That was (another) year that was...

 

...and frankly I'm bloody glad to see the back of it.

I've been racking my brains to say anything good at all about 2024, anything even vaguely positive, and have come up with very little. So let's try listing my thoughts, in no particular order, good and bad.

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Good Stuff.

Well, the Tories were voted out of office.  Finally.  After 14 years of ruining the country, incompetence and lying. In a landslide. Their demise also got rid of no-marks like Hancock, and Truss, and Johnson, and a whole list of other crooks, chancers and dead-weights who no-one (apart from their families, probably) cares about.  Good riddance to them all.

In came Keir Starmer and Labour, full of plans to improve the lot of the ordinary man in the street (rather than fleece them like the Nasty Party did). Hurrah.

I am still alive, and healthy. Cancer free (with the caveat that I am due a further check up in January).  

I'm reading more than since the Pandemic faded into memory (though the virus itself remains active, despite what the nay-sayers would have you believe) and trying to write too. It's tough, though.

My Beloved and my kids are well, and healthy too. As are my dog and cat, and the rest of my family, scattered throughout the world (at least, to the best of my knowledge). I thank my god for that. 

After four years of solid stress, struggle and spending we finally moved into our new flat, meaning I now sleep on a bed rather than on the settee, and soon will have a proper desk and workspace of my own in the corner of our room, overlooking the kids playground beside the block.  I should be able to focus and produce more....

 Bad Stuff.

Starmer's Honeymoon Period in office lasted about a week before the gutter press, led by GB News, the Daily Mail and Talk TV, aided by a bunch of keyboard warriors and wannabe celebrities, started the rumour mill rolling with totally undefined and unsubstantiated claims about him and other members of the government, that have turned a large minority of the electorate against the government.   Already.  After 5 months.

Brexiteer-in-Chief, serial liar and failed commodity trader, loser of seven previous attempts at being elected to Parliament, finally got in.  Representing Clacton, one of the most rampantly anti-European parts of the UK.  Nigel Farage (for it is he) has since spent as much time in the US trying to help his mate Donald J. Trump (another serial liar....) with his Presidential bid.

And against all odds he succeeded.  Dear old Joe Biden finally admitted defeat 12 weeks or so prior to voting and stepped aside in favour of VP Kamala Harris.  The problem was the US of A is still unable to bring itself to elect a woman to the Office, never mind a black California prosecutor who has never given birth.  The MAGA Republicans, led by the Orange Oaf, rallied round and elected the convicted felon (not no mention a known sex offender and loser of a civil case for rape).  Yes, Trump is the next President of the US.  Insanity or foolishness - you be the judge.

The slaughter in Gaza has shown little sign of ending, and indeed spread to Lebanon and Syria as Bibi the Butcher continues his single handed efforts to wipe out the entire Arab population in the Middle East.  The ICJ arrest warrants issued against him for violating international law, suspected war crimes and genocide mean no more to him than the multiple UN Resolutions about the Palestinian conflict that have been ignored by the Israeli government since 1948.  He is aided, abetted and financed by the US government (and to a lesser extent those of the UK and EU, amongst others).  Madness and murder most foul.

Vlad the Impaler's Special Military Operation (AKA the Invasion of Ukraine) is still grinding on, approaching its third anniversary.  Ukraine fights on, with strong support from the EU, the UK and NATO - but that may all soon change: Trump is widely expected to pull US support for both Ukraine and NATO soon after taking office (which will please his mate Vlad no end), and support is waning in a number of European countries that now have strong nationalist parties in government (or largest in opposition) like Hungary, Serbia, Czechia, and even Italy and Germany.  Putin has also threatened a nuclear response if any NATO ally takes direct action in support of Ukraine or allows the weaponry it has provided to be used to attack targets on Russian soil, including that seized in the invasion. Scary and shameful stuff.

Anti-Islamic sentiment and anti-immigration parties and supporters are gaining even more traction across Europe, leading to increased racial tensions and public unrest.  And it will get worse, because...

...all the promises made by governments to tackle climate change at past COP Summits have been broken, abandoned or watered down. We are rushing headlong towards a global catastrophe, including producing a massive increase in climate refugees looking for shelter and aid,  that I didn't expect to see but am increasingly likely to.

My football club, the mighty Ebbsfleet United, spent the entire year battling relegation from the National League.  We stayed up on the final day of last season, after changing managers, but the new gaffer turned out to be worse than the bloke he replaced. He was sacked a month into to the new season with the club bottom of the league, and replaced by a well-respected young coach with excellent coaching qualifications and experience at senior clubs in both England and Scotland.  He turned out to be even worse and was sacked after two months, with the club rooted to the bottom and totally devoid of any confidence or quality.  The club captain stepped up, retired from playing and vowed to keep us up.  He has presided over four games (at time of writing) and four (more) defeats.  We are doomed.

I've been suffering from writer's block most of the year: my 2024 target of a weekly blog post has been closer to one a month or less.  I'm also stuck on my books, still unfinished and unpublished, and not had a new or original idea for a story this year.  But I soldier on....

Finally, my beloved elder sister passed away in the summer.  She was approaching 84, and had been living with an inoperable heart defect for several years, so it was not unexpected, and indeed a relief.  But it's still losing my closest relative, and came less than a year since my other sister passed away after a struggle against undiagnosed dementia for three years or more.  It leaves me the last man standing in my family.  It's a sobering thought.

You see, I'm getting older, nearly 72.  Sure, I'm well and cancer free, but I can't hide that my health is failing.  The back and knee and hip pains, when they bite, take longer to recover from.  My eye-sight and reflexes aren't as good and I've given up driving as I no longer feel safe doing so.  My beloved bike has been in storage for 18 months on doctor's orders (because of my cancer) and is likely to remain there - if I can't walk a straight line, trying to do so on a bike is probably not a good idea.  I get tired quicker and more frequently, often dozing off in front of the tv mid-evening. And I'm not as strong, can't do so much lifting or other physical work at home.  It comes to us all, I know, sooner or later, but I find it very hard to accept it's now happening to me.....  Reality bites.

So you can see why I look forward to 2025 - it can't be any worse.  Can it?

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So let's look forward now.  Forget all the big stuff I mentioned above, there is bugger all I can do to influence any of it.  What can I do to make it a good year?  For me and my family?  Me first.

