Author: The Information Badger

The delivery of letters…a pre-Christmas musing

Posted on by The Information Badger in Delivery, Digital Transformation, Life, Public Institutions, Tech for social good

You never know what will catch your eye or pique your interest when you browse in a charity shop. Two weeks ago, the Badger sheltered from a downpour in one, and the ‘The Post Office went to war’, a 94-page pamphlet published by His Majesty’s (George VI) Stationery Office in 1946, caught his eye. In good condition for its age, it describes how the GPO – the public service providing the UK’s letter, parcel, telegraphy, and phone services during World War II and until the late 1960s – actually worked during wartime. The Badger was drawn to it because, after service in the British Army, a close relative became a GPO postman and delivered letters and parcels to their local community from the late 1940s until the late 1960s. They enjoyed the work, the camaraderie, and interacting with customers while out delivering the mail. They took great pride in wearing their GPO uniform, and in delivering the mail reliably.

The Badger bought the item for 50p and subsequently read it from cover to cover. It was a revelation. Did you know, for example, that during World War II the GPO managed to deliver letters and parcels posted in the UK to recipients in the British Isles in two days, even when sorting offices and infrastructure had been bombed, and even when the location of recipients was transient due to the war effort and housing damage? That’s an achievement, especially when the technology for the handling, distribution, and delivery of the mail at the time bears no comparison with that of today. A little research via the postalmuseum.org reveals that the cost of a stamp as a proportion of the weekly average wage is almost the same today as it was in those times. It also reveals that the number of people actually delivering letters and parcels as a public service is much the same today as it was then. Has today’s modern technology significantly improved the time it takes for a letter to land on your doormat? Hmm, probably not.

A friend living in Northern England phoned last week. They mentioned that they’d posted a Christmas card first-class to the Badger. Our postman delivered the card this morning, a week after it was posted. Draw your own conclusions, especially as the postal public service ecosystem today is markedly different to that when the GPO existed, but surely something’s amiss when today’s tech-rich society cannot match or better the letter delivery of a bygone era with about the same number of employees and stamp price?

Christmas is now just a few days away. Have a happy Christmas however you celebrate the occasion, but please remember that family and friends, especially those who may be vulnerable, should always take priority in your thoughts…not Christmas cards that haven’t arrived due to postal delays!

To stay on X, or not to stay on X…that is the question

Posted on by The Information Badger in Psychology, Railways, social media, Technology

It’s rare these days for the Badger to travel by train, but recently he journeyed on one into London. Unexpectedly, the journey helped him make a decision, one that he’s been cogitating on more than six months! That decision, in case you’re wondering, doesn’t relate to this form of public transport, the specific journey, the extortionate cost of the ticket, or the quality or reliability of the rail service. It related to whether the Badger continues to have a presence on X, formerly Twitter, or not.

In contrast to when the Badger was a regular commuter into London, a third of the seats in the carriage were empty throughout the journey and no one stood in the aisles or doorways. As the train moved smoothly between stations, the Badger was reminded of how easy it is to overhear the conversations of strangers, and how doing so can influence your own thoughts. The Badger wasn’t thinking about X at all on boarding the train, but by the time he disembarked he’d made a firm decision about retaining a presence on X or not. The train journey had unexpectedly facilitated the taking of the decision, but it was observing and listening to a group of three strangers, two men and a woman in their mid-to-late twenties, which spawned the thoughts that tipped the outcome in one direction.

The group stared at their smartphones throughout the whole journey, and when they conversed with each other they never diverted their attention from their devices. There was no eye contact in their conversations, and their verbal exchanges revolved around reading something on X, drawing each other’s attention to what they’d read,  tweeting something critical or provocative in response, and then complaining if someone in the virtual world countered with something they disagreed with. The group were clearly avid X users and seemed like anonymous keyboard warriors rather than thoughtful and objective contributors. The Badger felt that they were really always talking to their devices rather than verbally conversing with each other, and what he observed and overheard surfaced the question that he’d been cogitating on for months, namely ‘Should the Badger retain a presence on X or not?’  The answer he came to is ‘Not’.

