Lockdown Locals

As we enter a second lockdown, I’m worried that local businesses will be hit hard by the reduced footfall. 2020 has been a brutal year with many challenges for many people. sometimes we might feel powerless, thrown about by the avalanche of news and generally rubbish events unfolding.

But we are not powerless. When we come together, humans can achive great things. And one great thing we can all do is support local businesses.

I’ve started a list of businesses local to where I live, who offer a collection service or delivery, with ordering online or by phone.

This list is not exhastive and will need to be continually updated as things change. If you live in north watford, please do share this list with anyone who might find it useful!

The latest government advice on coronavirus can be found at gov.uk/coronavirus.

The North Watford focus Facebook page (which I help moderate) can be found at facebook.com/NorthWatfordFocus.

I’m a local resident and a political activist, trying to make North Watford an even better place to live. If you’re interested, my Facebook page can be found at facebook.com/libdemjoe, and my blog can be found here.

We should be proud that UK foreign aid helped eradicate wild polio in Africa

At a time when the UK’s role in the world is changing and Boris Johnson is trying to minimise UK foreign aid, characterising it a 'cashpoint' in the sky some good news might have slipped past you unnoticed: Wild Polio has been eradicated from the continent of Africa, and UK foreign aid was critical to achieving this long standing humanitarian objective.

I think this news is an important reminder of the massively positive role that the UK has in the world.

We often spend time feeling guilty and critical of our colonial history. We feel under attack. And when we are under attack a very human reaction is to be defensive and to retreat. “If we’re so bad we’re going to retreat into isolationism then”.

But that would be wrong. Britain is one of the richest countries in the world and one of the most powerful. And that wealth and power came from Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world. No man is an island? No island is an island. We are connected to the rest of the world. So the question is not “do we have a relationship?”, but “what kind of relationship do we want to have?”.

Britain is full of kind and generous people: the overwhelming majority of citizens would like the world to be a better place. And that’s why we should be loudly celebrating the UK’s role in the fight against polio, now that Africa has been declared free from wild polio by the independent body, ‘The Africa Regional Certification Commission’.

Support from the UK has helped 220 million children across 47 countries in Africa. That is a big deal.

Polio usually affects children under five, sometimes leading to irreversible paralysis. Death can occur when breathing muscles are affected. Twenty-five years ago thousands of children in Africa were paralysed by the virus.

The disease is now only found in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The UK is one of the top donors to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), which has vaccinated millions of children against polio in the world’s poorest countries. As a result of their work more than 18 million people are able to walk who would otherwise have been paralysed by the virus.

At a time of historic change, where Britain is faced with an opportunity to decide who we want to be in the world, it is vital that we celebrate the good our country has done so that those who represent us in parliament know that we value the successes of UK aid.

I’ve written to my local MP, and I would encourage you to write to your MP to help share and promote the good news:

Dear xxx

I wanted to share my delight in hearing the news that, with considerable UK support, Africa has recently been declared free from wild polio.

This is exactly the kind of initiative that I support, and I am proud of our government’s decision to provide aid for this cause. UK Foreign aid is important and something we should continue to fund.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/wild-polio-wiped-out-in-africa-with-uk-aid-support

Maximum National Maximum Trust

Celebrate our shared collective heritage and support those willing to have difficult conversations about our history by joining the national trust today!

nationaltrust.org.uk/join-us

The national trust is a fantastic organisation, and quite unique in the world being the biggest conservation charity in Europe and one of the biggest in the world.

They look after the UK’s coastline, historic sites, countryside and green spaces, ensuring everyone benefits.

On 23rd August the national trust marked the UNESCO day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, by taking a closer look at the places they care for with direct or indirect links to slavery, including objects made from materials obtained by forced labour.

It was factual, respectful and exactly the kind of conversations we should be having. I didn’t find the thread to be judgemental but just an honest consideration of some of the darker aspects of our history.

You can read the full thread on twitter and the supporting statement on their website.

Regretfully some people were upset about this and have subsequently threatened to cancel their national trust membership.

I’m not going to focus on the mostly ignorant and occasionally hateful responses, but what I would say is this:

If you want to encourage honest and frank reflections about our nation’s links to slavery and colonialism by the national trust, then join up and write to them to let them know why. Or if membership isn’t your bag, just get in touch with the national trust to let them know you appreciate their efforts.

To remember the words of Martin Luther King, Jr:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”

Be the love. Show your support for the National Trust today!

Why I'm backing Layla

I’m backing Layla Moran to be the next leader of the Liberal Democrats - here’s why.

Empathy

Our character is built by our lived experience. As a BAME, LGBT+, woman, Layla has had experiences that help her truly empathise with others. Layla is already an inspiration to many in our party- and as leader she would have a platform to inspire many across the country.

Competence

Having had a successful career before entering parliament, Layla has real world skills that are useful in her role as an MP and will be useful as the party leader.

Intelligence

Having studied at Imperial, Brunel and UCL it is clear that Layla is highly intelligent. Frankly, there are lots of intelligent people. What makes Layla exceptional is her combination of academic intelligence with emotional intelligence.

Even in a crowded room, when Layla talks to you, it feels personal. We need a charismatic leader that will connect with the public, a new Cleggmania for 2020 (Laylageddon anyone?).

Values

Layla is a true liberal social democrat. While I, personally, often find myself to the right of the party - we need a leader that is able to bridge both our economic liberals and our social democrats. Layla is that leader.

To find out more about Layla Moran MP, her campaign to become Leader of the Liberal Democrats, and to join her campaign go to:

votelayla.org

If All Lives Mattered it wouldn’t be controversial to state that Black Lives Matter

Black lives matter and all lives matter are not mutually exclusive statements. If you genuinely believe that all lives matter then you should support the movement to end racism and treat black lives as equal to white lives.

If you disagree with the statement that black lives matter you’re denying that racism exists. The sad truth is that we currently live in a world where black lives don’t seem to matter as much as white lives.

The whole point of black lives matter is to draw attention to the discrimination and disparities faced by people of colour, to bring everyone in society together, so that together we can fight for a reality where all lives do matter equally.

Photo Credit: Reddit u/Primuri • Jun 5, 2020

Why brilliant MPs fail on national issues (in small parties)

This article focuses on the LibDems but the fundamental concepts apply to UK politics generally.

On the 6th January 2020 Daisy Cooper assumed office as a Member of Parliament for St Albans after more than a decade of local campaigning. A huge victory for the party and shows how years of determined effort can pay off.

In the coming days, MP Daisy Cooper will bring a bill to the House of Commons to “End the use of prison for women, except for the most serious and violent crimes.”

