AI – At long last the Government wakes up!

I read Mr Haldane’s comments along with his reference to those fields employing numbers rather than any other aspects when referring to the possible employment effects.

I would be very surprised if there are many eye specialists to be affected by any change. There is already a backlog of action at the moment due to the shortage and costs of skilled staff with the ability to deal with current issues. Unless you are prepared to pay you will often go close to blind with easily treated conditions before you get treatment. The eye specialist still monitored the work done on my eyes, though he was likely one of a smallish number of specialists – by small I doubt that there are more than a low thousands, hence the wait lists. Mine commented that the cycle time for new techniques and hardware was often as little as three months, though he avoided the more bleeding edge methods as he had seen them come and fail in the past.

In contrast Airfreight employs 137,800 people according to the best data I could find, many of them are in the ‘pile ’em high sell ’em cheap’ jobs Steve wrote about. Some jobs will touch other transport means so there will be inevitable double counting, but there must be at least the same again in other versions of the logistics industry, airfreight is small compared to shipping and road haulage. Just look at the road transport effort involved in flinging food about the country. A likely total would likely exceed 300,000 so even 10% of that would be a lot of impact. There must be richer pickings to be had anywhere that uses big numbers of bodies. Postal sorting was a manual activity, it really is no longer and neither is a lot of other logistics. Harvesting and gathering are crying out for some automation relief of their drudgery as fewer people want to freeze their vitals off in the cold wet and often dark fields of night-time work.

A heratic’s thought, who will build, service and repair these support worker robots? Other autonomous robots?

The Duke wrote:

It’s OK ed, don’t worry as after brexit our labour will be cheaper than idea. We will be all making clothing for the likes of primark. there will be loads of work, I’ve all ready started to teach my young ones to use a sewing machine, and how to stich on sequins . ?

WOW…. So you are upping sticks and leaving the UK after Brexit.   Which part of India or Bangladesh are you moving to?   That’s where all our clothing comes from.???     But look on the bright side.  We will be able to do our own free trade deal with you without Brussels being involved.

Electrician. Plumber. Carpenter/Joiner/Cabinet maker. High-end Watchmaker. Food preparation/Hospitality/catering.

Mechanic? How many of today’s “technicians”, armed with diagnostic laptops and electronic tools, have the knowledge and experience, to maintain a Classic Car? Check out the economic value of the Classic Car market: –

http://tinyurl.com/ydfbmwyd

Specialise! There will always be a place for those who spot a gap and go for it, create and supply goods and services, and build a business which requires human labour of one sort or another. Probably not as much as previous decades and there will be many falling by the wayside, but it will happen. The world is about to get even more competitive and competition is what has always driven the human race.

I see a future whereby some sections of the population will become second or even third class citizens, being paid by the taxpayer to live. A significant proportion are already engaged in that process, I fear. The big problem is the number of people on the planet and the inability of perhaps >50% to feed their families.

Worryingly for me, accountants are also in the firing line from AI. On a positive note, despite HMRC doing their damned best to force it through, HMRC’s track record with IT leaves a lot to be desired. I’m probably safe until I retire.

After my pancreatic cancer op in April this year, and during the first stages of the ensuing chemotherapy, drugs, etc, I was informed that I would need to see an NHS Dietitian. I was told at Castle Hill Cancer ward that this was a must, because there are certain things I cannot eat or drink, certain periods between meals and sizes of meals that I must stick to. Here we are in August and I am no wiser: there are apparently so few NHS dietitians that none is available for me until November. Maybe…

I carried out my own research of course, which led to several conflicting sources of information. Therefore I decided to use my own commonsense. I drink alcohol very rarely, usually a white wine Spritzer. I eat in moderation and try to avoid processed foods, red meat and other foods that may be harmful. I drink no tap water here, ours is very hard water, so I drink several liters of “Highland spring” water a week. I eat chicken, fish and the (very) occasional Steak and kidney pie, with few potatoes and lots of veg, which I love. I take a little sugar on my cereal, nothing else.

By the time this dietitian has got around to telling me what I should or should not eat and drink, I will have fixed my own diet. If his/her instructions conflict with my own choices, I will probably say yes/no and go my own way. Not the Fault of the NHS, simply the fact that what was supposed to support my recovery, is one more Lost Factor.

That Bob is the real issue with the NHS not enough of the right skilled staff when you need them*. That is certainly interesting stuff about the NHS Dietitian, none has ever been offered to either of us for any reason, though about 20 years ago our eldest did see one, once.

