Captain of the Sandleford Owsla

Soundtrack hint - Our eyes are magnets in the darkness. Answers on a postcard.

I am going to pretend I was in Hurricane Isabel. Everybody else is. The remnants are expected over Liverpool any moment now and then I should be able to get some juicy stories - or at least make them up. Oh - is that in poor taste. That would never do on the Internet would it. Anyway, Hurricane Isabel is prompting a shutdown of Government in the DC area - I could ask how would we tell but the answer would be all too obvious - things might get better. Sometimes I think democracy is a scam but that will not stop me fighting (though perhaps not actually dying) for it. Local Government especially seems to be a platform for sad beer-mat collector type people to grind axes in public and make huge amounts on their expenses. We are back to the idea of the only people suitable for political office are those who do not want it. Thank you for that Douglas. Well the wind is getting up now so I will close down for now. Good luck everyone.

Sound of wind and rain - calmness - Sound of wind and rain again. Inane comments of TV crews as they arrive and start working out their expenses.

We're back! Well that wasn't as bad as I thought. Blew away some cobwebs and cleaned up all the litter. I am not going to feel guilty here. There is so much downright evil out on the web - along with some really positive stuff of course. My satire is hardly - well satire I know - but not particularly nasty. The Internet is really a giant editorial where you can find anything on the spectrum of human opinion. It is like the Christian Science Reading room got mixed up with the Leafleting department of the BNP and the Tattooists and Piercers monthly. It is all there in easy reach; you do not need to go to a special place to get special information. Everything is together. I can only think that this will make children grow up very confused. It used to be that Children either took on the values of their parents or rebelled against them completely. Now with what appears to be the abdication of parental responsibilities to TV, Video, The Internet etc, you are going to get a generation growing up with no real hard and fast opinions on anything. This may be a positive thing; extremism and black and white opinions may not be possible but on the other hand it may turn us into a world of Zombies with no passion to try and make things better.

This goes hand-in-hand with the bureaucratisation (had to look that one up) of management in all fields and I fear this will clog up any system. I find sometimes that even here, the only way to get something done is to walk around and ask people. The systems are so moronic and complicated that following them is just like entering a maze. The problem is that these systems are designed by people who have no real skill at the job. Designing a system requires a worldview; you cannot make these things piecemeal - they have to be designed with all inputs, outputs and processes in view. All duplication has to be removed. All redundancy has to be removed. How many times do you find yourself hearing someone explaining a bit of a system that you never knew existed. The worrying thing is that the functions of these systems are always quite simple. My favourite analogy is that the systems I have to deal with involve additions and subtraction most of the time, multiplication and division some of the time and Integral and Differential calculus - NEVER. A simpler saying would be it is not rocket science. Managers almost seem to think that systems should be designed by evolution. Now this might me a good thing. In its simplest form this is like finding the balance point of a ruler - you could find the mid-point by measuring and then use trial and error to get the exact point. However the easiest way is to put the ruler on the index fingers of each hand so that each finger is at each end. Then simply bring your fingers together without restraining the ruler. As the ruler overbalances each way, the friction on one side will be overcome and that finger will slide. As the balance changes, the friction on the other side will be lessened and that side will slide. This process will increment until your fingers are at the centre. A simple elegant solution provided by nothing other than thought.

This reminds me of the old cartoon which is a favourite of systems analysts - the design and production of a swing. I know it is a cliché but sometimes a good cliché can cut through all the trendy originality. The Emperor’s new clothes and all that.

After all this I am off to get Pat Robertson to pray for me to win the lottery. What? You don't believe he can do that? He can steer hurricanes so he can certainly make those balls come up. Maybe he just doesn't want to.