Despite being a bill by the Lib Dems- it is obviously discriminatory and illiberal: men and women should be treated equally before the law. That’s liberalism 101.

This bill, which is currently being promoted by the central party, is sure to fail. (Hopefully without a great deal of press attention). Parliamentary arithmetic is against it, and fundamentally it’s a bad bill which the government will see no reason in adopting (to steal the credit).

More importantly - party members are appalled that their party could be advocating an illiberal change to the justice system. This may well have scuppered Daisy’s chances of winning the LibDem leadership contest.

So, how did such a genuinely brilliant local MP get it so wrong on a national policy issue?

The big issue is that the skills to become an MP are different to the thought leadership required to translate liberal social democracy into a political force.

Local politics is about local issues, and MPs represent a local constituency.

Rightly or wrongly, the truth is that a prospective parliamentary candidate’s policy on bin collections will have more impact than their policy on, as in this case, sentencing guidelines for the justice system.

The LibDems are a smaller party that has to win every vote and is funded by members (rather than unions or a few wealthy individuals). 

With the big think tanks, and political institutions focusing on the big party’s (that are most likely to form a government), smaller partys have a much harder job of doing both local politics and national politics at the same time.

To be blunt - Daisy wasn’t elected for her policy positions on justice- she was elected as a representative of St Albans.

How do we stop local MPs failing on national issues?

Well for a start, MPs are individuals who the public have chosen. The answer isn’t to stop them pursuing bad ideas but to flood them with good ideas. (With Mark Pack’s election as libdem party president I‘m hopeful that the next wave of ideas will be focused on winning votes rather than having interesting but niche fringe debates).

We can examine the rise of the Scottish National Party (SNP): Scottish Nationalism is a single issue, with a simple message, that everyone in the SNP can rally behind. This makes it easier for local activists and politicians to work on local issues on the ground, yet tune into national policy when needed.

How do we “fix” the small party problem for the LibDems?

In simple terms - the party has to get bigger.

In the same way that the party is funded by its members, policy development is going to need to come from its members as well.

More members who are more engaged and active will lead to more, and better thought out, policy.

All party members have a role in this - in being friendly and welcoming. And also in trying to include new members as much as possible.

If you’re not yet a member of the Lib Dems, you can find a local party to get involved with here and join the party here.

If you are a member and/or an activist, mark pack (party president) runs a newswire here.

If you want to know the recent Lib Dem policy positions, the 2019 manifesto is here.

If you have specific ideas about policy development, get in touch with me here and I will do my best to help connect you to the right person or group.

Lastly (but not leastly) if you want to volunteer generally for the libdems, you can get in touch with the central party here.

Rail Station Accessibility: When £20 million is not a lot of money...

The government recently announced a £20m “funding boost” for accessibility across 124 rail stations.

£20 million, to most individuals, really is a lot of cash. And any additional investment in train station accessibility is good.

For many people, the rail network is extremely challenging to use.

Quite a few years ago I did some fire engineering design training*. Trying to navigate without eyesight (wearing a blind fold) is both terrifying and difficult. Not only did it change how I considered the design of a built environment, but it also gave me some appreciation of the importance of designing for accessibility. Platform tactile paving, for example, literally is a matter of life and death.

Further- The things that make stations more accessible for disabled users tend to make the stations better for all users.

For example: Lift access to platforms is fundamental for wheel chair users. Lifts are also safer and more convenient for passengers with big suitcases. And additional lifts provide additional overall capacity.

So is £20 million enough additional investment in accessibility?

It’s not clear from network rail reporting how much is currently spent on station accessibility.

If we look at £20 million in the context of network rails recent £3,577 million in annual operational costs, this doesn’t seem a lot.

Network rail only operate 20 out of the 2500(ish) UK train stations. Point being we can conclude that £20 million is a relatively modest funding boost.

If we divide £20M between the 124 stations allocated thats roughly £160k per station- which in railway terms is not a lot: For example, in a recent estimate the “Cost for the design, supply, and installation of the lift mechanisms and enclosure themselves would be in the region of £750,000 to £1.2 million.”

That would again indicate that £20 million is a relatively modest funding boost.

What can we conclude from all this?

I don’t doubt that this funding boost has good intentions. And any increase in funding is a good thing overall.

I believe that it is fair to judge the success of a train station on how accessible it is for the least mobile in society.

Generally, UK train stations could be a lot better and I would argue that £20 million is inadequate to make a big difference. And for me, a big difference is exactly what is required.

What else have I missed?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this. Please do leave a comment below, or message me directly.

P.S.

If you enjoyed this article, the best compliment you could give me would be to share it with someone else who might like it. And as ever, if you think I might be able to help your organisation, please do get in touch!

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REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:

• News post on gov.uk by the Department for Transport and The Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/rail-stations-across-great-britain-receive-20-million-funding-boost-for-accessibility-improvements

• Network Rail Limited Annual report and accounts 2019 - https://cdn.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Annual-report-and-accounts-2019.pdf

• Estimated cost of a passenger lift at a railway station: EIR release - https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-18-03026/

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*This experience had a tremendous and lasting impact on me. Some of the first-hand accounts from former firemen reduced the room to tears.

The next high-speed rail boom?

When we think of railways in Africa, we might imagine gigantic post-colonial steam trains, bouncing along old rickety tracks in clouds of dust, steam and smoke.

Image Credit John Gaydon

Yet Morocco is smashing that picture, operating a successful, modern, high speed railway.

Africa’s first high speed rail line, running from Tangier to Rabat, has just recently celebrated its first anniversary. And Morocco’s national operator, Office National des Chemins de Fer (ONCF), have plans to extend the rail network to 20 cities and 14 airports by 2040.

Both Egypt and South Africa have plans in place for new high-speed rail routes. And all across the South-Asia Pacific there are high-speed rail projects.

So, are we seeing the start of a high-speed rail boom? To answer this question, we need to look at some context.

A brief history of railways (and high speed railways in particular)

Railways were pioneered in the UK, during the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. The age of steam shrank the world with railways connecting not just British towns and cities but quickly being rolled out across the British empire, and within other industrialised nations.

During the first half of the 20th century we saw massive growth of passenger use, and a transition from steam to diesel and electrically powered locomotives.

Through the second half of the 20th century we saw a diversification of rail use. Some countries, many of those that pioneered rail use originally, saw the gradual replacement of railways with planes and cars. Railways were still in use, but typically with diminished budgets and a general approach of ‘managed decline’.

Notably, countries with large geographies like the USA, Australia, Kenya and Tanzania started using rail for efficiently moving freight rather than slowly moving passengers. Los Angeles to New York takes roughly 5 hours by plane or 3.5 days by train.