A few days later, the Badger withdrew his presence on X. It’s no loss. Life goes on happily without it and the Badger doesn’t feel he’s missing anything. The observation of strangers on the train journey gave the Badger the nudge that he needed. Major brands have since been pausing their advertising on X and the future of the platform looks questionable. Mr Musk and an army of anonymous X keyboard warriors will disagree, but what’s X’s unique selling point for the individual in these days of rampant misinformation, disinformation, scams and abuse? Perhaps the Badger should take the train more often…

Dr Who and the batteries…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Automation, Batteries, Electric cars, Information Technology, Life, Science & Engineering, Smart & New Technology, Technology

The first episode of Dr Who aired on television on the 23rd November 1963. The series became part of the Badger’s childhood routine, although it almost didn’t! It aired on Saturday evenings, and initially the Badger’s parents didn’t think it suitable for their children to watch on the family’s black and white television. They capitulated following tantrums by the Badger and his siblings, however, on the understanding that if  we had nightmares then the programme would be excluded from Saturday night viewing. We never had nightmares, but we often cowered behind the sofa when our parents were out of the room and an episode included the Daleks or Cybermen.

As an undergraduate at university years later, watching Dr Who with friends on a communal television in the Students Union was a weekly ritual, one which always led to discussions about the episode’s ‘whimsical science’ in the bar afterwards. One friend, a chemistry student who became an electrochemical research scientist in the battery industry, always asserted that the gadgets in Dr Who, the Daleks, and the Cybermen had one thing in common – a fundamental reliance on batteries! Dr Who’s still on television today and the Badger’s still in contact with his friend. In fact, we chatted recently after the Dr Who 60th anniversary special episodes. His friend asserted the same point about batteries that they’d made all those years ago, and they added that any of Dr Who’s gadgets, cyborgs, or robots that were more than two years old needed charging multiple times a day! Since the Badger’s two-year old smartphone now needs more frequent charging than six months ago, we laughed and agreed that smartphones proved their point!

The physics, materials, chemistry and design of modern batteries is complex. According to his friend, in the coming years we’ll see improvements in how fast batteries can charge and how many charging cycles they can withstand, but not a huge change in how long they can last between charges. If that’s the case then battery life, charging frequency, charging speed and depreciation will be key criteria when buying goods requiring batteries for years to come. Depreciation is an often forgotten but particularly sobering point because after 3 years an iPhone, an Android phone, and a battery electric vehicle will have lost ~50%,  ~75%, and 50% of their initial value, respectively.

Dr Who, of course, doesn’t worry about such things, but for those of us in the real-world batteries and the depreciation of the goods they power are key aspects of modern life and the cost of living. Dr Who is full of creative license and not practical matters like batteries and depreciation, and so it should be! It’s science fiction and highly imaginative escapist entertainment. It should trigger to interesting discussions about ‘whimsical science’ and batteries over a beer in a Student Union bar for years to come…

Are Management Consultants useful and good value?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Consulting, Delivery, Information Technology, Leadership & Management, Project Management

A recent item about Management Consultants made the Badger chuckle. It’s  worth a quick read to see if anything resonates and makes you chuckle too. The Badger giggled because the narrative struck a chord and made him remember one particular encounter with a ‘management consultant’ while he was leading the delivery of a very large, fixed-price, IT systems and service development contract for his company. This delivery was a key part of an overall public sector programme transforming the workings of an entire industry. Inevitably, this overall programme was mired in politics, resistance from some quarters of the industry, and commercial gamesmanship by some of the parties involved to ensure they avoided blame for any difficulties the overall programme might encounter.

