One plus one doesn't always equal two.

A child being taught arithmetic soon learns 1+1=2 and of course arithmetic skills, particularly without the use of a calculator, are so useful throughout our lives.  Arithmetic relationships are easily explainable.  For example, I have a bag and put into it one orange.  Then I put into the bag another orange.  How many oranges are now in the bag?  The answer is two, because 1+1=2!  You can't argue with that........or can you?

The problem arises when you try to apply simple rules to complex issues.  Yes I know I've beaten that drum before but I'll do it again........and again........and again, as part of my personal crusade to avoid the pitfalls of reductionist thinking, i.e. the whole is not necessarily the sum of the parts.  A problem shared is a problem halved.  Have you heard that one?  Half a problem plus half a problem equals the whole problem, thus obeying the basic arithmetic rule of 1+1=2.  So if my wife loses her wedding ring and knows it is somewhere on the lounge floor, then if we divide the room into two and each search half of it, then the sharing of the problem rule probably applies, i.e. it will take us half the time to find the lost ring compared with the time taken if one of us searched alone.  But if I have a problem with my computer and enlist the support of a 'PC Jockey' to help me fix it, then because of her experience she will probably solve the problem in a fraction of the time than if I go it alone.  The magnitude of the computer problem has been decimated because of the skills and experience of one of the participants.  But suppose I share a problem with a 'dumb partner', for example one made of wood and metal!  If I decide to dig a hole in my garden 1 metre by 1 metre square and 1 metre deep, using my bare hands and no tools, it could take me 10 hours to complete.  If on the other hand I enlist the support of a 'dumb partner' in the form of a spade, it might only take me one hour to dig the hole.  My efficiency has increased ten-fold.  But some would argue that in the one hour required to dig the hole, I have only contributed 10% towards the efficiency because without a spade and in one hour, I could only dig one tenth of a hole.  So the spade has contributed 90% of the efficiency, which again follows the simple addition rules of 10%+90%=100%.  I have seen that argument employed when analysing the benefits of automation but where it falls down, in my opinion, is the fact that I can dig a hole without a spade, but the spade can't dig a hole without me.  So, in a ten hour period, I can dig one hole without any help from the spade, whereas the spade on its own cannot dig a hole.  Put the two of us together and in ten hours we can dig ten holes, i.e. 1+0=10!!

No, the rules of arithmetic haven't broken down.  I have merely demonstrated that a simple additive relationship does not apply to describing the efficiency of a man with a spade.  It follows that if adding things together doesn't always give simple predictive results, then conversely understanding things by pulling them apart is not always possible.  As I write this post for my blog, there are many issues around the world that are, in my opinion, examples of simple solutions being applied to complex problems, often with disastrous results.  The austerity programmes in some European countries as a means of solving their economic problems, do not appear to be working.  The military coup d'état in Egypt and the removal of President Morsi to bring stability, doesn't seem to be working.  In each case taking something 'undesirable' away from 'the whole' has not left 'the whole without the undesirable', which again defies the simple arithmetic logic of 1+1=2.  In the case of the financial austerity programmes, taking away excess spending has not left the countries with healthy income vs expenditure, because unemployment has increased, consumption has reduced and revenues have plummeted.  The removal of President Morsi in Egypt has brought an abrupt end to one year of democracy and left the country deeply divided.

Simple arithmetic works very well when checking the supermarket shopping bill and has a part to play in most problem solving but if life's challenges were always simple and mechanistic, peace and prosperity would just be round the corner.  Unfortunately Utopia remains a dream.

Why is life so cruel for some?