Meanwhile countries with more suitable geographies, and governments willing to invest, started building dedicated high-speed passenger railways. This is especially useful for connecting city centre to city centre (avoiding the hassle of getting to/from the airport).

France and Japan took the lead in this area, eventually competing with each other to build faster and faster high-speed trains.

Around the turn of the century, up to today, more countries began investing in high speed railways. With a steady development of high-speed rail projects across most of Europe and China.

Today we see plans for high speed rail projects across the Middle East, and with wavering commitment across the South Asia Pacific and each coast of the USA.

Railways in Africa

Which brings us back to the ‘Al Boraq’ high speed railway in Morocco. Connecting the Northern Port of Tangier with the capital, Rabat, and the main commercial hub of Casablanca.

The Al Boraq project started in 2011, with help from the French state through SNCF. French built TGV trains reach 186mph (300kph) along the 225 mile (360km) journey and take 2 hours and 10 minutes end to end.

The initial cost of construction, and cost of future renewals are met by financing, with project funding comprised of Direct investment from the Moroccan government, French led European investment, and commercial loans.

Income from rail fares are currently enough to cover cost of operations and maintenance.

The bet is that the overall investment will lead to growth in overall productivity in Morocco. This will lead to increases in tax receipts, with the difference being larger than the costs of servicing the investment loans.

Economies are complicated systems dependant on many factors, but all things being equal it is a fair assumption that improvements in infrastructure will lead to improvements in economic development. And historically, there are clear examples of railways having a hugely positive economic and social impact.

The start of a boom?

The Al Boraq project has been successful (so far): daily Passenger numbers on the route have increased from roughly 7,500 up to 10,500 per day and this seems set to continue. So given this success, it seems probably that Morocco will continue to invest in high speed rail.

More generally, we are living in an age where interest rates are low, debt is cheap, and traditional “low risk” financial assets, like government bonds, are offering poor returns for investors.

Image Credit Paul Schmelzing, Bank of England

Government backed infrastructure projects offer a win-win for both government and financial investors – where government backing reduces risk for investors, the debt affordability reduces risk for government, and infrastructure utilisation offers stable returns for all.

The countries who pioneers the development of high-speed rail are growing close to saturation. There are, after all, only so many cities that can be connected. As Ashley Barratt asked recently, “is the west reaching peak infrastructure?”

Such countries are looking to exploit their knowledge advantage, and keep these engineers employed. Nearly all western rail infrastructure managers have subsidiaries to export services. The UK’s Network Rail has ‘Network Rail Consulting’. France’s SNCF has ‘SNCF International’. And so on.

If you add all of this together, then yes we could well be seeing the start of the next high-speed railway boom.

What else have I missed?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this. Please do leave a comment below, or message me directly.

P.S.

If you enjoyed this article, the best compliment you could give me would be to share it with someone else who might like it. And as ever, if you think I might be able to help your organisation, please do get in touch!

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References and further reading:

ONCF, 2020 - https://www.oncf.ma/fr/Entreprise/Profil-de-l-oncf/Historique

JOHN GAYDON, 2017 - https://steamtrainstories.com/author/john-gaydon/

Groupe_oncf, 2020 - https://www.instagram.com/p/B2C3nn-Bgq9/

Paul Schmelzing, Bank of England, 2020 - https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2020/eight-centuries-of-global-real-interest-rates-r-g-and-the-suprasecular-decline-1311-2018

SNCF International - https://www.sncf.com/en/sncf-around-the-world

Tech, Infrastructure and the Future

It’s often premised that Tech companies are going to change the world, and this includes disrupting how we will build, maintain, replace and dispose of infrastructure.

This article is about why tech companies are probably not going to disrupt infrastructure management directly. And how tech is going to indirectly impact the infrastructure management industry.

TL;DR -

1. Don’t expect google (et al) to be putting any asset management and engineering consultancies out of business any time soon.

2. Do expect the role of asset management and engineering consultancies to change.

Firstly, let’s define what a tech company actually is

A ‘tech company’ (to me at least) is a company that uses technology to disrupt an existing market, with products that, once built, have a very low additional cost for each additional paying customer. This is often called a “zero marginal cost” model.

Tech companies are often funded by venture capitalists, betting that their upfront investment will deliver zero margin, and therefor practically unlimited, returns.

Herein lies the first massive difference between the tech world and the infrastructure world:

In infrastructure, initial investment is defined by the construction (once a bridge is built it is built). Returns are limited by the physical infrastructure (a train can only fit so many passengers).

In tech, initial investment is undefined. Lean software development has led to a world where it’s basically impossible to say a product is “finished”. But, importantly, returns are unlimited.

To take google search as an example, the costs associated with an additional user searching on google are thousandths of a cent (we can consider close to zero) - whereas the commission revenue from each user searching is measured in dollars per day. Given the capture of search by google, returns are limited only by how many billion people are using the internet, and how much of the rest of the economy is online. However you cut it, the initial investors in google have made monumental returns.

So, tech favours agile rapid development to quickly iterate between solutions, with massive rewards for finding zero-margin products and services.

In tech there are few prizes for perfecting a product before you’ve proven it has a market. Competition is fierce so it’s all about racing through iterations until you find those zero-margin returns.

As Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg put it:

“Move fast and break things”

Which, is about as far as you can get from infrastructure management, where the equivalent expression would probably be:

“Move at a reasonable pace and absolutely do not break anything, ever”

If a web search calculation is wrong, you might have an inconvenient couple of hours of inefficient searching. “Why can’t I find the website I’m looking for?”

If a train signalling calculation is wrong you might end up with a massive train crash, with loss of life, massive costs, and potentially jail time for company directors.

So, the typical use of technology in infrastructure management has high consequences and constrained returns. Or in other words, exactly the wrong model to interest tech companies (or tech investors).

So, how might tech influence infrastructure management?

To answer this, let’s look at the fundamental paradigm shifts in technology over the last 50 years:

Big shift 1) moving from mainframes to personal computers.

Big shift 2) moving from desktop applications (on personal computers) to the internet, with virtual servers running almost unlimited computational power on demand.

Big shift 3) moving from the internet accessed on desktop computers to laptops, then to PDAs then to mobile phones (and fridges and home sound systems). Ubiquitous internet!

And if we overlay how this has impacted infrastructure management:

Big shift 1) moving from huge teams of engineers and technicians transforming calculations or records to feed into mainframes, to small teams or individuals using personal computers in an office.

Big shift 2) moving from desktop applications with engineers feeding data into personal computers and worrying about storing and using data locally, to feeding internet connected systems with virtual servers making information shareable and retrievable around the world.

Also within shift 2 - the scope and scale of Calculations has become virtually unlimited accessing almost unlimited computational power on demand.