I MUST exercise more. I let it slip this year, didn't do as much as I should, largely because so much time was spent with the move to the new place, fretting about all the big bad stuff, and mourning my sisters.  For Christmas I had a set of Nordic Walking poles, and I intend to make use of them a lot.  I tried them out a day or so ago with a 4km stroll, and found them helpful, once I'd found my rhythm.  They're supposed to help with balance and promote full-body movement that in turn helps build strength and muscle tone, lose weight and improve co-ordination, all of which will do me the power of good.  I need to keep it up, a similar yomp every other day at least.

I also need to focus on my mental health - I've been all over the place this year, with the good days and bad pretty much in balance.  I read a book recently about meditation and training yourself in positivity and better rest, and I need to do more of that.  It may be easier with my own space: I tried some meditation and mindfulness exercises from the book but with all the distractions in a family home I lacked focus and felt no benefit.  That needs to change.  Recently I've also come very close to sliding back into the depression that plagued me post-Covid and frankly that scared me.  It was not a good place to be and I do NOT want to relapse - if I do, it will I'm sure be worse and harder to pull through.

If I succeed in both those objectives, then I will be happier and better able to get back to my writing.  I also intend to embark on some self-improvement, learn some new things. I would love to take a degree course, History and Politics, perhaps. or English Literature, something of that nature, but I know I won't be able to afford the Open University course fees.  Yet, anyway - perhaps in the future.  But I can start small, use the Coursera platform that has a wide range of free courses - not all of them degrees needing months of solid work, but short certification courses: there are some there that appeal to me.

If I can make progress on all of those objectives, then I'm sure I will feel better about myself, and fitter, which in turn will mean I'm more balanced and patient and just....happier.  Less likely to argue and complain and mope around feeling sorry for myself (way too much of that going on this year) - which should in turn make things much easier and more pleasant for My Beloved and my kids.

They deserve that, after all the nonsense this year.

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Happy New Year, all.  I hope 2025 is a good one,

AI: for good or ill?

 

 

This is a very good book.  It's a collection of short stories and essays set in a possible (probable?) future just 17 years away where AI and related technologies are reaching maturity and playing an increasingly important role in the world - and hence in all our lives.  

The stories are all written by Chen Quifan, a Chinese science-fiction writer who, after university, worked for Baidu and Google in various senior positions related to AI development before turning successfully to writing.  Each story delas with one specific aspect (or prediction) of how the techincnology can - and no doubt will -be used in the near future, whether in education, in healthcare, in warfare or employment (amongst others).  There is a lot of thought provoking stuff in there.  

The essays, meanwhile, one for each story, are written by Kai-Fu Lee, another Chinese authority on this developing technology, and elaborate in detail the specific aspects covered, their histories, easy-to-understand technical descriptions, and how they may develop further - and. perhaps crucially, their downsides (including regulatory and ethicsl problems).  He too has a solid grounding in AI, having held senior positions in AI devlopment with Apple, Microsot and Google.

Their joint knowledge and easy writing styles combine to make an incredibly complex, even esoteric, subject clear and understandable.  I learned a lot from the book....though I confess that the doubts I've had about the sudden proliferation of the technology have not been completely erased - but very much eased.  It's very clear that huge changes to the way we do most things are just around the corner, and I still worry that the massive change in mind-set that I believe is fundamentally needed, by all of us, to gain the biggest benefit is showing little sign of happening any time soon (except perhaps in the younger generations for whom VR gaming and related technologies - including AI itself - are increasingly commonplace) and I wonder how that will play out.

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Throughout the stories there is a common thread, and a couple of them deal specifically with one aspect of human activity that we are all completely familiar with, one way of another: the workplace.  Making a living.  

Let me give some caveats here. I am not an expert in AI; my knowledge of the workplace in this post-COVID hybrid workplace day and age is sketchy and based largely on anecdotal evidence, since I had retired a year or so before the Pandemic hit; and my hands-on knowledge of the recruitment process of today even more outdated, as I'm more comfortable with the pre-LinkedIn (hell, the pre-internet!) days when written CV's, magazine and newspaper ads, the postal service and the telephone ruled us all. I preferred it then, to be honest.....far simpler, and personal relationships were more important than algorithms.

None of which stops me from having feelings about what we as a work community are facing in the coming months and years.

In truth, I have been an AI agnostic since its early days, despite a family connection to its development (someone dear to me worked for DeepMind in its infancy, transitioned with it to Google and hence knows personally many of the main players). To me it was always a staple of the science fiction books I devoured in my younger days (and many of them also pre-dated the computer age, never mind the internet) or something to fear as a recipe for Armageddon (think the Terminator series of movies) - nothing more than that. The concept of a computer being able to play and win a couple of dozen simultaneous chess matches against Grand Masters, or trouncing the best Go! player in the world struck me as being an interesting news story to tuck away on an inside page of the newspapers on a slow news day, but of no real practical use. I think many people, particularly in my age group (at that time my 60s, now 70s and older), were of the same view.

How wrong we were! The development of the technology has happened at breakneck speed, and new applications for it seem to surface every couple of weeks. Many of them are riffs on earlier ideas, some completely new and esoteric - and the vast majority of them quite beyond me. In many ways I'm happy about that: I have enough to worry about as it is - like my health, getting old, the well-being of my kids and grand-kids, money (or the lack of it): simple, everyday things - without needing to concern myself with the stuff of dreams. 

Global warming is simple enough (I only need to look at the news or out of my window to be concerned about that, and understand that, whatever the sceptics may say, it's real, we as a species are major contributors to the problem, and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better (if at all). It's a tangible reality, whereas AI is something that happens in the background, out of sight and mind, managed directly by a miniscule portion of the 8billion humans that inhabit this Planet Earth, understood properly by a not much bigger portion, but affecting directly and indirectly everybody else. I would argue that before many more moons have passed it will affect every living thing - not just humans, but plants and animals, fish and insects, even the invisible germs and microbes and bacteria that we host - directly. For good or ill.

I see evidence of AI every day. For instance, when I open my laptop I know that every browser is using AI in its Search functionality - some more than others. CoPilot is there on Edge, glaring at me from the Search Bar on the Home Page for instance: I don't use Chrome, but I'm sure it does something similar. The only browser I know of that has a publicised policy of NOT embedding AI tools is Vivaldi (which is my default, my daily driiver...).  Even Firefox, that beacon of independence and FOSSin the browser space,, is developing its own AI tools (or so I read recently). Every search engine likewise uses AI tools to refine its search algorithm (even another proud FOSS leader that I use on a daily basis, DuckDuckGo).