This blog post was prompted by my wife's recent concern at the distress of a stray dog searching for food and water, which unfortunately is a common sight where we live in Turkey.  We don't know the circumstances but I guess the poor creature never had much of a chance.  Life's lottery is of course a reality for all species on this planet, including humans.  Those who suffer unduly, are victims of circumstances - in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Conversely, those who appear to have phenomenal success in life, are beneficiaries of circumstances - in the right place at the right time.  In a previous blog post, I commented on the widening gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots' and I was referring to the inequities within human society.  I believe that inequity is regrettably an emergent property of human society, i.e. it happens whether we like it or not.  But what about the animal and plant worlds?  Do they suffer from the same injustices?

I certainly don't know enough about animal and plant life to ascertain whether, through their natural competition for survival, they create elite and lower-life sub groups.  But I do know that many species are not helped in their quest for life by the antics of humans.  Returning to the stray dog, there are many street dogs in Turkey,  For most, their existence is wretched, scavenging from day-to-day to keep themselves and their offspring fed.  Some are rescued and join a human family.  My wife and I have two ex street dogs and a formerly stray cat.  We are now one happy family and I am sure that collectively we are all happier than we would be individually - the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.  But we can't keep giving a home to every stray dog or cat in the street because we would soon run out of space, food and money.  There are organisations in Turkey that do help animals in distress and indeed, we have taken a couple of dogs to a local shelter recently that we found (dumped?) on our doorstep.  However, in my opinion, society is addressing the symptom of the problem and not its cause.  The millions of species on this planet all have an equal right to exist and coexist.  That includes you, the reader of this post, and the stray, starving dog that I referred to earlier.  It is my opinion that the human species, despite inequities within its own communities, regards itself as in some way superior to all other living species.

Humans' superiority complex is passed on through generations memetically (by imitation) rather than genetically (by reproduction).  I don't believe a newly-born baby is naturally cruel, but conversely I have seen young children, in different parts of the world, display complete contempt for animals.  As an example, I recently witnessed children kicking and throwing stones at a dog.  A few days later I observed a mature man kicking a street dog.  What's that if it's not learned behaviour?!  The big question is, can the situation be improved through education?  I'd like to think it could but I'm not so sure.  Some of the cruelest individuals in the history of mankind have been extremely well-educated.  Attitudes towards others don't necessarily improve with education, indeed the opposite can often be observed when, for example, academics display a holier than thou attitude towards 'lesser mortals'.

So to the little stray dog I say:

I apologise for the situation you find yourself in.  The reason you have got so little is because I and many others, have got too much.  I sincerely hope that all species will learn to respect the lives of others and in particular, mankind will come to its senses and shed its arrogant and unwarranted superior attitude towards others.

Amen!

It's fracking stupid!

Last week fracking was in the news again.  Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the fracturing of various rock layers by a pressurised liquid.  It is a technique in which a large amount of water is mixed with sand and chemicals and injected at high pressure into faults to release gas.  Royal Dutch Shell's chief executive Peter Voser told the BBC in an interview last week that fracking was important to Europe in order to stay competitive with the US.  His logic being that cheap energy released by fracking had 'revolutionised' the US energy market.  Well that's fine Mr Voser, but aren't there a few environmental issues with fracking?  The horizontal drilling technique used to extract gas involves pumping chemicals into the ground.  Those chemicals could push salt water to the surface and could poison drinking water.  There is also a risk of creating earthquakes.  In addition we mustn't forget that the gas itself is a non-renewable fossil fuel, which when burnt creates carbon dioxide, a generally accepted cause of global warming.

So let's return to Mr Voser's logic.  We in Europe should do it because the US is doing it, despite the environmental risks and the fact that it is not helping to reduce carbon emissions.  Indeed, isn't it possible that this 'abundant' source of fossil fuel could take the eye off the ball of renewable energy development?  So if the US decided that eating human babies was a source of cheap food and could help control the population, would Europe go along with that abhorrent idea to be competetive?  Of course not, it's a stupid question.  But the fracking logic, if you accept the risk of loss of lives, is just as fracking crazy!

