me tell you). Still Monaco is a great place for all this, as long there is no transit VIA Monaco you are doing fine, in the past the Netherlands were a great transit nation, but I am not sure if their laws have been adjusted in the last two decades. There is a lot to get through, and that is at times part of the joy to get to the juicy bone. You see, it is not only the Middle East that needs help, there are a whole range of issues with American arms dealers, There are Russian oligarchs that cannot show their face in certain places and they all need dealers, the money will remain good for a long time, because they end up making a lot more and that is the central nail in the coffin, as long as they make good money, you get to make scraps (in their eyes $25 million a year is a scrap). As such you can have the lifestyle you want providing you can swallow that BS agreement called morality. Consider CAAT your destination for the data. They have (at https://www.caat.org.uk/resources/export-licences-eu/licence.en.html) for 2017 $159 billion, now a lot of that is normal arms trade yet there is nothing stopping you from being an in between for 2017 $295 Million, 2018 $260 million and 2019 $305 million (expected). You are basically in a place where you could get 0.1%-0.2% of the arms trade agreements and that is slightly optimistic, you’ll end up with $55M-$65M in 2019, would you not do that? I would!

And in all this, the top 6 recipients are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, India, the US, Egypt and the UK, all decently rules nations, all with a normal seat of power, all needing to defend their borders, that is the Wacky part of CAAT, even as India, the UK and the US are allowed to defend their borders, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are not?

That’s just dealing in double standards. Oh and when it comes to double standards, in that list Iran has less than 1 billion and Lebanon was the destination of 2.2 billion, so what about all the rockets they fire at Israel? As far as I can see it, CAAT has no records of them, is that not interesting as well. OK, I am not counting the 350 missiles they send a week ago as this charter has no 2019 data, but Gaza has been firing rockets on Israel for years now and they cannot build these themselves, so the data is already flawed. That is the problem with CAAT, their idealism is out of whack, for people like me that is a good thing down the road (If I ever get hired) for the arms makers it sucks a little as I am getting part of their profit share, yet in the long run, those board directors would have spent it on blow and hookers (suggested speculation) so it’s good that they lost it (for me in more ways than one).

When you travel the field of import and export and you can handle transit laws the road might seem bumpy yet it still leads to a road giving you 100,000 times the amount you could have ever earned. And this field is not over, because even as we check out the need for arms, we see that several nations have a much larger need for pharmaceuticals. To be the small independent trader seems to be an interesting time, all because we had morals, you tell me how good morals are when you knowingly are not stopping anything, you only indirectly hurt the national product.

Yes it is a fun day.

Oh and Oman, Lithuania, Kenya and Pakistan need hardware too, my day is looking up already (when I get any of these calls that is).

 

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The deal

There is a deal out there, at least in the UK. There are all kind of deals out there, the consideration is all in the eye of the beholder, yet what is the deal?

The independent has a few views, the first one is ‘Labour and the Tories are both desperate for a taxpayer-funded spending spree – I don’t trust either of them‘ (at https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/labour-conservatives-general-election-spending-plans-economy-a9195736.html), yet its by-line has an interesting thought ‘makes me wonder who is actually monitoring the books? Who is in charge of the economy?‘ Yet that is he issue and it has been n issue for close to a decade. Another article is focussing on ‘Which chancellor would you prefer to ruin your life? Sajid Javid or John McDonnell?‘ (at https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/sajid-javid-john-mcdonnell-general-election-chancellor-brexit-labour-a9192161.html), yet in the guardian we see: ‘Labour derides £1.2tn Tory costing claims as ‘work of fiction’‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/10/labour-derides-12tn-tory-costing-claims-as-work-of-fiction-corbyn) there is a larger issue at play, there is no doubt that both sides have parts that make sense, yet both are as the Guardian states ‘Both parties have promised significant increases in public investment, funded by government borrowing‘, this is however not a great time.

The dangers that are out there is the fact that Austerity is a path that is slow and cannot be fast, there is still a decade of austerity at the very minimum and this spending spree will add half a decade. The Guardian also gives us “The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said the Conservatives’ investment plans would amount to an extra £20bn a year, and Labour’s to £55bn a year” whilst tempering this with “Javid declined to say whether the Conservatives would implement promises made by Boris Johnson during his campaign to become leader, which included an increase in the threshold for higher-rate tax to £80,000 a year“, the problem with that part can be seen through the numbers giving by the government (at https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/bulletins/theeffectsoftaxesandbenefitsonhouseholdincome/financialyearending2017), and that is merely two years ago, so when we look at the chart, how much of that collected money will give any kind of relief towards austerity?

The problem is that the people are sick and tired of austerity, but that was going to be the controlling majority to deal with debt, we can call it ‘austerity’ or we can call it ‘debt control’ the UK cannot continue the spending it had done for the longest case, not if they do not want to be vassals of banks, and the problem is that the largest collection of banks are those out of the UK, the only way is to fall below that spending spree and that is not a popular solution to listen to. Yet the numbers are clear and I get to laugh out loud for almost a year as Labour made these promises whilst the budget just didn’t allow for it, and the funnier part was that the proper taxation was key, not merely the richer people all people and more important corporations, yet Labour did not really give any of us the view that corporations were to properly taxed, were they? And the one chart I gave you shows that taxing the right will not give us anywhere near the funds required, so why is Labour connecting to its members with fairy tales and a conundrum of stories that could be minimised to a level that gives them the reality of a magical roundabout (the one with Eric Thompson doing the narration). The situation is that bad and we are just not catching on, why is that?

In that case the Libdems get closest to it by “The Liberal Democrats’ central spending pledge is a radical increase in childcare, which they said would be free for all working parents from when their child turns nine months old, at a cost of almost £15bn a year. They said they would fund it by reversing corporation tax cuts and increasing capital gains tax“, I wonder how much you can tax capital gains tax, and I have questions on how you will ‘reversing corporation tax cuts‘ but they do have the right idea in part, as I see it ‘reversing corporation tax cuts‘ is the better stage, and what do you think will happen? Apple will suddenly decide to reduce new locations from 15 to 10 (no great loss there) and others will follow suit, when the going is less profitable they will all vacate towards ‘bonus share’ percentages and all of it out of the UK, I personally believe that it is time to stop giving into the need of corporations, but that is just me. And the most important part remains, you cannot do any of the spending until taxation is clearly established, All parties need to learn that inescapable truth, because it is already too late for alternatives, the UK, the US, Japan and the EU have been playing the spend card for too long and whilst collections have been delayed and outstanding the world has no reserves left, this generation is the first one handing out money that was means for the grandchildren, and we all let them do it. And whilst we read ‘Javid has adopted a considerably more relaxed approach to balancing the books‘ with empty persuasion we forget that they already ended up spending the money that was meant for our children and now they are busy spending the funds meant for the grandchildren and I wonder what excuse they will use to let that continue?

There is a larger inequality and that inequality is not addressed, why is that?

And when it comes to excuses “The Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng also sought to defend the Conservatives’ calculations on Sunday, but refused to give an equivalent for his own party’s spending plans. “I’m not going to bandy around figures,”” The question is what is worse, not being into the act of bandy, or giving us fairy tale figures? I honestly cannot decide, omission or denial, both seem to be keeping the voters away from having a judged informed decision and as far as I can tell, none have any idea of where they will get the money from to fund whatever they need to get elected. At present the UK has a debt that amounts to 86% of GDP, whilst Germany has one that is a mere 62% of GDP, now there is an additional side, Germany has a much larger GDP as they are supplying for the need of many, the UK does not have that option, As such it amounts to £2.265 trillion and that amount grows well over £5,000 per second, as such the debt might seem a mere £62,500 per taxpayer, but when we look at a debt of £36,400 per citizen do you think I was kidding when we are currently spending the money that was meant for the grandchildren? With a debt of £2.265 trillion, the interest cannot be below £225 billion a year, so when you look at the total collected taxation, did you think that the previous chart gets anywhere near that amount? Oh and for Germany (in comparison) €1,990 trillion Euro, yet their debt is diminishing, it has been that case from 2010 onward when it was at €2.035 trillion Euro. Germany is ahead of the UK there, and for now it might be €48,000 per taxpayer and €24,000 per person they are merely seemingly in a worse place, yet their total debt is still going down every second, the UK debt is still increasing and until that comes around the UK has no cause for cheering or for some debatable spending spree.

The rich cannot fill that gap, anyone who says differently is lying to you, it is time to fill the gaps, reversion tax gaps is one part and making corporations accountable for whatever scheme they have next is another part, it is time to let corporations pay for their mistakes, as we need to hold the ruling parties accountable, the clear path seen is the fact that whatever is available for your grandchildren is diminishing and your vote is a clear path in stopping that. So make sure you follow the right party, I’ll let you figure out who that is.

Oh and one small consideration, when the entire EU, the UK, the US and Japan, Russia and China all have debts in the trillions, where do you believe the wealth of the world is?

