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We seem to live in a world where public money is seen as a cash cow for businesses and contractors. Over charging is rife, dragging the work out for as long as feasibly possible to eke out as much money as they can. Then generally laughing about it, I've met contractors who have basically paid off mortgages from NHS contracts. Couple that with the locals trying to block every development they can, look at HS2, where golf clubs were protected but ancient forests ploughed through.
If anyone has actually worked on any of these large scale infrastructure projects then you’ll know that the bureaucracy is off the scale. The UK Government approach to any public works scheme or Contract has been mental for decades but now you have to fill in 28 forms to turn a screw. It’s madness.
London Underground are worse. I was on a contract with them decades ago and their approach to everything was a licence to print money for us Contractors. Clearly H&S is and should always be a priority, but this is now pushed forward at the expense of common sense.
Nobody is proud to produce anything for this Country anymore and who can blame them? It’s forced down our throats not to be like that and everything needs dumbing down to the most basic of levels.
The last project that I was involved in (on a very minor basis) that I’d say produced something to be proud of was the St Pancras Great Hall refurbishment. Cracker that.
I used to do work for the American company 3M up and down the country (UK) The levels of paper work involved, basically just to cover their arses so they dont get sued at any point, was just ridiculous. H&S is paramount on site, but so is common sense. The practicality of construction work seems to just get in the way of loads of people in an office or board room all justifying their jobs and existence and taking a tidy share of the profits
I used to do work for the American company 3M up and down the country (UK) The levels of paper work involved, basically just to cover their arses so they dont get sued at any point, was just ridiculous. H&S is paramount on site, but so is common sense. The practicality of construction work seems to just get in the way of loads of people in an office or board room all justifying their jobs and existence and taking a tidy share of the profits
Some of those "office jobs" are vital and justified I'll have you know....
Cherish and enjoy life.... this ain't no dress rehearsal
When we are all kicked out of cars (other than driverless taxis) and the UK can only travel by public transport.....Old Oak will be key. Completion 2029-2033, very much in line with the UN 2030 agenda.
We are all moving into a new age, like it or not.
I predict London will be the first city to ban cars in the UK.
When we are all kicked out of cars (other than driverless taxis) and the UK can only travel by public transport.....Old Oak will be key. Completion 2029-2033, very much in line with the UN 2030 agenda.
We are all moving into a new age, like it or not.
I predict London will be the first city to ban cars in the UK.
They’ll never be banned, too much of a cash cow, congestion charge, parking charges, camera fines, how are they going to replace all that lovely cash coming in? they’ll just find ever more ways to separate your money from you whilst making the experience of driving worse.
I used to do work for the American company 3M up and down the country (UK) The levels of paper work involved, basically just to cover their arses so they dont get sued at any point, was just ridiculous. H&S is paramount on site, but so is common sense. The practicality of construction work seems to just get in the way of loads of people in an office or board room all justifying their jobs and existence and taking a tidy share of the profits
My go to example of common sense playing second fiddle to H&S is always a station job I was involved with. We had a site visit on the hottest day of the year. NR rules say you have to wear full orange, think it's so that the train drivers can see you easier. Fair enough, site rules were we had to wear all orange. However, when you're working on the station building and inspecting the loft space, it really isn't necessary to have plastic over trousers on as well. I raise this with the contractor when we were on the second floor of the station, before we accessed the loft space but they'd had their wrist slapped recently by NR for subbies not wearing full orange, so they weren't budging. The building surveyor I was with suffered heat exhaustion and only just made it out of the loft space under his own steam before being sick. I'm still not convinced it was wise for him to do the 2.5hr drive home either but by that point he had limited options and just wanted to get home, so I don't blame him. Completely avoidable if common sense was used applied, afterall if the train driver could see our legs there were possibly bigger issues .
They’ll never be banned, too much of a cash cow, congestion charge, parking charges, camera fines, how are they going to replace all that lovely cash coming in? they’ll just find ever more ways to separate your money from you whilst making the experience of driving worse.
AI. 10-15 years time and the world we live in wont look the same at all.
I watched a really interesting presentation a few months ago, the guy spoke about never believing you would have free music on demand (but now we have), hundreds of free TV channels, etc
He predicted the step is free public transport for children, then over time the costs of cars will go through the roof and, for a generation who have been using public transport every day, we all just switch. Cars phased out, apart from driverless.