Big shift 3) moving from manual data entry based on desktop computers to the “Internet of Things” and/or “Smart Infrastructure” where humans provide assurance that the assets are monitoring themselves correctly.

We, in the infrastructure management community, are currently living in shift 3, while the tech companies are busy working on the next shift. (how about ubiquitous internet implanted directly into your brain?)

So if tech companies aren’t going to directly enter the infrastructure advisory business...

...then where next for tech in infrastructure management?

Well, as a general observation big shifts don’t happen suddenly, we just suddenly realise the shift has happened. While tech PR would have you believe that their next product is going to change everything, actually it is adoption that changes things.

I’m reminded of a joke I first heard at a seminar by Dr Hillson:

3 frogs are sat on a log.

1 of the Frogs decides to jump off the log.

How many frogs are on the log?

3 frogs are sat on the log.

Saying something is not the same as doing something.

Point being, In these predictions I’ve tried to ignore product hype and focus instead on what’s being adopted in the real world.

Prediction 1

And so, my first prediction would be that we remain on a steady trajectory- that is, there won’t be a revolutionary change but a continuing evolution.

Ubiquitous internet, and the expected deployment of 5G, will lead to more “smart infrastructure” and remote monitoring of assets.

The cost of remote monitoring is likely to continue to drop, widening the portfolio of assets for which there is a business case for connecting to the internet.

The increased bandwidth offered by 5G will allow for more data to be collected and transmitted.

Highly criticality assets will be able to provide real time condition monitoring and real time capacity utilisation monitoring.

If you want to label it, we could call this the digitisation of reliability centred maintenance.

Prediction 2

Automation and Machine Learning will continue to increase the general efficiency of people who work in infrastructure management.

The define what I mean by automation and machine learning- it’s simply training a computer how to recognise certain inputs and provide a prescribed output.

In basic systems engineering we often breaks things down into an INPUT, PROCESS, OUTPUT model.

Well automation and machine learning is just where we’ve massively increased the input data, and used some more complex maths in the process, so that we get better and more reliable outputs.

Take for example a thermostat. Traditional thermostat took inputs of target temperature and current temperature. If it’s too hot, the output is to turn off the heating. If it’s too cold, the output is to turn on the heating.

Well, a “smart” thermostat (like nest, although other products are available) might use much more input data, like what temperature do you want the room when occupied, or when empty. Add some sensors so it knows when the room is occupied and it will vary the temperature accordingly. Add a time series and it can start to predict what temperature the room should be based on when it thinks the room is likely to be occupied and when the room is likely to become empty.

In this way a “smart” thermostat can reduce energy use as the heating is only switched on when it’s needed. And the possibilities go on- is it really hot? Probably a fire. Is it really cold? Probably a Window open. Is the room occupied at a weird time? Maybe let the owner know in case its someone who shouldn’t be in that room. And so on.

The point is- In the same way that we now have shared digital calendars as standard for pretty much every aspect of every job, we’ll start to see automation and machine learning tools permeate into the workplace as well.

Let’s call this a machine shift.

Prediction 3

So combining prediction 1 (digitisation of reliability centred maintenance) with prediction 2 (machine shift) we get to prediction 3: that effort in infrastructure management will change most dramatically in two main areas, assurance and innovation.

Staff who currently inspect infrastructure directly will, over time, instead be providing assurance that the “smart infrastructure” is functioning correctly. Inspection staff will also provide a ‘validation’ that the condition reported by system is the same as the condition in real life.

And similarly, staff who renew or build infrastructure (in both design and delivery) will over time be more preoccupied with working out how to deploy smarter infrastructure.

An impact of this will likely be fewer inspections (with an associated drop in workplace injuries). From looking at the impact of reliability centred maintenance generally, we would also expect to see improved performance and reduced uncertainty.

We will also likely see greater infrastructure complexity. This may in turn impact upfront cost as well as increase project risk – given that more complex projects have more opportunity for error.

What have I missed?

I’ve limited this article to 3 predictions, and I know I’ve missed a lot. Big things I’ve missed are:

Green Shift - the impact of the drive for environmental sustainability. Probably a continued reduction of energy and material use, as well as a switch from carbon to green forms of energy.

Working Practices - social trends for flexible working and reduced working hours. We once thought that when the robots did all the work, the humans could live in a form of utopia. Well the robots are owned by some of the people and those people don’t seem to be that keen on distributing the wealth those robots are generating…

What else have I missed?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on all of this. Please do leave a comment below, or message me directly.

P.S.

If you enjoyed this article, the best compliment you could give me would be to share it with someone else who might like it.

If you look after physical assets, I would love to help your organisation get the best from tech. Please do get in touch!

We need to talk about asset management

Any organisation that is responsible for physical assets would benefit from a joined-up approach to the overall system by which those assets are looked after.

As previously discussed there is a distinction between managing assets (the things you do to assets) and asset management (the overall system by which an organisation achieves its strategic objectives through it’s assets).

Yet in too many minds- asset management is only the concern of engineers and maintenance staff.

If we want to improve this, we need to find ways to teach people who don’t ‘manage assets’ about asset management, why asset management is important, and how they’re connected to asset management.

This article lists out a coupe of tips for having conversations about asset management. It’s not in any way exhaustive, so please do comment with your own suggestions below.

1. Start with a Smile

Everybody is human, so connecting on a human level is going to be a good place to start. If you want to land any message, you want the other party to want to listen.

If you’re negative people will switch off and disconnect.

If you’re positive, sincere and passionate, people will be much more ready to listen to what you have to say.

2. Be respectful of the other person - are they available?

Building on the first point, if you want someone to listen, they need to be available to hear you.

Imagine the situation: you’re in a lift, on your own, waiting to go up to the office floor where you work. The Chief Financial Officer gets in. He knows everything there is to know about finance, but has never really connected with asset management. Sounds like this is time for your perfectly rehearsed “elevator pitch”.

But wait! Before launching into the benefits of asset management, you absolutely must check they are ready to listen. “How are you” goes a long way. For all you know they might have had the worst day imaginable. Likewise, they might have had the best day. And that should absolutely impact how you talk to them about asset management, if you should at all.

3. Avoid acronyms

What is the point of an acronym?

At their best they save you a few tenths of a second. And being charitable, if other people know the acronym, using them like a shared secret code can bring you together.

But that highlights when acronyms are at their worst. Acronyms are exclusive terms that hinder communication. They create a form of secret club for ‘people in the know’. Worse still, they make less confident people feel stupid for having to ask you what they mean.

Generally using acronyms is a way of demonstrating knowledge. A better way of demonstrating knowledge is talking in plain language and being understood.

The other reason why acronyms can be unhelpful is that they can lead to confusion.