Many individual websites have also introduced AI tools - LinkedIn, for instance, invites me to use AI to compose every Post or Comment or Article I write, including this one (an abbreviated version, sans book review, was posted there last week). But since I can string words together in a lucid and (I hope!) entertaining and relevant way I don't use it, and never will - and it annoys the hell out of me every time I see that prompt!   Apple and Samsung and the other leading mobile phone companies are embedding their own versions of AI assistants into their flagship models, thereby increasing dramatically the cost of buying the things - which seems to this Old Age Pensioner as compelling a reason as any to revert to my old style Nokia handsets, with limited functionality but replaceable batteries that last about a week on a full charge. Dumb-phones? Not to me! I don't need NASA c.1969 computing power in my pocket, thanks very much.

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So I've done a bit of research, read a lot of articles via Vivaldi, conversed with techies in the user community, taken soundings from my dear-to-me Google employee.....and it's clear to me now that being an AI agnostic is not going to work or make a scrap of difference to my life, now or in the future. Pandora's Box is well and truly wide open, and as everyone knows once that happens its contents can never be returned and the Box resealed. It's HERE, and like it or not always will be (a bit like COVID-19 and its variants, only - please God! - better for us). So, like everyone else, I have to learn to live with it.

But how, exactly? Well in my case it seems easy enough. The most exciting and potentially quickest to mature AI technologies are likely to be in health care and automated vehicle technology. I'm getting older, and therefore likely to need increasing amounts of medical assistance of one kind or another (which is not to say I'm ailing or at death's door: I'm far from that and God willing will remain so for some years). But if AI realises its potential and speeds up the development of medicines and drug treatments, and helps the doctors make more accurate diagnoses quicker, and crucially helps the identification and administration of the best personalised treatments and cures, then I will be delighted to accept the prolonged life that I will enjoy. Yes, I know it's inevitable that at some point I'll pop off, but I'm in no hurry and if AI means I can prolong it further - well, I can live with that.

Similarly, if AI and other technical developments mean that self-driving buses and cabs and trains, 100% safe, can speed me from A to B at a lower cost then what's not to like? I'll happily take that, too. Improved crop yields and food distribution to help with my diet and grocery bills? Yes, please. More renewable energy sources at lower cost to the benefit of we consumers and counter the climate crisis? Damned right, bring it on! Automated weapons systems and robotic troops, both offensive and defensive, to reduce the numbers of casualties in conflicts (or, preferably, obviate the need for conflicts at all - and yes, I know: human nature and all that make that highly unlikely!) - well, less so.

There are loads and loads of other exciting possibilities on offer, some better and more attractive than others, but I will leave you to do your own research on them, and along with the few I'm mentioned decide for yourselves how you feel about them all.

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Which brings us to the elephant in the room. If we accept that advances in AI and robotics are going to reach every part of our human existence, for good or ill, there will come a time - probably sooner rather than later - when work itself, that most basic of human needs (just after eating and sex) will be affected. Seriously so. If AI and robots of one kind or another, are doing most of the work, then what the hell are the rest of us going to be doing? If we accept the premise that once your education is finished right up until you retire 50 or so years later, you need to work to earn as much money as you can, to provide a home and food and clothes and education and all the rest of it for your family, and AI and robots are now doing all that so your job has disappeared - then a) WHO is going to pay for all of those needs and b) WHAT are you going to be doing with yourself?

And it's happening already. Take Amazon: I understand the company is now employing fewer workers in its distribution centres because state-of-the-art robotics and, increasingly, AI means humans are no longer required. The same is probably true of similar on-line retailers. Another example: in the auto industry, the introduction of the assembly line reduced the need for workers 70 or 80 years ago, and increased use of robotics has decreased the need for skilled workers even more over the past 25 years or so. Even bigger vehicles, like buses and trucks, even train and aircraft manufacture, are going the same way. Perhaps it's a coincidence that unemployment numbers have, by and large, risen as a percentage of the working age population in the same time period (although I don't think so: not all of the workers who were sidelined by technology will have been able to re-train and find new jobs).

AI in particular is going to start eating into white collar work too, if it hasn't already done so, as systems are developed using it to take over the more manual office tasks. I'm given to understand that in recruitment the task of initial screening is now being done increasingly using AI - I think I see examples of it every day on LinkedIn as I get pestered to apply for this or that job based on a search of my User Profile for a variety of keywords (ignoring the fact that the Profile also states that I am retired and not interested in any position). There are, again, hundreds of examples of AI taking over what companies may see as mundane, but surely no less important, tasks. No doubt the cost/benefit analysis has suggested that this will save a decent chunk of money that can otherwise be spent on, say, management bonuses or shareholder dividends. And hopefully some of it will also be invested into staff re-training rather than redundancy pay-off's....

It seems to me that we are heading into an era of mass unemployment that will dwarf anything that has ever gone before it, and not a single area of paid human activity will escape it. Jobs will disappear, as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and not all of them will offer an alternative. How are we going to manage this transition from a human based economy and work structure to one dominated by machines? How is it all going to be funded? What are we going to do with the legions of men and women who no longer have a financially rewarding occupation? And perhaps most important of all, what are we going to do for future generations, born into a world where work is dominated by AI and robotics, without any prospect themselves of working for a living?

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Being unemployed takes a very different mindset - I know this from personal experience. In my 50 year career in stockbroking, investment banking and IT consultancy I experienced a number of spells out of work. Employers went out of business, or for whatever reason decided I was no longer needed. Sometimes the "rest" only lasted a couple of weeks, sometimes longer - the worst was just under a year. I got through it every time, and generally moved to a position that was better than the previous one, so I did ok. But I found that, eventually, the accumulated stress and uncertainties had not left me at all: they were locked away in my subconscious and eventually killed any enjoyment or desire I had for work. That was when I retired - and found a further (and unexpected) consequence of these "career breaks". My pensions were reduced. Call it naivety or stupidity, but it came as a bit of shock and one I can neither challenge nor do anything about now.

But ignoring that financial impact, being unemployed was difficult. Every time it knocked my self confidence. Every time it made life difficult for my family - they still needed support, food, clothes, all that normal stuff, and it was all much harder for me to provide. We were looked down upon by our neighbours as the company car was replaced by the old banger. I spent hours on the phone, making phone calls for every job that was even halfway suitable, lost count of the rejections, and had to will myself every day to get up and battle on.

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It's tough, but I'm sure you all know that anyway. My personal experience is probably different from anyone else's, of course - but there are also a lot of similarities to what all of us have experienced. I have never, in all my 71 years and counting, met a single person happy to be unemployed. Now imagine a world where the majority of people are unemployed, facing those kinds of issues.

How in God's name are we going to manage that?

How to be an Influencer....