In and around Gloucester, all new estates are being planned with a railway station at its heart.
AI. 10-15 years time and the world we live in wont look the same at all.
I watched a really interesting presentation a few months ago, the guy spoke about never believing you would have free music on demand (but now we have), hundreds of free TV channels, etc
He predicted the step is free public transport for children, then over time the costs of cars will go through the roof and, for a generation who have been using public transport every day, we all just switch. Cars phased out, apart from driverless.
In and around Gloucester, all new estates are being planned with a railway station at its heart.
PS I work in AI software these days.
Not to go off topic, but: I've got a nephew over in TrumpLand who has just started university, doing computer science.
I wrote to him a couple of weeks ago congratulating him. I also asked him what computer science is going to look like these days with such rapid changes, AI etc.
He said he was 'curious to find that out too'! His parents are hyper dilligent about this stuff, and he's a smart kid, but I'm trying to figure out how many humans the computers are actually going to need 3 or 4 years from now. Other than an army of nerds watching them saying "Don't do that" every few minutes as they impulsively hack into something.
Not to go off topic, but: I've got a nephew over in TrumpLand who has just started university, doing computer science.
I wrote to him a couple of weeks ago congratulating him. I also asked him what computer science is going to look like these days with such rapid changes, AI etc.
He said he was 'curious to find that out too'! His parents are hyper dilligent about this stuff, and he's a smart kid, but I'm trying to figure out how many humans the computers are actually going to need 3 or 4 years from now. Other than an army of nerds watching them saying "Don't do that" every few minutes as they impulsively hack into something.
Amazon was pushing it's inhouse AI very hard and insisting that it's own developers had to use the AI for problem solving instead of doing it themselves.
Then the AI decided the best solution to a problem was to delete the production environment, in the process wiping out 6.3 million orders.
At first Amazon defended the AI and blamed the engineers! Since then they have been significantly scaling back their AI:
It has also been reported that one of Amazon's AI tasks failed to run properly and no one noticed for 5 months, by which time the cost of the task had come to £1.8m
They’ll never be banned, too much of a cash cow, congestion charge, parking charges, camera fines, how are they going to replace all that lovely cash coming in? they’ll just find ever more ways to separate your money from you whilst making the experience of driving worse.
You're right.
They wont be banned.
The politics of totalitarianism is subtle although Starmer wasn't the best at it and he was totally see through. As noted, driving and owning a car will be made totally cost prohibitive
To replace that income? Will they need to? As Gloucst notes the world is rapidly becoming a very, very, VERY different place. Maybe we'll all have a Digital ID with carbon credits on it controlling how much you go out and where? By that I mean leaving your front door.
People will offer me a corner to sit in wearing my tinfoil hat but I sort of feel there's a bigger end game. I haven't got the intelligence to articulate or guess what it is but I've listened to others with interest on it. Climate change is inevitable, its what the Earth has done for millions of years, and it could be that the new world involves barren sun dried wastelands where there are currently temperate local systems; there's not a single thing the human race can do to stop this change - it will happen no matter if we all used horses from hereon in and ate nothing but mungo beans. However in their bid to slow this down drastic measures may be coming into play coupled with a Terminator world. There also has to be an end game to this acceptance / encouragement of mass migration rather than just load up the populus to pad out pension contributions -- as there's no work!!!
Maybe David Icke was right all along..... those b'stard lizard people are gonna do for us.
Cherish and enjoy life.... this ain't no dress rehearsal
Not to go off topic, but: I've got a nephew over in TrumpLand who has just started university, doing computer science.
I wrote to him a couple of weeks ago congratulating him. I also asked him what computer science is going to look like these days with such rapid changes, AI etc.
He said he was 'curious to find that out too'! His parents are hyper dilligent about this stuff, and he's a smart kid, but I'm trying to figure out how many humans the computers are actually going to need 3 or 4 years from now. Other than an army of nerds watching them saying "Don't do that" every few minutes as they impulsively hack into something.
Any thoughts?
I listen to a lot of podcasts on this subject and the general consensus is that programmers will be hit hard. I know in my industry, software that took 24 months to code and develop can now be done in 3 months by AI. However, there will opportunity for small niche companies to spring up and create new solutions. But the hyperscalers will win the ultimate race (MS, AWS Google).