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The foundation of a blame game

It was the Independent that gave the headline ‘Tens of thousands of operations cancelled because of staff shortages and faulty equipment, NHS figures show‘ by Vincent Wood about 13 minutes ago, and the by-line gives us ‘Labour blames ‘Tory cutbacks running our NHS into the ground’‘ did anyone catch that? Did anyone catch the issues that were given over the last 5 years, not eventual new issues bu the Conservatives, but the destructive path of Labour? “The Labour party bungled the option to get part of the technological solution implemented that could have helped the NHS (perhaps you remember the loss of roughly £11.2 billion in NHS IT restructuring)” did you think that a loss of £11.2 billion is easy to wipe away? That loss hit out into every corner of the NHS, £11.2 billion in IT, in Systems never delivered and the need to do something, so as Labour make some claim as we see printed: “The simple truth is under the Tories, patients wait longer and longer for vital care. This general election is about the future of the NHS and ensuring quality care for all. Labour will fully fund our NHS, recruit the doctors and nurses we need and safeguard our NHS from a Trump deal sell off that could cost the NHS £500 million a week” my question becomes: ‘Will any Labour MP connected to the initial NHS spending disaster be removed from politics?‘ it is a fair demand, is it not? And as I see “The figures were compiled by the Labour party, is based on responses from 82 per cent of hospital trusts” I wonder what else they wrote up and connected down, now we cannot keep on bringing up the £11.2 billion, but it had to come from somewhere, did it not?

And how did we get to “staff vacancies continue to put the health service under strain, with the NHS reporting last year it was short of 100,000 staff including 10,000 doctors and 35,000 nurses“, shall we take a look at the state of things in 1997 – 2010? Then we also need to look into the state of things from 2010-2019. Shall we take a look on the changes required in 1997-2010 and the impact of the Economic meltdown? Now the second part is not on the heads of labour, but there was a definite impact, it is so easy for Labour to make a definite push to ignore that and in the years when it mattered Labour squandered £11.2 billion, that is a whole boatload of systems and thousands of nurses and doctors. Interesting how they ignore that part of the equation.

So as Labour hides behind “the statistics obtained via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request” shall we ask to include the amount they squandered? And whilst were at it, let’s take a look at the squandered part compared to that nutshell trust charity requiring ‘the amount needed to repair faulty equipment across the service provider at £6bn‘ let’s see what is left when we compare one to the other, it seems that Labour is all about forgetting one element in this equation.

The article (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-operations-cancelled-tens-of-thousands-official-figures-tories-damage-labour-a9183636.html) has a few more idle hands in all this and I am not stating that the Tories are entirely innocent here, but the joke that is regarded to be Labour’s shadow health secretary seemingly decided to ignore the heart ship that £11.2 billion squandered had on the services of the NHS, in addition the loaded debt on the government corporate credit card did not help any, in that regard the Tories are not innocent, i am not claiming that, but the ignoranus that is Labour better get their part right, because the people should be aware of that £11.2 billion fuck up called Labour IT plan, and the issues from there were widespread because that amount had to come from somewhere. And when we start looking at the surplus that the Labour party should have created but did not we will get to an amount that is a lot less representative of what actually should be the consequence of the NHS, amounts and numbers of staff that has been too low for almost 2 decades. When we look a NHS Digital we get that (at https://files.digital.nhs.uk/publicationimport/pub00xxx/pub00912/nhs-staf-over-1996-2006-rep1.pdf) we might think that a good job was achieved with “The number of staff in the NHS has grown every year to 2005 with a small fall in 2006. The workforce is now 27% larger than in 1996“, yet how many SHOULD have been added? When we look at ‘Total staff employed 1,338,000‘ this includes ‘professionally qualified clinical staff 675,000‘ is that not a low number? Remember the earlier ‘the NHS reporting last year it was short of 100,000 staff including 10,000 doctors and 35,000 nurses‘ how come that this number is so divergent from the initial numbers that at the end of Labour was given? How many positions got fired? Yes, there is something wrong and a place like the NHS is dependent of what the government has available and that part is also missing from the equation, so when we start drilling down the numbers Labour comes off as insincere and the usual yokes that they are. All yellow, icky and not really to any point are they?

Oh, and the numbers also calls into question that training places are lacking in a few corners and degrees, so as we are looking at that part too, how did Labour address that in their term? It is important, not because it stops Tories being responsible, it does not, but it does show a systemic problem in the matter and that goes beyond the political element here, there was a shortage for funds and the so called British professional medical degrees should have made a larger and louder complaint in all; this, perhaps it was done, perhaps it was not, but the article does not give light to any of this and it relates to a direct quote that Vincent Wood relies on. And it all related back to the failings that Labour introduced in their term from 1997-2010, so this issue is a lot larger than anyone realises and leave it to the Labour party to add their own failures onto the Tories back, it merely makes no sense to do so, the numbers are out there and it is time to hit Labour with the long term damage that they pushed onto at least half a dozen directions, or did you think that tapping the £11.2 billion NHS vein was the only bloodletting they allowed for? I also believe that certain questions need to be asked towards British Medical Association chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul. He was a topic of investigation in my article ‘As a Puppet‘ in May 2017 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/05/18/as-a-puppet/) when I also had a go at the Labour manifesto, I also wrote at that point: It states: “The people of Britain are rightly proud of the NHS and we will invest £12 billion over the next five years to keep it working for them“, so we get a little over £6 million a day, or slightly more than £200 million a month, so where does this £350 a week ‘pledge’ come from? The independent (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservatives-must-make-manifesto-commitment-of-350m-a-week-for-the-nhs-say-doctors-a7739401.html) shows us: “Doctors, academics and public health officials have called on the Conservative Party to include in its general election manifesto a commitment to spend £350m a week on the NHS, in keeping with the notorious posters of the Vote Leave campaign“, which makes me wonder where the actual pledge comes from. So it seems that Dr Chand Nagpaul and Norman Lamb are both missing a few parts here (I am happy to be proven wrong)“, so not only is the claim debatable, yet I wonder what the numbers then and now represent, yes a 2017 number in this day and age will show a total lack of change towards today, is that the case? From my point of view Dr. Chand Nagpaul has a few explanations to make and I get it, he is watching his own turf and what he’s in value, there is nothing wrong with that, but how much has he achieved in spreading the love of budget? And all this is also linked to the January 2017 article where we see: ““Coventry and Warwickshire NHS chiefs fork out £340,000 for advice on how to SAVE money” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/01/15/the-views-we-question/)“, so how much money was forked out by NHS chiefs on how to save money and how much did they safe in the end?

There are a few issues that are open all over the NHS and the Labour party, but in case you were not aware, I am happy to inform you.

Have a great Monday! #Justsaying

 

 

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Inspirational creativity

Today it is not the news that got me active; it was a TED video (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYemnKEKx0c). It was inspirational for a few reasons. In the first, I have had my exposure to Mental Health Law at UTS, best elective subject ever!

Anyway, the video gives an interesting view on the properties of Mental Health. Whether we look at this from the comedy perspective; whether we see it as an assessment of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it does not actually matter. We can take it into several directions, the problem is the approach towards statistics and how we see people.

Jon Ronson gives an interesting view, but the issue behind this all is that we have pushed ourselves onto the list of being a member of at least one of the stated diagnosis of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Is that not interesting? Consider that close to 80% of the people optionally have mental disorders, 85% if you are in the UK.

How did I get there?

First we get to the group of people who are a sociopath, that group is well over 30%, one in three is a sociopath, I know, because I basically am one (of we accept the evidence).

Let’s go over the rules:

  • Doesn’t respect social norms or laws. Most gamers seemingly disrespect social norms, gamers are a separate group of people and they are often in niche places that are based on what games they play. In addition, workaholics ignore the social norms of a family life.
  • Lies, deceives others, uses false identities or nicknames, and uses others. Gamers are often deceptive, yet we need to see levels of deception, gamers use other players to gain a tactical advantage. Workaholics use nick names all the time to alleviate stress, often these nicknames are not disrespectful or intended to be disrespectful.
  • Doesn’t make any long-term plans. Workaholics live from deadline to deadline; as such gamers often do too, from gaming season to gaming season, as well as release dates to upgrade the pool of games they live by.
  • Shows aggressive or aggravated behaviour. OK, in this, virtual violence (NHL, Fortnite, Overwatch) does not count.
  • Doesn’t consider their own safety or the safety of others. A lot of workaholics are chasing deadlines and meetings; they always overbook their schedule and in addition to that, leave too late for every appointment trying to balance that by speeding and being a menace on the road. Oh and they always call their next appointment that they are stuck in traffic and they will be there in 5 minutes (whilst they are still 15 minutes away).
  • Doesn’t follow up on personal or professional responsibilities. Most workaholics ignore or pushes against personal responsibilities, even as they do whatever they can to meet and follow up on professional responsibilities, with a schedule that is overburdened by well over 15%, they fail there too with some regularity.
  • Doesn’t feel guilt or remorse. It is all about the job, there is no remorse when a target is to be met, there is no guilt when it is met and often thee is a lack of guilt when it is not met either.

