Apropos of nothing

IT is not magic pixiedust
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But Alex reminded me of a 2006 Daniel Davies article on the dismal fate of British public sector IT projects. Here’s what I think is the money quote:

This would seem like an unbelievably obvious, basic rule of good practice; that you can have major operational projects or major structural changes, but not both at once. It is, in fact, one of the big principles that they teach you in business school. But in the British public sector, this principle appears to be treated with the most monumental and catastrophic contempt. There was simply no chance that the NHS IT project (or the various Home Office projects, or the various education projects) was going to succeed; failure was written into the specification by the fact that the government chose to ignore the existence of the projects when deciding to have a dozen or more attempts at “radical change”.

No comment, but it’s not just British IT projects which could use this insight. Unfortunately, most big, public sector IT projects tend to take years rather than months and there are few sectors in which you can shut down change that long. So every project that goes on long enough and has to deal with any kind of legislation is always going to have to run a Red Queen’s Race just to keep up with its environment. The same goes for any large IT driven organisation, which these days is every organisation.

What makes things worse is that by and large a lot of the decision makers are IT illiterate and think of computers as just fancy typewriters or databases as just a replacement for their filing cabinets. Not to mention that especially in government, the people who ultimately have to make the decisions are not part of the organisation having to implement them and therefore do not understand the consequences of their decisions for these organisations.

Tales — H. P. Lovecraft

"Literature", books and books review, science fiction
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Cover of Tales


Tales
H. P. Lovecraft
838 pages
published in 2005

This deceptively slim volume, much slimmer than the similarly titled 1997 Jocye Carol Oates edited collection of Lovecraft stories, turned out to be printed on the kind of paper they use to print those teeny tiny complete bibles with. So what I thought would be a week’s worth of reading actually needed two long train journeys to finish, by the time I was somewhat bored with Lovecraft’s eldritch obsessions. After a while all the lurking horrors and dwellers in the darkness start to blur into each other and the descriptions turn from atmospheric into mildly ridiculous. Lovecraft is not a writer you should over indulge in; it’s better to read him sparingly story by story.

As a collection this is an impressive book, part of the prestigious Library of America series set up to safeguard America’s literary heritage. That H. P. Lovecraft, as first science fiction, horror or fantasy writer is allowed in these hallowed pages as a genre writer, not ust an established literary figure dabbling in these genres, is a good sign of how far these genres have penetrated literary
consciousness. You may quibble about Lovecraft as a first choice, but he has slowly evolved from a cult writer into one appreciated as much for his literary qualities as his ability to scare his readers so he’s certainly not an undefensible choice.

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The cost of War

economic crisis, War on Afghanistan, War on Iraq
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A while back former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz calculated that the total cost of the War on Iraq and Afghanistan would be a cool three trillion dollars. The video below explains what that money is spent on:

Supposedly it was only World War II that ended the Great Depression. I don’t think the War on Iraq has done the same…

The ruling class enjoying itself

2008 US election, Life under Capitalism
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Barack and John, supposedly in mortal combat for the presidency, having a good time together. Some would call it a thriumph for the idea of democracy as fair play, but you can guess my attitude from the title. It’s just slightly sickening to see them clowning around while there’s so much at stake. Certaintly doesn’t improve my opinion of Obama, too much of a centrist stoge anyway.

But at least abortion is safe with him, there will be slightly less pressure to punish the poor for their poverty, perhaps even some modest measures to easen the burden of the working classes and of course no half senile, rage addict with his fingers on the button and an Alaskan ignoramus waiting in the wings.

Dear Wouter

Dutch politics, economic crisis
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Dear Wouter, what do you think? 350.000 euro is not too much to ask, is it?

Well done. The plan you and Jan Peter cooked up with your colleagues this weekend worked a treat. Sure, it cost a bob or two, almost 250 billion euro by my account (17 billion to buy up Fortis & ABN/AMRO, 20 billion to safe guard saving accounts and now some 200 billion to make the banks lend each other money again), but it worked. The stock market recovered beautifully, with the Amsterdam stock exchange having its second best day ever yesterday.

Which brings me to the reason I’m writing you this letter. You see, it’s not just the stock market or the bankers that have lost their confidence in the Dutch economy. Yes, it’s true, even I have become gunshy due to the credit crisis. I was planning to build an extenstion to our kitchen while we were remodeling it, but these plans unfortunately already had to be dropped. I couldn’t raise the credit to do everything we wanted to do, nor did I want to run the risk of getting stuck with bad debts, especially now the interest is getting so high on them.

Therefore I would like to use your help in this crisis of confidence. Because you’ve done such a marvelous job for people who need much more than me, I’m sure you can also fulfill my modest request. What I’m asking for is almost a rounding error compared to the huge sums of money you’ve already given away to people who’ve done much less to stimulate the economy than I have done. All I need is a straight forward cash injection of 100,000 euros, plus a guarantee for another 250,000, just in case my mortgage supplier gets shirty.

Be honest: who’s more deserving of your support? The losers in the banks and credit companies who caused this crisis in the first place by wasting billions buying dodgy merkin mortgages, not to mention tens of millions on their hot shot stock brokers who told them these were good ideas? Or me and others like me, who’ve been working hard to keep the economy growing by working hard and doing our best to inject cash into the market through kitchen remodelings or by spending it on essential investments like that big plasma television screen I saw in the shopping centre the other day.

Yours sincerily,

Martin Wisse

P.S. In return for your support I’m of course more than willing to make a pledge not to ask for a salary higher than that your pal Balkenende, as you’ve also asked of all your public sector executives. Is the board in charge of your new state banks Fortis and ABN/AMRO also prepared to pledge this?