I remember once talking to someone for at least an hour about “RCM”, before we realised, they were talking about “remote condition monitoring”, and I was talking about “reliability centred maintenance”.

We’re all human and it’s not the end of the world to use the occasional acronym. Generally though, acronyms aren’t going to help you spread asset management concepts to non-asset managers.

4. Don’t assume knowledge

Which neatly leads to the next point about assumed knowledge. It’s quite normal to use our own frame of reference and our own personal experiences, to construct explanations of concepts.

As with acronyms, if people don’t have your reference point, they might feel too embarrassed to ask, or just generally switch off from the conversation.

5. Talk about things that matter to both of you

So aside from things to avoid, what should you talk about? Ideally you want to find things that overlap between your interest and theirs.

In great organisations there will be overall strategic objectives that unite the whole organisation. If you’ve successfully developed Asset Management Objectives, that align to the overall organisations strategic objectives, then this can be a good place to find common ground.

6. Use practical examples

Quite often the things that matter to both of you will lead to a practical example to do with your work. Even if they don’t, you can usually find examples outside of work.

For example, I often talk about a garden fence when explaining the concept of whole life cost. I might pose the question “is it cheaper to paint the fence every year, or let it rot and rebuild it?”

Why all this is important

Ultimately, good asset management saves money, increases production and reduces risk. If we believe that asset management is good, we should want to share the knowledge and practices of asset management far and wide.

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If you enjoyed this article, the best compliment you could give me would be to share it with someone else who might like it.

And please do comment below with your tips for talking about asset management.

Please do get in touch if your organisation needs help with asset management training!

Labour spin on the NHS

I saw the above misinformation floating around on Facebook and felt compelled to respond…

What’s with that headline? I thought the Lib Dems were pro NHS?

Put simply: Labour spin doctors are trying to portray the Lib Dem’s as enablers of Tory privatisation of the NHS. This is Labour treating the NHS as a political football. And while the Labour position is clearly BS (as I’ll go on to explain below), in fairness to Labour, this is just politicians doing politics. The Lib Dems want to capitalise on their simple pro remain position vs Labour‘s unclear Brexit mess. 

And likewise Labour want to distract from their internal split over Brexit by focusing attention on a simple anti-privatisation of the NHS message. Even more so if they can attack the Lib Dems who are currently polling in second place (behind the conservatives and ahead of labour and the Brexit party. [2]

So what actually just happened?

Basically Labour want to repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012 which devolved funding from large centralised NHS Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities to more local Clinical Commissioning Groups (run by GPs).

The act in itself is not about “privatising the NHS” but about moving decision making around spending NHS money closer to the front line staff and their patients.

The act does not provide for any parts of the NHS to be sold off or privatised and actually preserves the commitment for NHS services to be free at the point of use.

Furthermore, the service tendering processes were made more rigorous in the new structure- making private sector involvement more transparent and more efficient [1].

It is really important to emphasise here- the Lib Dem position has been really clear for a very long time on this: the Lib Dems want to raise taxes to provide more money for the NHS, to expand mental health services, and are committed to ensuring the NHS remains free at the point of use.

So did the Lib Dem’s vote for this bill in 2012?

Yes - one of the core Lib Dem values is community. Lib Dems believe that Humans are better when they work together and that local people should have a say in things that effect them.

To repeat - the act is not about privatisation, but about localism.

The current Labour leadership’s default position is that of left wing socialism. They think that, as a rule, private enterprise is bad, people can’t be trusted, and more central government is good. To be reductionist: ‘the government should control every aspect of your life’.

To be fair to Labour, they believe that the act could make privatisation easier in future, so they want to repeal it. To be fair to reality- the Original Act has not ended a publicly funded and administered NHS.

So why don’t the Lib Dems want to repeal the act?

Aside from the ideological differences between Labour wanting a central government controlled NHS and the Lib Dems wanting locally controlled services, repealing the act would have required a massive reorganisation of the NHS. 

This would have resulted in a monumentally expensive exercise without a clear goal. The repeal proposal wouldn’t have given any direction or plan, and so the changes required would have had to be worked out and delivered by NHS managers who, to be honest, aren’t exactly sat around with nothing better to be doing.

But then, the repeal proposal wasn’t expected to pass, it was purely political for the purposes of trying to create negative PR for the Lib Dems, who are in the process of overtaking Labour to become the second most popular party in the UK (after the Conservatives) [2].

A much better proposal would have been to table a new bill to guarantee that NHS services will always remain free at the point of use. Within this, there would be room for a sensible conversation about the amount of privatisation that is acceptable [1]. Rather than point scoring, I’d much rather the parties were working together. Regretfully in the context of a Tory hard Brexit, a labour soft Brexit and Lib Dem remain, I can’t see much chance of the parties working together for a long long while. Sorry to end on a bummer!

Notes

[1] To be very clear- to remove all private business from the provision of healthcare in the UK we would need to have a global socialist revolution, where governments take over all the things, like; all manufacturing of pharmaceuticals; all production of non pharmaceutical medical products like bandages, bed sheets, cleaning products and prosthetics etc; all food production and nutritional supplement production for patients; all logistics and distribution for moving items around; providing the enormous upfront capital investment for drugs research, development, testing and approvals process etc etc. 

At some point the NHS has to interact with private businesses. Even if Labour had the mandate to nationalise all the things in the UK, the rest of the world would need to do the same. The question is not should private companies have anything to do with healthcare. The question is to what extent and within which regulatory framework should private companies interact with the NHS. 

The labour position is wilfully nieve and cynical to try to win votes by misrepresenting truth. The Lib Dem position is nuanced and complex making it difficult to explain to voters. Still, both positions are better than the Tory’s who are just straight up lying about the NHS (big red bus anyone?).

[2] lots of opinion and voting intention polls have shown the Lib Dems to have overtaken or come close to overtaking Labour. It’s been well known for decades that when voters pick policies they prefer, without knowing the party, the majority pick Lib Dem.

Quite literally the majority of the population would vote Lib Dem: https://youtu.be/d5455K_PzA8. 

Recent opinion poll article:

 https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/liberal-democrats/news/106641/lib-dems-leapfrog-labour-second-place-after

Parliamentary Arithmetic

This post goes into the numbers behind the current parliamentary arithmetic, and why Jeremy Corbyn is unable to lead a government of National Unity. (As of the 8th of October 2019).

Context

Parliament, and the majority of the population, are opposed to a no deal Brexit. 

Boris Johnson, our current Prime Minister, unelected and with no popular mandate, has stated repeatedly that he will crash the UK out of the European Union with no deal if the EU doesn’t accept his terms for the UK leaving the European Union.

