Friday, 18 January, 2008
- 18 Jan 08, 05:31 PM
Hello
Today's Quote for the Day
"I think he shatters the myth of white supremacy once and for all" - New York Congressman Charles Rangel when asked for his views about US President George Bush.
China and the World Economy
and says he wants trade with China to double in two years. Meanwhile to help the ailing US economy. I'll be exploring the significance of the Brown visit and the world economic problems with Senator Chuck Hagel, Chairman of the US Congressional China Commission and Lord Digby Jones, the new Trade Minister.
Heathrow
The Captain of the British Airways jet which crash landed at Heathrow airport yesterday on board Flight BA 038. Susan Watts has been trying to establish what caused the crash.
Bobby Fischer
The former chess champion, . He was 64 and had been seriously ill. He made his name as one of the world's greatest - and most temperamental - players. A Grand Master at 25, he won the world championship in the highly-publicised match with Boris Spassky in 1972, breaking the Soviet domination of the game. Steve Smith looks back at a Cold War legend.
NEWSNIGHT REVIEW
After Newsnight, Kirsty is joined on the Review sofa by Pablo Mukherjee, Denise Mina and Tom Paulin to discuss: No Country For Old Men, the Coen brothers' bloody new western based on Cormac McCarthy's novel; His Illegal Self the latest from Australian author Peter Carey; Tim Burton's take on the Sondheim musical version of Sweeney Todd, with Burton stalwart Johnny Depp; and a double bill from the Bush Theatre, London - Land of the Dead/Helter Skelter.
More details on all those on the , and read about and watch - Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.
Comments Post your comment
Dear Newsnight
re Bobby Fischer
one of many interesting strands here is where the nature of genius makes it very difficult for the genius to be used to its optimum
best wishes
Bob
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"As you know, an investigation is being carried out by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch so it's not possible for me to make any public comment on the circumstances of what happened."
Captain Peter Burkill
Wouldn't Susan/NN be better leaving it to the investigators?
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Hi Newsnight
Bush's economic strategy seems to have being to steal iraqs oil while keeping those who run him happy,
his personal sense of inadequacy having failed to fight in the Vietnam while living in the shadow of his father seems to have caused psychological weaknesses that those aroud him have exploited,
economically he has significantly weakned America by embarking on a costly military build up against a non existent threat instead of investing the money in the US economy,
soon he will be gone but he presents a clear and present danger to the stability of the world, to the middle east in particular as i am quite sure he intends to attack iran,
Bob
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Wasn't Jeremy just superb on Wednesday - 90%/100. As a former member of the British Amateur Weight - lifting Association (BAWA)
I have always admired his physic.
But too many boozy lunches with hacks - Your New Year resolution: YOU need to belly dance!
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Re Heathrow:
If BA/BAA refused to compensate passengers for impounded baggage, forcing the to pay for their own taxis home, then the just breached the new Charter on Fundamental Rights, Article 17
Right to property
1. Everyone has the right to own, use, dispose of and bequeath his or her lawfully acquired
possessions. No one may be deprived of his or her possessions, except in the public interest and in
the cases and under the conditions provided for by law, subject to fair compensation being paid in good
time for their loss. The use of property may be regulated by law in so far as is necessary for the general
interest.
Note the clause stating that any legal deprivation is "subject to fair compensation being paid in good time for their loss". As the airport has large amounts of cash being paid for many different purposes, including ticketing (BA) and duty-free (BAA), I think that a reasonable definition of "good time" would have been "immediately".
Although it's pragmatically clear that the passengers couldn't remove their possessions at the time of the crash, it becomes a lot less certain that such possessions are evidential - one could as easily claim that everything they stood up in was too, which WOULD have made an interesting story (on the hypothesis that there may be mobile phones to check for usage freezing the systems, for instance). And if these posessions aren't evidential, then once the situation was stabilised it would have been eminently reasonable to offload what could be offloaded - they removed the passenger chutes, for instance.
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Your "prospect" bloggers sum up the problem we are facing and I write as a Labour member.
I have spoken many times to my local MP that politics is a matter of "perception" even if this perception is biased by those (bloggers) who have a party point to make. i.e. Brown is rubbish.
Now we can all have a good "belly laugh" at Brown's expense but we are still left that, unless we address the problems that the ordinary worker/housewife/citizen is experiencing, free from cheap shots at politicians, we are heading for disaster.
It pains me to agree with many of the sentiments expressed, but we have to address the problem on how we are to return skills to this country which we are "privatising" off to others. The hike in energy prices is a good example-foreign investors ripping us off making massive profits and the Government sits by and lets them.
After 30 years of Thatcherism which a Labour Government has signed up to, it is strange to be hearing more calls for Nationalisation of Rail and Northern Rock.
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Bob (#1) Perhaps:
Perhaps not:
If it really comes down to a genetically determined lack of self-awareness of the consequences of one's behaviours, what's the point of criticising perpetrators if one begins with the assumption that they don't know, and that their scotoma is/are genetic? What hope can there be for enlightenment rather than management?
