Should Screwfix take over Labour Policy?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an Energy Minister in possession of a net zero policy, must be in want of a Clean Energy Engineer.  Or so thinks Ed Miliband.

Equally, it is a truth universally acknowledged, that an anyone in possession of a dripping tap, must be in want of a plumber.  Or so thinks Screwfix.

It’s possible that only one of those two statements is true, but it’s been an odd few weeks, with two very similar policy documents being published about the need to train more engineers for the future of the UK.  One from Ed Miliband, highlighting the need for another 420,000 engineers by 2030 to support his Clean Energy Superpower Mission, which he believes will transform the UK.  A few days before that announcement, Screwfix – one of the UK’s largest builder’s merchants published a Voice of the Trade skills survey identifying a similar shortfall of 250,000 tradespeople in the same timescale, who they believe are needed to build and maintain our homes and workplaces.  Whilst Ed Miliband’s introduction to the Clean Energy Superpower Mission reads like a Government edict from “1984”, exhorting us to “take back control from petrostates” and an end to “union-free zones” in the industry, the Screwfix manifesto is a lot more pragmatic, calling for the Government to make it easier for young people to take up a career in trade through apprenticeships. 

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The 2G / 3G / 70th Birthday Sunset

I have a friend who recently reached 70, having worked in and around the telecoms industry.  Hallmark and Scribbler don’t have many cards aimed at that specific combination, so it felt like time to design a custom card.  Being of that annoying engineering bent, I wondered what 70 would appear as in different number bases.

Imagine my surprise when I found that 70 in Base 18 is 3G, and In Base 27, it’s 2G.  Both of which are being “sunsetted” around the world, as mobile operators refarm their spectrum allocation to increase revenue from their 4G and 5G networks.  I couldn’t believe the coincidence.  And so, a birthday card was born.

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Ticketing the Edinburgh Fringe

I’ve been going to the Edinburgh Fringe for many years.  It’s the world’s largest arts festival.  This year, 3,893 different shows were performed in over 300 venues around the City.  That led to sales of more than 2.6 million tickets.  In terms of ticket sales, it’s the third largest ticketing operation in the world, beaten only by the Olympics and the World Cup.  Unlike the Olympics and the World Cup, the Edinburgh Fringe takes place every year, so the pressure on the ticketing system is immense.

In many ways, the Fringe, in its current form, only exists because of the ticketing system run by the Edinburgh Fringe Society.  They publish the master programme guide and run EdFringe.com, which provides the single point of information and purchase for most attendees.  It’s a complex job, as it needs to coordinate with other ticketing systems run by larger venues.  Ensuring that the last remaining ticket for any show is not sold multiple times is a complex challenge in such a distributed system.  Which means that it is vital that it works.

The Fringe has come close to disaster in the past.  In 2008, the Fringe Society  introduced a new ticketing system, which failed on the opening day of ticket sales.  It should have been a “never again” lesson, but this year, when I went to book tickets, there was an unpleasant reminder that the lesson may not have been learnt.

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AI reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe

If you’re putting a show on at the Edinburgh Fringe, the thing everyone looks for is a good review.  In the performing arts, the star system starts where the Michelin Guide runs out of steam.  Three stars for a show is just run of the mill.  Four stars means it’s a “must see”, while five stars indicates that you may need to kill to get tickets.  Except it’s all got rather devalued.

Go back thirty years and there were two gold standards – the Scotsman and The Stage.  Each had a team of professional reviewers who awarded stars in their daily reviews.   A few other printed publications like The List joined in, but everything changed when Broadway Baby burst on the scene in 2004 with online reviews.  The Scotsman was outraged and railed against non-professional reviewers, but an increasing number of online review sites appeared.  Audiences were encouraged to comment on Twitter and post reviews on the Edfringe.com website.

The result was that it became a lot easier to get a four or five star review from somewhere – sometimes the Edfringe.com ones even appeared before the show opened.  Productions now plaster their posters and flyers with the stars in large font and the source in diminishingly small font.  What’s important seems to be how many sets of stars you have.  That’s been going on for several years.  What is ruffling feathers this year is the accusation that some reviews are being written by AI. 

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Reclaiming NIMBY – Nuclear in my Back Yard

What do Plymouth, Weymouth, Southampton and Portsmouth have in common?  They’re all South coast towns in England, and for the past fifty years they’ve all been happy to host small nuclear power plants within a few miles of their town centre.  In the not very distant future, they might be joined by a lot more British towns and cities as nuclear enters a new phase of rolling out SMRs – Small Modular Reactors.  That could be the best energy decision any Government has made for the last seventy years.

The small nuclear reactors these towns host aren’t connected to the grid – they’re the ones that power the UK’s fleet of nuclear submarines which visit these and other ports.  The concept behind an SMR is to scale these small reactors up to a level where they can be manufactured cost effectively as standard power plants which can be located wherever a baseload electricity generator is needed.

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