My son wants to go to Uni and take commercial law and I am watching closely to see whats being said about this too.
Completely off track but listen to what people like Musk have said about a social salary (its not just him, lots of others have said the same). Its interesting and scary at the same time.
When we are all kicked out of cars (other than driverless taxis) and the UK can only travel by public transport.....Old Oak will be key. Completion 2029-2033, very much in line with the UN 2030 agenda.
We are all moving into a new age, like it or not.
I predict London will be the first city to ban cars in the UK.
I listen to a lot of podcasts on this subject and the general consensus is that programmers will be hit hard. I know in my industry, software that took 24 months to code and develop can now be done in 3 months by AI. However, there will opportunity for small niche companies to spring up and create new solutions. But the hyperscalers will win the ultimate race (MS, AWS Google).
My son wants to go to Uni and take commercial law and I am watching closely to see whats being said about this too.
Completely off track but listen to what people like Musk have said about a social salary (its not just him, lots of others have said the same). Its interesting and scary at the same time.
In theory law and computer science are both likely to be transformed by AI.
Both are industries which are largely procedural and in the case of law require a lot of specialised research.
But you don't have to dig too far to find stories in the media of AI inventing complete garbage which has made it all the way to court.
Both in law and computer science mistakes can be very costly.
The really odd thing is that phantom cases can make it as far legal pleadings presented to the court. That's really feckin sloppy work but it keeps happening.
"The high court has told senior lawyers to take urgent action to prevent the misuse of artificial intelligence after dozens of fake case-law citations were put before the courts that were either completely fictitious or contained made-up passages.
Lawyers are increasingly using AI systems to help them build legal arguments, but two cases this year were blighted by made-up case-law citations that were either definitely or suspected to have been generated by AI.
In a £89m damages case against the Qatar National Bank, the claimants made 45 case-law citations, 18 of which turned out to be fictitious, with quotes in many of the others also bogus. The claimant admitted using publicly available AI tools and his solicitor accepted he cited the sham authorities."
In theory law and computer science are both likely to be transformed by AI.
Both are industries which are largely procedural and in the case of law require a lot of specialised research.
But you don't have to dig too far to find stories in the media of AI inventing complete garbage which has made it all the way to court.
Both in law and computer science mistakes can be very costly.
The really odd thing is that phantom cases can make it as far legal pleadings presented to the court. That's really feckin sloppy work but it keeps happening.
"The high court has told senior lawyers to take urgent action to prevent the misuse of artificial intelligence after dozens of fake case-law citations were put before the courts that were either completely fictitious or contained made-up passages.
Lawyers are increasingly using AI systems to help them build legal arguments, but two cases this year were blighted by made-up case-law citations that were either definitely or suspected to have been generated by AI.
In a £89m damages case against the Qatar National Bank, the claimants made 45 case-law citations, 18 of which turned out to be fictitious, with quotes in many of the others also bogus. The claimant admitted using publicly available AI tools and his solicitor accepted he cited the sham authorities."
I don't disagree, in my industry Gartner said up to 70% of people could lose their jobs due to AI, they have now adjusted that to 17%!
In simple terms, we are only at stage 2 of AI. There is a lot to come.
Big big big topic and some may scoff at what I am saying. But what I have learnt over the years is be open minded, read, listen and absorb as much as you can.
I have a moral dilemma, am I part of the problem or the solution?
You cannot dispute that the ultra wealthy are able to reduce their tax, sometimes to pay less than their cleaner, but.... 5% of something is better than 40% of nothing.
Cherish and enjoy life.... this ain't no dress rehearsal
I listen to a lot of podcasts on this subject and the general consensus is that programmers will be hit hard. I know in my industry, software that took 24 months to code and develop can now be done in 3 months by AI. However, there will opportunity for small niche companies to spring up and create new solutions. But the hyperscalers will win the ultimate race (MS, AWS Google).
My son wants to go to Uni and take commercial law and I am watching closely to see whats being said about this too.
Completely off track but listen to what people like Musk have said about a social salary (its not just him, lots of others have said the same). Its interesting and scary at the same time.
I don't tend to listen to many podcasts but these sound interesting.
Might get googling
Cherish and enjoy life.... this ain't no dress rehearsal
I don't disagree, in my industry Gartner said up to 70% of people could lose their jobs due to AI, they have now adjusted that to 17%!
