Three news stories have played on my mind recently:

• In his latest newsletter, Benedict Evans updates on the seemingly never-ending Horizon scandal. The Post Office rolled out a buggy computer system which wrongly calculated cash balances held by branches. The assumption that money had been stolen led to almost a thousand people being wrongly prosecuted. Some people ended their lives.
• As reported in the Guardian, one of my local hospitals failed to send 24,000 letters over five years ‘due to a new computer system’.
• The FT reported that an incorrectly weighted computer algorithm for allocating liver transplants led to specific groups of patients waiting longer than others.

All three of these stories are similar: they are presented as though the problem is with computers when it is actually with management. In all three cases, managers knew about concerns with the computer systems, yet the organisations involved did not take timely corrective action.

I don’t know the inside story behind any of these incidents, but I’m willing to bet that all involved managers saying something like ‘I’m not good with computers’—and failing to engage as a result. In some organisations, it’s a daily occurrence to hear senior leaders say things like, ‘Ooh, I’m not sure how to share my slides; is it working?’ That discomfort writ large means that they subject IT processes to less scrutiny.¹

The irony is that the consequences of all three failings were in the real world, not inside a computer. In all three cases, it seems likely that a reasonable and non-technical workaround would have been to stop using the computer system until it was fixed. The real-life resolution required no knowledge of how the systems worked.

One can’t imagine the same managerial non-response to a problem if, say, the underlying issue was secretaries who weren’t bothering to type letters or an accountancy team consistently failing to produce reports.

And therein lies the issue. Even in the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is still acceptable in many organisations for senior leaders to freeze up over any problem involving computers. Nobody expects them to be IT experts, but they ought to be experts in leadership and management and not simply give up when the situation involves a computer.

The greater development of artificial intelligence means that ever more processes will be completed in an automated fashion in the coming years. This will result in progressively less oversight of day-to-day work within organisations whose senior staff seize up over this stuff. For them, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

1. Unfamiliarity with the tools required for daily work is, in itself, deeply problematic. It ought to be no more acceptable to playfully boast about one’s lack of ability to use basic computer functions than to boast about being unable to chair a meeting or manage people. It’s your job! ↩

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

A few years ago, I added Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life to my ‘to read’ list on Goodreads. I didn’t think anyone else noticed such things, but several people—one online and some in real life—asked me what I was playing at.

My only exposure to Peterson had been through an interview on Channel 4 News, an absurd piece of television. Cathy Newman asks a question, Peterson answers, and then Newman paraphrases, leading to an argument about the paraphrasing. Rinse and repeat. No light is shed on anything; there’s no honest discussion of any issues.

To the extent that I could follow them, Peterson’s views seemed quite different from mine. Reading challenging viewpoints is always interesting, so his book went on my list. Those who asked me about my choice knew of a broader negative reputation that had passed me by.

As it happens, I never got around to reading his book. Peterson disappeared from my view until I spotted an article by James Marriott in Monday’s Times. It turns out that Peterson still has quite a following, hosting his own show at the O2 arena to an audience of nearly 20,000. ‘It is one of the strangest nights of my life,’ says Marriott, and the article is well worth a few minutes of your time.

Rishi Sunak claimed yesterday:

This King’s Speech delivers change. Change in our economy. Change in our society. Change in our communities.

It doesn’t, though, does it?

The only thing ‘delivered’ was a speech, once in a ceremonial pouch and once verbally from a throne.

There was precisely no difference in our economy, society or communities after the speech compared to before it. We can argue all day about whether the speech discussed meaningful change in those areas, but nobody—nobody—can credibly claim that it delivered any change whatsoever.

Rishi Sunak appears to use ‘deliver’ as a synonym for ‘talk about.’

Once this is understood, a whole load of puzzling pronouncements suddenly make sense. Take this from the Government’s briefing on the King’s speech:

Integrity, professionalism, accountability. That’s what I promised when I stood on the steps of Downing Street just over a year ago – and that’s what we have delivered.

Read ‘talked about’ for ‘delivered’, and this is a far less disorienting description. It’s a similar story for this section of his recent conference speech:

I have seen up close the quality of our Armed Forces and intelligence services. Truly, the finest in the world. The debt of gratitude we owe them is why we are making this the best place to be a veteran.  I know we will deliver because we have a minister for veterans affairs sitting in Cabinet.

We ought to parse this as ‘I know we will talk about this because I’ve appointed someone to talk about it.’

It’s maybe churlish to point out that the Government’s own guidance says that the word ‘deliver’ ought to be avoided as insufficiently clear:

Use ‘make’, ‘create’, ‘provide’ or a more specific term (pizzas, post and services are delivered – not abstract concepts like improvements)

But at least the Prime Minister has helped us understand his idiosyncratic use of the word.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

It’s the State Opening of Parliament today.