As a dedicated workaholic (since 1979) I pass every test but one on the sociopath list, from all this we can state that EVERY workaholic is a sociopath. This is the first issue where we see that the balance of work and life styles is so thin, that line will get crossed on a daily basis. This economy and the work life style that some companies claim (and then set the stage that it can be met when all tasks have been completed) is a stage that warps, instigates and promotes mental health issues.

The plot thickens

You see, there is another revelation; it comes to us when we consider the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath. “There’s no clinical difference between a sociopath and a psychopath. These terms are both used to refer to people with ASPD. They’re often used interchangeably” and now we have created a stage of mayhem!

You see antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is as I personally see it outdates issue, we see the setting “People with ASPD can’t understand others’ feelings” I do not disagree with the stage, I merely see that stage as a convoluted, overrated and optionally outdated one, social media is part of the live of almost all and it influences all our actions inside and outside the social media. How many people have been willing to ‘understand the feelings of a gamer‘, I have been a gamer since the very early 80’s (1983) and I never stopped being one, yet for decades (until late 90’s) women would ‘yuck’ at those who loved video games, these people were not cool, they were nerds and no one wanted to understand them, because cool people rub off on them making those socially cool people optionally no longer cool.

It was only after the PS2 and the Xbox that gamers were more and more accepted in the world. Now we see the issue when we consider a workaholic that is also a gamer (that still includes me), for us time is a precious commodity, for the social types, time is a measure of procrastination, you merely have to see Facebook, Snapchat and optionally Tinder to see where their priorities lie, and self-esteem with a dose of Ego feeding is more often than not the ingredients of their need.

Those people fill another void of the DSM, the Narcissistic personality disorder.

When we look at the elements we get:

  • Have an exaggerated sense of self-importance.
  • Have a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration.
  • Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
  • Exaggerate achievements and talents
  • Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
  • Believe they are superior and can only associate with equally special people
  • Monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they perceive as inferior
  • Expect special favours and unquestioning compliance with their expectations
  • Take advantage of others to get what they want
  • Have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
  • Be envious of others and believe others envy them
  • Behave in an arrogant or haughty manner, coming across as conceited, boastful and pretentious
  • Insist on having the best of everything — for instance, the best car or office

Here the colours change, the blue is directly seen in Facebook exchanges that a lot make, the problem here is that they are intent on feeding the urge to respond, feeding the interaction that are part of the Rules towards Social Media engagement. the greens are sometimes part of Facebook, yet too often these elements are merely trolling and cyber bullying issues, they are however optionally still part of the Narcissistic personality disorder, Red is a different issue, at times it is not an issue. It can be the sociopathic side in them waking up; it can also be due to unclear communication in social media. When the one word response ‘fine’ comes through, it could be positive, or perhaps sarcastic oppositional negativity, the problem is that this carries in the voice and not on the keyboard. To quote Big Bang theory, Dr Sheldon: “How can I be conceited when you cannot understand what I say?” He is true and he is truth, communication and comprehension requires a third step, the feedback of comprehension, that part where the bringer of the message sees that you comprehended the message; a step that is left null and void in the bulk of all social media used.

In all this there is also the issue with the DSM, 5th edition. I believe that people have evolved to some degree (whether positive or negative cannot be said), the stage of corporatocracy where it is all about the deadline, all about the next spreadsheet for commission and the next quarter. A created workforce of workaholics in an age where we see ‘work life balance‘ given out as a ‘mandate’ for a happy future, whilst the work pressures have not been dealt with, it is an unbalanced stage where people are more and more in doubt of what to do and in my experience the first group getting hit on that part are the families that these people are part of.

In an age where jobs become an issue, where job security is out of the window almost 24:7 in present day and as these issues become more and more visible, we see the added levels of depression added to the mix.

In all this, I mentioned ‘people have evolved to some degree‘ is the previous paragraph, well here it is, even as some claim to be social companies and socially responsible companies, their shareholders and board of directors are all about the bottom dollar, an environment that becomes corporatocratical more and more, the social markers are diminishing. they claim to have their ‘Friday afternoon drinks‘ or their social events once a month, yet these events are more and more about ‘heralding’ successes as a light on all others to become more successful. That is not some social event that is a directed pep talk to give the people something to think about on the weekend that precedes next Monday. It happens more and more and it is there that I invented the joke (which I love to tell every Friday afternoon): “Don’t worry, only another 62 hours and it will be Monday morning again!“, most people shiver, they get how short a weekend is, they merely never understood why they shivered, it was not about Monday morning, it was about the lack of true social family time that has gone more and more into the mists of forgetfulness and it saddens them to the core.

I believe that we will see more and more technological jumps which gives light to more commerce, more goals, more metrics and further isolation of individuals, as they are pushed and pushed into a stage of performance, making the bulk of your workforce an optional mental health case. Even as the Irish Times seemingly hides behind the quote ‘Employers are recognising the importance of supporting employees’ mental health‘, the underlying question is whether this is about work force retention, or actual mental health wellbeing in the workplace. For Europe this is to address “This is because right now almost one third of senior leaders cite finding talent as their most significant challenge” when you cannot find people hanging onto the ones you have is essential, yet the foundation of all this is not the workforce, not the pressures, as I see it the entire quality of life balance has been unhinged for the longest time of a decade and until that is addressed the issue that comes with ‘Why do I bother‘ cannot be maintained and these people are looking for every workaholic they can, those people go on regardless and that is fine with the talent seekers to a much larger degree.

There is no real short term solution and until the metrics reflect diminished work pressures, the situation merely escalated that part we see when HR presentations are set to a stage that no longer includes certain metrics.

When we see:

  1. Revenue per Employee.
  2. Cost per Hire.
  3. Employee Turnover.
  4. Overtime Percentage.
  5. Length of Service.
  6. Job Satisfaction Rate.

We see a problem that does not go away, even as we understand ‘Revenue per employee‘, there are scores where it was all about the team, where the first person properly informs a person and another sells the product as the person comes back gives a lack of understanding of the ‘browsing around’ customer, in a larger corporation there is a lack of comprehension where services and support are reasons why customers remain and buy again, not the salesperson, not even when he or she is selling in the nude. It is the services department that retains the customer and the business they bring. For the largest degree I have seen a lack of comprehension of that in senior management. As long as that issue remains there will be no resolution, especially when the sales people go to suave places for long weekends of training and booze and diners whilst services keep the business clear as they are away.

And in all of these stages, there has been an almost evangelistic absenteeism of the marketing department and their approach to ‘Inspirational creativity‘. For me it was the poster and the advertisement of Macquarie University, as they gave us all: ‘You to the power of us!

Did you ever realise just how brilliant that approach was? It is about inclusion where the approached person is at the centre of it all, how many advertisers were able to inspire you? You might not realise it but inspiration and enlightenment is the first sign that there is no mental health issue, because it is them driving you and it is you who engages that drive to a higher degree, we balance ourselves when someone else becomes the inspiration of us, not the work we need to do, but for us to excel what we were doing all along, at that point when we are there we retain ourselves and we contain ourselves to what we can inspire ourselves. I wonder how many companies have figured that out. I know that Google has been on the right track, but behind that metric is still the need to become accomplished as an increase, not as a state of awareness towards something better and in the second degree that is the track where the true innovations are found. It gave me 7 pieces of IP for 5G, two video games, one movie and an optional TV series (still working that out in my mind).

We can all be creative, yet to be inspirational requires something special and too many have not been able to push that, this is one of the reasons why Huawei is ruling the path of 5G and not anyone else. They all forgot to become inspirational creating their share of workaholics, psychopaths/sociopaths and narcissists, to them: “Welcome to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition”, did you have time to find on which page you belong?

 

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Mental health or Medication

We have seen the premise in a few stages in the last decade and for the most people lean towards one or the other and that is fine, it is a hard choice to make and there is no real evidence which of the two is better in the long run. Mental health needs treatment, medication is at times not a cure, merely a way to create a timeline for treatment, or to minimise the impact of the situation. Yet there is also a medial state that is not mental health based, for example treating people with cystic fibrosis who have two copies of the F508del mutation, for them there is Orkambi. Yet, what is the status when this involves a politician? How delusional is a public speaker allowed to become before he is considered unhealthy and unable to perform his function?

That question came up when the Guardian gave me ‘Labour pledges to break patents and offer latest drugs on NHS‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/24/labour-pledges-to-break-patents-and-offer-latest-drugs-on-nhs). So not only is he making claims, he is basically pronouncing war on the World Trade Organisation, abolishing the TRIPS agreement and throwing it all overboard. As we realise that the World Health Organisation gives us: “As of February 2005, 148 countries are Members of the WTO. In becoming Members of the WTO, countries undertake to adhere to the 18 specific agreements annexed to the Agreement establishing the WTO. They cannot choose to be party to some agreements but not others“, the UK and the EU are both signatories, so Jeremy Corbyn is stupid enough to set a stage of war that endangers millions. To give a little consideration to the metrics, we get the numbers on Cystic Fibrosis, not merely those with these two mutations (a specific subset), we see that more than 70,000 people worldwide are living with cystic fibrosis. Approximately 1,000 new cases of CF are diagnosed each year. More than 75 percent of people with CF are diagnosed by age 2. More than half of the CF population is age 18 or older. Now this is not a good thing, we admit, yet we are looking to a population that is less than 0.001% of the entire population, more important the people that need Orkambi are a mere subset of that. And for the UK it would linearly mean that it affects only 0.1% of the 0.001% that optionally have it. That is his ‘limelight’; can someone please kick this idiot out of the Labour party (preferably out of UK politics altogether)?

