End of the road

We have sold our car. We simply were not using it enough.
I have been a petrol-head since I bought my first motorcycle at the age of 17. I have taken bikes and cars apart and put them together again. I like knowing how these things work. We have had some wonderful cars. I have had some wonderful motorcycles.
But the world is changing. Young men do not do up cars these days. Cities are providing more and more ways of getting about. And they are restricting cars. It is unpleasant driving in London, or driving out of London to get somehere. I had a car which would do 120mph. In most of London, the speed limit is 20mph. Cycling and Uber are the ways people do it now.
And I am changing as I get older. I am less keen to spend a day in a garage working on a car. I am more inclined to spend time working on a program on a laptop in the flat.
We can catch a lot of taxis and trains for much less than it was costing us to tax, insure, service and park a car.
But it is not simply a matter of money. Governments, companies and people all have to change as the world changes. If they don't they are left behind.
We are changing to work with our bit of the world as it is.

Vote Green and defeat the great pretenders

I will be voting Green in the general election. Why?
It is the only party which is not pretending that everyone can have a job and is, instead, promising to try out a basic state wage for all.
It is the only party which is not pretending that we will be conquered if we give up our nuclear weapons and is, instead, promising to scrap those nuclear weapons.

Getting rid of immigrants or leaving the EU will not help the employment prospects in the North East. The days when poorly-educated people could earn good money in mines,  shipyards and factories are over.
The days when well-educated people can earn good money doing middling jobs will not last much longer, as Artificial Intelligence proves cheaper and better.
So at some point, politicians will have to work out how to enable people to have meaningful lives without working to put food on the table.
The Greens are tackling that now.

And there is no serious debate about nuclear weapons. Any attempt to start one is quashed by the main parties saying any grown-up knows we would be invaded in five minutes if we didn't have Trident.
As only nine countries have nuclear weapons, the list of naked countries which have not, so far been invaded, is long.
If Germany, Japan and all the other lily-livered countries can get along fine without the wherewithal to blow us all to kingdon come, why can't our insignificant island do likewise?
The Greens are tackling this now.

The Europe con

I am old. Not as old as the Chewky Embra, but old enough to have seen most things before.
In my lifetime a succession of British Prime Ministers have gone off to 'get a better deal from Europe'. They have always come back, boasting of the good deal they got, when, in truth, very little was conceded by Europe, which is more interested in doing things which benefit all the member countries, than in things which benefit only one.
Now we have Theresa May going off to try the same con. What does she think she is going to negotiate? 
The club has fees, rules and benefits. Obey the rules, pay the fees and you can get the benefits.
We say we don't like the rules or the fees, so we are leaving the club. But we still want the benefits.
When Europe says: Dream on, May complains the Eurocrats are trying to punish us. This is arrogant nonsense.
More than 50 years ago, Harold Macmillan came back from Europe with his tail between his legs because General de Gaulle had said Non.
I will be interested to see what May boasts about when Europe ends the negotiations with Britain because we don't understand Non.

Data or diatribes

I went this week to the launch of the Royal Society's report on machine learning. 
It is a very interesting look at all the issues around the subject.
One questioner asked when we would reach the stage when algorithms will be able to do anything a human can do. None of the panel could put a date on it.
But by one yardstick, we are already there. 
Computer algorithms learn from the data they find to produce their outcomes. Just like scientists. 
An awful lot of humans base their outcomes on what Boris Johnson or Donald Trump says. 
Which do you think is better?

Good health

I am learning about the Health Service. The organisation is chaotic. The people who work in it are brilliant.
The people who have seen me at Bermondsey Spa, my GP, at Guys and St Thomas' Hospitals and at University College London have all been very good at the medical stuff and very good with a patient.
The organisation behind them is less good. 
It is not a normal business. Unlimited demand for a free service which divides political opinion is not the ideal model for an efficient, cost-effective business.
But it must be possible to have one businesslike bunch dealing with the allocation of beds, the booking and managing of appointments, the peaks and troughs, leaving the brilliant medical bunch to do what they are good at.
And they must have the means to raise the money it takes to meet this unlimited demand. If the government won't pay the bill, the Health Service needs to be able to raise it some other way.
I would invest in NHS bonds, or NHS crowdfunding.

The Milo de Venus and the sky blue Jaguar

The first LP I ever bought was Chuck Berry On Stage. I still have it. It still sounds great.
I love Chuck Berry. I love his words, his jangling intros. 
While callow pop stars sang of love, Chuck sang about school, cars and Nadine:

As I was motorvatin' over the hill, I saw Maybelline in a Coupe de Ville . . . 

Ten mile stretch on an Indiana road, t'was a sky blue Jaguar and a Thunderbird Ford, Jaguar setting on 99, trying to beat the Bird to the county line . . .

I saw her from the corner when she turned and doubled back, started walkin' towards a coffee-coloured Cadillac, I was pushing through the crowd to get to where she's at, campaign shouting like a southern diplomat . . .

They had a hifi phono, boy did they let it blast, 700 little records, all rock and rhythm and jazz, but when the sun went down the rapid tempo of the music fell, c'est la vie said the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell . . .

Milo de Venus was a beautiful lass, had the world in the palm of her hand, lost both her arms in a wrestling match, to win a brown-eyed handsome man . . .

Everything is wrong since me and my baby parted, all day long I'm walking 'cause I couldn't get my car started, laid off from my job and I can't afford to check it, wish someone'd come along and run into it and wreck it . . .

Looked at my watch and it was 10:05, I didn't know if I was dead or alive . . .

I earned my living doing words. I never did anything as clever, as memorable as that.
Chuck suffered as all black artists did in the South in the early 1960s. Jailed several times, cheated by concert promoters. He got even by insisting on payment, in dollars, in cash, before he went on stage and by using the cheapest local players to back him.
So many of the big British bands of the Sixties started off playing Chuck Berry songs.
We all have a lot to thank him for.

Sell-out

So now it is official. We are not just a backward island off the coast of Europe, we are a go-getting sales team looking to do business with anyone in the world no matter how nutty or how dangerous they are. Deals with Trump - bring 'em on. Arms sales to Erdogan - yes please.
But don't try to send your salesmen here. They will be stopped by the border police.
We want to sell them stuff, not welcome them.