Wendy and I have been speculating for weeks on who might lead the BBC’s television coverage in the absence of Huw Edwards—there’s never a dull moment in our house. We’d guessed Kirsty Young, but the job has gone to Wheel of Fortune and radio phone-in host Nicky Campbell.

It may turn out to be today’s boldest decision. Rishi Sunak appears to be pursuing a slightly weird strategy of promising boldness while delivering abject timidity. His bold new plan for HS2 was not to build half of it. His conference ‘rabbit’ was to ask Parliament to have a little think about banning smoking, but not to ask his MPs to actually vote for it. His solution to overcrowded prisons is not to reform criminal justice nor build more cells, but to rent some rooms overseas. His approach to meeting targets on net zero is to water them down. He’s exercised about tinkering with the guidance for local Councils on speed limits. The King’s Speech will announce a bill to ban some leaseholds, but not the tricky ones such as flats.

I’m no fan of the majority of policies pursued by this Government, not of its approach to governing, so I ought to be thrilled that Sunak has set his sights so low. Yet the overriding impression is of bathetic smallness and inadequacy.

Surely the country can do better than this?

According to YouGov, 77% of adults in Great Britain think Sunak’s government has achieved ‘not very much’ or ‘not much at all.’ It doesn’t feel like this approach is a great way to tackle that perception.

The picture at the top is my own from a few years ago. I like the unusual opportunity to see Parliament with all the ugly security barriers removed during the State Opening. I also used it in 2014 for a post reflecting on the legislative harm associated with the State Opening.

I’ve been the proud owner of a nose for over thirty-eight years and went through more than thirteen continuous years of medical training. Yet, somehow, news of the nasal cycle had utterly passed me by until I read this article by Sarah Zhang in The Atlantic.

Since I learned about it, I’ve been borderline obsessed with it. I already knew that humans effectively have two noses, like we have two eyes and two ears. Each nostril connects to an independent nasal cavity, a complex construction with multiple functions. These include filtering, warming and humidifying air, as well as containing the olfactory epithelium which allows us to smell (and, to a large extent, taste) things. The nose also plays a vital role in speech.

It was news to me that each of the cavities contains erectile tissue similar to that found in the sex organs. Each side alternatives throughout the day in swelling, leading to slight congestion. This ensures that one cavity always has high airflow and the other low. This is important for the olfactory epithelium because different chemicals take different amounts of time to bind, meaning that we need high and low-flow surfaces simultaneously to have the full spectrum of scent. The cilia, tiny hairs which clear mucus, also suspend their usual pattern of beating on the congested side, allowing it to be more moist and hence help humidify the air we breathe.

Even more astoundingly, when one lies on one’s side, it appears that signals from the compressed armpit can induce the nasal passages on the opposite side to open.

Now that I’ve learned this, it’s obvious: I’ve become obsessed with noting which nostril is congested throughout the day. Wendy and I even sometimes ask each other out of mild amazement that we’ve never noticed.

I trust that you, too, will be amazed by this and will spend the next few days noticing with fascination what your nose is up to.

One of the benefits of reading novels is the realisation of the degree to which any individual’s life experience is limited. We all get to live only one life and act out only one set of life choices.

In the last few days, though, it feels like the limits of my own experience have been fired at me from all angles.

On The Rest is Money, Steph McGovern and Robert Peston discussed the enormous industry of narrative video games, which eclipses television and movies combined. This is a world that has completely passed me by. I wouldn’t know Call of Duty if I fell over it. The last console I owned was a PlayStation 2. I think the last narrative computer game I played was Simon the Sorcerer on the Amiga, and I don’t think I ever completed that.

On Search Engine, Taylor Lorenz told PJ Vogt about hiring a ‘content consumer’ to watch all of her friends’ Instagram stories and send her a summary report each week, saving her the trouble. The bit that surprised me was Taylor and PJ’s shared concern about appearing to disengage at the end of the project, and how her friends might take this. I don’t think I even knew it was possible to see who had viewed Instagram stories, let alone that anyone would obsessively check that.

In medical news this week, there has been a bit of unnecessary fuss about doctors being advised to avoid ‘sexting’ and to avoid including their faces in explicit images. One consequence of spending more than twenty years with Wendy is that the modern dating world has passed us by. The idea that I would want to send or receive explicit photos with potential partners seems vaguely ridiculous and not erotic in the least.

We all lead sheltered lives; they’re just sheltered in different ways.

A local politician popped up on our regional news bulletin yesterday evening. This was the sum total of his contribution:

What we’ve seen today is a series of meaningless soundbites that will provide very little reassurance to families that are struggling right now. To turn our economy round, we need tough but necessary decisions.