Apart from grapefruit and its juice and broad beans for other medicines, that has been about all the controls for us. We both tend to skirt round the rather dodgy advice columns on dietary foibles. We have eaten wheat for well over half a century without issue, so gluten stays in our diet with only the volume bread being monitored.We knew one, now late friend, who was convinced she was a coeliac, except she has lethal stomach cancer. Tap water has been good enough for years, though we do filter it  to a drinking water tap. Hard water might be related to some things, soft water to to others, I cannot remember the anecdotal accounts. Neither of us have had any alcohol since Mid may when I had my thing dug out of by nose and my wife started chemo, (only two more sessions before the operation). That is probably a good dietary step since we had started  to find glasses (oops be honest) the bottles a bit small. Different subject, the latest dietary discovery is that our boarding dogs think their meal is greatly improved by the addition of chopped broccoli and cauliflower. They leap up from sleeping and clear the veg perhaps leaving the odd trace of dog food. Meal sizes have varied for my wife with a general swing in favour of fruit and a reduction in vegetable with the meal. I think this is partially because the fruit is outside of the meal slot and can be grazed on demand. She can only allow a limited intake at many sittings. Unfortunately there has been some sort of reaction, cause unknown which cause discomfort and profuse sweating. That is currently under investigation, she is also reacting to every type of sticky thing used to anchor the PICC line.

*I said before about the ‘skilled NHS worker’ who could only load one sample at a time into an automated culture incubator when the machine should do 40 sample batches, because ‘that was all she could manage’.

Ed P wrote:

Just to correct false impressions I was not being Luddite in my thinking, however anything that buys time to allow reality to sink into the moribund techno-phobic brains of our politicians would be a good thing. “It will take people to test, order replacements including doing the (electronic) ‘paperwork’ via a new series of chains.” Btw over 20 years ago the linking of the General Ledger to purchase order-entry to POS boxes, high-rise automated warehouses and ‘picking’ algorithms pretty much ripped the guts out of that particular business sector. Many companies now only have jobs for a few buyers, replacing the 40 or 50 people who previously staffed that particular job stream — been there and implemented such stuff (SAP ran a lot of it).

The whole ‘Just in Time’ model with central warehouses wiped thousands and thousands of sales jobs off the job market.  Until that occurred all the big FMCG companies had hundreds of reps on the road visiting each store, doing stock checks and taking orders that would be delivered direct to each store.   I was in that game in my early twenties and visited most big chain outlets like Tesco’s outlets, Woolworths, etc., in NW London on a two weekly sales cycle.   I would bump into dozens of other such reps from Mars, Unilever, Heinz, etc., etc., every day.   Central purchasing and JIT wiped out thousands and thousands of sales jobs in a few short years.

What truly surprises me today is that the big discounters, Lidl and Aldi, do not link sales at checkout to ordering.   Their Managers manually stock check on shelf daily with a handheld scanner and that generates the order.   That makes no sense to me.  Surely the figures could in effect be taken from checkout sales.   I can only assume that because stuff gets thrown about in those stores they anticipate a very high and variable level of breakages and that can only feed into the system if the Managers assess usable remaining stock daily.

Bob Williams wrote:

After my pancreatic cancer op in April this year, and during the first stages of the ensuing chemotherapy, drugs, etc, I was informed that I would need to see an NHS Dietitian. I was told at Castle Hill Cancer ward that this was a must, because there are certain things I cannot eat or drink, certain periods between meals and sizes of meals that I must stick to. Here we are in August and I am no wiser: there are apparently so few NHS dietitians that none is available for me until November. Maybe… I carried out my own research of course, which led to several conflicting sources of information. Therefore I decided to use my own commonsense. I drink alcohol very rarely, usually a white wine Spritzer. I eat in moderation and try to avoid processed foods, red meat and other foods that may be harmful. I drink no tap water here, ours is very hard water, so I drink several liters of “Highland spring” water a week. I eat chicken, fish and the (very) occasional Steak and kidney pie, with few potatoes and lots of veg, which I love. I take a little sugar on my cereal, nothing else. By the time this dietitian has got around to telling me what I should or should not eat and drink, I will have fixed my own diet. If his/her instructions conflict with my own choices, I will probably say yes/no and go my own way. Not the Fault of the NHS, simply the fact that what was supposed to support my recovery, is one more Lost Factor.

The Marsden issued a booklet to me called “Eating well when you have cancer”. There’s a pdf on the Marsden website. LINK.

I found it areally useful reference. Plain advice, no preaching. Hope you find it useful.??

PS – as you’ll read in the book, you’re not drinking enough water. One consultant told me that more water will help dilute the toxins in the body – I asked him wouldn’t it dilute the treatment also – he didn’t have an answer for me!! However, I’ve been told on several occassions, by several health professionals,  that I should drink more water – I still find it a struggle.

Richard wrote:

Different subject, the latest dietary discovery is that our boarding dogs think their meal is greatly improved by the addition of chopped broccoli and cauliflower. They leap up from sleeping and clear the veg perhaps leaving the odd trace of dog food.

Veg in all brands/varieties/mixtures of dog food is something that I’ve noticed in the last few years. It started off in the “healthy living” niche of the market but has spread to general usage.

Peas. peppers, carrots, rice ( less so potatoes ), make regular  appearances in the food our boarders bring with them.

The most outrageous this far has been THIS. £2.50 a TIN!!! But then, the ingredients read like a human dish.

Chicken (60%); Potatoes (4%); Sugar Snap Peas (2%) Carrots, Spinach, Apples, Vitamins and Chelated Minerals, Herbs, Safflower Oil