And in the second part, no political party has any business being in the pharmaceutical industry, there is a reason why industrials should never have any political power (well, we lost that one ages ago, but still). His voice giving us: ‘party will create company to make cheap versions of drugs‘, whilst the metrics give us that it will be a population less than a 100 that have this version of Cystic Fibrosis that is what he is fighting for? He cannot even properly represent his constituency and now he is starting patent wars as well as a war with the World Trade Organisation on abolishing or severely changing The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)? Not only does it not make sense, the impact could be devastating for the UK. This is a person screaming ‘election’ and then spinning silent when it was offered.

It is my personal view that UK labour is better off getting the clown Ronald McDonald to do the Labour party bidding, and it will do a better job than Jeremy Corbyn ever could. His promises are no longer empty, they are now right-out dangerous.

Pharmaceuticals

There is a larger pharmaceutical issue and it has been going on for well over a decade, the issue that patents are reapplied well over 30 years after date, often in a slightly changed form, only barely passing the innovation line is the largest concern for generic medication, yet there are dozens of examples and Orkambi is nowhere near the top 10 in this. Lyrica (Pfizer), Rituxan (roche), Cialis (Eli Lilly), Xolair (Roche/Novartis), Restatis (Allergan) are 5 of the top 10 expiring patents with a value of a little over $16 billion in total, and those owners would like a little longer exclusivity, because the expiration will hit their bottom line in a real hard way. In that list Orkambi does not even stack up to any decent degree and we have larger issues gaining patents with a generic option and Corbyn’s need to make war with TRIPS, whilst the NHS has larger issues, especially as it was Labour who botched the NHS IT project losing £11 billion and small change to the degree of several millions is not one who should be casting voices on ending patents.

The sentiment is not wrong, but the chosen field is a little beyond stupid, making us wonder whether the man is personally dealing with mental health issues. We all have had that moment where we wanted to stand in front of Dwayne Johnson calling him Tinkerbell, not really wise, but we all have those inflated moments of self, to do what Jeremy Corbyn does worse hiding behind one 9 year old with: “Luis is denied the medicine he needs because its American manufacturer refuses to sell the drug to the NHS for an affordable price“, so this is not some Cystic Fibrosis case, this is a very specific case and the medication required many millions to create and pass FDA approval. A medication for CF patients with a rare mutation. With two specific mutations in a disease that knows more than 1,700 mutations that had been found in the CFTR gene. Orkambi works for patients with the F508del mutation in both copies the CFTR gene, the most common mutation in people with cystic fibrosis worldwide. So even if it is the most common, there are 1700 mutations meaning that his war on one medication to a specific subset that comes down to a lot less than 100 patients in the UK. So this idiot (read: Jeremy Corbyn) goes to war, promising to abolish TRIPS and leaving the WTO, all for a subset of people, too small to fill a village? Now consider that the UK has Pharmaceutical interests as well, the top two players in the UK are GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca representing almost £132 billion pounds, because if he does what he does, then those two will vacate as well, this is how stupid Jeremy Corbyn is, but he is hoping that you will not notice this as he is in feigned tears for one nine year old child. I only mentioned the top two, the field is larger than that, but Jeremy Corbyn is willing to throw it all in the air.

Can you please explain to me how the government budget will be met when two companies representing a taxable £100,000,000,000 leave the UK? This is the kind of short-sighted, BS carrying ventures that Jeremy Corbyn is handing its constituents. His claim is ‘In England about 5,000 young patients could benefit, but the NHS said it could not afford to pay the bill‘, if there are worldwide 70,000 Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients the UK cannot have that many, the claim of “US drugs company Vertex priced Orkambi at over £100,000 per patient per year” might be true and for 100 patients that is still serious money, but we need to recognise that we cannot hand every working person a Ferrari, we do not have the money, and it is that extreme. We are in a position where until a patent ends, the maker gets to set the price, or not sell the product. In light of the numbers I see, I want Jeremy Corbyn to give us an exact list of these 5,000 patients and what medication they need. I reckon that the picture shifts a lot faster at that point. And we agree that larger changes are required, yet making a direct case to the WTO that patents cannot be extended above the 35 years is a lot better than abolishing the WTO. Yet Jeremy Corbyn has no options to do that, so he comes with a delusional plan to start a company that ‘create company to make cheap versions of drugs‘, whilst there are plenty of companies doing that, the case remains that patents hand exclusivity until they expire, this year 26 drugs are facing patent expiration and yet, Orkambi is not among them, but 26 patents will become generic, before 2022 42 patents will expire and that is good for a lot of people, yet this system is already in place, we do not need some delusional politician to add his need to become a rich pharmaceutical cat as well.

To be honest, I have never had such a low regard of UK Labour ever before, the fact that I have twice the regard towards LibDems than towards Labour at present is something I never thought possible in the age of Ed Miliband, whomever thought that Corbyn would be a worthy successor deserved the title ‘Joker of the Year‘, as I personally see it, it is actually that bad at present.

So whomever is happy that this optional mental health case is running the UK labour party is in desperate need of some medication (generic NHS funded options will be available).

 

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Tethered to the bottom of the ocean

Perhaps you remember a 1997 movie, about a ship that decided to take a fast trip to America, the HMS Titanic. We all have our moments and what you might not know is that there is a deleted scene that only a few limited editions had. The captain (played by Bernard Hill) was asked a question by one of the passengers: ‘Is land far away?‘ The response was: ‘No, it is only 3900 yards to the nearest land………straight down‘. OK, that did not really happen, but it does sound funny. You see, the image of a place can be anything we need it to be, dimensionality is everything and that is where we see the larger problem.

This is actually directly linked to the article I wrote on September 18th, the article ‘The Lie of AI‘ gets another chapter, one that I actually saw coming, the factors at least, but not to the degree the Guardian exposes. In the article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/09/18/the-lie-of-ai/) I gave you: “more importantly it will be performing for the wrong reasons on wrong data making the learning process faulty and flawed to a larger degree“, now we see (at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/19/thousands-of-reports-inaccurately-recorded-by-police) a mere 8 hours ago ‘Thousands of rape reports inaccurately recorded by police‘, so we are not talking about a few wrong reports, because that will always happen, no we are talking about THOUSANDS of reports that lack almost every level of accuracy. When we consider the hornets’ nest the Guardian gives us with: “Thousands of reports of rape allegations have been inaccurately recorded by the police over the past three years and in some cases never appeared in official figures” Sajid Javid is now facing more than a tough crowd, there is now the implied level of stupid regarding technology pushes whilst the foundations of what is required cannot be met and yes, I know that he is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is not that simple, the simplicity is not seen in the quote: “More than one in 10 audited rape reports were found to be incorrect“, the underlying data is therefore more than unreliable; it basically has become useless. this is a larger IT problem, it is not merely that the police cannot do its job, anything linked to this was wrongfully examined, optionally innocent people were investigated (which is not the worst part), the worst part is that the police force has a resource issue and there is now the consideration that the lack of resources have also been going in the wrong direction. The failing becomes a larger issue when we see: “The data also found that a number of forces failed to improve in subsequent inspections, with some getting worse“, the failing pushed on from operational to systemic. Now consider IT, the laughingly hilarious step of AI, even the upgrades to existing systems that cannot be met in any way because the data is flawed on several levels. It is a larger issue that out of the national police force in this regard only Cumbria, Sussex and Staffordshire past the bar, a mere 3 out of 36 forces did their job (above a certain level) and it gets worse when you consider that this is merely the investigations into the sexual assault section, the matter could actually be a lot worse. Consider the Guardian article in July ‘Police trials of facial recognition backed by home secretary‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/12/police-trials-facial-recognition-home-secretary-sajid-javid-technology-human-rights), as well as ‘UK police use of facial recognition technology a failure, says report‘ from May 2018 (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/15/uk-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-failure), you might not have made the link, but I certainly did. When you take the quote: “Police attempts to use cameras linked to databases to recognise people from their face are failing, with the wrong person picked out nine times out 10, a report claims“, now consider that a  victim reported the assault on her, a report is made and at some point the evidence is regarded and looked over, the information is linked to CCTV data and now we are off to the races, whilst 3 out of 36 forces did it right, there is now a stage where 91% is looking at the wrong information, inaccurate information and add to that the danger of 10% getting properly identified, even if the right person was picked out, there is still a well over 75% chance that the investigation is going in the wrong direction and optionally an innocent person gets investigated and screened, in the meantime the criminal is safe to do what he wanted all along.