What's clear to me is the fact that major energy companies, like Shell, are really only oil and gas companies and are paying lip service to the planet's atmospheric contamination problems, particularly when they can see a short term profit opportunity.  Yes, I do mean 'short term' because even 100 years, say, is a minute timespan compared with the age of the planet and the millions of future generations that we should be planning to support.

Now the proponents of fracking accept there are risks but propose better regulation as a solution.  But how can we regulate the unknown?  We don't understand the subterranean system well enough to predict unintended consequences.  It is one of many examples of commercial profit being put before common sense and frankly an endorsement for this risky practice by the head of an oil company, means nothing.

It's fracking stupid!

Hunger at Home

I was born and bred in the UK and although I now benefit from residing in sunnier climes, I still maintain a watching brief on good old Blighty.  The political scene is rather sad and boring suffering from, in my opinion, poor calibre leadership and government as well as a confused society having difficulty accepting a much reduced role in the world compared with its imperial past.  That said, it is the seventh largest economy in the world, when measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and number three in Europe by the same GDP measure.  It's current 'austerity' programme is understandably unpopular with UK citizens but the 'live now, pay later' culture prevalent throughout several decades has inevitably created a national financial deficit that has to be addressed and there are no pain-free solutions.

I do believe that the noun 'austerity' has different connotations depending on personal circumstances. Not being able to run two cars or having to forego an overseas holiday, is a different kettle of fish to being unable to heat the house or having insufficient disposable income to be able to afford decent meals.  In this respect, a feature in the UK's 'The Independent' newspaper earlier this week, with the headline "Hungry Britain: welfare cuts leave more than 500,000 people forced to use food banks, warns Oxfam", really was a chilling wake up call on the state of the nation.  Half a million people, which roughly equates to the population of Bristol, cannot afford to eat properly.  The newspaper refers to this group as the "hidden hungry" and makes the point that the number has trebled in the past year.

The article included extracts from a joint report by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty, which stated that the hunger crisis had been exacerbated by the falling living standards of people in employment who have seen no increase in wages or have had their working hours cut in recent years.  Whereas over the past five years food costs have risen by 35 per cent and home heating costs by 63 per cent.  The report also points the finger at the government's changes to welfare payments a primary reason for the demand for food banks.  But whilst I am sure the changes don't ease the problem, I am not convinced there is a strong causal link between state benefits and poverty.  The economic malaise within the UK and many other countries is a multi-dimensional problem, for which there is not going to be a one-dimensional solution.

Any system has emergent properties, which, in my opinion, within the global economic system, include the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  This appears to be true in every country in the world including the richest, the United States of America.  At the rich end of the spectrum, capital attracts capital and results in exponential, limitless growth without any work being done by the owners of the capital.  At the poor end of the spectrum, poor individuals, who are poor through no fault of their own, are deprived of opportunity and breed offspring who suffer the same miserable existences, and so the cycle goes on.  Add to this the fact that we are taking more out of the planet than we are putting back in, particularly in respect of energy and food, and the prognosis doesn't look good.

What's the solution?  There are no easy answers my friend.  But however the problems are tackled, let's make sure everyone, regardless of where they were fortunate or unfortunate to have been born, is not deprived of their basic needs.  If food banks are part of the solution in the UK, they should be accepted and not used for political point scoring.

Don't put politics before common sense.

I am an avid follower of political events around the world and I really don't know why, because politicians frustrate the hell out of me!  They really are a strange breed.  What motivates individuals to be representatives of the people, when the real agenda is looking after number one, themselves?  Are there really any 'conviction' politicians or is that just a tactic to feed their own egotistic traits?  Why does the electorate keep coming back for more and expect the next generation of political animals to be any different?  The answer to the last question must surely be because there is nowhere else to go. There are some pretty crunchy national and international issues that affect all of us and generations to come.  So the politicians' jobs are extremely important and democracy does give the populace some influence on national and to a lesser extent, international governance.