This seems to be one of The BIG questions in today's business environment. Influencers are everywhere - they all seem to be young and beautiful and full of fetching pouts and winning smiles, long blond hair or designer stubble. Oh, and wealthy.

I've only ever seen one under the age of about 30 (although decent make-up can hide a multitude of imperfections and knock years off your apparent age) and he was an old Polish geezer on breakfast tv over the weekend: white hair, neatly trimmed white goatee, blathering on about something or other. My Beloved turned to me and said witheringly, "He's over 70 like you, and an influencer, making lots of money. Why can't you do that?"

I couldn't answer. Because I have absolutely no idea how to become an Influencer. Or even what they are supposed to do,

Apart from looking presentable, what exactly are the qualifications? How do you get them? How do you decide what you want to influence people in? And how do you actually DO that? And monetize it?

It seems to me there are no qualifications, and anyone can talk an absolute pile of nonsense on almost any subject under the sun, on Twitter (or whatever it's called this week), Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or any other social media platform, and provided the individual has the word "Influencer" somewhere in his/her description and a nice photo for his/her thumbnail, then people, especially the young (who, let's be clear, invented the entire concept), will accept the nonsense as nothing less than the gospel truth. And somehow, magically, all the Likes and Shares translate themselves into hard cash, and lo and behold your old Toyota Avensis becomes a shiny new Audi Q7.... Like magic.

OK, perhaps I sound like (or even am, to an extent) a Bitter Old Man, but I'm not, really and truly. I just find it incomprehensible that these activities can be so influential (sorry...) with so little substance - and not all of that good. It's a case of the Blind leading the blind......and blind are lapping it up.

A teenage girl of my acquaintance, like most teenage girls it seems, spends hours every day on social, and follows a number of Influencers. One of them recommended some make-up product or other (I have no idea which one, but it seems it was expensive) to make any teenage girl look a million dollars. The acquaintance duly invested a month's pocket money in a jar of this stuff, plus the face powder that was the recommended accompaniment, and slathered it all over her face every day for a week before leaving for school. Sure, she looked pretty as a picture when she left home every day, but by the end of the week, despite properly cleansing and washing her face every night before bed, she was covered in acne - both cheeks, forehead, even her nose.

That was a couple of years ago. Although it has improved a lot (possibly because she no longer uses the products), her parents have had to shell out a significant amount of dosh on dermatologist appointments and her recommended products to try and help. The hope is that, in time, she will simply grow out of it...... It may of course have had nothing to do with the Influencer, not her fault at all: she was after all not much more than a kid herself, so probably still naive about the Ways of the World (except for the new Ways of making money with little effort or ability in anything else) but I do ask the question whether or not she had sufficient knowledge of the damage any cosmetic can do to sensitive young skin before she started peddling the stuff on social (and no doubt being lucratively rewarded for doing so).

In my day, the kid would have been labelled a con-artist or worse, and not at all looked up to. But then times have changed, and across the entire internet there is a lack of strong governance and sense of responsibility by the platforms themselves, never mind the majority of people and companies who use it for their business growth. How else to explain the rise of, say, Truth Social (its name alone should raise red flags!), or the Chinese outfit that peppers my LinkedIn feed every day with new space-age smoking technology adverts that the system will not allow me to either block, delete or report....

In the old days - so the 20th century and before - influencers were not called Influencers. They were called mum and dad, or grannie and grandad. They were your teachers at school, from the age of 5 and upwards and through college or university, giving you the core knowledge you needed to survive and flourish in life. By definition, they were older than you, with much more experience in living (including, those in my youth, active service in World War Two).

They all guided you in the right way to behave; in respect for other people (particularly those older than you and in positions of responsbility); and in good habits like being on time for school, for trains and buses and planes, and later on for work. Then your seniors at work, your supervisors and managers and peers who happened to have been employed at your factory or office for a longer period, all gave you help and guidance and influenced your own performance and, ultimately, career path. And in so doing they gave you the tools to pass on as guidance to your own kids and grandkids. As an "influence" system I would argue it was far more effective and valuable than any amount of hours trawling through any number of social media platforms or search engines. The advice was always - at least in my experience - grounded in real life, based on real world experience, and rarely if ever unsubstantiated claptrap narrated solely for financial gain. And it worked - there are still habits and behaviours, particularly relating to the workplace, that I find myself following even now in my retirement, and desperately trying (without too much success) to encourage my kids to emulate. But it seems good time-keeping for a start is no longer important.

It seems to me that influencers should carry a Government Health Warning, in the same way that smoking products and alcohol do. They should be compelled to show a high degree of knowledge in their chosen subject of infuence, probably earn a professional qualification of some kind from a respected educational establishment rather than some fly-by-night mail order scam. But I recognise this is highly unlikely to happen - if Big Tech like Microsoft and Apple, Google and Facebook are incapable of governing themselves then what hope is there for a quasi-business sector like "Influencing" to do so? Somewhere between "Zero and You Gotta Be Kidding?" I would suggest.

So I am highly unlikely to ever attain My Beloved's tongue-in-cheek suggestion of "Travellin' Bob: Influencer" and all the Wealth of Croessus that apparantly goes with it. But I will continue to rail against things that annoy me - like the unstoppable rise of AI (that in my view is a clear and present danger to us all); the continued importance of Big Tech and the way it dominates us all whether we like it or not; the evil of Messrs Putin, Trump, the British Conservative Party and the IDF (amongst others); and a host of other niggles. And I will continue to praise and support the good I see in the people of this planet as and when I see fit - climate change activist retirees facing jailtime for calling it out when governments everywhere renege on promises and further endanger us all; health professionals fighting incompetence and shortages every day; volunteers providing food, shelter and help to refugees wherever they may be....; and a host of other praiseworthy activities.

It's what this Blog is all about, after all!

Finally - a chance to vote.....

 .....at least for most of us Brits.  Those, like me, living outside the UK, for whatever reason, may still face difficulties - but then our non-residence shields us somewhat from the worst of British life in the '20s.  

But the General elecation in Britain, called by a rain-sodden Sunak for July 4 (I assume his spads missed the irony there of the electorate voting for independence from the fragmented and failing Conservative Party on US Independence Day - which goes a long way in showing the mess the party is in: it would never have happened under Churchill or Thatcher or even Major), is not the only election this year.  The Indian election has just returned Modi with a reduced majority in the world's most populous democracy - the voting process took a month to complete.  This weekend sees the EU's Parliamentary election, and of course in November we have a re-run of Trump v Biden in the US.  

Taken indivudually each country involved (all 29 of them) face important decisions that can and probably will have global impact.  Come Christmas, and the world will be a different and quite possibly more dangerous place.  This should concern us all.

