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Europe

The month of June has been incredibly busy for me. I’ve had multiple projects on in multiple weeks as well as fitting in a lot of remote assessment for my students. Luckily we have online systems and WiFi! I spent the bulk of the last week in Luxembourg with the European Commission. I was acting … Continue reading “Europe”

I spent the bulk of the last week in Luxembourg with the European Commission. I was acting as a rapporteur for ICT evaluators. Over the course of the week I was immersed in a group of people who were interested, dedicated, passionate, educated and curious. While I was really just the Scribe, I was greeted very warmly by all (and it was acknowledged I knew a lot more than was expected about the technologies and projects). It felt good.

None of the people I met were “9-5”. They were all working full-time on their opus but had time for conversations, directed or idle. And they all spoke English – which prompted me to try my French and German even more.

Most evenings I was back to Northern Ireland matters – dealing with difficult conversations, assessing verbose reports on hardware installations and explaining to friends why I was in Luxembourg and not Lisburn (and to some, why I was in Lisburn in the first place).

Luxembourg is a curious place. Odd opening hours, seemingly conservative yet refreshingly liberal in other ways compared to home. The culture is foreign to me but I could get used to it and more than one person did suggest I look to Luxembourg or Brussels for my next work. I could get used to being one of the Luxembourgeoisie.

I heard stories of night escapes to the Island of Capri on the eve of the Second World War laden with Polish gold, ate with a restaurateur who builds schools in Nepal, of the failure of “foreign food” on the island of Crete, and of sailing and scuba diving in the waters around Spain and Mexico. We talked about travel, about post-scarcity society, about how to make a dent in the universe and how it would be cool to work on joint projects. I met some friends that I believe I will retain forever.

I am also confident that if the UK does vote to leave the EU, I will leave the UK. We need fewer borders not more.

I needed a break from the real world. And I feel like I am returning renewed.

Red #ev

Just a few images for reminder… Obviously none of these are EVs, but there needs to be a series of EVs inspired by great retro designs. Related posts: America: Day of Days cultureTECH: What I did… We need leaders driven by social values who are willing to collaborate, innovate + cut through red tape

Just a few images for reminder…

Obviously none of these are EVs, but there needs to be a series of EVs inspired by great retro designs.

Wanted: IT Recruiters with vision

I know there’s a few recruiters in my stream and this might interest them. We allegedly have a shortage of ICT staff – developers, dev ops and infrastructure engineers. Belfast Met is offering free training to Level 2, Level 3 and Level 5 (Foundation Degree). Yes, a free degree. On Day release. So a savvy … Continue reading “Wanted: IT Recruiters with vision”

Yes, a free degree. On Day release.

So a savvy recruiter could sell “great candidates” who may not have the full spread of skills but who are great communicators, team players or other life experience and get them trained up over a period of time to be great employees.

Obviously a recruiter gets paid over an employee reaching their probation period. So, use the system to create the candidates you need with the skills your clients need.

We currently have 100 apprentices out there right now with companies of all sizes and we think we could recruit 200 more this year.

So, come along to this on Friday 29th May and speak to the Apprenticeship NI staff.

Free to do anything

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GOD

From http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/kulturdebatt/per-schlingmann-arbetslinjen-ar-dod-lange-leve-arbetslusten/ GOD is spelled Globalization, Urbanization and Digitizing half of the jobs that people perform today within 20 years will be replaced by machines. That’s a weird article. If we turned the argument around and considered that globalisation, urbanisation and digital can have positive effects, we can get away from the idea that “full … Continue reading “GOD”

From http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/kulturdebatt/per-schlingmann-arbetslinjen-ar-dod-lange-leve-arbetslusten/

GOD is spelled Globalization, Urbanization and Digitizing

half of the jobs that people perform today within 20 years will be replaced by machines.

That’s a weird article. If we turned the argument around and considered that globalisation, urbanisation and digital can have positive effects, we can get away from the idea that “full employment” is a good thing. That’s a meme from the 19th Century; that the only worth is in working.

