[Richard]

Dave Rice wrote:

Firstly I don’t agree with the statement that we are at war with Islam, we are at war with terrorists who have usurped Islam. When we were fighting the IRA we were not at war with Roman Catholicism. There are have been armed police at international airports for as long as I can remember. Ditto openly armed police on the streets of any non UK city. Yes there is now proper security at most airports, helped by the fact that a lot of it is now technically possible, and it’s long overdue. Every generation there are the terrorist bogeymen to be dealt with – IRA, Baader Meinhof, Black September, the list goes on to the present day. Once this lot have been dealt with the next lot are waiting around the corner. There there’s solo nutters like Anders Behring Breivik. Just one point about America, there were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870 and 64 of these were school shootings.

Yes I agree, the entire world is at war with the devil worshippers in whichever form they come. Islam is a handy coat hook for some nutters but that does not make them fit the mould. There are others who claim different alliances but they are just as deadly, Timothy McVey et all. Since September the 11th was in effect an act of war by state of (warped) minds it is arguable that the ‘state of war’, (if any) was created some seriously deviant minds.

It is noticeable that many if not all the current ‘soldiers’ are social misfits and sadly unstable characters, many addicted to drugs who are used the by the back-room bullet makers

[Richard]

Otherwise check for a freecycle arrangement, there will usually be someone who has in interest and being local they will usually collect rather than expecting you to post the item. I cleared out a freezer via them and there is no way that could be posted!

[Richard]

I have not been back there since the 1960s and when I Google street viewed it I wondered if I had ever been there. Manchester is nothing like it was back then, the parks created out of wartime bomb damage have all gone and it was almost totally rebuilt. All that is apart from a huge campus extension that was started, then ran into a few issues. One night all the cranes blew down and then the budgets blew away. I see that it is now an open space once more with no signs it was ever anything else. I was sad I ever looked, a bit more of my past memories swept away.

I just hope you find the people as warm, down to earth and friendly as they were back then.

Richard

[Richard]

PlaneMan wrote:

Thanks for the good wishes. TBH as long as I can cycle I’m okay. I’ve not liked walking for years, lots of injuries when younger started to take a toll but I could do it without huge amounts of pain, which was very handy and I was very grateful, especially as I could have lost my ankle due to a very bad break. It is what it is and there are people way worse of than me. Hope the mrs gets sorted.

Thank you,

I have also found most pain relief was next to useless, the only time it was slightly useful was when I was in hospital years back, they told me they were reducing the tablets and then I found out what the food was really like. It did nothing for the real pains then and never has since. Your trouble does sound slightly like nerve pain for which there is very little that has any effect except removing the source of the nerve trauma. My main one was/is spinal problems, some were relieved by an operation, I can now walk with two legs and stand up, but then new pains arrived.

Some people say that exercise is the answer to joint pains, the wrist exercises I have been given are great – for making the elbow problem worse, so I do not have total faith in that theory.

I did find I can now walk far further than I thought possible a little while ago. I had some trouble with a car and walked home from the garage a few times, it is about 3 miles and about a third is up hills, They were really hard work, but I was surprised that I did it at all. A while back I would not have been able to do more than a few hundred yards, so things can change.

[Richard]

The bloods may be very useful and the MRI certainly will be valuable. It is a pity that they are only on bits of you as I suspect that there may be an autoimmune problem going on. My wife has one and was referred for various tests with an appointment scheduled for the 19th of February, ‘when all the results should be available and we can think about starting treatment‘.

Late last week the appointment was put off until some time in June. Wife who can now barely move took umbridge and rang ‘the person who knew’ only to be told that she was on holiday until next week. A call on Monday just after lunch found that ‘the person who knew’ had already gone home, part timers. So the call was tried again on Tuesday and the full details were spelt out to ‘the person who knew’. Ten minutes later the phone rang and my wife now has an appointment for a week earlier than the previous cancelled one.