Now we get the good stuff, in 2018 home secretary, Sajid Javid gave his approval and now as he is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he approves the invoice and also sets the stage of handing out £30 million to a system that cannot function in a system that is based on cogs that were not accurate and are transposing the wrong data. Even then we see “the BBC reported that Javid supported the trials at the launch of computer technology aimed at helping police fight online child abuse“, a system this inaccurate, not merely because of its flawed technology is set in a stage where the offered data is not accurate either, this simply implies that until the systemic failure is fixed the new system can never function and it will take well over a year to fix the systemic failure. So tell me, what do you normally do to a person who is knowingly and willingly handing over £30 million to a plan that has no chance of success?

We need to stop politicians from wasting this level of resources and funds merely to look good in the eyes of big business. I also feel that it is appropriate that Sajid Javid will be held personally accountable for spending funds that would never be deployed correctly.

The reasoning here is seen in the quote “Recorded rape has more than doubled since 2013-14 to 58,657 cases in 2018-19. However, police are referring fewer cases for prosecution and the CPS is charging, prosecuting and winning fewer cases. The number of cases resulting in a conviction is lower than it was more than a decade ago“, the stage is twofold, we see a doubling over 5 years whilst convictions were down from more than a decade ago, it will in the end link to conviction rate on data, whilst the data numbers are not reliable. The quotes “the case was not recorded as a crime“, as well as “noting it as an incident“, in both cases rape registered as something else, and there is no conviction required on ‘incident‘, the underlying questions is whether this lack is optionally intentional to skew that statistics. You might not agree and it might not be true, but when we see a 91% failing from the police force there is something really wrong. The problem intensifies when we see the Guardian statement that “West Midlands was found to be ‘of concern’ and had ‘not improved’ rape recording upon re-inspection in 2018” this implies that the work of the Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) is either not taken seriously or is intentionally ignored, you tell me which of the two it is and connected to this is Sajid Javid ready to ‘upgrade’ to AI (that remains funny) and spend over £30 million on that system, as well as the funds wasted on the current CCTV facial recognition solution, which is not cheap either.

I wonder who the CCTV will point to arrest for the person allegedly having sex on the desk of the Terry Walker, Lord Mayor of North East Lincolnshire. Images show that the local police might be seeing Noel Gallagher as a person of interest at present.

I wonder how that data was acquired?

In opposition

There is however the other side and even a I did not give it the illumination, there was no intent to ignore it. The options to ‘AI to reduce the burden on child abuse Investigators‘ is not to be ignored, it must be the task that will burn out a person a lot faster than they would transporting bottles of nitro-glycerin by hand through a busy marketplace. I am not insensitive to this, yet the Police Professional gives us: “The development will cost £1.76 million from a total investment in the CAID from the Home Office of £8.2 million this year, which is different from the £30 million given, as I see it additional questions come to the foreground now. Yet there are other issues that are not part of this. There is the danger of misreading (and incorrectly acting on) seeded data. In SIGINT we see the part where data fields are used to misrepresent information (like Camera model, owner, serial number), when we start looking in the wrong direction, even if some of the data might be correct you are in a different -phase and the problem is that no AI can tell you that a camera serial number might be wrong, or right. There are larger data concerns, yet I do understand that some tasks can alleviate stress from the police, yet when we link this to the lack of accuracy on police data, the task remains equal to mopping the floor whilst the tap is running spilling water on the floor. None of these steps make sense until the operational procedures are cleared, tested and upgraded. A failing rate of 91% (33 out of 36) makes that an absolute given.

And for those who missed the Gallagher joke, please feel free to watch the movie the Grimsby brothers. There are actually two additional paths that are an issue, it is not about presentation, it is about the interpretation, as well as the insight of sliced data, they interact and as such a lot of metrics will go wrong and remain incorrect and inaccurate for some time to come. Data will get interpreted and optionally acted on, which becomes a non-option when accuracy is below a certain value. So feel free to be anchored to the ground in the approach to data surveillance employing AI (I am still laughing about that part), yet when you are tethered to the bottom of the ocean, how will you get a moment to catch your breath?

Precisely, you won’t!

 

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The Lie of AI

The UK home office has just announced plans to protect paedophiles for well over a decade and they are paying millions to make it happen. Are you offended yet? You should be. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/17/home-office-artificial-intelligence-ai-dark-web-child-sexual-exploitation) is giving you that, yet you do not realise that they are doing that. The first part is ‘Money will go towards testing tools including voice analysis on child abuse image database‘, the second part is “Artificial intelligence could be used to help catch paedophiles operating on the dark web, the Home Office has announced” these two are the guiding part in this, and you did not even know it. To be able to understand this there are two parts. The first is an excellent article in the Verge (at https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/28/18197520/ai-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-computational-science), the second part is: ‘AI does not exist!

Important fact is that AI will become a reality at some point, in perhaps a decade, yet the two elements making AI essential have not been completed. The first is quantum computing, IBM is working on it, and they admit: “For problems above a certain size and complexity, we don’t have enough computational power on Earth to tackle them.” This is true enough and fair enough. They also give us: “it was only a few decades ago that quantum computing was a purely theoretical subject“. Two years ago (yes only two years ago) IBM gives us a new state, a new stage in quantum computing where we see a “necessary brick in the foundation of quantum computing. The formula stands apart because unlike Shor’s algorithm, it proves that a quantum computer can always solve certain problems in a fixed number of steps, no matter the increased input. While on a classical computer, these same problems would require an increased number of steps as the input increases” This is the first true step towards creating AI, as what you think is AI grows, the data alone creates an increased number of steps down the line, coherency and comprehension become floating and flexible terms, whilst comprehension is not flexible, comprehension is a set stage, without ‘Quantum Advantage with Shallow Circuits‘ it basically cannot exist. In addition, this year we get the IBM Q System One, the world’s first integrated quantum computing system for commercial use, we could state this is the first true innovative computer acceleration in decades and it has arrived in a first version, yet there is something missing and we get to stage two later.

Now we get to the Verge.

The State of AI in 2019‘ published in January this year gives us the goods, and it is an amazing article to read. The first truth is “the phrase “artificial intelligence” is unquestionably, undoubtedly misused, the technology is doing more than ever — for both good and bad“, the media is all about hype and the added stupidity given to us by politicians connected the worst of both worlds, they are clueless and they are trying being dumb and clueless on the worst group of people, the paedophiles and they are paying millions to do what is cannot accomplish at present.

Consider a computer or a terminator super smart, like in the movies and consider “a sci-vision of a conscious computer many times smarter than a human. Experts refer to this specific instance of AI as artificial general intelligence, and if we do ever create something like this, it’ll likely to be a long way in the future” and that is the direct situation, yet there is more.

The quote “Talk about “machine learning” rather than AI. This is a subfield of artificial intelligence, and one that encompasses pretty much all the methods having the biggest impact on the world right now (including what’s called deep learning)” is very much at the core of it all, and it exists and it is valid and it is the point of set happening, yet without quantum computing we are confronted with the earlier stage ‘on a classical computer, these same problems would require an increased number of steps as the input increases‘, so now all that data delays and delays and stops progress, this is the stage that is a direct issue, then we also need to consider “you want to create a program that can recognize cats. You could try and do this the old-fashioned way by programming in explicit rules like “cats have pointy ears” and “cats are furry.” But what would the program do when you show it a picture of a tiger? Programming in every rule needed would be time-consuming, and you’d have to define all sorts of difficult concepts along the way, like “furriness” and “pointiness.” Better to let the machine teach itself. So you give it a huge collection of cat photos, and it looks through those to find its own patterns in what it sees” This learning stage takes time, yet down the track it becomes awfully decent in recognising what a cat is and what is not a cat. That takes time, yet the difference is that we are seeking paedophiles, so that same algorithm is used not to find a cat, but to find a very specific cat. Yet we cannot tell it the colour of its pelt (because we do not know), we cannot tell the size, shape or age of that specific cat. Now you see the direct impact of how delusional the idea form the Home Office is. Indirectly we also get the larger flaw. Learning for computers comes in a direct version and an indirect version and we can both put it in the same book: Programming for Dummies! You see, we feed the computer facts, but as it is unable to distinguish true facts from false facts we see a larger failing, the computer might start to look in the wrong direction, pointing out the wrong cat, making the police chase and grab the wrong cat and when that happens, the real paedophile had already hidden itself again. Deep Learning can raise flags all over the place and it will do a lot of good, but in the end, a system like that will be horribly expensive and paying 100 police officers for 20 years to hunt paedophiles might cost the same and will yield better results.

All that is contained in the quote: “Machine learning systems can’t explain their thinking, and that means your algorithm could be performing well for the wrong reasons” more importantly it will be performing for the wrong reasons on wrong data making the learning process faulty and flawed to a larger degree.

The article ends with “In the here and now, artificial intelligence — machine learning — is still something new that often goes unexplained or under-examined” which is true and more important, it is not AI, the fact that we were not really informed about, there is not AI at present, not for some time to come and it makes us wonder on the Guardian headline ‘Home Office to fund use of AI to help catch dark web paedophiles‘, how much funds and the term ‘use of AI‘ requires it to exist, which it does not.