I recall someone else said much the same a couple of millennia ago (not that it did much good ;-)
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I at least learned something tonight from Digby Jones in China. I thought
Ove Arup was a Danish company - but Digby was indeed right that it is British .... Ove Arup was educated in Denmark and Germany - but born in Newcastle where his father was the Danish consul! I wonder if Newcastle still has a Danish consulate ......?
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FINDING THE NEEDLE IN THE BOEING SOFTWARE HAYSTACK
They have found the cause of the Heathrow crash very quickly – no doubt much to the relief of the co-pilot – but have they?
The engines simply failed to respond to the pilot’s control. In the old days you would look for the broken bit of wire. Boeing, however, chose – in its latest designs – to replace that wire by computer control. The problem, therefore, is to hunt out the intermittent fault in millions of lines of programming code; with no easy way of simulating the conditions which caused it – for everything was apparently normal at the time.
I have no experience of avionic software, but I did work for IBM when they were launching enormous new operating systems. The main part of the cost, and time, in the development of these was taken up with testing them to debug them – to ensure that no problems would occur. At least two thirds of the overall effort used to go into such testing. Even then the real testing was undertaken by the eventual customers, initially as beta-testing with customers who were willing to risk the process but eventually with ordinary customers. Indeed faults emerged many months later, and IBM built its reputation of throwing huge resources at getting those customers back on line. Much the same was true for its development of software for the Apollo programme, and we saw Houston desperately working out the answer to such problems in space.
In addition, for the really life-critical software, such as that on Apollo and later on its live medical applications (on which I did work), IBM deliberately chose to use software which was long in the tooth; since it assumed, as it had been tested by customers elsewhere for anything up to a decade, the worst bugs had been found.
Boeing, with a great fanfare, chose instead to pioneer leading edge – unproven – developments. At the time it seemed it enabled it to leapfrog competitors, but maybe it will now pay the price for the risk it took with its passengers’ lives. Not least, it will find it near impossible to find the real fault. Intermittent faults, as this probably was, are incredibly difficult to solve; even when they are hardwired. Hiding amongst all the programming code they will be virtually invisible. What will the future passengers, let alone the regulatory authorities, think when the latest Boeing planes might just drop out of the air without warning. Alright, the risk may be something less than being hit by lightning, but air passengers are paranoid about safety matters. So will it destroy Boeing?
In the meantime, if you want to be that much safer yourself, fly Airbus; which chose a safer hybrid approach!
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Bob (#1) Perhaps:
Perhaps not:
It's the way the (verbal/symbolic) game is played which matters (as Galloway adeptly points out in the clip(s) above).
One thing's for sure, this side of Fischer's 'life's work' still gets very little airtime. As remarked upon before, if one thinks about the criticism as being directed at a very specific non-male class of (almost universally regarded dishonourable) verbal behaviour, it becomes far less controversial for all concerned. The target behaviours are, I suggest, the expression of an immutable blind-spot which universally accounts for a division of labour which only crudely differentiates the sexes by genitalia.
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There seems to be a strange consensus among economists that China's recent record growth can continue on at or near its current pace forever. But it is clear to me that this period is drawing to an end for a large number of reasons. For one thing, China has paid the price for its growth by becoming the worlds most toxic waste dump with conditions dangerous to life and health so terrible that it will not be much longer before every source of food, water, and every product is suspect of being contaminated with deadly poisons. More incidents like those recently in the US with toys, pet food, and toothpaste may make Chinese made products unmarketable. China's growth is the result principally of exports of relatively inexpensive products often bought as discretionary purchases. Its huge export surplus is bankrupting its customers who now face reprioritizing their purchases to more basic needs like rents, mortgage payments, utilities, their cars, insurance, etc. China is rapidly consuming increasing percentages of the world's availiable natural resources especially energy, a situation which cannot go on forever. China is a key to controlling global warming, its lack of serious participation along with India's will mean climate change will go unchecked no matter what other nations agree to however reluctantly. China's population is aging. There are still 500 million Chinese who live on less than $2 a day and they want their fair share of the new prosperity. So do another 200 million who live above $2 a day but also in poverty. China is facing a land use crisis because arable land is being taken over by industry and agriculture is disappearing. Climate change is also having an impact on agriculture. China has an extremely fragile banking system and a stock market in a huge bubble. All of the ingredients for social upheaval and economic collapse are present. All it will take is one major event such as recession in the US or EU or war in the Middle East to bring this house of cards down.
David Mercer #9
While it is prudent to wait for the result of careful investigations to come to any reliable concludion about the cause of the 777 aircraft failure, the preliminary assessment from what I can tell was complete and sudden electrical power system failure. While I am not familiar with aircraft design, I have had considerable experience in industrial controls. It seems inconceiveable to me that in a critical system such as this there aren't redundant systems not only for software but manual overrides which allow the crew to take direct control bypassing all computerized systems. These are the inevitable consequences of failure mode analysis during development and FAA approval of aircraft for flightworthiness. It is unlikely that all of the backup systems failed simultaneously or that the crew was not trained to use them. Something entirely catastrophic and unpredictable must have happened but at this stage I can't imagine what that could be.