So the lesson is not to be unreasonable but to press with details and full facts so that you have the best chance of good treatment and above all a clear diagnosis. Incidentally, I suspect many of these ‘I have not seen that before‘ cases have more in common with patients have not lived long enough, reported symptoms clearly enough and a range of less probing efforts on behalf of the medicine people.

I wish you well and hope that there will soon be a better outcome.

[Richard]

London prices are stupid, even 5% on them is a fortune. A £ 1 million for a small terraced place is bonkers. Even a little way out it is stupid and I can neither see why people spend to much nor how they can afford little more than a flee pit. Just up the road some almost derelict labourer’s cottages from the 1700s went for just under £ 250,000 each. I cannot comment on Manchester or Salford, I was last there in the 1960s. It was sometimes ‘interesting’, but like everywhere there were better and less good parts and that will have continued to this day. Certainly £40,000 buys very little in most places, perhaps enough for a door mat and maybe even a front door, still I would guess that if there is work somewhere about then the journey to work would be less of a pain than commuting into London.

Remember the RMT slogan, You are better off by far if you can get where you are going by car.

It is even better if you can walk to work.

Such things are all part of the package so make sure it all works for you or it will fail badly sooner or later. Family or families can become a real issue sooner than you might expect.

[Richard]

MM Forum has gone sometime about lunchtime today 19/01/2017 and the redirect to here is in place.

[Richard]

Drezha wrote:

Yeah, I’m just trying to get some advice before making a potentially huge decision! Military is out completely – medical verdict was permanently medically unfit so no chance of changing that and speaking to the doctor, my ability to appeal isn’t great due to one of the medical conditions they’re saying is stopping me. Military life isn’t quite ruled out 100% though, as I’m booked on to Officer and Aircrew Selection for the RAFVR(T) in February and I’m involved in the ACO for the past two years since I left when I turned 18. The best time of the week is cadet nights(!) Having done a degree before, I know what I’m looking for now (accreditation with institutes, employment opportunities afterwards etc) Current employer (or at least my boss) does not really have a decent plan for marketing, training or anything else like that and is focused on creating framework agreements with big name clients. All well and good but it’s at the expense of repeat work from smaller companies. It feels very public sector still and it’s not a firm that I’m really enjoying. The fire team within the business forms a very small function in comparison to the rest of the firm and it shows. The interview I’ve got in Manchester next week has come about from seeing it advertised. I’m in a niche profession that if I’m looking at moving, I could probably approach the bigger names without a headhunter, saving them the fees. It’s a question though of if I could port my mortgage to somewhere in Manchester and finding someplace to live up there. It’s trying to find something I’ll enjoy doing!

Can I simply wish you happy hunting and best wishes for a successful result. Do remember you are making any change for your own benefit not for the benefit of anyone else so do all the research and due diligence you need to ensure the ‘best fit’ with all of your needs. If anything does not ‘feel right’ be guided and remove or resolve the issue before you act. There is more than one thing that can satisfy your need for a stimulating and rewarding career, make the task of find one a pleasure as well as a challenge.

[Richard]

I ‘sort of’ echo what PlaneMan said with one small warning. It has been said by others that by making one’s outside interest a career you may risk losing the interest and the desire for a career. Only you can decide if that is a real risk. Money is certainly useful but it is not the only or a real motivator beyond a short term effort or drive. Getting an interesting role is vital and a role that you can grow and to some extent self manage is vital at your age. You are certainly young enough to achieve in whatever field you want to pursue.

Be careful, I sense you feel that you were sold something of a pup with the present job and that it did not grow the way you would have liked, make sure that no future role follows the same furrow. Is there no way that your present employer can smooth your way into the more cutting edge stuff you want? Having said that, it is possible that a commercial outfit might have more incentive to innovate and need leaders able to take on that process.

When you are depressed or just disenchanted it is very easy to look over the fence and see greener pastures but are they really that green with the substances of life? Do not get caught a second time.