In private, every party believed the overall programme would be delayed. Their public stance, however, was different because the commercial ramifications of being blamed for delay were punitive. Most expected the key, critical path, IT delivery from the Badger’s team to be late. His magnificent team, however, delivered a system of quality on time, and in doing so exposed unreadiness and delay in other key parts of the overall programme. The overall programme’s stakeholders appointed management consultants from a well-known company to review and advise on the situation, and the Badger, in due course, spent an afternoon being interviewed by one of them. He didn’t come away from the session with much respect for management consultants.

As soon as initial pleasantries were complete, the Badger wondered how the expensive, brash, sharply suited, intelligent but over-confident, youngster in front of him could be a ‘management consultant’ when they were just a few years out of university and simply executing a process with a long list of associated questions. They had no real business, project, programme, or leadership experience, but they had clearly read many books, and drafted many reports and PowerPoint presentations. There was no discussion, just questions with the Badger supplying increasingly curt answers. The interviewer’s brash confidence and superficial real experience was irritating, and their credibility as a consultant providing value dissipated with every question. Two weeks later, the programme’s stakeholders received the management consultants’ overall report and supporting presentation. Both were stylish and well-written, but contained little that stakeholders didn’t already know. It didn’t seem like value for money!

You might think from this that the Badger has a low opinion of management consultants? In fact, he has engaged with many over the years and developed great respect for those who have become management consultants after years of important roles in business, industry, or project delivery. They are useful and provide significant value. Those, however, who call themselves management consultants, have expensive fee rates, but do not have such underlying experience are not great value for money. You may, of course, feel differently…especially if you are a management consultant.

Electricity – Domestic self-sufficiency…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Energy and Energy Markets, Obsolescence, Risk, Smart Meters

When there’s international turmoil, it’s the average person and their families that are impacted the most. This hit home last week while chatting to the Badger’s aunt after the funeral of his uncle, Jim, her husband. ‘To save electricity, we haven’t watched much television in the last few years’, she said. ‘Jim has also told our electricity supplier,’ she continued, ‘that we’d only have a Smart Meter if they put the daily standing charge down to its 2017 level’. Jim, always a plain speaker, had little time for politicians and the energy industry, and he was perpetually exercised that the daily standing charge on his electricity bill had risen from 15p in 2017 to 48p today. He hated the standing charge. He believed it was a way his supplier penalised him for diligently reducing the amount of actual electricity he’d used over the years in order to keep within his pension budget.

Jim saw the daily electricity standing charge rise by 200% between 2017 and 2023. He was outraged that he must pay this even if he used no electricity. Explanations from politicians, regulators, and energy suppliers justifying rises were ignored because he didn’t trust them! In today’s world of instant information, disinformation, misinformation, and vested interests, perhaps that’s not a surprise, especially amongst the elderly, vulnerable, and those struggling to make ends meet. Jim didn’t want a Smart Meter because he already closely managed his electricity use. He didn’t see what benefit it provided and so he didn’t see why he should be paying through his bills for the rollout programme, especially when it provided little real benefit for consumers. (The rollout continues to struggle – see here and here – and further delay and cost look inevitable).

The Badger’s aunt asked if Jim was right not to have a Smart Meter. Before the Badger could reply, she answered her own question with ‘Yes’. She then asked, ‘Can I avoid the electricity standing charge by completely disconnecting from the grid?’ The Badger nodded. ‘When I was a girl,’ she continued, ’we used a wood-fired range for heating and cooking. The wood came from trees in the local area. It was stored until it was good to burn, and we used candles and paraffin lamps for light. I miss those days because things were simpler. We were self-sufficient and had no reliance on massive companies for our basic needs’.

