TGS Has Moved

I can now be found at my new home: http://www.thegreatsimpleton.me.uk/

heads they win, tails we lose

As always when it comes to politics and big business we, that tax payers, are the ones getting screwed:

Shamelessly stolen from The Angry Economist

Boy, did we get it wrong on SMS! What chance political central planners.

From this year's Economist technology and Innovation awards*

Computing and Telecommunications: Matti Makkonen for the development of Short Message Service (SMS), or text messaging. Mr Makkonen is a Finnish engineer who is credited with inventing SMS, which allows short messages to be sent between mobile phones. He proposed the idea in the 1980s while working at Finland’s telecoms authority. Billions of text messages are now sent every day.

I spent most of the 90's designing and building GSM networks. Whenever we put business plans together we just paid lip service to SMS; it was seen as something that could be used for SIM updates and nothing else. Nobody believed that any sane person would think about going through the rigmarole of tapping out a message to send to someone else.

Unless you've been on planet Zog for the past 15 years or so you'll be well aware of how wrong we were and the massive growth of SMS but maybe not aware of how much of a golden egg it became for the mobile industry:

The same Informa report shows that SMS remains a very popular technology, however. Worldwide SMS traffic was up year-on-year by around 50 per cent to more than 620 billion messages sent during the quarter. SMS revenues were up 23 per cent over the same period.

and

A report from UK-based research firm Portio Research suggests that SMS will remain the most widely used messaging format for some years to come, with revenues estimated at $50bn by 2010 driven by almost 2.38 trillion messages.

To select just 2 random articles.

When we talked to the Marketing teams to get dimensioning numbers they were either oblivious to SMS or just didn't see it as a major revenue generator, so we would just add in a single SMS centre for the network and move on, it wasn't worth spending time on the detail. This didn't matter as even if they had given forecasts of high usage we would have matched spend to revenues so there wouldn't have been much of an impact on capital expenditure (Capex) until it was needed and had revenues to pay for it.

When SMS did start to take off there was a bit of a scramble but as it is a Store and Foreward technique and instant delivery was never promised it didn't realy matter. A few engineers made extra money during that period and some smaller companies grew like topsy to meet demand, but no real harm done.

It is also worth noting that in 1994 the engineering team I worked in was given a briefing by the Orange marketing team. In this briefing they predicted that UK mobile penetration in the UK would top out at around 30% by the year 2000 and Orange would have a 20% share. As it happens penetration was approaching 100% by the year 2000.

So, why am I telling you all this? Well, apart from general interest there is a lesson in central planning to be learned. When I say "we" did all this planning, I mean some seriously intelligent people. I worked with a number of Management Consultancy companies at the time and they were the ones making the forecasts on mobile demand. Most of the people had MBA's from some of the top management schools, including INSEAD. Many of them also had years of telecoms experience as well. They were also working for some very hard nosed, perceptive and very rich clients.

These people were focused on one thing, making money. If they it wrong then companies would lose billions of £££'s, and they still managed to get something as fundamental as mobile forecasts wrong. Fortunately for the companies involved they undercooked how much money was to be made, but when they get it wrong its very expensive; ask Hutchison about its 3 operation here in the UK:

Canning Fok denies that the launch of a mobile broadband service is the last chance for Hutchison Whampoa's loss-making 3 mobile business. ... Today he is desperate to convince the outside world that the $25bn gamble 3 has placed on Europe's third-generation telephony market will - eventually - pay off.

They are still losing money, but not quite as fast.

If these seriously bright people with lots of experience can't always get it right, what hope is there for us of our current crop of politicians and civil servants, most of whom haven't done anything outside politics, planning and managing a whole economy or even, for that matter, regulating the seriously bright people effectively? And they have any political consideratios affecting their decision making as well.

Me? I would prefere to leave most of it to the seriously bright people and hard nosed business men and I include health deleivery in that statement as well.

*No link as its behind a subscription wall

You won't often hear this from a Yorkshireman

Well done Mancunians

BBC: More or less

As regular readers know I am always happy to bash the BBC, especially the lightweights on Radio 5. I may even call for it to be trimmed but as along as they produce programs like More or Less, its almost worth the licence fee on its own.

This week's program was excellent and exposed the nonsense behind the recent wild stories about sexual abuse of children:

A question of sexual or statistical abuse?

Between 5 and 10% of girls suffer the most serious forms of sexual abuse, according to reports based on a paper published this week in The Lancet.

These are shocking figures.

But are they true?

We investigate whether the statistics really support the claims of a hidden epidemic.

You won't be surprised to hear that it was statistical abuse. A meta study of a meta study of some very badly planned research. The one report that claimed this abuse didn't even include the UK is its research.

I recommend getting it on your MP3 players as a podcast. If you can't do get over there and catch the last program on iPlayer and then make a date in your diary to listen to future programs.

Ireland's 2nd Refererendum and Ever Closer Union

Guido is reporting that the EU has persuaded Ireland to have a new referendum in his own, inimical, style (my emphasis):

Reports from Brussels coming in suggest that Ireland's political elite are allowing their arms to be twisted by the EU into ignoring the "No!" vote in the referendum and having another one. This comes as absolutely no surprise - the undemocratic nature of the EU project has always been manifest. It has a semblance of voting but the outcome is as pre-determined as a Soviet-era party congress. On the rare occasions when the project comes off the rails, nothing, not even the will of the people will stop it.

Irish citizens were the only people in Europe allowed to express their democratic will. They said "NO!" The EU's dirty ratifiers won't accept that answer.

The BBC reports it a bit more sedately, pointing out that Ireland is seeking legally binding bribes assurances:

The mechanism for a second referendum is included in draft conclusions which are being presented by the current holders of the EU presidency, France, and which have been seen by the BBC.