I met a guy who had been on a course aimed at teaching people how to deal with the media.  He told me he had been taught the ABC technique for dealing with questions, which apparently most politicians learn.  Seemingly, when you are faced with a difficult question from a reporter you Acknowledge the question, Bridge across to something you prepared earlier and then take Control by talking about what you wanted to talk about in the first place!  So Acknowledge could be "That's an interesting issue........", the Bridge could be a simple "but........", and Control might be "What I really want to get across is that........".  Next time you watch a programme like the BBC's Question Time, observe how many times variations of the ABC technique are employed to avoid difficult questions.

From my comments thus far, you will gather I don't believe politicians are very good value for money, but can they do any harm?  Yes, I believe they can and let me provide a very recent example.  One of the major political issues disrupting life in the UK right now is the European Union - in or out?  Well I don't want this post to stray into the minefield of independence versus dependence, at least not directly.  But I would encourage the reader to raise the level of thinking beyond the UK, those little islands off the north west coast of mainland Europe, to world trade.  After all, the global economy transcends all national boundaries and if the global economy collapses, we all perish.  Earlier this week, a group of British businessmen, including Richard Branson and Martin Sorrell, wrote a letter published in the UK's Independent newspaper urging the government not to pull the UK out of the European Union.  They made the point that the benefits of membership overwhelmingly outweigh the costs and to suggest otherwise is "putting politics before economics".  I think that is an understatement.  In my opinion, this issue is yet another example of self-gratifying politicians putting politics before COMMON SENSE.

Whatever, your views on Europe, it must be obvious to all that the issue has become purely a political debate in the UK, triggered by the success of UKIP in the local elections.  Politicians are concerned firstly for themselves and secondly for their party, although their party is a very poor second.  So survival tactics have become the name of the game.  Political debates become full of populist statements and where there are audiences, searching for the maximum applause.  But returning to the example of the BBC's Question Time programme, I have noticed how very often, in my opinion, the quality of the audience is better than the quality of the panel.  So if the audiences are representative samples of the 'public at large', i.e. the electorate, then maybe that's why apathy (reflected in election turnouts) has been so apparent in recent years.

People power has never been greater, particularly with the effectiveness of social media, so hopefully democracy will improve.  Maybe online voting will one day replace archaic ballot boxes and voting slips.  Whatever, the aim should be for common sense to take precedence over politics but common sense is not very common! :-)

When the bubble bursts.

I'm forever blowing bubbles,

Pretty bubbles in the air,

They fly so high,

Nearly reach the sky,

Then like my dreams,

They fade and die.

Fortune's always hiding,

I've looked everywhere,

I'm forever blowing bubbles,

Pretty bubbles in the air.

This 1918 song was performed throughout the 20th century by various artists, and is well known in the UK as the club anthem for West Ham United.  Anyone who has blown bubbles will have experienced the fun of watching a bubble grow, float away and then very, very rapidly deflate and disappear.

What about economic bubbles?  A bubble is created when any asset is allowed to increase in value, irrationally and unsustainably.  Notable examples in the past two decades are the dot.com bubble in the 1990s and the various property bubbles in the early 2000s, including the USA mortgage fiasco, which is blamed as the major cause of the 2007/2008 global financial crash.  The psychology of bubbles is interesting because humans do not appear to learn any lessons from bubble bursts, which can be extremely painful.  Perhaps the main cause of not learning from the mistakes of the past is that bubbles can be extremely exciting.  Rather like a night out on the town when you might consume vast quantities of alcohol even with the experience and painful knowledge of past hangovers!  When the next 'morning after the night before' arrives, you swear it will be the last time, but it never is!  Living in an economic bubble, for example a property boom, is very similar.  Prices are rising, so more people want to buy for fear of 'falling off the property ladder', which cause prices to rise more, more people buy,........a vicious circle.  Construction firms are busy, estate agents are manic, mortgage lenders are working overtime, personal debt is rising, the national economic figures look good, so what's the problem?!  The problem is that the situation is not sustainable because rationality has gone out of the window and the economic system is out of control.  If people stop buying or banks stop lending, the bubble bursts, very quickly and with little or no warning.  People lose their properties, unemployment soars and the hangover sets in.......never again........until the next time!