In simple terms, we are only at stage 2 of AI. There is a lot to come.
Big big big topic and some may scoff at what I am saying. But what I have learnt over the years is be open minded, read, listen and absorb as much as you can.
I have a moral dilemma, am I part of the problem or the solution?
From what I'm hearing a lot of companies are losing faith in AI.
Where's the saving if you have to manually go through every line looking for mistakes and correcting them?
Part of the AI boom has been fuelled by the AI companies giving it away for free or at a great loss. They've woken up to the fact that they can't do that any more and are passing the cost on to the customer. And customers are saying "nah, you're all right".
Aside from anything else, where's the social benefit in making large swathes of the workforce redundant?
From what I understand the Chinese are taking a very different approach to AI with the focus on solving specific problems instead of trying to come up with some super AI that can do everything. The Chinese are also adapting their education system and preparing their kids in how to use AI in the workplace. Not something we are seeing here or coming out of America.
Who knows what the next 5 years will look like, but I think the proverbial/clichéd genie is well out of the bottle. Those examples of it going wrong are perfectly valid, but I think they're more like modifications or course corrections of something that is gaining pace and reaching into more and more areas.
The Chinese advantage seems to be mainly around it being sort of open source and far less expensive to develop (for above and below board reasons) more than it being more narrowly restricted or targeted.
But we'll see. Maybe we will indeed all be basking on a comfortable universal basic income a decade from now. Maybe we should be buying up shares in golf courses and country clubs?
Who knows what the next 5 years will look like, but I think the proverbial/clichéd genie is well out of the bottle. Those examples of it going wrong are perfectly valid, but I think they're more like modifications or course corrections of something that is gaining pace and reaching into more and more areas.
The Chinese advantage seems to be mainly around it being sort of open source and far less expensive to develop (for above and below board reasons) more than it being more narrowly restricted or targeted.
But we'll see. Maybe we will indeed all be basking on a comfortable universal basic income a decade from now. Maybe we should be buying up shares in golf courses and country clubs?
The biggest advantage China has right now is that they have invested heavily in cheap renewable energy.
In America there's a lot of talk about building masses of new data centres but that was before anyone did the sums on how much energy they would be using.
By all accounts the entire American electric grid can't provide anywhere near the energy that is required for these proposed data centres.
And then you have the cost of supplying energy to new data centres being passed on to domestic consumers meaning huge spikes in their energy bills. And since data centres require very few staff to support them there's no benefit from them bringing new jobs.
Not surprisingly there's growing opposition to these things in America.
From what I'm hearing a lot of companies are losing faith in AI.
Where's the saving if you have to manually go through every line looking for mistakes and correcting them?
Part of the AI boom has been fuelled by the AI companies giving it away for free or at a great loss. They've woken up to the fact that they can't do that any more and are passing the cost on to the customer. And customers are saying "nah, you're all right".
Aside from anything else, where's the social benefit in making large swathes of the workforce redundant?
From what I understand the Chinese are taking a very different approach to AI with the focus on solving specific problems instead of trying to come up with some super AI that can do everything. The Chinese are also adapting their education system and preparing their kids in how to use AI in the workplace. Not something we are seeing here or coming out of America.
We have seen the cost of AI become more than the cost of a human. That's comical in business. But its a tech race at the moment and the costs will come down within the next few years.
The environmental impact isn't discussed enough either.
Water and energy.......Water and energy.......Water and energy.......Water and energy.......
Me having a 5 minute shower isnt the problem.
EDIT - Sorry Kensal, missed your latest post when I wrote this.
Who knows what the next 5 years will look like, but I think the proverbial/clichéd genie is well out of the bottle. Those examples of it going wrong are perfectly valid, but I think they're more like modifications or course corrections of something that is gaining pace and reaching into more and more areas.
The Chinese advantage seems to be mainly around it being sort of open source and far less expensive to develop (for above and below board reasons) more than it being more narrowly restricted or targeted.
But we'll see. Maybe we will indeed all be basking on a comfortable universal basic income a decade from now. Maybe we should be buying up shares in golf courses and country clubs?
Funny you mention golf clubs....have you noticed how many new leisure businesses are setting up (Universal in the SE, a new mega resort and ski slope on Wales)? Plus how sports clubs are all of a sudden a must have (rugby, football, cricket)
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