According to the draft, the Irish government says "it is committed to seeking ratification" of the Lisbon Treaty by the end of October 2009.

What Guido misses and the BBC don't want to tell us that it is always inevitable that any country that rejects anything the slows down the integration of the EU will have to vote again and again until they get it right. There will be some tinkering for the sake of "face" but no Government can object and say No means No because membership of the EU obliges them to work towards "ever closer union".

The Treaty establishing the EEC calls for it as part of membership:

OBJECTIVES

After the failure of the EDC, the economy, which was less subject to national resistance than other areas, became the focus of consensus in the field of supranational cooperation. The establishment of the EEC and the creation of the Common Market had two objectives. The first was to transform the conditions of trade and manufacture on the territory of the Community. The second, more political, saw the EEC as a contribution towards the functional construction of a political Europe and constituted a step towards the closer unification of Europe.

In the preamble, the signatories of the Treaty declare that:

"- determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe,

This is why Maggie always ended up losing and no matter what our politicians promise us they can't stop it. They can promise referendums in order to help win elections but they are meaningless waffle.

Although I voted to join the EC in 1975 I quickly became aware that something was wrong, but just put it down to empire building politicians and bureaucrats. I voted Tory partly because I thought that they could tame the worst excesses of the EC/EEC/EU only to see them embrace the EU.

It wasn't until I heard someone mention this ever closer union following the French No in their Constitution Referendum that I realised what was going on: we have been hoodwinked, conned or whatever phrase you prefer, into a position where we can't block the "progress" towards a United States of Europe. We were promised this wouldn't happen in 1975, they lied.

It is for this reason that I have moved from being a skeptic but accepting staying in and changing from the inside to outright hostility and a belief that we need to get out, immediately. I shall be voting, but not joining, UKIP at next summer's EU elections.

Met Police Just Dont Get It on Menezes Death

I caught most of Sir Paul Stephenson's press conference following the Open Verdict on my way home and he just doesn't get it. (See it here).

There is some justification to the "fog of war" argument. No matter how much you plan and train for these things something can, and usually does, go wrong. I have have some sympathy for the policeman on the front line, none of them go to work wanting to kill anyone, let alone an innocent person, and I am sure that they will lose sleep over it for the rest of their lives.

What was unacceptable, and still is, is the way the senior ranks colluded to hide the truth. The way they tried to smear him is beneath contempt:

Lawyers for the Met questioned whether the Brazilian’s cocaine abuse and illegal immigration status could have contributed to what happened on July 22.

They said the suspect's "threatening and aggressive" behaviour was like that of a suicide bomber when confronted by police.

Asad Rehman, the family's campaign spokesman, hit back at the claims about the 27-year-old.

He said: "We have been taken aback by how the police decided to defend this case, and the line that they have taken in terms of trying to muddy Jean Charles's name and diminish him as a person and make the shooting more acceptable.

"He [the defence lawyer] was literally saying he was asking for it, which I thought was pretty sickening."

There was also a leaked rumour just after the shooting that he was an illegal immigrant and that it was therefore somehow his own fault, as idiotic blogs like this one attest.

If Sir Ian Blair had put his hands up immediately and accepted it was a complete fuck up we could have had more respect for them, paid compensation had a very quick inquiry in to what went wrong and hoped that we wont be the victims next time.

Sir Ian Blair's belated sacking resignation was too little, too late, and anyone involved at a senior level in the events should be barred from applying for the promotion of any sort, at least.

Iraq finished - job well done

Travelgall has written an excellent post about the excellent work our troops have done in Iraq at A Very British Dude, which I commend to all.

Daily Telegraph Letter(s) of the Day

Being away from home and staying in a hotel I have more time for the papers. I liked this one, it sums up the Governments our confusion about drugs and tobacco very nicely:

SIR – Last week it was reported that illegal drug use was costing the NHS £15 billion a year – 10 times the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses.

As illegal drugs have never been displayed for sale or put in fancy packaging, but always sold "under the counter", this method of marketing seems very effective, as there are more illegal drug users now than legal tobacco users.

But then, it is much easier to target the corner shop than the vast organised business of supplying illegal substances.

Stephen Leader

Chessington, Surrey

On a personal level, as a non-smoker of nearly 24 years standing I sometimes partake in this little pleasure:

SIR – I will regret the disappearance of tobacco products from display in shops and supermarkets.

I take great pleasure in checking the price of packets of 20 king-size filters. They were 37·5 pence a packet when I gave them up.

Mike Cooper

Southport, Lancashire

Just in case anyone passing through doesn't understand my position on smoking and drugs: I support the right of people to smoke, I was against the banning of smoking in pubs and I support the legalisation of drugs. I would, though, ban smoking outside.

Labour bashing welfare claimants without even a squeal from the BBC, what gives?

Another Government head talking on Radio 4 this morning:

0816
The government's welfare reform plans - designed to get more than a million people off benefits and into work - are to be published. Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell discusses how benefit claimants "can play their part" in the economy.

Two things struck me about it:

Firstly, what a soft ride he got. If this had been the Tories the interviewer would have been all over them trying to rip their heads off. Furthermore, the studio would have had all the usual suspects from the Unions and self appointed spokes people claiming how bad they were, especially as we are having a recession.

Secondly, why now? We've had 12 years or so of growth without these initiatives, wouldn't it have been easier then? private industry is starting to shed jobs and the Government is doing its best to saddle us with ever increasing debt and is hardly in a position to go around creating even more jobs. That would pointless anyway as the non-jobs would cost more than keeping them on welfare.

Could it be that the Government have tipped off the BBC and their other friends that this is just a move to placate the Daily Mail tendency in the run up to a General Election?