Jim would’ve been very happy today if he didn’t have to pay £175/year in standing charges because all his domestic electricity was produced from renewable sources at his home. With international turmoil and volatility in energy supply a norm, the day that domestic consumers routinely vote with their feet and isolate from the electricity grid in favour of self-sufficiently is getting nearer. Jim, RIP, will be grinning at the thought…

Public inconvenience – A tale of a project gone wrong…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Leadership & Management, Project Management

In 2021, the Badger’s local Town Council proposed a project to build new public toilets at a leafy recreation and community space close to a busy shopping area. The proposed facilities would be modern, environment-friendly, free to use, and aesthetically pleasing to blend in with the area. The need was undeniable, there was community support, funds were sourced from budgets, and the council applied for planning permission from the Borough Council. This was granted in November 2022, and the Town Council gleefully announced that a contract had been awarded to complete the project in February 2023, in good time for the facilities to be used during local celebrations of King Charles’ Coronation in May 2023. What could possibly go wrong?

The contractor completed the foundations, but an inspection found they had been laid in completely the wrong place! They had to be dug up and re-laid in the correct place, which didn’t happen quickly. The Town Council blamed the delays in rectification on the contractor, who in turn blamed difficulties sourcing materials and labour for the work. Eventually the new foundations were ready, and the Town Council announced that the building itself (being prefabricated in a factory 100 miles away) would soon be assembled on site and still be operational in time for the Coronation celebrations. Guess what, the building’s arrival and assembly on site was delayed. The council, pithily noting that they were fed up with being frequently let down by the contractor, was forced to announce the facility would not be operational in time for the Coronation.

When the building eventually arrived in the summer, there was a public outcry because it was very different aesthetically to that originally proposed and expected. The assembled building sat fenced off in its untidy site plot for a long time with no work taking place. In September, under pressure from the community, the Town Council committed to publishing a weekly update on what was happening to get the facility operational. Only three updates were issued, the last of which mentioned that permissions to a) connect the building to public utilities and drains, and b) for the contractor to do the associated groundworks, were still awaited. Since early October there’s been no updates from the council, and no work undertaken on the site. The community has lost confidence that there is a deliverable plan to complete the project and get the facility operational. The Town Council’s credibility is in shreds, rumours abound about the contractor’s track record with other councils, and the local community – the end users – are complaining loudly about management failings and incompetence!

Why tell this tale? Because it highlights that it isn’t just big public sector projects that go wrong, that the root causes of problem projects are fundamentally the same regardless of scale, and that ultimately, it’s always the end users who suffer and are inconvenienced…

Leadership; never, never, never give up…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Information Technology, IT Project Management, Leadership & Management, Life, Psychology, Training

In May 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister to lead the nation through World War 2. As this old item on leadership highlights, he was a ‘chubby, stoop-shouldered, funny faced man…and political has-been’ whose career in politics had been patchy. Nevertheless, his leadership proved to be just what the nation needed. On this death, his state funeral on 30th January 1965 was watched on television by over 350 million people around the world.  Televisions and global communication at the time was, of course, rudimentary compared with the norm today. A very young Badger was among that TV audience, watching black and white pictures of the funeral with his parents on an old Bush television with thermionic valve circuitry in the corner of the sitting room.

Little was said, but at one point the Badger’s sombre father leant over from his armchair and said ‘Son, remember Mr Churchill’s words – never, never, never give up. They’ll  stand you in good stead through life’. Those words have never faded in the Badger’s memory, and they came to the fore again last weekend when a visiting cousin asked the following over a family meal – ‘Do you think your career as a leader was due to being born a leader, or due to the training you received?’  The Badger told his cousin, a talented artist, that it was both, and that although much is written about the attributes needed to be successful leaders (just Google the subject), there’s no simple answer to whether leaders are born or trained. Psychologists signal that leaders are born with some relevant attributes but always need training to develop others.

An entertaining discussion unfolded, and we chortled when the Badger’s wife noted that Winston Churchill was evidence that you can’t tell if someone is a leader from just the way they look! The Badger’s cousin was interested not only in the Badger’s view of key leadership attributes gleaned from his experience in the IT industry, but also whether they derived from inherent personality or training. The Badger quickly summarised his view of the most important leadership attributes as integrity, rationality, objectivity, an ability to remain positive with a ‘can do’ attitude in the toughest of circumstances, and a focus and determination to get things done in a way which energises others. The Badger added that he felt these attributes come from personality and normally come to the fore from being exposed to new or challenging experiences in life and at work. If you are never exposed to new things, then you’ll never know if you can be a leader! Training alone never makes a successful leader.