The second missing item.

You think that I was kidding, but I was not, even as the Quantum phase is seemingly here, its upgrade does not exist yet and that is where true AI becomes an optional futuristic reality. This stage is called the Majorana particle, it is a particle that is both matter and antimatter (the ability to be both positive and negative), and one of the leading scientists in this field is Dutch Physicist Leo Kouwenhoven. Once his particle becomes a reality in quantum computing, we get a new stage of shallow circuits, we get a stage where fake news, real news, positives and false positives are treated in the same breath and the AI can distinguish between them. That stage is decades away. At that point the paedophile can create whatever paper trail he likes; the AI will be worse than the most ferocious bloodhound imaginable and will see the fake trails faster than a paedophile can create it. It will merely get the little pervert caught faster.

The problem is that this is decades away, so someone should really get some clarification from the Home Office on how AI will help, because there is no way that it will actually do so before the government budget of 2030. What will we do in the meantime and what funds were spend to get nothing done? When we see: “pledged to spend more money on the child abuse image database, which since 2014 has allowed police and other law enforcement agencies to search seized computers and other devices for indecent images of children quickly, against a record of 14m images, to help identify victims“, in this we also get “used to trial aspects of AI including voice analysis and age estimation to see whether they would help track down child abusers“, so when we see ‘whether they would help‘, we see a shallow case, so shallow that the article in the Verge well over half a year ago should indicate that this is all water down the drain. And the amount (according to Sajid Javid) is set to “£30m would be set aside to tackle online child sexual exploitation“, I am all for the goal and the funds. Yet when we realise that AI is not getting us anywhere and Deep Learning only gets us so far, and we also now consider “trial aspects of AI including voice analysis and age estimation” we see a much larger failing. How can voice analyses help and how is this automated? and as for the term ‘trial aspects of AI‘, something that does not exist, I wonder who did the critical read on a paper allowing for £30 million to be spend on a stage that is not relevant. How about getting 150 detectives for 5 years to hunt down these bastards might be cheaper and in the end a lot more results driven.

In the end of the article we see the larger danger that is not part of AI, when we see: “A paper by the security think-tank Rusi, which focused on predictive crime mapping and individual risk assessment, found algorithms that are trained on police data may replicate – and in some cases amplify – the existing biases inherent in the dataset“, in this Rusi is right, it is about data and the data cannot be staged or set against anything, which makes for a flaw in deep learning as well. We can teach what a cat is by showing it 1,000 images, yet how are the false images recognised (panther, leopard, or possum)? That stage seems simple in cats, in criminals it is another matter, comprehension and looking past data (showing insight and wisdom) is a far stretch for AI (when it is there) and machine learning and deeper learning are not ready to this degree at present. We are nowhere near ready and the first commercial quantum computer was only released this year. I reckon that whenever a politician uses AI as a term, he is either stupid, uninformed or he wants you to look somewhere else (avoiding actual real issues).

For now the hypes we see are more often than not the lie of AI, something that will come, but unlikely to be seen before the PS7 is setting new sales records, which is still many years away.

 

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That one sentence

You have all faced it before, the moment where that one sentence stops you in your tracks. I am not talking about the sentence a partner states when they come with ‘If you get naked now, we can have sex‘, most people jump at that point. No, it is the ‘if you value your life‘ moment. It is not always a threat, and more important, it is not a sentence that is an imminent danger to you, that would be a reaction as well, but one of another kind. It is the sentence that makes you realise just how dangerous the stage is. I saw one today that came from Warsaw. It was an opinion piece, but the issue is not that it was an opinion; the issue is that this opinion is shared and it shows just how essential Brexit is to the UK. Besides the two failed stimulus events and a new one rolling off the bankrolls as we speak, a third, or perhaps more accurately stated a second mistake in a three part plan that goes nowhere. We now get that sentence ‘The Financial Times editors, heads of German business and many economists argued that Germany should start spending which it does not intend to do‘ this sentence is dangerous and idiotic, there is no relief in spending more, there is no relief, not merely because a government spends more, it is idiotic because Germany has a debt that surpasses 2,250,000,000,000 €, more important, their debt increases almost €2,000 a second. So every person in Germany has a €27,500 debt to deal with. A nation in that position is not in a good place and needs to reduce debt, but the deception and the brainless issue is that Europeans are all in a stage to take on more debt, whilst the ECB is playing with trillions in stimulus. That danger is too large and leaving the EU is the only option to get a handle on the debt every European faces.

The danger that these exploiters face is that the UK can pull it off, and when the first economic victory is scored. all those EU members will stand still and look at how they can pull it off, the people behind the scenes, the people handing us this contrived stories will then have to report to the large corporations and the custodians of the European corporatocracy that they have failed and they will no longer matter or be considered valued. That is the larger game and whilst the UK moves closer to proving that point, others keep on fear mongering as much as they can for as long as they can. Yet the dangers are becoming real and they are increasing in visibility. The Local in Germany (at https://www.thelocal.de/20190913/should-germany-give-into-pressure-and-boost-spending-to-revive-europe) gives us: ‘Should Germany boost spending to help revive Europe?‘, yet its economy is slowing and they are close to a €2.5 trillion debt. Still, for the economic value of Germany it does not seem much, but it is not a multi-billion valued debt, it is a thousand times worse and people do not seem to get that this debt pushes nations towards a corporatocracy where the banks and corporations are in charge and that danger is not understood anywhere, except perhaps the boardrooms of the Fortune 500 and they are extremely unwilling to explain it to you. As we see the stage of corporatocracy growing, we should also notice the lack of media looking into that matter. I would state it is because the media aligns with Shareholders, stake holders and advertisers and corporations are in charge of all three. So in a stage where we see: ‘a day after the European Central Bank warned it had reached the limit of its powers to avert recession‘, we get two things. The first is the stimulus that is coming, and second German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz gets the news: “Germany faced renewed pressure on Friday to boost public spending and help revive a sputtering European economy“, neither will solve anything and there is now the crux, because if the UK exits the EU and gives a real first sign of improvement (which will be year 2 or 3 after Brexit), we see a change, Germany will anger to a degree not seen before and the German population will demand Gexit, AfD (Alternativ fur Deutschland) is already pushing in that direction, but it is not powerful enough, the first UK signs will push it to such a level that Gexit would optionally happen overnight. That is the problem for the fear mongering lot and they are scared because Brexit is still on the road, and the second problem is that it will bring a better stage to the UK, which also means that Germany will get out as fast as possible. At that point the EU can no longer continue, with three trillion in debt it will collapse. I had actually expected for France to leave as a second country, yet with France electing an investment banker, that danger was temporarily averted. Now as Brexit is in a higher stage the Germans start looking at the ACTUAL issues and FACTUAL problems and benefits that the EU leaving stages bring, it is the one part no one had considered to the degree they needed to. Fear mongering remains a virtual issue and the real facts are not in line with the fears created and now that this void is becoming visible, a lot more people are realising that they were played and that will give the entire EU collapse a speed boost, but in all this, it is the UK that pushes what happens next, that is why we see UK Labour cold calling on every door with some hilarious moments (at https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/9924096/homeowners-brexit-rant-terrorist-corbyn-democracy-labour-caller/). Yet they are merely stalling and buying time, at present Labour has no political power to their position, Jeremy Corbyn and his stupidity destroyed the Labour party, so he decided to openly support (read: hide behind) the remain groups. It is a valid strategy, yet the truth is also that more and more people are aware just how dangerous remaining has become and the British people have one full faith, they have full faith in Britannia and in that setting there is no EU, large corporations never understood that, it is not Wall Street, so they cannot comprehend.

So there we see it all and this all started with that one sentence: ‘Germany and others need to spend more‘ and when we see the debts rising and rising more and more people realise the one urging thought ‘Why on earth would we want to do that?

The smallest level of consideration would have been given if the second stimulus has shown levels of victory, it did not and now we have and a €3 trillion debt and no restored economy. The truth does not come from economy, it was Albert Einstein who gave us: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results every time“, it is the realisation of that truth that is now sinking in and spending more and more helps corporations, it helps banks, it does not help people, and that truth comes clear when it all collapses and all the pensions stop existing. That will be the next step and still the ECB will remain in denial, this entire matter is staged around organisations and gravy trains that have no bearing on our economic benefit or our economic long term stability. It serves them and the members of their teams, and more people are figuring that out.

As we are brought more and more revelations on how there will be a new recession, we see others come with news, fake news, bad presentations and so on. The Guardian in 2018 gave us: ‘We are due a recession in 2020 – and we will lack the tools to fight it‘, the recession is still coming, the tools are not there and more debt is coming in at the same time. This was always a formula for bad tidings. More important, it will hit Europe and the US both to a larger degree. It will not be a 2008 event, but it will be bad and as I see it, as Germany has the best economic position as their debt is merely 60% of GDP, they have the best chances to get through it all. The UK follows after that, yet they too will be hit and now we get the kicker, if Brexit has been completed, the drag, the huge drag that the UK would get because it had to tend to the 27 member states will no longer be there, so they can rise faster and sooner. That lesson, when we see that in reality will be the trigger for Germany, France and Italy to get out as fast as possible. It will end the EU, it will make a lot if issues messy yet it is only after that that a global economy can be grown in proper ways.