As large parts of the developed world face so-called austerity and the developing world struggles to catch up, the gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots' increases and politicians believe economic growth will solve all these problems in one fell swoop.  Why would any rational person believe this fallacy?  You can't get perpetual growth on a finite planet because perpetual growth requires access to unlimited resources and the ability to dispose of unlimited waste.  But when bubbles come along the appetite to follow them is often insatiable.  Bubbles are very attractive to politicians because they provide a short-term fix to national economic problems and they can always blame the post-burst hangover on someone else.

Government policies shape nations and nations shape the world.  This short post cannot cover all that needs to be done.  But in my opinion, the world's focus ought to be on NEEDS rather than WANTS and in that vein, I am reminded of a Dutch proverb:

Getting what we want is more fun than getting what we need, but........

Possessing a toy

Is the end of the joy

Beware of the next bubble!

Sir Alex Who?

I had a brief flirtation with football during my schoolboy days.  Growing up in north London, it was expected that lads (male chauvinist attitudes in those days!) would support Arsenal or Spurs and I chose the former - Up the Gunners!  But by my early teens when my father's job was relocated to Manchester and I moved with my parents to the north of England, I grew out of the football bug.  That's not to say I didn't enjoy watching the occasional match from the comfort of an armchair pointing towards a TV!  The 'English Disease' of football hooliganism in the 1970s appalled me and soured any remaining taste that I had for the sport.

I hardly thought about football during my adulthood, until 2003 when I met and developed a strong friendship with a guy who is a fanatical Manchester United Football Club (MUFC) supporter - and I mean fanatical!  On his Twitter account he describes himself as a 'pre Munich Red'.  Our friendship meant that we would understandably discuss football, although we were certainly not stuck for conversation without it, and I gradually gained an understanding of the footballing 'religion' - in this case faith in and worship of MUFC.  From my point of view, my new knowledge didn't encourage me to support MUFC, or any other football club, but I was interested in the business model and in particular, the MUFC brand.  I was, and still am, on a very steep learning curve.  You have to understand that prior to 2003, I didn't know who was the manager of MUFC and so not surprisingly, I had no knowledge of Sir Alex Ferguson - hence 'Sir Alex Who?'!

I was fascinated by the financing and ownership of the club and in particular, the purchase of a controlling interest by Malcolm Glazer in 2005.  It was a highly leveraged takeover and the club's debt prompted protests from fans, including some choosing to wear green and gold when going to matches, which were the colours of the original club, Newton Heath.  Suddenly a huge number of supporters had become financial experts.  They decided debt was a bad thing and Malcolm Glazer was an evil man, unfit to have a controlling stake in their club.  Throughout this period, MUFC continued to perform excellently on the pitch under Sir Alex Ferguson's management but, in my opinion, he really demonstrated his leadership acumen by the way he focussed on the one thing that football should be all about, WINNING GAMES!  Unlike some of the fans, he didn't allow himself to become distracted from that goal - no pun intended!  Indeed I am not aware of Sir Alex having expressed any complaints about the ownership of the club because like all business leaders, he knows that ALL stakeholders are important to the success of the enterprise.

So when I heard the recent announcement of Sir Alex's resignation as manager of the club, albeit continuing as a director and ambassador, I didn't feel any emotion, unlike many of the club's fans, but I do recognise that he will be a hard act to follow.  The timing of his resignation and his apparent succession plan with the impending appointment of David Moyes as the new manager, is yet another example of Sir Alex's exemplary leadership and commitment to MUFC's future success.

Well done Sir Alex........Sir Alex Who?........Sir Alex FERGUSON of course!!