Status-Q

For those who are, like me, disappointed with the results of the referendum, let me offer some mitigating thoughts to try and cheer you up over the next few days!

• As the old saying goes, “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” But if you believe in it, then a referendum with a clear question and two choices is the purest form of democracy. In it, the British people voted across party lines for greater and more locally-accountable democracy. And huge numbers turned out to do it. Never in recent years has democracy been so much of a talking-point. Never has it had such a turnout.

• I don’t believe that the clear tendency of older voters towards leaving can be put down purely to xenophobia. I think those of us old enough to remember life before the EU are less scared of being without it. For younger voters it’s been portrayed as a terrifying leap into the unknown.

• Remember that the majority of our trade is not with the EU. Yes, the EU is a very big part of it, but it’s less than half, and that proportion has been falling since 1999. Remember too that the EU imposes extra friction on much of our current trade with countries outside its boundaries – the majority of our trade. We should do what we can to further reduce friction and tariffs on all our other trading partners in the next few years. It may not compensate for the new frictions imposed as we leave, but it should offset it. Also, a large proportion of our trade is with other non-EU European countries, which bodes well for us when we’re on the outside.

• Remember that 90% of the world’s countries are not in the EU. Globally, we are rejoining the majority. I don’t think that is a retrograde step.

• Thank God we didn’t join the Euro – look at what’s been happening to it. In fact, until the referendum came along, the poor prospects for the Euro economy were a regular feature of the news. There will be some benefits to decoupling ourselves from it a bit.

• You shouldn’t assume that those who voted leave did so for the same reasons as the more extreme spokespeople, who are naturally beloved of the media. I have many friends who indicated they would vote that way and they are all nice, very intelligent, well-travelled, foreigner-loving people. Don’t believe the stereotypes. Britain hasn’t changed.

• This was a vote for an issue, not for people. Not even for a political party. I don’t for a minute think Nigel Farage is going to be PM. In fact, I think this may rebound. If Labour manage to get an electable leader I think they’ll win the next general election as a result of this.

• We soon won’t have to see those annoying cookie messages at the top of every web page!

You may not find all of these comforting. But I hope some of them will help a bit. 🙂 Enjoy the sunshine!

It occurs to me, as I go to bed wondering what will be broadcast about the referendum in my sleep, that it must now be at least a decade since I watched any actual live TV.

This means that I’ve voluntarily paid at least £1400 in TV licensing that I didn’t need to pay. Not legally, anyway. You can listen to the radio, and watch iPlayer content without one. It’s only live TV, online or traditional, that actually requires a licence.

Now, I’m a fan of the BBC and I’ve consumed lots of its output in various ways, so I feel a moral obligation to keep supporting it. But it does make me wonder how long this funding method can continue…

The shooting of MP Jo Cox has caused understandable shock waves here, because it is so unusual.

In the US Senate, a 15-hour filibuster session trying to force some debate on (very limited) gun control looks as if it might have been successful. Vox news points out that during that session, 48 people were injured or killed from gunshots.

Here, also from Vox, is an excellent summary of the international statistics around gun ownership.

Thanks to Markus Kuhn for the video link.

I’ve often pondered the question of why some countries drive on the left-hand side of the road, and others on the right. We normally mount horses from the left — presumably because a sword would get in the way while doing so from the other side — so they are naturally positioned to set off down the left side of the road, as God and the King clearly intended. Why, then, would other countries have adopted a different system?

This great article talks about how Sweden switched over from driving on the left to the right in 1967. Extract:

When horse-back was the primary mode of transit, people generally rode on the left side of roads so that their right hand remained free to greet oncoming riders—or to attack them with a sword.

But with the rise of horse-drawn carriage, conventions began to change. Drivers would often sit on on the left rear horse, so their dominant right hands could more easily control the rest of the team which stood to the front and right of the driver. It then made sense for them to drive on the right side of roads so the driver could be positioned in the middle of the lane and be able to more easily keep track of carriages behind them.