[Richard]

Wisdom teeth can be hell, mine were but I was older when I said goodbye to them. Unfortunately it either disturbed a long dormant clutch of viral infection or I caught it at the same time. I ended up in hospital with a knock out case of glandular fever.

Don’t go there, a  mid 40s temperature and then a 45/40 blood pressure gave the nurses a real colour change. I was in hospital for about 10 days and only found out later from a different hospital and doctor what the infection was.  A paediatric specialist told me that you can catch glandular fever more than once and later on in life it can have a bigger impact. Previously I was barely affected by the illness, I just had a slight temperature for about 2~3 months.

So anyway I hope you will soon feel better.

[Richard]

Ed P wrote:

Richard, the worrying thing is that once you apply ‘deep-learning’ or ‘machine learning’ the actual work of preparing the program itself can be done on almost a by-rote basis. I’m not even sure that the future amount of skill required to service such machines will be that high – taking the automotive industry as an example, nearly every new car has a diagnostic set-up that tells the mechanic which board/part to replace. It is becoming a gray area on where the capabilities of human intelligence start and machine intelligence ends. The old Turing Test no longer applies as a gold-standard break-point Beeb link. (However,I’m not sure it was ever a very good test). Unfortunately most links on AI versus Human intelligence are dated due to the progress made in AI in the last few years, those that are not are unfortunately tainted by religious rants e.g. ‘Only something made by God can create’. If you plot AI progress versus time we are now close to the point where the effects of exponential progress start to kick-in. This link is a good mid-year CEO level read on the situation of AI at that time. As the writer reassuringly says ‘humans will need to be in the loop’. Unfortunately the writer did not pose the corresponding question ‘How Many’?

I wish that was true about automotive units. I have one with a ‘report’ that is going through automotive shuttlecock at the moment. It appears it could be the A end device, the B end device or the wire between them, or another wire. The ‘B’ end has been changed, the fault is still present. Wiring may get checked tomorrow/Friday with the ‘A’ end spare part arriving on Friday.

That said I agree that using some of the semi autonomous agricultural machines is brought down to a simply level, except for the comment about John Deere, where nothing can be done without a trained ‘specialist’ in attendance. So a whole industry exists, New Holland may hopefully not have caught that boat.

It is dangerous if the job gets too many human aspects de-skilled. I have already seen the effects of that in play with trained system support working through their manual from page 1 to 1000. Sometimes it is useful to know if the power is available and it is turned on. Then take it from there. The system in question was not a small device but a room size collection of racks all interconnected with different dependencies. A practised, skilled, time served technician went straight to the problem area, resolution was then a matter of moments, the chap with a ‘superior’ training CV was on about page 8.

The problem with open sky speculation is that without constraints or understanding of consequences the forecasts are almost always wildly off the mark. One issue can be that what is assumed to be a constant may in fact be a high dependency factor while variables may turn out to have either little impact whatever the value or in practice turn out to have few if any consequences.

Thank you for the link, to be fair it did not contain a huge amount of new information and recalled a ‘computerisation expert’s’ words from 40 years back. When asked what sort of computer system most companies needed his response was, Most businesses needed a system first before they bothered to try to computerise anything. I suspect that is still largely true, a few, e.g Amazon do fairly amazing things, too many do amazingly awful things; we have the ordering experiences to confirm how bad some big names really are. They clearly lack any real system and absolutely no feed back or controls. that does not need AI it needs thinking and if ML and AI are the only ways that such outfits can progress then that is the way that they will have to achieve what is needed. That will put no one out of work since it is clearly not being done at the moment.

[Richard]

Robin Long wrote:

New Holland themselves describe their NHDrive system as Autonomous. <iframe src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/xyu9dhcUnrA” width=”560″ height=”315″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=”allowfullscreen”></iframe> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyu9dhcUnrA – clearly have not mastered linking to a video yet!