As long as the physical and emotional needs of the people are sated, it will permit them to pursue expression and intellectual activities.

So what if a job is automated away? That’s the sort of argument that turns men and women in plow-horses. We should automate everything that is practical to automate but yes, we should consider what is practical.

A&E in NI: a problem of emergent use versus public service development

I have always been fascinated by emergent development. This is the unintended design from actual use rather than the laid down design by architects or town planners. We see this in everyday life in the development of “cow paths”. An architect or town planner says you should walk this way? And the public use a … Continue reading “A&E in NI: a problem of emergent use versus public service development”

I have always been fascinated by emergent development. This is the unintended design from actual use rather than the laid down design by architects or town planners.

We see this in everyday life in the development of “cow paths”.

An architect or town planner says you should walk this way? And the public use a slightly different route and that’s because the people know best. They aren’t wilfully destroying carefully coiffeured grass ways, they’re trying to get somewhere. Planners and architects need to think about this.

The same goes for public services. This is an article from BelfastLive.

Just under half the people who turned up at Northern Ireland’s A&Es last year were not emergency cases, shock figures have revealed.

Statistics provided by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS) also show only 14% of patients arriving at casualty units had suffered major trauma and needed immediate care.

And yet we hear nightmare stories of people being kept on trollies for hours or how our emergency medical services are completely overburdened. It’s obvious the problem is one of design, not one of staffing.

In light of this, we should be re-designing our public services to meet what the public plainly want. They want to get seen by a medical professional.

I’ve previously proposed that a better solution might be to put a paramedic station in every town, maybe built onto the side of a health centre or GP practice. Somewhere where local people can flock and always be seen in an emergency. The current system of A&E and Out of Hours GP plainly isn’t working so we have to start to think smarter. If every large business tends to have a first-aider on every floor, why doesn’t every town have an emergency station?

The naming of the place is important too. What may be a sprain to you or me, is a break in the mind of someone who is hurt. It has to be described as the place you go when you have a medical emergency and the definition of emergency is entirely subjective.

Remembering… Northern Ireland in 1998

As I parked my car yesterday, I caught the eye of a middle-aged woman standing waiting nearby. In a typical “up-the-country” Northern Irish accent, she blurted out “I hope your car is okay, the wee skitters have taken mine.” Her frustration was palpable. I was reminded of the weeks leading up to the Good Friday … Continue reading “Remembering… Northern Ireland in 1998”

I was reminded of the weeks leading up to the Good Friday Agreement and I remember my girlfriends car being stolen. We were parked outside a friends house and the arrival of the police prompted a flurry of opening windows and beating the air with magazines. Two days later, on the day of the vote, the car re-surfaced with a heavy weight in the back along the Grosvenor road and was duly exploded in a controlled fashion by the Army.

I mentioned that may have happened to her car. Same time frame, same size of car (small hatch back with R plates). She shook her head and continued to tell me all of the business of the day; the make, the model, that her brother was coming to get her, that it still had R plates and the first couple of letters from the registration. I smiled politely and decided to wait until her brother arrived which he did about 2 minutes later.

I bid her goodbye and scurried across the road towards my next meeting and something made me look across the road where I spotted a small, recent model white Fiesta with R plates and the same first numbers on the registration. Of course, I did what any normal human would do and ungracefully loped back across the road, waving my arms like a lunatic to an extremely grateful lady.

Yesterday a man was also shot. There’s no doubt that as a former IRA commander and the various implications in his life that he was no innocent. And there’s no doubt that as a “community worker”, he had an army of people rallying around him. But someone walked up and shot him. I’ve heard rumours of loyalists, or republicans or drug lords or turf wars but really I’m left with this single thought.

In 1998, most of us turned out and voted for peace. And then most of us switched off again. Because we switched off, we have moved barely an inch forward from that vote and barely an inch forward from the supposed ceasefires of the past.

We have to switch back on and vote for a civic society because the alternative is a world where cars are turned into bombs and men, whatever their background, are shot in the street.