This was not a mystery, this was not a consideration and it was not a devil plan. It was merely that application of nature. Consider that any economy has high tides and low tides that is how it was, like the seas they have an influencer. For the sea the larger influence is the moon. There is nothing we can do anything about it, yet these tides are also regular, so for a larger part they are predictable. Now consider that tides fall away, on a planet with 24 time zones, we decided to place 4 of them in one group. Then we decided to nullify the tide (which was unnatural) and now we are all screaming that recession is our bane, it never was, economic cycles are as normal as the tides and we all face high and low, it is not something that corporations like and they designed a way around it. They failed, nature always finds a way and that is where they are now. They want to stall as much as they can and they are willing to sell 500 million people in the EU down the drain to keep their profits, and now as we all realise that these times have come and gone, and as we realise that debt helps them, it does not help us, people wake up and decide to find a way to end their struggle. It will be a long fight, but at present we could win it and end the EU cycle called corporatocracy, the nations, their monarchies and republics get to win. There will be a mess, it will not be pretty but it will get better.

So what one sentence woke you up today?

 

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Predictive Analytics or crystal ball?

We all have these moments, we all have that limelight moment that is all about the lights and not the lime; or better stated, in this world where about 23 people pointed at me, making me sound like an evangelist who is casting the bones, calling me tainted by the Afreet. They all stated that delusion was my middle name, to them today I say; ‘Hah!

The Arab News about an hour ago (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1553251/saudi-arabia) gives us ‘Saudi Arabia’s SAMI, Navantia in SR3.7bn military deal‘, which represents a few coins less than a billion dollars in green US pieces of paper, now gives us that “SAMI Navantia Naval Industries (SAMI-Navantia) signed a SR3.7 billion ($986 million) contract with Spanish shipbuilder Navantia to collaborate on combat system integration (CSI) on the Avante 2200 corvettes for the Saudi navy“, whilst on September 1st (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/09/01/change-is-coming/) where I wrote “SAMI has the option of building space well over 5 times the combined spaces that Damen, Spanish Navantia and Dearsan combined have. It changes the equation a fair bit“, in response to “As the links with Navantia matures, we see the option to cater to the needs of coast guards on several national levels and these are not the small players. Some might have noticed the small mention of ‘Offshore Patrol Vessels Market 2024: New Business Opportunities for Manufactures to Upsurge in Coming Years‘, yet Navantia and therefor SAMI are in the thick of that part of the equation“, 11 days later I would be proven correctly and this is just the start for SAMI. I understand that some might unite under the expression of ‘one Swallow does not a summer make‘, but the setting of preparation was too large, too much effort had been made in several directions by Saudi Arabia and a few foreign interested parties. More importantly, the EU gravy train decision makers have been taken out of the equation. As I see it, it is merely the first of several new ventures that we will see happen and each success is an almost guaranteed stage towards the follow up job which will be substantially larger than the previous one. It is here where we see what Walid Abukhaled, Chief Strategy Officer at SAMI, as well as Dr. Andreas Schwer, CEO of SAMI are capable of when two visionaries unite in a view that has a similar direction. One would consider that it feels really good being His Excellency Ahmed Al-Khateeb this week in light of these successes, yet they are not merely successes, they are the beginning of milestones that thrust the abilities and capabilities of SAMI forward. The data was decently clear on that. It was not merely their ability, it was the hindrance that Heckler and Koch, Farbique Nationale Herstal as well as BAE Systems are finding operating under EU procedures, all whilst the procedures are nothing short of hypocrisy in the first place; a stage of what some call holier than thee ideology. I get it, there is nothing wrong with something like Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), yet it can only work if it is balanced and it is not, so now they merely achieved in losing commerce for the UK (and parts of the EU). There is nothing wrong with ideology, but if it is not dipped in some level of realism, they will do more harm than good. You cannot act in one direction and after that refuse to hold Iran to account who has been visibly ignoring and shunning agreements, and these pressures are also being applied by Turkey on other fronts, all these pressure points result in turmoil and stress and the market will respond to the needs of other governments requiring the hardware to do something about it, the SAMI deal might merely be the first deal for the Saudi Navy, but there are two parts there, first the Saudi Navy is growing, second is that once the knowledge is implemented other orders can be completed as well and it is that second part that will matter even more, as the governments require additional value out of their vessels, Navantia, if SAMI delivers could get a lot more value out of their Life Support services department and these overhauls add a lot of value, which works for SAMI as a facilitator as well. In this Navantia will get the stage of upgrading and give additional services to the preventive maintenance and remote technical assistance divisions of their yard. And it is more than facilitation for Saudi Arabia, as its knowledge of logistics is applied. Whilst we think that there is no news under the sun when it comes to predictive models to support strategic purchases, and optionally scripted and tested Machine Learning techniques to expenditure control and collaborative development with suppliers through common digital platforms most do not realise that in shipping it is very different from other industries. There are external inhibitors (weather) there are operational inhibitors (idle time) and logistical inhibitors (active manpower/resources), all stages on 2-3 levels that other industries never had. It is like Google being baffled by their answer of ‘What is Standard Deviation‘, whilst the answer does not compute with the customer who knows it to be: “the angular difference between magnetic North and the compass needle due to nearby sources of interference such as magnetically permeable bodies, or other magnetic fields within the field of influence“, it is there and the fact that the answer differs on the other side of the equation where we see a mismatch of standards and concepts. Whilst we laugh away the difference, some might realise that 2 miscommunications is enough to lose out on a billion dollars and then the life aquatic is no longer a simple comedy with Bill Murray, the stage of global maritime needs has changed and changed differently from most other industries. Navantia and a few other players have remained on top of it (as well as a few other serious players), it is here where we also see larger failings. We might see growth in a report like: “LNG Bunkering will register a 65.2% CAGR in terms of revenue, reach US$ 24400 million by 2023, from US$ 1200 million in 2017“, and that report might be completely correct, and now, even whilst I have not looked into that report (as it is not important to this article), how does that growth and equation impact idle time? Anyone who ignores idle time also ignores any captain confronted by it. when we consider “new mega-vessel, more capacity and a tremendous effort to improve competitiveness and efficiency are now hand to hand with a new collaborative mind-set, involving new technology to enhance connectivity that leas the seaport supply industry to the future” we accept a growing industry, yet the premise of “Idle time at waterside (arrival and departure), constitute 38 per cent of the total port stay for a container ship, which cost billions of USD per year to the shipping lines“, we get this from Ruben F, in his thesis ‘Identification And Measurement Of Idle Times Port Visit Of Container Ships Through An Explorative And Simulation Study: The Case Of Algeciras’s Terminal‘, his advisor was Jalal Ashayeri, PhD. It is in this document where we see: “The latest news is that in 2019 NYK line will test a crewless container ship from Japan to North America (BloombergTechnology, 2017) . This is not the only carrier working in this new technological model for container ship, however the future for in this industry is still being unwritten“; there is nothing wrong with the quote, yet everyone forgets that every harbour has one darling limit, the amount of berthing space available and when we consider that dangerous cargo is a second limitation we see a larger windfall for SAMI, because weapons (specifically ammunition) is a Class One dangerous cargo, which now also means that whenever a government upgrades its navy there is a shift in what is available, and therefor pushed idle time by a lot, consider ANY harbour and consider that due to government upgrades two berthing spaces are lost due to naval upgrades. Not every navy has its own long term harbour space at times; now consider the impact on idle time and having the software to manage that more efficiently, that is where Spain and Saudi Arabia get the larger windfall down the road, not merely implementing, but managing logistics and operational options through consultants and remote servers. What some saw last month is the ‘claim’ of cyber warfare capabilities was shy of one element. The element of cyber logistics and cyber upgrading as a facility becomes more and more important, especially when you realise that those in that field have little to no experience with naval logistics and what makes naval logistics a lot more different (as well as complex and difficult) from other logistics. Most of them have no experience with idle time algorithms. That oversight might make some people run to books and learn, but unless you have the knowledge of a harbour master with added quarter of a century experience you lose out, plain and simple, Navantia has that (as do some others) yet the larger group is absent that knowledge and this is where SAMI gets the added benefits down the road.

And that makes sense how?