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Gordon Brown looks likely to have upset the " touchy feely " wing of the Labour party with his form on his visit to China, no mention of human rights yet cuddling up to the Olympics. The Beijing Olympics have been responsible for the virtual ethnic cleansing of many people from the sites but Brown can't complain because its going on here. The Elevate schemes in the north west mill towns have evicted hundreds of home owners who owed nothing, then were forced to take out a mortgage on a another property somewhere else in the area. The London Olympics have already destroyed hundreds of secure long term jobs which never be replaced because the production has probably gone overseas.
Never mind, we are all going to get 5000 stock market parasite jobs as the Chinese gradually nationalize our banks and can close any competitor at the drop of a hat. Its obvious that the stock market parasites have got Brown in their pocket, perhaps like Blair they have offered him a major consultancy with some astronomical pay check for very little work. Perhaps the only reason he got into the headlines on Saturday was due to him having magiced a private sector solution to the Northern Rock situation. It may be more than coincidence that Branson is also in China, the bonds are probably his idea, and there could be a long queue of potential investors for government backed bonds. Its probably likely to make the stock market crash even further than it is anticipated if Northern Rock was actually Nationalized. Its no wonder that the bonds are being staged over a number of years, but you just might as well introduced National Savings certificates or perhaps more importantly income bonds at a good rate.
I suspect that the inflation figures for this month will be far harder to massage with gas going up 15%, will the BoE stick to its guns on inflation pressures and not cut interest rates. We need a strong pound now that we rely so heavily on imports, and it doesn't help exporting recycled plastic bottles to China. The Chinese are on a real winner here, they get cheap fuel but perhaps more importantly a " back load " for once empty containers. This must significantly decrease their transport costs, its hardly surprising we can't compete with them, after all much of their heavy industry is still nationalized. Perhaps time for the UK to embrace Energy from Waste, we might just as well get the benefit of potentially cheap electricity. The only obstacles are the eco-fascists and their set of brainwashed politicians or perhaps what Bill Bradbury said on the blog a few days ago is beginning to percolate through.
It may be interesting to watch Boing shares this week if air accident investigators fail to climb off the possibility of a software bug in the 777.
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I thought GB said we are to be a 'knowledge economy', but we then
give the Chinese Government £50m for 'green energy', while at home at the same time, £m's are being cut from the science budgets.
Colin
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Gordon Brown looks likely to have upset the " touchy feely " wing of the Labour party with his form on his visit to China, no mention of human rights yet cuddling up to the Olympics. The Beijing Olympics have been responsible for the virtual ethnic cleansing of many people from the sites but Brown can't complain because its going on here. The Elevate schemes in the north west mill towns have evicted hundreds of home owners who owed nothing, then were forced to take out a mortgage on a another property somewhere else in the area. The London Olympics have already destroyed hundreds of secure long term jobs which never be replaced because the production has probably gone overseas.
Never mind, we are all going to get 5000 stock market parasite jobs as the Chinese gradually nationalize our banks and can close any competitor at the drop of a hat. Its looks like the stock market parasites have got Brown in their pocket, perhaps like Blair they have offered him a major consultancy with some astronomical pay check for very little work. Perhaps the only reason he got into the headlines on Saturday was due to him having magiced a private sector solution to the Northern Rock situation. It may be more than coincidence that Branson is also in China, the bonds could be his idea, and there could be a long queue of potential investors for government backed bonds. Its probably likely to make the stock market crash even further than it is anticipated if Northern Rock was actually Nationalized. Its no wonder that the bonds are being staged over a number of years, but you just might as well introduced National Savings certificates or perhaps more importantly income bonds at a good rate.
I suspect that the inflation figures for this month will be far harder to massage with gas going up 15%, will the BoE stick to its guns on inflation pressures and not cut interest rates. We need a strong pound now that we rely so heavily on imports, and it doesn't help exporting recycled plastic bottles to China. The Chinese are on a real winner here, they get cheap fuel but perhaps more importantly a " back load " for once empty containers. This must significantly decrease their transport costs, its hardly surprising we can't compete with them, after all much of their heavy industry is still nationalized. Perhaps time for the UK to embrace Energy from Waste, we might just as well get the benefit of potentially cheap electricity. The only obstacles are the eco-fascists and their set of brainwashed politicians or perhaps what Bill Bradbury said on the blog a few days ago is beginning to percolate through.
It may be interesting to watch Boing shares this week if air accident investigators fail to climb off the possibility of a software bug in the 777.
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Gordon Brown and Branson on the same flight and didn't discuss 'in detail' Northern Rock? Yeah, right. We are about to hand over 55 billion to an adventurer who saw his chance and the opportunity to seal the deal on the flight. We, the taxpayers will be left with a legacy of lending an already rich kid the crown jewels because Brown doesn't want to be tainted with the N word. What a betrayal of British values.
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