Many people have found it strange then, that Parliament, the elected representatives of the people, has yet to organise itself to throw out Boris Johnson as prime minister, in order to request a negotiating extension such that a general election can be held.

While a general election might hit produce a majority for any specific option, it will at least produce a prime minister with a legitimate mandate to negotiate with the EU.

Government Of National Unity

The idea of a Government of National Unity is that Parliament agrees to vote out the current prime minister, install a temporary leader and dissolve itself in order to hold new elections. In this instance, the Government of National Unity would also need to negotiate a Brexit extension with the European Union so that there is enough time to hold fresh elections without the UK crashing out of the European Union.

The biggest stumbling block to this action, is finding agreement from enough Members of Parliament to support the vote of no confidence in the existing government and Prime Minister.

Taken individually, there is a majority in Parliament against no deal. But as a group, things are not so clear.

Main problem being that Labour are currently insisting that Jeremy Corbyn should be the temporary Prime Minister to take over from Boris Johnson. Conservative MPs would be needed to support the Government of National Unity, and the Conservatives don’t trust, and won’t vote for, Jeremy Corbyn.

Hence it comes down to Parliamentary arithmetic - how many MPs are in each group?

I’m writing this post In response to the repeated false claims by labour that the Lib Dems are responsible for this mess. As you will see below, it is not the fault of the Lib Dem’s that the majority of MPs won’t support Jeremy Corbyn.

The Parliamentary Arithmetic

So- we’re trying to find a majority of MPs to support a Government of National Unity (GNU).

The Liberal Democrats:

Led by Jo Swinson, have stated that they will support a Government of National Unity, but won’t support Jeremy Corbyn unless it’s clear that he could win a majority in the house. The Lib Dems currently favour a neutral MP stepping forward to act as temporary prime minister who would be able to lead a Government of National Unity. Lib Dems = 19 votes.

Those who will vote against a Jeremy Corbyn Government of National Unity:

It’s likely that the current Conservative party will vote against a GNU without exception = 287 votes

The DUP have indicated that they will vote against a GNU = 10 votes.

Led by Anna Soubry, including Chris Leslie and Mike Gapes, The Independent Group for Change have been very clear that Jeremy Corbyn is unacceptable to them = 5 votes.

2 independent MPs, John Woodcock and Gavin Shucker, both are ex labour and both hugely strong critics of Jeremy Corbyn = 2 votes.

Charlie Elphicke, conservative MP for Dover (currently a suspended over sexual assault allegations but in practice follows the tory whip) = 1 vote.

Frank Field, quit the labour party over anti-semitism claims also has voted with the government on brexit = 1 vote.

Ivan Lewis, suspended from the labour party over sexual harrasment allegations but since quit over antisemitism claims and issues about Jeremy Corybn = 1 vote.

Ian Austin, quit the Labour party over Jeremy Corbyn and anti semitism. Used his speech in the emergency debate to criticise Jeremy Corbyn = 1 vote.

Sylvia Hermon, Independent in Northern Ireland, has been consistently clear she will “never vote for a government lead by Jeremy Corbyn” = 1 vote.

Kate Hoey and John Mann from the labour party who have consistently supported a hard Brexit and would very likely vote against = 2 votes.

Stephen Lloyd, ex lib dem MP who quit the party to vote for brexit = 1 vote.

Total = 312 against.

MPs who will abstain:

Sinn Fein who abstain from Parliament = 7 abstentions.

1 Speaker and 3 deputy speakers don’t vote (usually) = 4 abstentions.

Jared O'Mare, labour MP suspended over sexual harassment allegations and hasn't voted in parliament for nearly a year = 1 abstention.

Mike Hill, ex labour MP suspended over sexual harassment allegations, represents a strong leave constituency but has been highly critical of Jeremy Corbyn = 1 abstention.

The 23 tory ‘rebels’ who have mostly had the whip removed for voting to block no deal (or subsequently left due to falling out with Boris, like Anne Milton). May vote with the conservatives against, but certainly wouldn’t vote for Jeremy Corbyn = 23 abstentions.

Kelvin Hopkins, ex labour MP suspended over sexual harassment allegations, strongly pro brexit but strongly pro Jeremy Corbyn = 1 abstention.

Total = 37 abstentions

Those who will vote for a Jeremy Corbyn Government of National Unity:

Labour MPs, minus those mentioned above and ignoring any Brexit driven defections = 242 votes

The SNP have stated that they will vote in favour = 35 votes

Plaid Cymrae have stated that they will vote in favour = 4 votes

Green Party have stated that they will vote in favour = 1 vote

Chris Williamson, independent supporter of Jeremy Corbyn and against no deal = 1 vote.

Total = 283

Totals

A vote for a Jeremy Corbyn Government of National Unity currently loses by 28 votes.

With support from the Lib Dems this would still lose by 9 votes.

it is clear that, for a Government of National Unity to form and successfully form prevent a no deal Brexit, a neutral MP will need to step forward to be a caretaker Prime Minister.

Asset Management is more than managing assets

TL;DR

Thinking about asset management as just maintenance of assets misses potential value. Just as all senior leaders should have a basic understanding of the legal, financial, and commercial aspects of their business, any senior leader of a physical asset owning business should have at least a basic understanding of asset management.

What is asset management?

Asset Management, is about having a structured, methodological approach to the ownership of physical assets. The overall methodology is what we call the asset management system. A document that sets out the asset management system is known as the asset management system framework.

Science is the application of logic to life. Engineering is the practical application of science to solving problems in society. Asset Management is an engineering discipline, focused on the application of logic to the ownership of physical assets. 

A scientist might ask “what are the different solutions that exist for this problem?”. An engineer might ask “how can I solve this problem?”. An asset manager would ask “which problems do I need to solve and by when?”.

Managing assets is about the day to day work to maintain functional outputs. Asset management is not just about managing physical assets. This is certainly one part of asset management, generally delivered by engineers and maintainers. But there are other parts as well.

We’re all asset managers

Asset management should include the whole of a business which owns physical assets. Beyond the engineers maintaining assets, Finance teams should be asking “what are the costs and returns of our physical assets?”. Commercial teams should be asking “how do our physical assets generate or cost us value?”. Legal teams should be asking “what are the risks (both threats and opportunities) associated with our physical assets?”

It’s often, especially in large businesses, valuable to have a specialist asset management function. But it is vital for that function to work across the full breadth of the business. While it is the responsibility of the asset managers to speak in a way which can be understood by the rest of the business, it’s also the responsibility of the rest of the business to work with the asset management function to deliver the overall business objectives.

Asset management is about deploying an approach that maximises the value of the physical assets while minimising the whole life cost.

Maximise asset value...