Well, for that we need to realise that several sources mentioned almost a month ago that in the EU (Spain was separately mentioned as well) that there is a ban on double trucks and that these trucks are given the limit of double tractor-trailers to 63.5 tons or less. It gives a larger rise to capacity problems in harbours, even as some hide behind safety issues like in “There is insufficient rail capacity, and “we would have to bet on the growth” of rail if double tractor-trailers disappeared, according to the proposal, which suggests that weight reduction would improve safety“, to me it seems that there is a larger growing capacity problem and the speed that the lack of capacity is growing at is also worrying, the ships have grown a lot bigger and whilst harbours were deepened in many parts, the amount of berthing spaces (as well as cranes, and its capacity) have not improved in a decade, this now implies that ships are docked longer, it pushes idle time by a fair bit and in all this, ships require upgrades. So when Navantia gets the added SAMI capacity to do things faster, optionally having access to Saudi berthing locations, the two together will make for additional growth options for SAMI, that part was already clear on September 1st to me. My undergrad was in ships engineering and even as I never worked in that industry (IT was too appealing) I do know what impacts there are and I do see where SAMI could be heading. There are over a dozen governments all wanting to upgrade their navy, whilst the resources and skills are almost universally lacking. I think that this Union with Navantia and SAMI will spell a lot more options than anyone realised.

The fact that the US was eager to add Australian BCT to its resources shows just how short the supply is, it is not merely cyber defence, electronic warfare, technology, and intelligence. There is in the naval sense a lack of ICT solutions to a much larger degree, it is the combination that is hard to find and some solutions are antiquated to say the least. Most IT people always thought of naval cyber needs to be too mundane or too unappealing which resulted in a maritime applicable shortage in several nations. Navantia recognised that weakness for the Spanish navy two decades ago and it resulted in a Combat Management System (CMS) called SCOMBA, now that SCOMBA is highly sought after in many places and there we see the applicability that goes beyond the Spanish navy, as the links with SAMI deepens we see that Navantia has a product that has appeal to several allied players and Navantia via SAMI gets to upgrade the facilitation that it internationally has without losing ownership of its IP, which in this day and age seems a lot more important than it was a decade ago.

Should you doubt this, you could always try the $12.99 solution (at https://www.amazon.com/Amlong-Crystal-Including-Golden-Package/dp/B005DK1AQU) and see how fast you could unload one container with 21500 kg of IMCO 5.1 at Singapore harbour, I wish you a lot of luck and fair weather handing that information over to the captain of whatever SS Minnow he is in charge, I dare you to end that conversation: ‘Get it done today, or else‘, I will be selling popcorn with a big smile and a loud laugh at that event.

 

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Anacusis through silence

This is about an article I wrote on June 2nd 2018, the title ‘Cheese Pizza with Oregano‘. The story (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/06/02/cheese-pizza-with-oregano/) looks at the finance situation that the big 4 face. With Brexit 7 weeks away that premise is becoming a lot more important. You see the big 4 (including the UK) had a lot of debt, now the issues for the UK do not dwindle, yet the other three are in a less savoury position. As sources gave us then we see: “Spain will have refinancing requirements that exceed €300 billion per annum before 2022. In 2018, 41.2 billion euro, in 2019, 82.4, in 2020 83.9 and in 2021 58.5 billion euro, with 60.4 billion maturing in 2022“, the second part is not Spain, it is Italy where we see: “4 billion euro maturities in 2018, 161 billion in 2019, 164 billion in 2020 and 172.5 billion euro in 2021“. Bloomberg (at https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-29/conte-s-five-star-democrat-coalition-offers-italy-respite) gave us last week ‘Italy’s Unlikely Allies Offer a Brief Respite From Crisis‘, a brief respite is not a solution and there well over a quarter of a trillion Euro to refinance in Europe alone. Where is that coming from? You see Italy is merely one of three players that is in the deep waters, I have no numbers on Germany, yet Spain is in a similar place and whilst we thing that there is no issue, there is. Two nations represent an outstanding invoice totaling €250,000,000,000 due in three months and there is no real solution (as far as I can see it). Refinancing is fine by the banks; with the added interest these two nations will sign an addition burden of no less than €2,500,000,000 and optionally close to twice that amount. This implies that in the two nations every person adds between €24 and €50 to their debt (read: taxes) just to pay for the increased interest. You might not think this is a lot and over a year it seems little but EVERY person in Spain and Italy must pay it, no exceptions and it is merely to pay for the additional interest on the debt, not the debt itself and next year it will be about twice as much and with the outstanding debt still there (I am ignoring the debt of 2018), in 2019 people will have to pay between €75 and €150 each, young, old, it will not matter. So how large is the percentage of people that have to face this invoice and have no means to pay it? Those having to live below the current poverty line is clearly one of these groups and it is not a small group. We all are placed in denial of outstanding bills because the media seemingly ignores it. I gave warning to this in 2017, I reiterated it in 2018 and now the issue is on the doorstep, pushing it forward one more year will make it all come apart. It is the clear stage of deafness through silence. If we keep silent, it goes away. Well, there is some news for you. Anyone who ever faced a debt collector can tell you, it never goes away and that feeling of hardship can follow you up to a quarter of a century. And all this is negating the French situation. Germany is in a much better place, but when the recession hits it will deteriorate and in addition, Germany is seemingly tired of carrying the burden of irresponsible politicians. And when it comes to France, I personally wonder how much Credit Agricole gets to pocket this time around (perhaps you remember the Libor scandal). I agree that Credit Agricole was not alone in this, yet this time around Deutsche bank and Credit Suisse have additional problems and they are not in a position to get caught with their fingers in the cookie jar (or is that fingers in the cocky jar?)

the problem is that these people tend to not learn, in addition, the wealth tends to outrun the fine by a fair bit and that is where the problem lies, the issues of debt needed to have been negated harshly a lot sooner and these governments pushed it forward again and again and this now directly interacts with any additional stimulus, because Spain, Italy, France and Germany (Germany a lot less) will get to feel the pinch on both ends of the pliers, the Stimulus branch and the refinancing branch. The UK is not out of reach of it all, but as it is on the way out it cannot be held responsible for a lot of these upcoming cost and the remain group just does not realise how much money is added to the debt in that way. It was the biggest issue that mattered and it has arrived at the front door of the UK, The Brexit door avoids that issue that was part of the larger problem all along. And now 12 of the 27 nations are eager to say yes to whatever infusion they can manage also becomes a worry, as they now face a much larger share of that expense, so they are complaining as loud as possible.

Even now as we see the Coup D’état message of: ‘Brussels would reluctantly agree Brexit extension if rebel MPs succeed in preventing no-deal‘, and other messages of delay, the delay is essential for Europe because they decided to remain in denial of Brexit, for three years these EU people got fat wages and remained possum, so now we see a larger issue. What use is the EU when it cannot contain any control over the irresponsible spending of the ECB? What use is the EU when the players have shown an inability to get a proper budget? The problem is actually a lot larger. You see the next part is speculative and I cannot prove it, but bare (or bear) with me. It connects to the IMF Data produced for the year 2018. Now we can agree that there is always an interaction. There is expected positive and actual positive. My issue is that EVERY nation in the EU gained (actually except Turkey). All are gaining, now we can agree that most might have had a positive impact, yet when we look back at the news we see: “The weaker end to the year weighed on the economy’s performance in 2017 overall, with growth revised down from 1.8% to 1.7%” (the Guardian), “Britain’s economy slowed to a virtual standstill in the first three months of 2018” (the Guardian), “It felt as though the sector was losing its lifeblood this month as Brexit worries continued to claw away at confidence, new orders and business margins” (the Independent) all these bad news linking Brexit, all whilst the IMF data shows that nominal GDP numbers for the UK went up by 7%.

IMPORTANT

Now there are two important parts here. The first is that the metrics are not the same, yet the premise of one side claiming that there are losses, the positive is down, yet the year before the IMF showed that the UK GDP went down by 0.011% the numbers make no sense, we are thrown between different metrics and those different metrics do not reflect the battering news again and again. The people are being handled with data that is not reliable and that part is obvious not reported on. Just like the news three years ago that the IMF reported that UK austerity was a really bad idea, something that they had to retract later on. The second danger is that the GDP is a lot more complex, yet the premise that the UK economy is so bad, so less good and growing so much less so than before the Brexit ‘threat’ is not seen in a -0.011% versus a plus 7%. Even I agree that 7% is way too positive, but these are the reported numbers and they do not add up, not compared to the media and all the anti-Brexit reporting.

This comes to blows when we see the issues in the other large three European players. In addition, the setting ignores the fact that the medium economies (Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden) had been doing a lot better. Their economies might be ‘too’ small, yet their good venture might reflect to Eastern Europe to a much larger degree. Merely agreeing with the big four is seemingly folly too.

Oh, and before I forget, we can now also consider the forceful removal of any politician in the European economic field if so desired. They can be fired without any legal repercussions at present. The EU enabled us to do that when they decided to label the no-deal Brexit as a major natural disaster. This works for the remain as well as the Brexit group as the ECB was the biggest flaw in all this. When the Coup D’état works in the UK, we can demand the immediate firing of Mario Draghi and his ECB associates (read: cronies). If the economy is seen as a natural disaster, those setting and prolonging the stage of a natural disaster are wielders of that natural disaster and as such should be pushed out of office without pay.

I wonder if they thought that through, I guess not. I hope I did not oversimplify matters here 😉

 

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