Remembrance Day is a few days away. Churchill’s leadership is an apt reminder that you can be a leader and handle any difficult situation if you have an inherent personality and mindset which has ‘never, never, never give up’ at its heart.

AI, spooks, and red poppies…

Posted on by The Information Badger in AI & Robotics, Ethics & Regulation, Information Technology, Life, Online Safety, Public safety, Risk, Security, Technology

The UK weather at this time of year is often variable, and this year is no exception. Rain last night decimated Halloween’s ‘trick-or-treating’ and sightings of ghostly spirits, at least in the Badger’s locality. However, those at this week’s global AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park will no doubt have some fun ‘spotting the spook’ because there’ll inevitably be ‘spooks’ from shadowy organisations in their midst! The summit brings together governments, leading AI companies, and many others to consider the risks associated with rapidly advancing AI technologies, and how these can be mitigated via international coordination and regulation.

Given that it’s barely a year since ChatGPT was launched, the fact that this summit is taking place is encouraging. But will something tangible emerge from it? The Badger’s quietly hopeful, even though governments and regulators have historically been glacial and have only acted once a technology is already well-established. The UK government, for example, has taken almost 20 years to establish an online safety law to limit the harms caused by social media. AI pioneers have themselves voiced concern about the threats, and it will be a catastrophe if it takes another 20 years to limit the potential harms from this field of  technology!

With Halloween a damp squib, the Badger’s thoughts about the AI Safety Summit roamed fancifully influenced by November’s Guy Fawkes Night and Remembrance Sunday which are just days away. ‘Spooks’ from the shadowy organisations providing intelligence to governments will certainly push for more sophisticated AI capabilities in their operational kitbag to ensure, for example, that the chance of a repeat of Guy Fawkes’ 1605 attempt to blow up Parliament is infinitesimally small! Militaries will also want to develop and use ever more advanced AI capabilities to enhance their physical, informational, and cyber operational defensive and offensive capabilities. Inevitably, lessons learned from current conflicts will fuel further military AI development, but whatever any future with AI looks like, the Badger thinks that red poppies and  Remembrance Sunday will remain an annual constant.

The Badger’s grandfathers, and his father and father-in-law, served in the British Army in the two World Wars of the 20th Century. They rarely spoke about their experiences, but they were proud to have fought for the freedoms and way of life we take for granted today. Now all passed away, what would they think about the threat that AI poses to our future? Just two things; that an identified threat should always be dealt with sooner rather than later, and that we must never allow Remembrance Sunday to wither on the vine of time because it’s a reminder to everyone that it’s man who makes sacrifices to protect freedoms, not machines.

‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.’

What development has had the most detrimental impact on society in the last 20 years?

Posted on by The Information Badger in Change, Education, Information Technology, Life, Online Services, Press & Media, social media, Tech for social good, Telecommunications

The Badger was asked the question ‘What development has had the most detrimental impact on society in the last 20 years?’ during a conversation with a youngster who’s just started the final year of their university degree course. The conversation was centred on the Badger’s experience in the IT industry and was primarily focused on helping the youngster not only look  beyond completing their degree, but also decide whether to stay at university for a higher degree or move into industry to bolster their immediate income. As the Badger described some of the dynamic technological changes encountered throughout his own career, the youngster paused for a moment, pursed their lips, frowned, and then unexpectedly asked this question.

The Badger was taken aback. After what seemed like a prolonged and embarrassing silence, but was really just a few seconds, the Badger took the easy option and answered with a bland ‘I don’t know. Different generations will probably have different views.’ The youngster smiled and chided him for being cleverly uncontentious! They then answered  their own question, and their answer took the Badger completely by surprise. Why? Because he did not expect what he heard from a Generation Z person who is completely digital-native with no experience of life without the internet, personal computers, social media, or mobile phones.