Let's start with Britain's General Election, since, despite being an ex-pat for over 20 years, it is still closest to my heart.  I was born and raised English, and in my heart of hearts will remain so for the rest of my life.  A number of people have asked me why, since I no longer live in the country (I've been labelled a traitor more than once, especially during the 2016 Referendum) I still care about what happens in British politics - which I think says more about their stupidity than anything else.  I still have close family living in Kent, not least three out of my five kids and all four of my grandkids, so what happens in the country will directly affect them all, and I cannot ignore that (even if I can do nothing concrete to change anything).  It's what parentage does to you.....  And what I have seen happen over the time of my non-residence quite frankly fills me with anger and despair.

I left the country for work purposes at the turn of the century, and for personal reasons ended up staying abroad ever since.  When I left, the place was buzzing, at the height of Blair's Britain, a well respected global power with a strong economy and a bright future.  Involvement in Bush's invasion of Iraq, potentially illegally (I understand the arguments but remain of the view we had little choice in the matter) put paid to all that, and in my view was the genesis of the now overwhelming mistrust of Britain's political class by the electorate.  A discredited Blair eventually gave way to Brown, who despite being a fine Chancellor was a poor Prime minister, and he was soundly defeated in the 2010 poll that ushered in the Tory-LibDem coalition with the promise of a new, fairer way to govern. It fell apart fairly soon, amid the sort of anti-EU rhetoric and in-fighting that has dogged the country ever since, and thanks to broken promises and weak leadership by Nick Clegg the coalition foundered at the next Election and ushered in a solid Tory administration. The party has been in sole power ever since, and has lost every shred of decency, compassion and understanding of the worries of ordinary electors in the process.

At the root of it lies a still unrepentant rump of MPs who have always been rampantly anti-EU.  This is not new: similar factions forced out both Thatcher and Major (both of whom, though cautious about the UK's relationship with the EU, were committed to working alongside the bloc in most matters, in particular trade and security), and no lleader since has been able to cauterise them in the way Kinnock and, later, Blair neutered Labour's Militant Tendency headbangers.  Instead, the Tory party's own headbangers, ingenuously branding themselves the European Research Group (ERG) were able to flourish and obtain a far louder voice than their numbers or ideals deserved.

Brexit should have appeased them, since their aim of leaving the EU had been met. Instead, they have spent the time since complaining about, and blaming the EU for, the problems Britain faces in trade, its failing economy, underfunded NHS and transport sytem - the list of ills is long - actually made worse by leaving the EU and its associated trade deal, but lacking the moral fibre to admit they were wrong and are really part of the problem. They have looked for something to deflect the public's attention, and have found it in immigration: specifically the illegal immigration by loads of refugees crossing the Channel in small boats after bankrupting themselves to people smugglers.  Instead of attacking the "criminal gangs" the target is rather the boat people themselves, broke, cold, destitute and now demonised.  This election is shaping up to be all about immigration (Reform UK, a nonentity of a party that sprouted out of the Brexit defining UKIP are certainly making it their number one concern) since by stopping the boats, suddenly everything will be sunshine and roses again.  Of course it will not be that at all.

The problem is that over the past forty-odd years, sensible discussion and debate has been abandoned by the political parties, and replaced by soundbites, headline grabbing statements (most of them untrue) that appeal to our lowest instincts.  The Brexit campaign, and subsequent tortuous passage of the legislation through Parliament was founded entirely on untruths and exaggeration.  The Liar In Chief, Boris Johnson, was adept at telling at least one a day, and blaming everyone but himself and his Party for what was patently going wrong.  Is it any wonder that the electorate has lost trust?  No.

The election campaign has been running less than two weeks, and amid various questionable statements and evasive answers from both main parties, the first Big Lie has been uncovered, in the first Leader's debate.  Sunak stated that Labour's policies would mean a tax increase of two thousand pounds for every household, according to a UK Treasury report.  He repeated this claim 11 times over the course of the hour's debate, until a clearly nonplussed Starmer told him the claim was "garbage".  Tory MPs sprang to Sunak's side and repeated the claim ad infinitum.  But the next day a letter from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury (the senior civil servant who runs the place) to Starmer, sent two days prior to the debate, that stated quite clearly that the figure was incorrect, and the result of Tory advisors massaging Treasury figures (i.e. adding their own numbers to make the report look worse) and was in no way the work of any employee of the Treasury department.  In other words, a lie.  Sunak and his minions still deny it, but even pro-Tory publications like the Spectator have pointed out some inaccuracies in Sunak's statement.  A good start, and no doubt further undermining any remote chance the party has of winning.

The latest polling suggests that the Conservatives could end up with as few as 60 seats and be at best the third biggest in Parliament (this from an 80 seat majority a couple of years ago), with a best case position of around 110 seats.  In either case, it's likely several senior figures will lose their seats, and Sunak himself (even if returned to Parliament) will undoubtedly no longer lead the Party.  After the last few years, it is no more than the Party deserves.

And Labour?  This is a strange one, in my view.  In terms of key policies, there aren't too many differences between the Party and the Tories.  There is also some disquiet about Starmer himself: never a charismatic individual and a no more than average public speaker, he has so far failed to reveal exactly who he is or what he stands for.  He has been busily purging the Party of some of its more Left Wing Members, notably the last Leader, Corbyn, but this has not pleased the entire Party membership nor the public at large: they are still labelled, probably wrongly, as a traditional tax-and-spend party on the Left of the political divide: to me they seem more like the Conservative Party circa John Major.  But come July 5th, they will be forming the next government, probably with a landslide victory. 

 

The EU Parliamentary election is a strange one.  For years, as the bloc expanded from half a dozen member states to its present near 30 it has been clear that its governance is not fit for purpose: too complex, too many alliances, and not enough clarity of purpose.  The structure was fine for a small trading bloc, less so for the political partnership it has grown into.  Britain, during its membership, never took the Parliament itself seriously, nor did the press, so the voter turnout was always pitifully low.  One of the things Cameron pledged to do during his term was drive change to this governance, streamlining it and making it more accountable in its decision making, hence more palatble to British voters.  Instead, he brought about Brexit and immediately resigned.  I can't think of a bigger miscalculation by any Prime Minister in my lifetime - I think it even exceeds Blair's Iraq conduct.

The EU parliamentary members are voted in by their countries, with numbers based on the comparative size of the country (so Germany has many more MEPs than say Latvia).  This seems sensible.  Decision making however is more driven by various alliances between parties with similar political beliefs and aims: so in theory Green Party members from Germany would align with Green Party members from the Netherlands, Poland and so on.  The alliances are fluid and change to a degree with every election as countries respond with different MEPs as their own strategic needs change.  This seems less sensible. And certainly more complex and difficult to manage.