These two sentences could have been ejaculated by any representative of virtually any UK political party discussing virtually any issue. There is poetry in their vacuity. It is content-free speech lamenting content-free speech. There’s no hint of an idea, a political message, or even a substantive criticism.

Rather than the politician spending time on constructing such empty verbiage, the reporter and crew attending to film it, and the viewers having to listen to it, perhaps in future we could just replace it with one of those classic slient film caption cards: “ … “

It’s over twenty years since I left my Saturday job at a branch of Homebase. One of the deputy managers I worked for adopted some peculiar methods to improving the customer experience. When the checkout queues became very long, he used to ask for one of the checkouts to be closed so that the assistant could hand out Quality Street as an apology to the waiting customers.

I was reminded of this when I read Simon Calder’s piece in The Independent about Transpennine Express. The train operator is aiming to improve customer service by running fewer, older, and slower trains while working to “surprise and delight” customers by occasionally handing out free coffees or ice creams.

Experience has taught Wendy and me to avoid journeys on Transpennine Express services wherever possible, as the services are so frequently cancelled or overcrowded. A tiny possibility of receiving a free coffee at the station is unlikely to change our minds.

I wonder if that deputy manager has had a career change?

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

There’s a line in Cecil Woodham-Smith’s biography of Florence Nightingale that I was reminded of this morning:

Her calmness, her resource, her power to take action raised her to the position of a goddess.

Woodham-Smith writes this in his account of Nightingale’s time in a field hospital during the Crimean War. ‘Resource’ refers to her personal qualities, especially her formidable intelligence and work ethic. ‘Power’ refers to both the senior position to which she’d effectively had herself appointed and the soft power and influence she had built up.

The ‘calmness’ in this triad stands out to me. Woodham-Smith also quotes a letter which reflects on Nightingale’s character:

She has attained a most wonderful calm. No irritation of temper, no hurry or confusion of manner ever appears for a moment.

Watching the COVID inquiry in recent days, it strikes me that ‘calmness’ was under-appreciated as a necessary attribute in government. Indeed, I can’t think of any leader at that time who possessed calmness, resource and power: the few with the first two rarely seem to have been granted the third.

I, too, could learn from Nightingale’s example. When I reflect on my attempts to demonstrate ‘calmness’ in my professional life during COVID, two examples spring to mind.

On one occasion, an organisation’s internal plan was missing a critical aspect. I distinctly remember feeling a sense of almost zen-like calm settling over me as I repeatedly attempted to get the issue recognised and rectified on a national teleconference. I must have asked the same question four or five times in succession, preceded by statements like ‘I’m very sorry, but I don’t think you’d quite answered my question’. It worked.

On a different occasion, I felt that a senior leader of an organisation was being dismissive of wellbeing concerns raised by staff members. This pushed my buttons, and I remember feeling my anger swell. I contributed politely, though firmly. However, this didn’t work: my contribution wasn’t well articulated, and I think the point was missed.

The latter experience taught me to follow Florence Nightingale. Speaking in anger is rarely as effective as communicating calmly, with ‘no irritation of temper, no hurry or confusion of manner’.

I should learn to take a breath.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

It’s a few weeks old, but this article about the luxury carrier bag caught my eye. It’s by Helen Barrett of the Financial Times.

In particular, this paragraph widened my eyes:

A curious parallel market has emerged in used luxury product packaging on sites such as eBay, where large paper Céline carriers are listed for about £25 each. According to recent research by the credit broker Money, empty Louis Vuitton boxes sell for an average price of £74. You could argue such a market is absurd, but in satisfying demand, it is entirely rational.

I had no idea that this market existed. I recently donated an old radio to a charity shop in a spare yellow box from a certain Italian perfumer, for no better reason than to keep the power adapter and the radio together. A quick search on eBay reveals that the going rate for the box is a multiple of that for the radio. I have posted back library books in boxes worth more than the price of the postage and the books combined.

The value of boxes was news to me, but it wasn’t shocking. It’s not unusual for me to see a second-hand shop or a market stall and to comment to Wendy that I would have binned everything they were selling if it were in my house. I’m bad at recognising the intrinsic value of stuff I think of as rubbish.

I’m the opposite of a hoarder: I like to get rid of stuff. If you like, call me William Morris (‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’) or Marie Kondo (I fold my socks but, regrettably, I don’t talk to my backpack). Wendy has, shall we say, different preferences. Hopefully, our approach is happily balanced overall.

I’ve made an effort over the past year to offer more stuff to charity shops rather than sticking it straight in the recycling, partly—if I’m frank—because of the tax-based financial incentive. But I’m sure there’s a lot, like the boxes, where I don’t recognise the value and could try to do better.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.