They maybe autonomous at what they do, but they are not all doing, all seeing, though they can be very clever. Some farm automation can sector a field checking yields dynamically over quite tiny areas and setting up corrective actions, fill a hollow here, improve drainage there, increase fertiliser somewhere else, improve watering at this point, etc. This is work that humans would be unlikely to ever do, let alone do it profitably. Yes very skilled, yes very profitable if done correctly, but who prepares the machines and does all the other support work that the machine report demands? Even the ‘brightest’ machine will not turn itself into a taxi, or get its own spare parts and fit them, make fertiliser, etc. or perform any other really multifunction demand.

The machines may be autonomous in their roles, but that does not make them intelligent and it certainly does not make them flexible or multifunction. John Deere are currently the cause of considerable complaint in the US since their wonder machines will report a failure, but a visit from their technical support specialist at great cost and delay is usually required to fix the useless piece of otherwise dead junk. So John Deere automation is said to be putting airline pilots, taxi drivers and hotel clerks into jobs. I saw one filter change alleged to have cost the farmer US$ 30,000 in the middle of their harvest run with three days down time. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the claim, I can confirm they were wild about the issue of costs and delays.

[Richard]

Malcolm wrote:

AI is interesting in that the intelligentsia buy in to the concept, but being members of the intelligentsia, their feet are so far off the ground, they are incapable of carrying out even the most basic reality check. Some reality checks:-

1. AI costs big time
2. Creating a fully autonomous adaptable functioning intelligent entity was mastered by the human race generations ago, they’re called human beings
3. Only repetitive tasks fall to AI and given the changes in products output the AI costs can’t compete with the existing entities in point 2.
4. Adoption of AI is therefore likely to lead to lower growth as innovation would have to be stifled in order to pay back the AI costs.

Malcolm, I pretty much agree with you. though humans are very adaptable to many different circumstances, they do have some failings. They get bored and do loose focus. AI for the first period of time should focus on addressing that subset of needs and upon doing really boring menial tasks that frankly human beings are not so skilled at achieving, like in process checking, etc. In fact this is what ‘robots’ currently do.

The all seeing, all doing, multi adaptable, fully autonomous, AI robot only exists in Hollywood, I do not see that ending any time soon.

[Richard]

Oh dear it has all gone silent, I hope that the silence does not mean that more than the washing machine has suffered a power incident…

Modern machines doe not respond well to repairs, all too often the first sign of a problem is the signal that the device life expectancy is about done and dusted. I remotored a machine a few years back but I only got about 12 months out of the stupid thing before the laundry manager decided that a new one was required for some reason or another. So the procurement officer was pressed into action to supply a replacement. Now that one is a cause for complaint.

With a new baby on the scene I guess that washing could soon pile up so perhaps you have been on hand wash duties while sat in the dog house waiting for a new device. Dog houses do not always have internet so perhaps that is why silence has reigned (rained down) on you.

All the best for Christmas and trusting that all is not too dire.

Richard

[Richard]

The Duke wrote:

Totally agree with the sentiment of your second paragraph, but I don’t think NATO ever think about the fall out, or if the ever did, they have failed many many times controlling the fall out. Just look at sryia.

Poppy cock. we and NATO waked away from Syria and allowed the butchers free reign. Was it right or wrong,?

I am not giving an opinion but the thug won and we are all the weaker for it.

Rejoice and be slaves, we have to get more awake and sod Russia’s gas, go Frack and tell Putin (crap bucket) to put his stuff back in the ground.

[Richard]

The Duke wrote:

I’d imagine the other throwing of Putin has been discussed by Nato and the EU , and of it was so powerful would of been done some years ago.

Steve, we know what happens even if a Russian does not go on RT to denounce him but does not exactly laud him in other places. They get gaoled or killed polonium cocktails anyone?

People in secret conclaves do not count, however, I doubt that NATO have ever discussed the assassination of putin except to suspect that the world might be a better place without him. Sadly they would recognise that removing him would be ‘unproductive’ given the otherwise unstable state of Russia. The mess could very easily get far far worse as the replacement would be an unknown guess game contestant. That game is best not played.