The issue this time round is that over the past few years a number of member states have lurched politically away from liberal democracies that historically made up the bulk of the Union toward a more strident Right Wing Populism: examples include Italy, Slovakia, Czechia and Hungary.  Even in Germany the Far Right AfD party (widely considered to be Neo-Nazi) is the second biggest party, and Marine LePen's racist Fronte Nationale has grown in popularity in France.  The spectre here is that after this weekend the alliances in the Parliament could also lurch even further towards the Far Right, making common policy decisions affecting the entire EU much harder to achieve and implement.  A further complication is that a number of the Extreme Right Populist parties - in particular the Hungarian Fidesz of Viktor Orban - are extremely close and supportive of our friendly neighbourhood psycho Vladimir Putin.  

The irony of Right Wing parties, no matter how extreme or otherwise, cosying up to an unreconstituted Communist (hence extreme Left) psychopathic dictator seems to have been lost in the countries who elected them.  The fear here is that Putin can encourage (and probably handsomely reward) them for supporting him in his illegal war against Ukraine and hence undermine both the EU and NATO to his clear advantage.  Poland, formerly run by another Right Wing Populist government and close supporters of Orban and long in dispute with the EU over the rule of law, but still virulently anti-Putin, now has the more moderate, centrist former EU President Donald Tusk as its PM, and he has been campaigning strongly for Europe to strengthen its borders with Russia (and its puppet Belarus) to guard against invasion if Putin wins the Ukraine conflict as a result of the Extreme Right's possible interference.  

He should, know after his face-to-face dealings with Putin during his time in EU office.  The border fence constructed a couple of years ago to keep out illegal migrants (so not a uniquely British problem, no matter what Sunak and Farage and others would have you believe) is being extended to cover the Russian Kaliningrad enclave to the north and the Balltic coast. These are scary times, especially living within less than a couple hours' drive from both borders, as I do.   I hope the rest of the EU takes note and votes to guard its frontiers.

I'm not going to attempt to predict how this election is going to end up: the issues are certainly far more complex and less easy to understand than the simple Conservative v Labour choice at home.  But because of the proximity of my home to a war zone and the very real fears that most Poles have about Putin's post-Ukraine plans (fears that I share), I shall be watching with interest how the make up of the parliament in Brussels changes after this weekend.

Finally, we have the US Presidential Election this coming November.  The antics going on across the pond leave me amazed at the stupidity of some people, and mystified by how a political system limited to two parties that has led the country into being such a divided nation can be held up as a model for anything but chaos.  To this outsider looking in, it looks like every four years (eight maximum: the two-term limit) the country lurches either Left or Right, and the incoming President seems to spend the first couple of weeks of his term issuing Presidential Orders to unwind much of his predecessor's  legislation, before pushing through his own - which in turn will probably be unwound after the next election.  One Administration raises taxes and improves health care benefits for all, the next, favouring "the market", promptly slashes taxes and health care benefits unless they are purchased via expensive insurance policies provided by major companies (and party donors). Or vice versa...  There seems little stability.  If Britain is a divided country with an unfair electoral system (which is true), then America seems a deeply polarized country with a broken political system that is not fit for purpose and questionable as a democracy,

It seems to me that in a democratic society, leadership should be based on ability and the will of the people at the ballot box, not by who has the deepest pockets and able to persuade the most people to give them money, much of which appears to be spent on advertisements, in print, on tv and the internet, slandering political opponents, lying and misrepresenting their opponent's beliefs, policies and achievements while liying about and misrepresenting and grossly exaggerating their own.  It's the politics of hate and division, not hope and compromise, and sadly it is spreading across the Atlantic, certainly to Britain, arguably to the rest of Europe, and this is not a good thing.

This year it will be a run-off between two old men, 80 year old Democrat Joe Biden, the incumbent, and 77 year old Republican Donald Trump, a re-run of the last poll four years ago.  The fact that a new, younger generation of politicans has failed to come through, strong enough to take the parties and the country forward, is itself an indictment of the political system, for both parties.  Trump being on the ballot at all as his party's choice is nothing less than a disgrace: the man is a liar, a fantasist, a dishonest conspiracy theorist, a mysogynist and a convicted felon awaiting sentence for 34 accounting fraud offences.  He also has dozens of other court cases pending and held up in various states thanks to a justice system loaded by him with his supporters in the Supreme Court (so he is also corrupt).  Considering some of the cases relate to unsubstantiated claims of alleged election fraud last time out, and his conduct before and during the so-called Insurgency that attempted to overturn the election result in January 2021 by storming Congress, that resulted in a number of deaths (none of which were attributable to him, he insists) Trump should be nowhere near public office, let alone the Presidency. 

And yet the political system allows a convicted criminal, even one serving jailtime, not only to run for the Presidency but to take office and govern from his cell if he wins.  This is because there is nothing in the Constitution, America's sacred text, to prevent it happening, and this would need amandment to cover the eventuality: one that nobody had ever envisaged happening until this slimeball came along and trampled it underfoot. 

The result of this election could have consequence far beyond America's shores, especially if Trump wins.  He has already said his will be a vengeful Adminstration, so his political opponents will be targetted and his supporters serving time receiving Presidential Pardons as soon as he completes swearing the Oath of Office.  He has announced plans to reform many of the State's institutions to weaken their powers and replace them with rules to obey Presidential edicts - essentially changing governance from a democracy to a dictatorship.  This is essentially what Hitler did during the 1930s and Putin has done (and continues to do) since he took power in Russia.  He has suggested he will withdraw the country from NATO unless every member state immediately abides by his financial demands.  He has also pledged to end the Ukraine War on his fist day in office (presumably by withdrawing all support, financial and military from the country and allowing Russia to take whatever it wants).

Make no mistake he is a deranged individual whose only policy is one of self-aggrandizement. He cares for no-one but Donald Trump.  And yet swathes of the population support him and the Republicsan Party is in thrall to him - they will do whatever he says in order to maintain their grip on power. And dear old Joe and the Democrats seem incapable of countering this movement.  Many people have expressed concern for his health, and wonder openly whether if elected he is fit enough to complete a four year term of office - a reasonable point that begs the question, then why did you not find a younger candidate instead of abiding by convention and allowing the incumbent an automatic nomination?  Especially given the likely opponent!