So there you have it. Worth reading the rest. But don’t listen to the Telstars’ song, Håll dig till höger, Svensson, or you may be humming it for some time.

Thanks to Mark Littlewood for the link.

Black man. White House. Absolutely superb images captured by Pete Souza.

The boy had told Obama: “I want to know if my hair is just like yours.” The president had replied: “Touch it, dude!”

The first autonomous vehicles really to hit our roads in any numbers will probably not be Teslas, nor Google- or Apple-branded family cars, but big trucks. This makes perfect sense, when you think about it:

• Truck drivers have to clock up huge mileages, often over many days, and have to take breaks repeatedly to make sure they stay alert.
• Most of the driving is done on highways, where autonomous driving is the easiest, and at fairly constant speeds.
• The cost of adding the necessary sensors and systems is a smaller proportion of the cost of the vehicle.
• The impact on aesthetics, wind resistance etc of bolting camera and lidar sensors onto a truck is much smaller than on, say, a Jaguar.

And so it was that a convoy of self-driving trucks arrived in Rotterdam last month from all over Europe, and from six different manufacturers.

Trucks are also built in a more modular way than many other vehicles, so it’s easier to retrofit self-driving capabilities to existing vehicles. This is the current modus operandi of a new company called Otto, started by ex-Google employees, and with a pleasingly compact URL: http://ot.to . More information here.

I’m going to write again soon about other ways in which I think autonomous trucks may herald the likely transition into other autonomous vehicles. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, the truck drivers will soon be able to sit back and watch some old movies to remind them of the past…

I recently overheard a couple of BBC friends describing it, if I remember correctly, as ‘an organisation characterised by fear’. Many of us yearn for what the BBC was able to do in the past, and is no longer able to do now because of government and other interference.

Chris Patten, in a speech recorded in the Huffington Post describes his concern that other big issues this summer may distract us from the opportunity to fix some of the challenges when the Charter is next renewed.

Extract:

Of course, enriching our lives goes far beyond journalism. The BBC is at the cultural heart of this Nation. In fact, it is the cultural heart, and I welcome the measures taken by Tony Hall to forge closer partnerships with the nation’s other great cultural institutions. And cultural enrichment is not just about the Arts. It’s about Science, and Philosophy, and History too. It’s about Ideas and Enquiry: it’s about thinking the unthinkable. Here I fear the BBC has lost some of its ambition and needs to find it again. We need more programmes that are, frankly, slightly above our heads. Not inaccessible, but programmes that make us stretch to reach them. The BBC should remember the great auto-didactic tradition in British culture, not least in working class communities. BBC2 once offered that degree of challenge, but the tough stuff has largely gone to BBC4 and there, because of budget cuts, it’s sometimes made with glue and string. The long-term security that licence fee funding is supposed to bestow on the BBC should give it the confidence to challenge us all. But every time politicians grab an easy headline at the BBC’s expense; every time they question its scope, chip away at its funding and occasionally swipe great chunks of it; every time they seem to doubt its very future – they erode the BBC’s confidence to make bold decisions about content.

Worth reading in full if you care about what the BBC means today. Like the NHS, I fear it may not survive very much longer in anything like the form it had in its glory days. But I could be convinced otherwise — would be delighted to be so, in a world where everything else is funded by click-bait — and compared to the NHS, the BBC is very much easier to fix.

Reducing the fear would be a very good first step.

Yesterday, we bought some new kitchen knives, 25 years after last doing so. These new ones are terrifyingly sharp, and will no doubt result in the loss of a few digits over the coming weeks, but they did enable me to cut a blueberry into eighths before putting it on my cereal this morning.

I haven’t felt a desire to do this in the past, but it’s pleasing to know that I now can, should the need arise.

…when you’re no longer the youngest person at the garden centre. 🙁

I feel that our quality of life in general would be improved if we were to embrace more thoroughly:

(a) the Spaniards’ idea of the siesta.

(b) the Hobbits’ idea of Second Breakfast.

Working on it.

Bill Bailey is just brilliant. Here’s another favourite.