[Richard]

Robin Long wrote:

For me as a former driver and ASLEF member, I would rather have a guard on board, and it’s an additional number in the event of things going wrong. That’s OT though. automation of train functions ie. doors etc. is not mandatory in fact certain trains HST’s and alike have to have a guard since doors cannot be operated from the cab. The real issue here is automation via AI of jobs and the effect on employees, it’s not fair to simply blame lack of workforce or financial savings for the introduction of the AI employee. In most cases, the AI employee has been introduced because it’s either more efficient or people just do not want the jobs.

I agree with your writings, though this is not so much to do with AI  and the future of employment.

There are two situations that cry out for AI or actually simple automation; where people have a poor track record, e.g the jobs are  mindlessly boring, (e.g. a Croydon tram driver), are in hazardous situations, where the use of a human would be immoral and where there are few if any suitable candidates.

Sometimes a tiny bit of automation can have profound effects on service, (I know that to some ‘service’ appears to have become a dirty word). Years back I introduced a semi automated process, it did no one out of a job but it did check that a process had been followed. For the first week or so a box of fanfold station was consumed printing out the exceptions and service complaints continued to be a serious daily issue. After a drains up, the fog cleared and the complaints dropped from double or triple digits per day to one or two a quarter.

I have said before about my concern that no levels of workers, from top to bottom are immune from being unsuited to their roles, all levels suffer poor training, attitudes and skills. However ‘leaders’ of the RMT proudly spouting they want to overthrow the UK government should give pause for thought.

I wonder how that would fly if someone suggested overthrowing thug Putin on RT?

[Richard]

The Duke wrote:

Apparently real world figures of today for the us is somewhere between 21-25% not the 4% the give like to use. I think the UK fugures is around 15% and not the 3% (iirc) ours uses. The give just re jiggers what is ‘unemployed’. But to answer the question what do we do when we reach figures like this. I don’t think know one knows. Or they do , a sticker type of socalism come communism on a more global (like EU ) size scale. the trouble is the closer we come to needing to shift to such radical way of economics. The more inward and right wing we become, (look after your own ,and all that). So the question isnt want is needed to survive in such an era , it’s how do we get there? How do we change the mind set of forever increasing multi nationals , to are more philanthropist way of life. Or we need some new radical economic thinkers , and some new theories.

It is always somewhat pointless to dispute hypothetical figures since they are all based on guesses and theories. However, there are many who fall into the possible ‘unemployed’ basket who have no prospect or need to climb out of that state. Two of them live at home so 2/3rds of my ‘household’ are unemployed by one measure or another and while one would like to be able to work, bacon airways are more likely to carry fare paying passengers. Eight hours per work of volunteering currently exceeds their capacity. Are they to be recorded as unemployed, how is their carer to be classified? Or for that matter their driver, how can their time be accounted? Employed or unemployed?

Gross figures are always a problem to breakdown, so on what basis does one assess the real level of unemployed? I do know that there are areas of e.g. Wales, central and northern England and possibly Scotland as well where several generations have not worked and where many have given up looking. Clearly they are unemployed, equally many have also given up looking for work as they see the quest as futile.

I used to live in the West Country, I briefly worked there long, long ago but to have any choice I moved. First I ended up in London where in the ’60s I saw less and less chance of having a decent house or prospects. As the ’60s became the ’70s I decided more decisive action was needed so I ended up working overseas for 20 odd years, perhaps a bit extreme but that was my way forward. Later, when what passed for a run of stellar senior managers had run the outfit into the ground – in part by buying more scrap and crap ideas than even the most stupid of comedy show buts-of-jokes, I visited the Job Centre minus. This was during the reign of a late and unlamented socialist government. Clearly JS- wanted me to go away, I had a pension so effectively they asked why I was bothering and in any case they never had the sorts of work I would do anyway. Mind you some of their clients really did meet the definition of totally unemployable, while others were down on their lucky but keen, perhaps even desperate for work, the quest for which the JS- was very poorly equipped to support.  This was back in 2002.