I sincerely hope enough Americans come to their senses and vote for Biden.  Whatever his age and frailty, he is a decent man and has spent a lifetime of public office serving the American people.  I hope too the Republican Party re-discovers its conscience and blocks Trump's candidacy, but I fear Hell will freeze over before that happens.....

So here we are, well into what could be a momentous political year.  How it will all play out is open to debate and certainly impossible to predict. I try not to worry, not to lose any sleep over any of it - but I can't help it.  Without a vote there is absolutely nothing I can do to change anything (not that a single vote ever does, even in the closest poll).  

But, no question, these are dangerous times.

The Absence of Truth

 

For years, I've been a bit of news junkie.  Specifically, during my years travelling around the world on business, usually to places where I had little or no understanding of the native tongue and where either CNN or the BBC World News were the only English language channels on the hotel tv service, the experience turned me into a news junkie as there was bugger all else to watch (except for porn in some of the better hotels and, of course, on the internet - this was pre-Netflix, Amazon Prime and the other streamers).  With CNN and the Beeb you could be reasonably sure the reporting was factual since the reporters took pains (and often accepted tremendous personal risks) to go to where the news was - to battlefields, to angry street demonstrations where there was of the chance of a riot developing, to authoritarian countries like Russia and China, North Korea and Iran and Syria - and both film and report exactly what they saw happening.  Difficult questions were asked of politicians and their usually mealy mouthed spokespeople, and faithfully reported. It all worked fine.

Then somewhen towards the end of the Obama Administration and the start of the serious Brexit movement (perhaps even earlier, back when the Bush 2 - Blair duo proceeded a War On Terror in the wake of 9/11 that was essentially illegal, overthrew not only Saddam but de-stabilised the entire Middle East, brought about the retribution of al Quaida and ISIS, that all in cost hundreds of thousands of lives and rumbles on today) it all changed.  There came an explosion of alternate media outlets peddling stories on a largely unregulated internet, that often ran contrary to the traditional news media and was rarely verified or fact checked prior to publication. Fiction wrapped up as fact.

The conspiracy theorists that infest the internet loved all of the dross and couldn't get enough of it.  Low lifes like Alex Jones and his InfoWars website that specialised in peddling it (and often wrote the stuff) made fortunes.  The Conspiracist-In-Chief, one Donald J. Trump, lied his way into the US Presidency, largely on the back of another congenital liar and fake news specialist Steve Bannon (and his Breitbart News website), and in short order managed to turn the world upside down, so that the proper and well known global news providers - the "mainstream media" - like the BBC and CNN, and old and respected publications like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the grand old Times of London became branded as Fake News, and newcomers like InfoWars, Breitbart and a host of others switched from being Fake News to mainstream News Media.  

The press became increasingly partisan, not in terms of National Interest but in terms of specific political parties' versions of the national interest.  Hence the mass publication titles like the Mail and the Telegraph, always Tory supporting, became even more rampantly Right Wing, in return for favoured briefings from the Party leadership (in government now for 14 years and counting) and the odd knighthood or peerage.  The papers began to set the agenda, mostly cenntred around leaving the EU, domestic terrorism and border security, and a strong economy.  I would argue they have failed on all these fronts, but that's a discussion for another blog another day.

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All this has left me, and probably everyone else, completely lost as to what constitutes Truth, what is a misrepresentation, and what an Outright Lie.  Take the Brexit Referendum.  A lot of misrepresentation went on throughout the campaign with the odd outright lie thrown in for good measure. For the first, the statement that leaving the EU would enable us to set our own rules and sign our own trade agreements (neither of which has happened as predicted by the likes of Farage and Johnson) is a reasonable example.  The promise that our border security would be strengthened as we would be able to control it has turned out to be a complete lie: there are more illegal migrants arriving by the year and there is no sign of a solution to the problem - if indeed it is a problem. This too is a topic for another essay to re-visit.  The less said about the promise of another three hundred million quid a week (or whatever the amount was) to the NHS plastered all over Johnson's battle bus, or about Priti Patel's assertion that Turkey's imminent accession to the EU would open our borders to 80million Islamic terrorists (a lie on so many levels: Turkey has not acceded and is unlikely to do so for another generation, fpr example, plus the quoted figure was the total population of Turkey, hence the soppy cow was branding new born babes as well as dying old people terrorists), the better. 

The Conspiritor-in-Chief, Mr. Trump, lied his way through his term of office and a global Covid Pandemic, lost the next election but continues to protest that he actually won it, that he did not encourage the January 6 insurrection and storming of Congress (his plea to supporters that day, minutes before the storming, to "fight like hell" presumably just a joke, and the calls to "Hang Mike Pence" - recently panned by Trump as being a coward - merely exuberance), and that the hundred-odd court cases that he is challenging, charges including misuse of government funds, inciting the insurrection, false accounting practices and theft of government propertry, to say nothing of tax evasion, are all a sham and a disgrace and a Biden plot to prevent his re-election this year.....  Unbelievably, this deranged individual is still the Republican nominee. 

Then we have the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that Putin says is to de-Nazify the Ukrainian regime and protect the Russian people, not at all a blatant land grab.  There is so much Fake News flying about over that conflict, dragging on for a third year now, that I don't know where to start so I'll leave it.   But suffice to say that Russia has for years specialised in cyber warfare (there is documented evidence it has interfered in foreign elections and the Brexit referendum by spreading lies on social media) and is not averse to taking more serious action outside its borders when it feels like it (the Litvinenko assassination and Skripal poisonings in Britain and the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine have all been shown as the work of its intelligence agencies and military, despite the Putin regime's denials).

And more recently, and in my view sickeningly, we have the Israel - Hamas conflict.  The sheer number of untruths being peddled over this is simply breathtaking.  The cause of the current explosion is largely defined as the Hamas atrocity of October 7, the raid on a kibbutz that left a thousand odd Israeli men, women and children dead and more than 200 Hamas captives.  The preceding 80 or so years of successive Israeli governments carrying out policies that have left the Palestinian people either exiled around the world or penned into enclaves on the Gaza Strip and West Bank, under round-the-clock surveillance by IDF forces that also control the water, electricity and medical supply provision, are overlooked or denied.  These actions gave rise directly to Hamas, as desperation led to calls for some kind of direct action to help the stateless Palestinians make a homeland to call their own and govern on their own. The atrocity triggered a violent response from Israel, understandably, in defence of its homeland (at least, that is the official line) but the number of Palestinian dead has risen to almost 35,000 (depending on which set of figures you read), most of whom are women and children.  Gaza is now a wasteland, pictures of it resembling Hiroshima after the Bomb, Warsaw and Berlin and Stalingrad - indeed any number of cities in Europe - at the end of the Second World War. But by any stretch of the imagination Israel's response could hardly be called, and  certainly not accepted as, "proportionate", nor "effective and successful" since half the Hamas captives are still held in Gaza.  Negotiations to free them have dragged on for six months, collapsing time and time again, with each side blaming the other and denying responsibility.  