That’s the secret…

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Thoughts on Unity (the principle, not the games engine)

I am musing about the concept of unity. I never really thought about Irish unity until recently. The Republic of Ireland has always been a foreign land, somewhere to visit, somewhere to holiday, but not home. It is a land populated by friends and good memories. From what I can tell the province of Ulster … Continue reading “Thoughts on Unity (the principle, not the games engine)”

I am musing about the concept of unity.

I never really thought about Irish unity until recently. The Republic of Ireland has always been a foreign land, somewhere to visit, somewhere to holiday, but not home. It is a land populated by friends and good memories.

From what I can tell the province of Ulster has always been people apart. Reading the Ulster Cycle it was clear our myths and legends diverged.

The concept of Irish unity therefore needs to be on multiple fronts; cultural, economic, social and national.

Culture
The first issue is that as an outsider I see the Republic of Ireland as united. There may be issues with the haves and the have-nots, there may even be issues between the city folk and the rural folk, the people of the west and those in the east but they are one people, secure in their identity.

It’s not the same in Ulster. We have three cultures at war – nationalists, unionists and everyone else; corresponding roughly to the discrete identities of "Irish", "British" and "why does it matter?"

Economy
Our economies could not be more different. Ireland is a sovereign nation prepared to do what’s necessary. Northern Ireland is a province of subjects, beholden to London for any creature comforts.

Social
There are other differences; the Irish are hungry for business, buoyant in their humour, liberal in their attitudes and optimistic in their outlook. The subjects of Ulster are self-deprecating, suspicious of outsiders, conservative, risk-averse, and pessimistic about the future.

National
Ireland is not haunted by the constitutional question. Beyond a few, the attitude of the Irish to a United Ireland seems to be "Aye, grand"

Northern Ireland is haunted constantly by this. We are categorised by either being for or against. Our media refuses to recognise the rest of us who ultimately could care less. And it’s holding up progress, it’s causing poverty, division and violence.

Could we build a future without fossil fuels?

Thanks to @JoanneJacobs for putting this into my tweet stream. Thanks to @aeonmag for posting it. Given the dwindling reserves of crude oil left in the world, it could be argued that the most wasteful use for this limited resource is to simply burn it. We should be carefully preserving what’s left for the vital … Continue reading “Could we build a future without fossil fuels?”

Thanks to @JoanneJacobs for putting this into my tweet stream. Thanks to @aeonmag for posting it.

Given the dwindling reserves of crude oil left in the world, it could be argued that the most wasteful use for this limited resource is to simply burn it. We should be carefully preserving what’s left for the vital repertoire of valuable organic compounds it offers.

it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that a progressing society could construct electrical generators and couple them to simple windmills and waterwheels, later progressing to wind turbines and hydroelectric dams.

The rest of the article revolves around a scenario where we do not have energy abundance. But, that’s not reality. We live in an energy-abundant (relative to us) universe. Our failure to harvest it, our failure to take advantage of the energy surrounding us allows us to rely on “ancient energy concentrates” like fossil fuels.

This is one of the reasons I’m not fussed on hybrid cars. I see them as the modern day equivalent of the “faster horse”. It’s a hand-aid when the solution is to amputate.

The biggest, and perhaps the only, opposition to electric vehicles I have heard from self-confessed petrol heads is that the whine made by electric cars doesn’t compare to the roar of a V8.

Maybe we should play the phut-phut sound of the first internal combustion engines and see hither that is music to their ears. We’ve grown up with the roar of engines, it’s going to take a while for people to rid themselves of that affectation.

The article is most correct in that the worst thing we can do with our oil is burn it. We also need to stop subsidising the production of fossil fuels and put that investment into our own energy security. A nation that is dependent on others for energy is not secure.

I’m not advocating for a second we return to an agrarian lifestyle. I like the Internet and travel – but there are better ways and it’s not always cutting edge science that can deliver for us.

So can we rebuild our modern society in an energy-secure fashion, relying on sustainable fuels and renewable energy? Of course we can; but more importantly, it is necessary that we must.