Between the destruction of hope, a connected lack of skills, totally crap industrial and political management and the neck high detritus of failed initiatives there are some big issues.

I am with Robin Long, I cannot wait for AI to overrule some, (all) of the numskulls who try to hold us back. We do not need thousands labouring in the fields behind horses and carts. Let the AI and GPS tractor level ground, distribute water and fertiliser and say when the wrong crop is being attempted. Let a skilled approach flow through the entire system. Why is this country so unable to apply valid technology, better design and improved effective training?

Automatically guided trains; ‘Oh no we need a driver to help the trains crash’ like the ‘trams’ in Croydon where drivers were in the habit of breaching the speed limit, not much evidence of safety there nor in the many other SPAD cases. The only ‘industry’ to really benefit appears to be the undertakers. Get better designs, plans and execution. If a father who lost all four limbs following illness can get back into work it can be done so give the other under occupied and under motivated people the tools and hope they need. If they need training and a grasp of English then they must get those essentials without restrictions of any sort from any source.

[Richard]

There are many ways to read those different reports. One spoke of a fairly minor change the other spoke of a more apocalyptic 47% being affected. ‘At risk’ does not mean ‘will be destroyed’ it means only they they could be affected to some extent. Many of the roles that have been significantly affected during my working life  were roles that I watched over or managed, yet the biggest threat to my working life came not from those changes, but from the really crap moves of senior personal who demonstrated the Peter principal on a daily basis while combining it with a showing of why foxes should never manage hen houses.

At one point we had thousands of wagons moving goods behind one or more horses, the support industry for just the horses was huge, but automation did away with that. Railways automated longer distance haulage and motor vehicles then snipped away at the longer end while considerably modifying the local aspects. Incidentally in that case, employing more people albeit in different roles, vehicle drivers, mechanics, body repair people, time sheet sorters, pickers, etc.

We have lost thousands of other jobs,  e.g. telephonists, everyone is now their own telephonist while other jobs have chased the cheap labour, a fact that hit hard in the spinning and weaving areas of the country where we imported cheap labour, (I make no excuse for referring to those mistakenly imported like canon fodder as cheap labour) only to find that other countries could do it even cheaper so we lost the activity anyway and had a large number of unhappy, displaced people as a result. Previous ‘revolutions’ have been met with woe and disbelief yet out of the previous changes whole industries were first born, then flourished and then, as with all organisms either flourished or withered and died. Or in a few cases committed suicide, not always voluntary suicide there is evidence of crap senior management or silly government involvement causing at least assisted suicide. Were such cases natural deaths or corporate murder?

One trend that I have seen is how increasing skill levels, i.e. increased training demands are being made in many industries that previously relied more on ‘sitting with Nellie’ type training. Nursing is one such and police work is another, degree level training is either mandated or proposed. Who will do the training and, in these essentially people based activities are we yet getting the training to reach the required levels? I feel the evidence is not yet clear. For example, we have too many patients not being nursed, too many are being frankly neglected for a range of causes. The police can no longer deal with a large number of low level incidents. To me these suggest a situation of flux where changes are not yet fully understood and solutions are not yet effectively implemented. Should we put more effort into predictive initiatives and dare I say forensic style investigations of incidents. Both are ideally suited to improved AI style techniques where large masses of data are combed for patterns.

I have only picked on those two because news items have highlighted the changes and problems in those two industries.

Incidentally, many so called ‘manual and menial tasks’ did require skills that were learned on the job to overcome the deficiencies of machines or working practices. Too many of those who worked had considerably more capability for skilled work than their development path had recognised. The old shipbuilders who built riveted ships were either highly skilled or sadly dead. For a complex range of reasons the industry failed to move forward, lack of flexibility, restrictive practices at all levels of the business, shop floor to management suit. Oh and poor training, again from shop floor to management suit.

Will AI see some, (hopefully all) of the weaknesses addressed?

I would like to think so but I know I am unlikely to see either the fruits of success or the bitterness of failure

[Author]

Posts