There are allegations, backed up by hard evidence, of daily war crimes being carried out, all of them denied by Israel. There are continuing missile attacks by IDF forces against alleged Hezbollah camps (allies of Hamas and blamed for assisting with the October 7 atrocity: a claim denied by both groups) across the border in Lebanon. Israel also carried out (but will not admit) a strike on a building next to the Iranian embassy in Damascus in neighbouring Syria that killed a couple of high-ranking Iranian generals who, Israel maintains, were also assisting Hamas, Predictably the claim was denied by Iran, and a missile and drone strike carried out by it against Israel.  This was largely ineffectual, but drew the US and the UK into the conflict as USAF and RAF fighter planes assisted the Israeli defence effort.  With all sides blaming each other for the carnage, how is the truth to be defined here?

Whatever the truth is, there are certainly falsehoods in the offiicial statements being made by the Foreign Secretary Lord David (Brexit was nothing to do with me) Cameron in his defence of Britain's involvement.  The attack by Iran was "unprecedented", one sovereign country against another: this ignores Russia's invasion of Georgia some years ago, and more pertinently its invasion of Crimea (part of Ukraine) in 2014, the forerunner to its full scale invasion of Ukraine, with the assistance of its ally Belarus, in 2022.  It also ignores Iraq's invasion of Kuwait preceding the first Gulf War, and the joint US/UK invasion of Iraq post 9/11.  And many other instances throughout the world over the last hundred years.  There is nothing "unprecedented" at all.  Cameron also states there has never been such a "concerted aerial bombardment using drones and missiles" - again, totally false: similar tactics were used against Iraq in Operation Shock & Awe that kicked off the US/UK invasion, and have been used by Russia against Ukraine on a daily basis for the past for two years.  It begs the question why the US and UK are not prepared to allow their air forces to assist Ukraine in its aerial defences as well - Putin's Russia is a far greater threat to world peace than Iran and Hamas.  

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Clearly, "Truth" is a concept that most politicians are now unfamiliar with, under any circumstances. They peddle so much disinformation, so many outright lies, that reporting anything accurately is becoming increasingly difficult, especially with the proliferation of a cyber warfare using social media platforms like Facebook and X hosting, often unwittingly, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fake accounts managed via troll farms in Moscow and (probably) Tel Aviv and Beijing, Langley Virginia, and GCHQ in Cheltenham.  How is anyone supposed to make an informed decision in any election or referendum, in any survey, almost any life decision, when the facts needed to guide their choices are virtually impossible to detect and separate from the fictitious nonsense? How do you decide what is Fake News and what is Real News? 

I don't have the answers.  But I firmly believe that unless and until there is a return to truth-telling and an abandonment of bullshit, then we are all in a very dangerous place.  

Whatever happened to LinkedIn?

Out of interest, what is the purpose of LinkedIn nowadays? I used it regularly for several years, had a solid Network of people, most of whom I knew personally and had worked with. It was a good way for us to keep in touch, alert each other to work opportunities, shoot the breeze in a non-aggressive (i.e. Twitter free) way, and now and again to practice my blogging skills. I even found a work contract one time. It was fine. Then I retired, and (as I thought...) closed and deleted the account as no longer relevant to my life. That was in 2018.

A couple of months ago, My Beloved asked me to track down an old work colleague who we had lost contact with, so I revisited the platform and found him straight away. But without having a LI account of my own, I couldn't reach out to him, so I started to set one up (with the intention of it being purely a temporary means to an end) - and lo and behold the old account I thought was no longer in existance popped up, with all the same personal details but without reference to my original (and final) Network. I sent a request to our friend and we are now connected (not that he has renewed contact with either of us, but still - it's a start).

Just for fun, and to wile away an hour or so, I decided to Edit my Profile, since it was totally out of date and irrelevant, but the changes I was able to make were by and large complete nonsense.  For instance, changing my Occupation and Current Employer to "Retired" and "Not Applicable" - a reflection of my reality - was not possible.  According to my Profile, I am still employed by my old One Man Band Consultancy that I set up ten years ago and haven't used since my retirement, and this shows as my tag line and Current (uneditable) Positon.  I managed to set a field under the Open to Work button that says "Retired", so now I get sent lists of jobs tagged "for retired" that are nothing of the sort. I mean, retirement is not a job it's a way of life, and different for every single retiree. And of course other recruiters and agencies are sending me lists of Consultancy jobs in banking, IT, Pharma and a host of other stuff I neither know nor care about.  

The site even looks very different to how I remember it, so I find it a less than an enjoyable experience. Even the posts are somehow different from how I remember them: always a work-oriented social network, it now appears to me to have morphed into a glossy tool to advertise yourself and spell out what a truly wonderful individual you are, and how employers should be falling over each other to make you an offer you can't refuse - complete with slideshows, pdf's and videos to showcase this that or the other. But perhaps 'twas ever thus and my old mind is playing tricks again.  I'm sure this is all very well, all fine and dandy for today's thrusting young executives striving to climb their individual greasy pole......but I'm afraid to this introverted, aging hippy with a life to live and interests to pursue for my own personal satisfaction - well, not to put too fine a point on it, it's all bollocks!

I'm sure there is a market for a social network of this kind, since every damned thing has its own media platform these days, and I don't really have a problem with that.  I'm not particularly active in the area - a bit of Facebook to keep in touch with my friends and family scattered around the world, but that's about it. And my blogs of course, if they count as social media (I don't think they do). I also understand any platform, be it LinkedIn or simply my internet browser of choice, must evolve in line with technological advances and that driving force of everything, The Market - but I wish sometimes a little more thought could be applied when doing so.  To me at least what I've seen on my return to LinkedIn shows me that in this case the evolution hasn't been for the better.  It would have been nice, for instance, if the re-opened account still showed at least the list of names that comprised my old network, and allowed me to re-connect (should any of them want to do so, of course) but that is not the case.  As it stands if I want to re-build I have to a) remember who was in that network (of course I can't), then b) spend hours, perhaps days, using the Search tool to try and track then down.  Frankly, I can't be bothered - and that is no disrespect to them, they were all fine people. I simply just don't see any point in doing it.

Anyway, I know mine is a voice in the wilderness, so I'll finish this rant now and get on with the rest of my life.