Value generally refers to the good things we get from the assets. We typically try to define functional outputs of asset groups and systems, aligned to the delivery of a businesses overall strategic objectives. 

...Minimise asset cost

Costs are generally things we want to minimise or avoid. Costs can be monetary as in day to day operational expenditure, like maintaining assets. Costs can also be longer term capital expenditure like building new, or replacing existing, assets. 

Costs can be negative risks, environmental damages, injury to staff or the public, loss of future revenue or regulatory fines or penalties. 

Whole life costs are simply these costs extended over the entire life of the assets - all the way from design, delivery, utilisation, replacement and eventually demolition or decommissioning. Worrying about the cost of today is valuable. It is more valuable to worry about the future cost, and especially what this might mean for future shareholder returns.

Why all this is important 

An asset management system is only as good as the people using it. A well structured asset management system framework, with active participation from across a business can add tremendous value.

All professionals can benefit from a well structured asset management approach. It is easier to run the accounts when you have a clear list of assets. It is easier to procure insurance if you know what risks you have.

Fundamentally, adoption of asset management techniques across a whole business will make it easier to deliver the organisations strategic objectives. Specifically those related to the production or output required from the physical infrastructure. 

Ensuring that commercial and customer facing teams are engaged in the asset management system will ensure alignment of output to customer requirements. And giving the customer what they want is good! 

Last (but by no means least) senior executives following a structured asset management approach are more likely to exploit opportunities and mitigate threats.

September 2019 Update

This post was originally published on the 4th July 2019.

Since then I’ve had a fantastic discussion with David McKeown, one of the leading thinkers in Asset Management and Board Member of The Institute of Asset Management. David alerted me to an ISO Technical Committee article that he, Terrence O'Hanlon, and Thomas Smith published on this subject, back in May 2017.

The full article is well worth a read and is freely available on the ISO website: Managing Assets in the context of Asset Management.

How long will it take to end Brexit?

On the 23rd of June 2016, the “United Kingdom European Union membership referendum” took place to ask the electorate if the country should remain a member of, or leave the European Union.

Well, it’s over 3 years later and we still haven’t left.

However you voted in the Referendum, it’s likely that you’re sick of Brexit. You want an end to this nonsense, and so do I.

I’m sure, like me, you’d rather we were focused on using the might of UK engineering excellence to tackle the climate emergency (among other things).

So how do we make it stop?

I’ve created a diagram that explores the consequences of the 3 main options at this point looking at how long will it will take to return to some kind of normality.

References:

[1] https://fullfact.org/europe/brexit-timeline/

[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/07/how-long-do-trade-deals-take-after-brexit/

[3] https://fullfact.org/europe/how-many-free-trade-deals-has-eu-done/

Download:

This diagram is also available as a PDF - feel free to download and share!

Why do asset managers care so much about “line of sight”?

“Line of Sight” is all about how an organisation is organised around its core reason for being, and how this is visible to all the people engaged with that organisation’s delivery.

As a rule, organisations should have a point. The point of a railway is to move things from one place to another place. The point of a power station is to produce power. And so on.

Another way of describing the point of an organisation, is the organisations ‘unified purpose’: The thing that everyone in that organisation is there to do.

There is a very famous story about President John F. Kennedy visiting NASA during the space-race. During his visit, Kennedy asked a janitor what he was doing. The janitor responded:

“Mr. President, I'm helping put a man on the moon.”

“Line of sight” is about making the unified purpose of the organisation obvious to everyone who needs to deliver that purpose. That includes the President and that includes the Janitors.

Where does “line of sight” come from?

Honest answer – I’m not really sure where the expression comes from (if you know please do comment below or get in touch!).

However, the concept is well defined within the ISO 9000 family of standards about quality management systems first published in 1987 and last updated in 2015.

Essentially, these standards say that the point of an organisation should be written down, so that people know what the point is. It also advises that you might need to be more specific about the point of the organisation for specific people.

So why are asset managers so excited about “Line of sight?”

As I mentioned in a post last week:

Engineering is about using logic to solve problems. Asset management is about applying engineering logic specifically to the ownership of physical assets.

This doesn’t explain why we care about solving problems, which is where Line of sight comes in. Asset managers want to solve problems so that the unified purpose of the organisation is delivered.

Brilliant asset management presents a clear line of sight. Where the purpose of the physical assets is understood by everyone delivering that purpose. From senior management, to accountants, to maintainers, to operators.

While it very much depends on the specific organisation, the documents typically considered to define the asset management line of sight are set out in the following table:

View fullsize

Simplified Asset Management Line of Sight, © 2019 Joe Inniss Consulting Ltd.

While this is a simplified diagram, it is worth making some notes:

The asset management objectives should be mutually exclusive. That is to say, they should not all be achievable at the same time. Consider a rail passenger going from one place to another place, by train. The perfect journey is instantaneous, free and has zero safety risk. In reality, there will be some compromise between journey time, safety, and cost.

The asset management strategy might also be called a strategic asset management plan. Without being too niche, it’s not always got the same name, but an organisation should have a strategy for asset management.

Would you like to know more?

How this aspect of ISO 9001 is applied in asset management, is described in detail in the Institute of Asset Management Subject Specific Guideline 1, 2 & 5 - Asset Management Policy, Strategy and Plans as well as Asset Management – an anatomy.

ISO 9001 can be purchased directly from ISO.

The BSI have significant experience in both the quality management standards (ISO 9001).

P.S.

For help defining or improving your asset management line of sight, please do get in touch, or find out about how I can help you!

The documents that are professionalising asset management

Asset management is one of the fastest growing engineering disciplines. Engineering is about using logic to solve problems. Asset management is about applying engineering logic specifically to the ownership of physical assets. By agreeing how to apply this logic and codifying this agreement, we can go about experimenting and iterating with our approach to asset management. And so, in this codified way of doing things and continuous improvement, we make asset management a profession.

And make no mistake – asset management is big business. Physical assets are the foundation of every economy on the planet. Even modest asset owning companies are worth more than small countries. And large organisations can be worth hundreds of billions. Take 3 examples: ExxonMobil holds over $250 billion of physical assets, EDF $170 billion and Highways England $185 billion.

Subject Specific Guidelines

At the cutting edge of professionalisation of asset management are “Subject Specific Guidelines”. These are a series of publications designed to expand and enrich asset management knowledge building on the 39 Subjects in “Asset Management - an anatomy” .

In 2016, the Institute of Asset Management launched the first 4 Subject Specific Guidelines covering 9 of the 39 subjects. Since then a further 5 subjects have been covered, leaving 25 subjects remaining.

So, when and how are the subject specific guidelines being completed?

When? As soon as possible. Many of them are in progress and it is hoped that they will all be completed within the next few years.

