TONY ON FLOODS AND OTHER NEWS

THOUGHTS FROM A COMMON MAN
News and comment LATEST: UK floods – natural or unnatural disaster? … PLUS … What happened to aircraft carriers? Cameron! Get your act together.
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FLOODS, BIGNESS AND EFFICIENCY

The Great Flood is well under way in the UK. Many counties, cities and towns in the south west, and other areas, have been deluged as rivers break their banks. A natural disaster …
No, hang on a minute. It MAY be a natural disaster in part. Unless man-made climate change is behind it – and we accept that flood plains will revert to flood plains. But now there are some 300,000 people without water supplies, whilst sewage infested water swirls around them.

Is this a natural disaster?

I find it amazing that the deluging of such a small part of the infra-structure was responsible for this termination of supplies. But then again, maybe not.
Over recent decades, the term ‘efficiency’ has been used to explain the marvelous services we get today. This has been achieved by two simple business ideals. The first is that a few bigger facilities are far more efficient than many smaller ones.
Yes, this is absolutely true, if your main motive for efficiency is profit. But when the slightest problem affects just a few – or even one – of these bigger facilities, the implications are enormous – and hundreds of thousands of people will be without water for maybe two weeks.
Bigger is very rarely better, or more efficient. For as soon as pressure enters the system, it fails. We should wake up to the simple fact that smaller, and more, is the only option to survive such problems – and demand that business allows a touch of inefficiency into the system, so that it can be efficient.

© Anthony North, July 2007

DAVID’S HONEYMOON IS OVER

When David Cameron was first picked to lead the Tory Party, I thought, great! Just what was needed. It had nothing to do with him being a good politician – more with the importance of PR …
… read more …

THE MYTHICAL AIRCRAFT CARRIERS

The building of two new Royal Navy aircraft carriers is about to be announced – perhaps. These super-duper ships were first authorized ten years ago, and should have been in service by 2015 …
… read more …

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