‘Social media is the development that has had the most detrimental impact’, they proclaimed. They contended that social media has developed such that its content is the  embodiment of 7 R’s – rage, rumour, rackets, rubbish, robbers, retail, and revenue – which is growing to be ever more corrosive to the fabric of society. They voiced their distrust of the likes of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter), and expressed  concern that users of such platforms are naïve about their impact on personal privacy and social stability. Their final assertion was that social media has had the most detrimental impact on the world in the last 20 years because it has undermined law and order, respect for others, encroached on privacy, and enabled the immediacy of widespread fraud and misinformation. The Badger, who was a little surprised at hearing this from a digital native of Generation Z, quickly refocused the conversation on the youngster’s post-graduate aspirations!

Whether you share the youngster’s view or not, history suggests that some developments which change society are lauded during their time, but ultimately prove to be devastating in the long run. For example, fossil-fuels revolutionised life in the 20th Century, but they have had a damaging impact on the sustainability of life on our planet and are now shunned. The Badger’s undecided whether social media, a once exciting early 21st Century development, falls into this category, but if you want some fun at a multi-generational gathering of friends or family then ask the youngster’s question. The result is almost guaranteed not to be what you expect…

Children’s toys and ‘invisible’ e-waste…

Posted on by The Information Badger in Climate & Environment, Digital devices and the environment, e-waste, Education, Information Technology, Toys

One day last week, the Badger arrived early to collect his grandson from nursery school. As he waited, he  couldn’t help a wry smile as the young tots resisted the nursery leader’s attempts to get them to tidy the plethora of toys away. One little girl came up to the Badger with a battered Fisher-Price musical guitar and insisted on showing him how to extract noise from it. The noises from the guitar demonstrated that it was on its last legs! One of the nursery helpers then ushered the little girl away, and as she did so she told the child that the toy was broken and needed to be ’thrown away’. Did they really mean ‘thrown away’, or did they mean ‘recycled’? It was pretty clear that they meant the former.

In due course, the Badger’s grandson, who had been playing with a musical toy in the form of a mobile phone, was returned home to his parents. Afterwards, the Badger found himself cogitating on how different today’s pre-school toys are from those of his generation. No toys for pre-school kids in his day required a battery to function! Today,  however, toys requiring a battery and containing microchips are commonplace. The Badger found himself  muttering a phrase that everyone uses at some stage when they get older, namely ‘those were the days’. His thoughts moved on to the nursery helper’s ’thrown away’ remark. Did they really mean ‘thrown away’ rather than ‘recycled’? Well, since toys top the list of  ‘invisible’ e-waste finding its way into landfill, then, yes, they probably did.  

Many things young children play with today contain recyclable electrical or electronic material that goes unnoticed. The amount of such material in an individual toy may be tiny, but every little bit matters if we truly want a sustainable future. Unfortunately, however, awareness that a child’s toy should be sent to recycling at the end of its useful life isn’t as high as it should be. That’s why children’s toys contribute to the growing so-called ‘invisible’ e-waste in the world’s land fill sites. The Badger thus feels it’s incumbent on us adults to be more knowledgeable and make better decisions when it comes to disposing of broken children’s toys.

The Badger also suspects, perhaps wrongly, that the WEEE’s recent International E-waste Day on the 14th October 2023 passed most of us by. It’s purpose was to shed light on the overall scale of  ‘invisible’ e-waste, see here.  Our awareness of ‘invisible’ e-waste must be improved, and, as the WEEE Forum puts it, we must all be more conscious that we can recycle anything that has a plug, uses a battery or microchip, or has a cable. So, if you hear someone telling a child that a toy should be ‘thrown away’ then tell them to recycle it, and wish them good luck in getting it out of the child’s hands without a tantrum to do so…