How? Through working groups comprised of volunteers like me. I’m currently leading the development of Subject Specific Guideline 34: Management of Change. We have a fantastic team with experts in the planning and delivery of changes in organisations, operations, projects and of course, the physical assets themselves. Between us we have over 80 years professional experience. All the authors of all the subject specific guidelines are volunteers from the asset management community. We aren’t paid for this work.

Why Volunteer?

Which raises an obvious follow up question, why volunteer? There are lots of reasons why people volunteer to write subject specific guidelines, but here are the 3 main reasons for me:

1. Let’s be honest – a huge motivator is for recognition and publicity. As a freelance consultant, it’s a pretty helpful way to get noticed by potential clients.

2. Let’s be even more honest – I’m a massive geek and I genuinely love asset management. Not only does this work help professionalise our industry, it helps my knowledge stay current. To write one SGG, you need to have a handle of all the other SSG’s plus other documents like the anatomy.

3. Lastly, but not leastly, being part of the team has been a lovely way to network and meet like minded individuals.

If you’re interested in volunteering, or want to know more about the SSG’s, why not get in touch with The Institute of Asset Management today?

P.S.

For help improving your asset management tools and processes, please do get in touch, or find out about how I can help you!

Book Review of “HIRED six months undercover in low-wage Britain” by James Bloodworth

Main take away: it’s grim working low-wage jobs.

I would argue that, objectively speaking, average living standards overall have continued to improve. Yet, this book is a helpful reminder that real people don’t live in averages. To the individual, improvements to healthcare are irrelevant if you’re physically healthy but working 80 hours a week to meet basic needs like food, water, a place to sleep.

I’ve always agreed with the statement that “money can’t make you happy, but poverty can make you sad”. From this book it would be fair to add, “a good work environment can’t make you happy, but a bad work environment can make you sad”.

One of the striking themes of all of the jobs explored is that seemingly simple, and inexpensive changes would make working environments much better. This book explores the cutting edge, where corporate process and the bottom line run up against basic human needs.

Overall, the author seems understandably bitter and I don’t really agree with his politics. But this book is well worth a read. If you’re in the target audience (observer reading middle class) this book will help you get some understanding of what it’s like for the less fortunate in the UK.

Hired by James Bloodworth was Published by Atlantic Books on the 7 February 2019, ISBN: 9781786490162 This book was recommended to me by my good friend David Weston.

Boris, Brexit, and the Lib Dem surge

TL;DR

Boris will win the Conservative party leadership election becoming the next prime minister, Britain will crash out of the European Union, the Liberal Democrats will win the next general election.

Trajectory Boris

The Conservative party is the party of the privileged: it is 97% white, 71% male, and dominated by the wealthy.

These Conservative party members think of Boris Johnson like a plucky, amusing uncle. They think he’s a bit of a fool, mostly harmless and most importantly definitively British. They will inevitably vote for Boris to be the next Prime Minister.

Boris will, with the verbosity of Russel Brand and the tactfulness of Trump, fail to make any progress negotiating with the other members of the European Union.

At this point, Boris will either 1) deliberately crash Britain out of the European Union on October 31st with no deal or 2) default blunder towards a Theresa Trap of perpetual negotiation.

To be clear- towards perpetual negotiation doesn’t mean that the deadlines will actually be kicked down the road. While Boris and fans enjoy evoking images of a spam-from-a-can eating blitz defying Britain, no one actually wants to eat spam. And the European Union, viewing Boris as a posh shabby Trump, are feeling as defiant of Britain as they are the USA, and are tired of distractions from their own internal politics.

Either way, Boris leads us in the same direction. Britain is likely to plunge off a no deal Brexit cliff. The 85% of Conservative party members who now support a no deal Brexit will be pleased. The Etonian old boys will make a killing, having bet against the pound.

And as we fall off this cliff, most of us will look up to see crony-capitalist vultures paragliding into the sunset. International firms (stuffed with “patriotic” Brexit supporting Brits) will move in to buy out British industry on the cheap. A great ‘offshoring’ of wealth and assets into international tax havens. And as we fall, some of us will be momentarily distracted by one of Boris’s attention seeking stunts - like getting stuck in a zip line. It will be hilarious- good old uncle Boris.

It’s not all doom and gloom

Roughly 25% of British people favour a no deal Brexit. Many of those people are also disillusioned with politics, preferring antiestablishment, man-of-the-people ex-investment bankers (like Nigel Farage). Even with disproportionate constituency boundaries (favouring the conservatives in the countryside) 25% of the electorate does not make a government.

The majority of British businesses are small and medium enterprises. These small employers also employ the majority of people. These should be natural Conservative supporters - self made entrepreneurs who like their markets to be free and fair.

And so when the Conservatives so blatantly betray the interests of these businesses, whilst the Brexit party draws populists from the right, Conservative support will simply melt away.

Our antiquated first past the post, winner takes all, electoral system favours broad church party’s with breadth of appeal. With the Conservatives pandering to a smaller and smaller base of supporters, moderate voters will look for a new home.

This is in the context of a Labour Party that has gone full left wing mob-mentum. While Conservatives talk of lowering taxes for rich baby boomers is unpopular- Labour’s talk of tax hikes and re-nationalisation is about as popular as magic grandpa’s Lenin hat.

Time is ripe for a moderate, sensible party. A party for the many AND the few.

A party of liberals who are socially democratic. A party of Pro Europeans, economic liberals, those who want capitalism with a heart, a party that takes the environment seriously and values humanities future.

I am of course talking about the Liberal Democrats.

And things are looking up. The Lib Dem’s are well organised and practiced in campaigning with a huge number of supporters.

People are quite rightly tired of having to vote against one party to keep out the other. More and more people are voting for what they believe in. Voting for Liberty, Equality and Community.

It’s looking more and more likely that the hard work and positive campaigning of the Lib Dem’s is paying off.

So while it is extremely likely that we’re about to plunge off a Brexit cliff - we might just be able to reach out and grab a tree branch on the way down.

The great thing about living in a democracy is that people are free to change their minds. And the thing is in life, is that everything seems certain until it isn’t.

Before the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union it seemed a certainty that Britain would remain a liberal socially democratic nation with a leading role in the European Union. That was certain until it wasn’t.

And the UKs departure, international isolation and harsh split with its closest trading partners will be inevitable, until it isn’t.

How the European Union Works (by Kurzgesagt)

The Kurzgesagt team have put together a video explaining the European Union, how democratic it is and how this compares to the democracy of a nation state.  

Long story short, the EU is democratic, with power balanced between the democratically elected European Parliament, and the governments of each of the European member states.

The full video is well worth a watch: