Wednesday, 31 July 2024

Frontline 'phone ban: a parody of Russian law-making

Long before Russia's Feb 2022 invasion of Ukraine, stories had filtered out from the low-level conflict in the Donbas that Russian forces relied on mobile 'phones for their field communications.  They had - and still have - pitifully scant military means: the budget for radios etc was (by universal acknowledgement) long since looted in the great Russian tradition of wholesale embezzlement.  Use of private mobiles is certainly convenient (everybody has one, and smart 'phones can do all sorts of useful things) but it comes with a dreadful drawback: they are not at all secure, and have been the cause of numerous successful Ukrainian artillery strikes, often of high precision.

More than two years on, the Duma has passed a new law making any use of "domestic gadgets" (specifically including mobiles and tablets) at the front subject not only to punishment but - uniquely in Russia - summary imprisonment without any form of hearing.  This, I believe, is unconstitutional, FWIIW.

Reaction from the legion of Russian milbloggers has built over the days.  The first line of hostility ran thus:  we absolutely can't do without these gadgets; so the law will essentially be ignored, as per usual in Russia; but since literally every soldier has at least a mobile 'phone, it gives local commanders a means of simply banging up anyone they don't like.  This was not the end of the matter, but let's pause for some context.

When I arrived in Moscow in the mid '90s to set up an office there, I was warned by my local (American) lawyer that like everyone else I would be vulnerable to arbitrary arrest / fines etc at any time, because in Russia there is a complex web of laws (not least financial regulations), many of them mutually inconsistent such that everyone is always in breach of something.  It's just a kind of reserve power the authorities keep for themselves.  The 'phone ban fits this model precisely.

Then, the milblogger objections gathered force.  Firstly, they noted that most of the very many complaints raised by Russian soldiers about their dreadful conditions, reach the public domain via clips recorded on ... mobile 'phones!  How convenient to see this choked off.  Then, it occurred to them that the new law could be used to fill the ranks of the penal battalions that are thrown into the front line in what are known as "meat attacks", for many months now the primary tactic of the grinding Russian.  There is nothing but grass roots hostility to this new law.

This isn't just a case of "how typically Russian" - it's like Russia to the nth power: a parody, a complete reductio ad absurdum.  You might say they've been doing things this way for centuries, and it's true.  But it doesn't sow the seeds of an ultimately sustainable way of carrying on.  Only the enforcement troops positioned to shoot waverers, coupled with deep Russian fatalism, makes this thing work at all.

ND

Monday, 29 July 2024

UK no longer a top 10 manufacturer

Bugger the Olympics, here's an international competition that really matters.  And now we don't even qualify for the knock-out stages: the UK has slipped below the Top 10 for manufacturing.

Strikes me this is the single failing of the governments 2010-2024, and of course earlier ones, too - but one sort of hopes Conservative governments will do better.  Actually, having said that, Labour with its Union roots should be less prone to thinking a nation can busk it with service industries alone, however lucrative.

It's been noticed in the MSM that the entire thrust of Miliband's energy policy has been couched in terms of reducing energy bills and security of supply, and that CO2 targets feature nowhere in the roll-out rhetoric.  Labour knows what plays with voters, and what they're willing to see there money spent on.   Well; as discussed here at length the "reducing bills" aspects is utter hogwash.  But there's at least an argument that some forms of renewable energy can contribute to security of supply (once they've been built from Chinese components, that is).  So - if security of supply is a Labour issue, as well as "good jobs" - may we expect an intelligent revival of at least some of the more critically strategic manufacturing sectors?   High-grade steel-making comes rapidly to mind and I'm sure readers will all have their own favourite candidates.

ND

Saturday, 27 July 2024

Harold Wilson: rogues I have known (cont**)

Well, sat next to him several times.  He wasn't very communicative.  The crazy affair of Biden's Brain, plus a random news story brought him to mind this week.

For me as a lad reaching some kind of juvenile political awareness in the late 1960's, Harold Wilson was omnipresent in current affairs, a masterful politician in difficult circumstances, atop a restless and quarrelsome Labour Party.  By the time I was at the university he was PM (for the second time) and a veritable local legend for his 'congratulatory First' as an undergraduate, his adroit SCR politicking as a don, smart analytic capabilities as a wartime civil servant, and, above all, his astonishing memory[1].

Then, abruptly at the age of 60, in 1976 he stepped down as PM and almost directly into obscurity.  WTF?  There were all manner of conspiracy theories but the truth was, the previous year he realised he was fast losing his marbles; and full dementia set in shortly thereafter.  Without his memory he was nothing, and he knew it - not for him the pathetic Biden conceit.

Wilson off duty:  ciggies for him
A bit later I often found myself in the Victoria district, SW1, where Wilson had a flat overlooking Westminster Cathedral.  One could lunch handsomely at eye-poppingly low prices in a number of modest eateries outside Victoria Station - cheap, but totally respectable (in case you were thinking of Kings Cross in the same era), and heavily populated by office workers brandishing Luncheon Vouchers - remember them?[2].  Ultra-cheap + guaranteed high turnover was the formula.  Two of the favourites were known as the Old Maple, a tiny dive, 100% formica everywhere; and - no relation - the New Maple, on two floors, the upper of which even ran to some imitation wood panelling.[3]

Anyhow, if you weren't in so much of a hurry you could join Harold Wilson and his detective, who frequently lunched there too in the upstairs section.  You knew immediately something was very badly wrong: he wasn't any kind of physical wreck, but what in Heaven's name was a man who only a couple of years beforehand was PM, doing there silently nursing a plate of steak and kidney and his habitual ciggy?  (Occasionally a cigar - but the pipe was only ever for show.)

All very sad.  And it now turns out he quickly ran out of money as his care requirements escalated.  Thatcher's people arranged for the Bodleian to buy his personal papers, rather than have them go abroad, for a decent sum to keep him going.  He lasted until 1995.

ND

__________

** see also Jeff Skilling and Keith Best

[1] A really tremendous memory can cover for a range of what otherwise would be mediocrity in other intellectual attributes.  Whenever you meet someone highly regarded for intellectual attainment, it's worth considering whether memory is their actual superpower. 

[2] LVs, that is - though I could have meant office workers ...

[3] 'Known as' because IIRC those had been their historical names and that by the 1970s they were actually trading as something completely different.

Wednesday, 24 July 2024

Miliband under the cosh already

We've already noted that Miliband's energy policy will come to no good - and there'll be a lot of disappointment for those who set store by either or both of a 100%-decarbonised electricity system and/or "lower bills for everyone, for good", both to be delivered by 2030.

The number of reports telling him this can't be done, in aspect after aspect, is becoming a deluge.  The latest and possibly the most damning is from the redoubtable National Audit Office which declares that his plans are critically dependent upon delivery of carbon capture & storage (CCS); but that he has no Plan B, and that Plan A is most unlikely to deliver CCS in the relevant timeframe without some highly implausible assumptions being made.  (Personally I'd go further and say, there is no possible plan and no amount of money that could deliver CCS on the scale and timeframe "required".)

Since the election, other bodies have variously told him that 

  • he needs to find another £48bn if his wind and solar plans are to be realised (Cornwall Insight);
  • he's on track only to achieve one third of the "necessary" emissions reductions by 2030 (Climate Change Committee - although to be fair, they are deeply compromised by their own inanities over the years)
  • he'll need to commission new gas-fired power stations for his "reserve fleet", not just rely on existing ones (National Engineering Policy Centre, whoever they are)
  • smash the gangs NIMBYs up and down the land (Resolution Foundation)  

Etc.  That's on top of dealing with the dreadful EDF on Hinkley Point and Sizewell, and fending off a load of legal actions that will be gleefully pursued down several avenues, notwithstanding Starmer's intention to see off all opposition summarily in whatever planning forum he meets it.

Obviously, we understand that every Tom Dick & Harriet is busily projecting his/her wish-list onto the government right now in every area of policy, along with urgent financial pleading; and most will be sorely disappointed.  Starmer/Reeves took care to limit their measurable commitments to as few as they thought they could get away with.  But not in energy. "Clean power by 2030:  families and businesses will have lower bills for good, from a cheaper, zero carbon electricity system by 2030" was the commitment.  Oh yes, and 650,000 good new British jobs delivering it all, also by 2030.  It ain't gonna happen.

And Miliband himself must be set to be a very early casualty.  Will he see out the New Year?  The first reshuffle?  Party conference? 

ND 

Sunday, 21 July 2024

Britain's total defencelessness from air attack

Weapons development goes in cycles: and right now, defence against air attack is the big puzzle.  Against missiles, to be precise, which these days come in an every-increasing range of types - and numbers.

Ireland is often rightly criticised for hiding behind the whole of the rest of Europe when it comes to every aspect of defence, upon which it spends two fifths of bugger all.  As far as air defences go, we're effectively doing the same.  Any rabble that can get its hands on Iranian drones, UAVs and the like can inflict serious damage on even countries with advanced air defences.  Here in Britain, effectively speaking we have none worthy of the name.  Were we to be at imminent risk of salvos of drones, cruise missiles and hypersonics of the kind several hostile nations can muster these days, the best we could do would be to line up such of the Daring class destroyers as are seaworthy at any point in time (two? three if we're lucky): and (even assuming they aren't themselves eliminated in the first wave) when their limited magazines are empty, that's us done for.  A further handful of frigates with Sea Ceptors and machineguns, and men ashore with small arms left to tackle such of the slower-moving drones that they can see with the naked eye. 

The same is essentially true, mutatis mutandis, as regards the air defence of any "expeditionary force" we might send into the fray - see this sobering piece from the excellent Sergio Miller (an old comrade of mine) at the Wavell Room.  (On the subject of "projecting power", I won't even bother to mention the vulnerability of Gordon Brown's aircraft carriers, we've been over that many times before.)

Pathetic.

At least, someone has noticed: a fancy initiative (review?  committee?) has been launched by the MoD to address the higher-tech end of this threat spectrum - Science and Technology Oriented Research and Development in Missile Defence - 'STORM', haha.  Neat acronym, but it has a paltry budget, and I can't see Starmer really promoting anything 'defence' to the top of the list except a bit of rhetoric. 

To put in perspective the breadth of the challenge, consider how Russia is addressing the problem, which they feel pretty acutely, too, with their huge land mass and multiplicity of large, soft targets of high value (airfields, oil refineries, strategically important factories and the like).  They are trying to throw everything anyone can think of at the problem:  passive measures (camouflage and shelters for aircraft, laying tyres on aircraft wings [sic], installing 'barbecues' (metal frames) above the hatches of tanks, erecting wire screens around oil facilities) and active steps (licensing oil refinery firms to acquire small arms [sic], experimenting with anti-drone ammo for existing guns, issuing shotguns to infantry units, stepping up electronic warfare measures, considering a huge fleet of very light aircraft armed, WW2-style, with machine guns against slow-moving long-distance drones) etc etc etc.  But they've been at war now for nearly 30 months and they are still taking huge casualties and damage from the air (and inflicting the same, of course).

We haven't even mentioned the threat from seaborne drones etc ...

Who in the West is taking any of this seriously?  Our reliance on nuclear deterrence is now complete.  Under its umbrella, fingers need to be pulled out, and rapidly.

ND

Friday, 19 July 2024

Weekend humour: Vaughan Gething - comedy gold

He'd already given us the "takes out onion" routine in the Senned.  Then this gem ... (lowers voice, moves into Disappointed Headmaster mode):  you've let me down, you've the school down, but most importantly you've let yourselves down. 

"I had hoped ...  period of reflection ... I now hope ... I know our country can be better ...

Oh yes, and 

"... people who look like me ... feel personally bruised and worried by this moment ..." 

What, you mean that a blatant grifter who took £200k for his own personal ends from a highly dubious source, who was caught red-handed organising the deletion of messages specifically for the reason of dodging FOI requests, and then lashed out at someone he wrongly suspected of grassing him up - such a person should somehow be entitled to get away with it because of his colour?  

As political contributions go, £200k in Wales is an astronomical sum.  For pity's sake, £50k gets you a peerage in Westminster!  And this is Wales - famous butt of Robert Bolt's excellent joke

These devolved political leaders, eh?  Phff - Toytown stuff.

ND

Wednesday, 17 July 2024

Great times for the Great Man Theory of History

We should define our terms here, and personally I don't choose to go the whole hog with Carlyle, who claims that the whole of history can be written in terms of the stories of Great Men.  But that overlooks important 'materialistic' or 'economic' insights - such as those of Marx (someone else we won't be going the whole distance with, either ...).  I shall stick to something far more difficult to shoot down, and go with: at certain key points the course of human history is (sometimes) fundamentally determined by the purposeful actions of individuals.

In 2024, what more do we need to say?!  Whether Biden steps down is a decision he seems to have reserved to himself: I see no "economic" factors at work, just a painful case of very human personal vanity.  Whether Trump survived was a matter of chance (it seems), but a Trump presidency will - I think we might agree - set the USA and most probably the world** on a different course than any plausible Democrat victory this year.  (American isolationism has always been there, for more than 200 years, and its triumph over pragmatic internationalism has often been possible but never guaranteed.)  Neither is it a given that Russia would be in the hands of a dictatorial, brooding, fretful revanchist at this hour: nor that China would be in the hands of an all-powerful monomaniac nationalist. 

It seems to me that if one wants to argue against any of this, one has to have a thesis that requires stepping back to so distant a perspective (1,000 years?  5,000 years?) that all meaningful granularity is lost for any but anthropological, almost biological purposes.

ND

_____________________

** Some, though not I, hold that a Trump presidency will result in the US being withdrawn from global cooperation on actions related to climate change - with globally damaging consequences.  Interestingly, those folks are often highly materialistic lefty-greens.  If they couple their theoretical materialism with their fear of Trump, it must give them some uncomfortable ideological pangs.  (Of course, the whole of Reality ought to be fairly painful for them at frequent intervals ... ) 

Tuesday, 16 July 2024

Conspiracy theories run amok: and a nice Russian turn of phrase

Oh dear oh dear.  Perusing current US social meejah material - of both left and right this time, strongly suggests we need some kind of gullibility text to qualify for the franchise.  Sure as Hell, there's a heap of unanswered & genuine questions out there - but that doesn't stop people rushing in with Man-from-Mars theories of a pretty scary kind.

In the middle of all of this, there are plenty of Russian spectators online too, wondering with the rest of us what to make of it all.  Here's one with nicely-chosen phrasing - typical sardonic Russian stuff, always ready with a colourful idiom: 

In our opinion, hitting exactly the top of the ear with a bullet from an assault rifle from a distance of 130 meters, killing and wounding civilians, and then going to the next world yourself is top-notch aerobatics.

It's not funny: but it is.  If you see what I mean.

ND

Sunday, 14 July 2024

Trump, political violence & the Green/Left

We've written about this before: I really do think some on the Left (red and green, with a big overlap these days) are toying with outright violence in a way not seen in the 'democracies' since the 60s and 70s, IRA and one or two other nationalist cults aside.  For present purposes, I'm also minded to park the years of Islamist terrorism, terrible though they were, because they are not the phenomenon I want to focus on.

In the UK & Europe, normalising for the periodic outbursts the French have been indulging in for centuries, the modern flirtation with the political hard stuff has mostly been on the 'green' side of things, Andreas Malm and Roger Hallam being the best known promoters.  (For the record, I've not read that either has actually advocated or specifically perpetrated anything more than vandalism to date).  In both cases their logic goes: if we really think climate change is globally life-threatening on that scale, well, ...  - and they are not-so-subtly hinting at a lot worse than vandalism.

So now someone in the Land of the Free and the Readily-Available Firearms has taken a real pop at Trump.  More detail to follow in due course, no doubt; but a round from a rifle that clips an ear is an astonishingly close shave.  (Mercifully, most people don't have much idea what a rifle-bullet wound looks like.)  

What's the next stage in this slow-motion escalation?  Of course, many on the Left would adduce ASBO-level racist behaviour on the Right as being a long-running form of political violence: "you started it".  The pro-Gaza crowd contains some whose behaviour is increasingly of the same kind - as many a Labour MP knows to their cost.  (Again, I'm parking the outright Islamist terror wave.)  Left/greens are inclined to say that globalisation etc (in the manner they'd frame it in their own doctrinal terms) is a form of violence against the masses: "you started it" again.  There have been outbreaks of "communal tension" in Leicester which are echoes, albeit faint, of the Subcontinent where that phrase originates from.  And in an extraordinary, chilling, but apparently fleeting episode, a column of drilled and uniformed black folk took to the streets of Brixton a few summers ago.   Political football?  Here's a quick-off-the-mark piece from the Graun this afternoon.

That 2020 Brixton episode, and how it was evidently quashed quietly but effectively & with great dispatch, might be a signifier that peaceful politics may be expected to prevail hereabouts, even in these fraught times.  Ditto the non-followup to the 2011 riots that seemed to have some political pregnancy at the time; and the significant lack of traction for XR / JSO / IB et al.  But it's simmering, with a certain type of "desperate", would-be planet-saving green evidently harkening to the likes of Malms and Hallams.  Is the USA sui generis in its gun-based lunacy?   We can only wait with a high degree of trepidation.  

ND

Thursday, 11 July 2024

Ed Miliband, Starmer & energy policy: a curious political tale

15 years ago now: could do with updating
We've recently looked at the fairly extensive list of energy policies Labour brings into office: deeply implausible at best, outright impossible at worst.  We know it's Ed Miliband's doing, Starmer having invited him to pick up where he left off in 2010 when his fairly pivotal Energy Act 2008 didn't save Labour at the polls.  Mili is of course an ex leader of the Labour Party, losing fairly ignominiously in 2015 (- though it's hard to see who could have done much better).

It's somewhat unusual, but by no means unprecedented, for former party leaders to row in behind a successor with sufficient humility and unthreatening purpose that they are invited to bring their experience to the table & take up office again at a subordinate level.  Of course, other ex leaders are not wanted at all, and variously just piss off to make money and/or snipe from the sidelines.  (We may need to write about Tony Blair in this context quite soon.) 

To get the obvious out of the way: overall, I have little time for his politics and in particular his lazy, slapdash energy policy.  But over the past 2 years I have been very impressed with his loyalty, which is the point of this post. 

Mili put together his fairly detailed energy strategy for release at Conference in '22, at which time the numbers presented were at least arguable, even if they're now hopelessly wrong.  The plan came complete with a costing: he needed £28bn a year.  This number, too, could be defended, given that it didn't mean "total cost of plan" (which would be much more), it meant "incremental Treasury cash", a very different thing.  The balance would be made up mostly by subsidies levied on all our energy bills, and private capital.

Labour ran with this for more than a year, to some acclaim from Green quarters (and Red) - which is far from being any kind of ratification but it is germane for what followed.  Reeves then abruptly pulled the rug out, leaving him with perhaps £7bn, perhaps £10bn - barely enough even for the Warm Homes bit of the plan.   Cue outrage on the Green/Red flank: and many people would say Mili had every reason to chuck in the towel (& maybe even become a heavyweight totem for that wing of politics, which is his natural positioning anyway).  But he didn't, and has loyally stuck with Team Starmer, not breathing a word of dismay; indeed, making a very brave and positive face of it all.

I am strongly inclined to find this admirable.  There are too many egos in politics who stomp off in disgust in such circumstances, disloyally briefing to any journo they can nobble on the outrage they've just suffered and the stupidity of the decision.  The temptations are great: & what has Mili got to lose?  But that's not how he's behaved.  

But surely, he can't be expected to front for a policy when he's not going to get the resources he knows are required?   I don't see it that way.  I'm a soldier at heart, and the rule is:  loyalty downwards before a decision; loyalty upwards after a decision.  Show me the commander who went in to battle having been granted all the resources he believed necessary.  Not unheard of, but very rare.  That's life: soldier on & make the best of it.

Only "inclined" to find this admirable?  Well, there are one or two other factors in play.  I'm told by Labour insiders that Mili is not at all in the Starmer inner circle, and stands the risk of being axed at any time.  (We've just seen what happened to Thornberry.)  Right now, for choice, anyone in Labour would want to retain a seat nearish to the top table - with the chance of being a hero to the Green/Reds if he just hangs in there (they know he's not to blame for Reeves' strictures).   The 2008 Act is unfinished business for him.  He must now surely see Net Zero as his life's work & legacy - nobody would want to be remembered in terms of the Graun piece Anon gave us the link for, or ignominious bacon-buttie embarrassment - and really, really wants to be on board in what he must imagine to be the crucial years.  So there's a degree of self-interest at work, albeit measured in prestige rather than career considerations per se.

Overall, an interesting little political drama.  I shall unfailing strive to illuminate the nonsenses in his plans, at the same time as holding him in at least some degree of regard.

ND

Tuesday, 9 July 2024

Cut-out-and-keep: Labour's fantasy energy programme

As much for my own future reference as anything, here is the list of nonsense in Labour's energy plan.  Since they intend to deliver the bulk of it by 2030, DV we shall be able to tick off the items as they do not come to pass.

>  "By 2030, the UK will be the first major country in the world to run on 100 per cent clean and cheap power".   Can't be done.  Not clear anyone really thinks it can be, incidentally, even though Miliband pretends to.  Not even the '100% clean' bit is possible, since (as is admitted elsewhere in the manifesto) gas will continue to be needed - so by inference, they really are depending on the carbon capture & storage they also commit to - another very long shot indeed; assumption upon assumption).  As for "cheap" ... 

>  "Cut energy bills for good ... cheap power for all ... not just in the short term, but for good ... Labour’s plan for a cheaper, zero carbon electricity system by 2030 will lower bills because renewables are far cheaper than gas. Last summer the price of gas was nine times higher than that of renewables and it remains significantly higher. Based on gas futures price projections, our mission has been estimated as saving UK households £93 billion over the rest of this decade ... take £1,400 off the annual household bill. Outright rubbish from beginning to end.  (The consultancy that crunched the numbers for them - 18 months ago! - has quietly disowned them.)  Most renewables are more expensive than gas, some of them much more.  And all the other system costs arising from use of renewables are then piled on top (see 'infrastructure' below, and a host of other things).  The period of "gas nine times higher" was the height of the Putin spike; it was only the spot price; and it lasted for all of a couple of days.

>  "By 2030 ... quadruple offshore wind with an ambition of 55 GW by 2030 / More than triple solar power to 50 GW / More than double our onshore wind capacity to 35 GW".    The only question is how far short of this 'ambition' they will fall.  Incidentally, with knowledge of the German practice of building renewables (and getting paid) but not connecting them to the grid, we'd better hold them to a definition of 'GW' that means, not just capacity but 'connected and functioning capacity'.

>  "Double the government's target on green hydrogen, with 10 GW of production".  An interesting one, this.  What, pray, will be the load factor on this 10 GW of capacity?  Very, very low, I'd guess.  And why would anyone build that?  Unless, of course, it'll be paid for (via subsidy) irrespective of LF - which I suppose we can't rule out.

>  "Unleash marine and tidal power".  Sounds exciting!  No details, however, so hard to comment further, save to say that the extensive track record of tidal power experimentation is very unencouraging indeed.

>  "Four times as much grid infrastructure to be built in the next seven years as has been built in the last 30 ... We are confident the transmission operators can do it.Really?  What in the recent history of UK civil engineering leads to this conclusion?  Oh yeah, the A14 upgrade came in on budget and under schedule.  Anything else we can point to?  HS2?  Hinkley Point?

>  "De-link the price of renewables from gas, to ensure their low prices are passed on to households and businesses".  There are some potential subtleties here, but I doubt this was written by someone who actually understands how markets work.  (Incidentally, the same is true about some rather convoluted stuff they've got on local community energy schemes, but space does not permit.) 

>  "Mandating UK-regulated financial institutions – including banks, asset managers, pension funds, and insurers – and FTSE 100 companies to develop and implement credible transition plans that align with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement across their portfolios".  Too late!  We've already passed the 1.5 point of no return.  Even more seriously: what the Hell does this 'mandating' mean?  This could spell Big Trouble.

In fact, all of it could!  Finally ...

>  "Our plan will create 650,000 jobs across the country by 2030".  Some would say: cost 650,000 jobs, more like!  Well, job-creation schemes are job-creation schemes.  If even half of the above plans were to be embarked upon seriously, it probably would require hundreds of thousands of new jobs.  But where ya gonna find the Brits to fill them, eh?

So: a watching brief on all this guff.  Five or six years of popcorn is a lot of popcorn ...

ND

Monday, 8 July 2024

AI evolves - powerfully - in predictable directions

When Chat GPT burst onto an unsuspecting world last year there was a rush of activity in several spaces: wannabe AI rivals hastened to proclaim MeeeeTooooo; doomsayers proclaimed that AI / LLM on this scale marked the end for the professional classes and white collar employment in general; and a certain class of populist (or would-be populist) 'thinkers' proclaimed that machines could never match good ol' Human Beans, that there was no 'machine intellect' at work, move-along-nothing-to-see-here etc.  Meanwhile, Joe Public amused himself by getting some truly extraordinary results (well, staggering results, actually) from these free tools, as well as tricking them into hilarious bishes, seized upon eagerly by the 'thinkers' as grist to their mill.

Over the following months, a number of significant things have happened in this fast-moving sphere.

1.  Scale - and energy use!

The MeToo contingent is large (Amazon, MS, Meta, Alphabet etc, and without doubt several Chinese concerns), well-funded, and very very keen not to get left behind.  They are truly piling in.  From my perspective, the interesting feature of this is the sheer amount of energy these systems consume - and we've only just started.  All these behemoths (the Western ones, that is) claim to want to use only 'green' electricity but they've already hoovered up any of that on the market, plus as much dedicated nuke capacity as they can negotiate for - and it's not remotely enough: they'll remain FF-powered for many a long moon. 

Some indications of the scale.  The current definition of a 'worldscale' data centre represents 1 GW of electricity demand.  You just know that's a number that will be eclipsed as soon as possible.  Secondly, the last generation (i.e. 2023!) of LLNs cost about $3-400m  to 'train'.  The next generation (2024) will take over $1bn to 'train'.  A high proportion of that dosh is spent on high-intensity energy consumption.  And that's just for now.  Ongoing energy demand won't be negligible; and newer, yet larger LLMs will be leapfrogging each other for a long while to come.  (I wonder what the practical limiting factor will turn out to be?  And how long it will take to debottleneck it?)  One thing's for sure: they ain't gonna be constrained by sticking with green electricity.

2.  Correction of early failings

One of the things early 'critics' of LLM out put gleefully seized upon was that written answer to carefully posed 'prompts', whilst being fairly good in their own right, had the amusing habit of including footnotes that were to entirely fictitious, made-up, non-existent references.  It's a simple and readily understandable function of how LLMs work.

This never impressed me as a serious or definitive failing.  OK, these early pubic LLMs "knew" that footnotes were expected, and made up some plausible-looking ones accordingly.  One might imagine a bright primary-school kid doing something similar when trying to imitate the style of a realistic-looking journal article for some reason; and being thought of as quite imaginative for so doing!  Ooh, and you've even put in some footnotes and www-links!   But the next version of that kid, a few years later, would know what a real footnote-link was all about.  What, conceptually, could be easier for a putative next-generation LLM than to "remember" where it learned its text-predictive stuff from, and list it appropriately in the footnotes? 

Except, this is a fast-moving space!  And that next-gen LLM already exists: it's a new one called PerplexityKerching.  Next problem?

3.  Never as good as humans ..?   The Turing Test

Folks, without much fanfare the Turing Test has now been passed.  A set-piece, properly-controlled experiment was run at the University of Reading (a cunning plot by one department conning another!) in which undetected fake students - actually bots - got higher average exam marks than real thicko human students.  And there's the Turing Test delivered, haha!  This is so earth-shattering, the worrying classes haven't even responded to it yet!

So now I think we need a creative round of updated worries, to keep up with these exciting developments.

ND

Friday, 5 July 2024

Election Wash-up: OT

No top-line surprises, then (unless you are the SNP, maybe).  Turnout figures in due course - seems it was very low - for purposes of the supplementary Compo question when the full figures are in.

A majority of this kind is always possible under first-past-the-post, particularly with so many heavy-duty spoiler candidates in play - surely, on a scale unprecedented in its depth and extent this time?

Anyhow, all pundits are agreed: Starmer's support is very broad but very shallow.  Hard to disagree.   One of Drew's Laws of Politics is: the bigger the majority, the less meaningful is the result.  Large numbers of dumb voters who simply like feeling they are on the winning side - of which Murdoch is just the ugliest & and most prominent.  Conventional wisdom is that it'll be damned hard for Starmer to enforce discipline.   (Is there anything Starmer will wish to do that actually requires a majority of that size?)  He'll be very happy he stuffed the candidate list with placemen and non-entities, and carefully deselected the identified troublemakers of the left: Mandelsonian power politics in play there.

So here's an open thread, starting with a few random early thoughts of my own.

  • as regards the long game, the whole thing now comes down to how Farage conducts himself.  I personalise it thus because he is and probably will remain a one-man band.  If I was him, I would invest in some very comprehensive personal security.
  • on the green/left/Gazan side: although altogether less strategically interesting than Farage it'll be interesting nonetheless to see how the assorted malcontents - now holding quite a lot of seats - conduct themselves.  I actually think Starmer will be happy to have them making extreme spectacles of themselves, as an ongoing reminder to his own people of the merits of his quietist project. 
  • I sincerely hope that each and every Tory MPs who contributed to foisting Truss onto the leadership ballot paper came unstuck yesterday, and will never be heard of again.  How could anyone sit in the same building as her for more than 10 minutes and not notice she is stark, staring, batshit crazy?   If, as some have said, it was a Johnsonite manoeuvre to facilitate his re-entry, well, for self-centred irresponsibility that's up there with Joe Biden's senile vanity.
  • wouldn't it be nice if Starmer would now cut Murdoch cold-stone dead at the latter's every blandishment?  That's the way to parlay a majority like this.
  • this isn't anything I thought I'd ever find myself writing: but based on his recent "realist" (I think he means realistic) utterances I actually think David Lammy might make quite a good Foreign Sec.  If I'm right, he's gonna piss off the Left even quicker than Starmer.
With Starmer's very recent incarnation as Mr Growth-at-any-Cost - which we must believe was primarily a formulation against the challenge of "how ya gonna do it without borrowing or tax increases?" - the opening for BlackRock et al is plain: and they'll be up his trouser-legs like a rat up a drainpipe before he gets to sit down.  Cue the biggest PFI binge in history ...

Over to y'all.

ND

UPDATE:  a great phrase in a Graun article:

Labour’s ambiguous mandate, both overwhelming and unconvincing

Tuesday, 2 July 2024

UK Election: what kind of disillusion is brewing?

Maybe none at all.  Maybe the electorate views all politicians as liars, and has merely formed the view that the Tories just have to go, simple as that.  These things happen: ask Callaghan / Thatcher / Major / Brown / Johnson / Truss.

But here's the thing.  Needing to say very little at all, Starmer lies freely in all directions: a liar in a league of his own. Blair and BJ aren't even in the running, bad as they are.  Does Starmer feel he's in lawyer-in-courtroom territory, where the whole court knows the barrister will say anything to get his client off, and that's just fine & dandy?**   

Energy being my thing, I focus on what Miliband has been saying.  It's almost as bad.  We'll have 100% zero carbon electricity by 2030 AND it will cost us all less.  Seriously.  Oh, and 650,000 new Green Jobs will be created in the process (though to be fair, he doesn't say which country they'll be created in).  The Graun even writes that, as regards the oil & gas sector which is to be phased out, Labour have declared that "not a single job will be lost" in the transition, though fairness again prompts me to say that I can't source that anywhere in Labour's output.  

It's hard to guess how, in 2030, they'll explain why this has all come to grief, as indubitably it will: they won't get within spitting distance of any of zero-carbon electricity, cheaper electricity, or the 650k new green jobs.  The usual trick is: "we didn't know how bad things were until we saw the books" - but that doesn't wash with electricity generation because the entire sector is comprised of very big units that can't be hidden: every analyst modelling the UK power sector has a complete list of them all.  (Likewise, the roll-out of the small stuff like heat pumps, solar panels, electric vehicles etc is pretty exactly monitored - not least because policy-makers are so keen to.)  And "bills going up, not down" is pretty easy to track, too.  

"Didn't realise the extent of inflation in raw materials"?  That's pretty well known.  "Didn't know there was a skills shortage"?  Ditto.  "Didn't realise CCUS / hydrogen / new nukes wouild be so badly delayed / wouldn't work as advertised"?  Not that either: we've recently had a judge rule that it's "irrational" to assume anything else.  

Nope: I can't quite see how they are going to hide.  The question is: will it be held against them?

ND

_______________________

** I was once on the jury for a high-profile murder trial, and the case made on behalf of one of the perps - whom we'd watched carrying out the murder on CCTV from several angles - was essentially that a Man from Mars came down, swapped clothes with the perp a couple of minutes beforehand, did the deed, and then swapped back & flew off again.  All this under the coded formulation: "The suggestion is ...".  The judge didn't seem to feel the need to reprimand this line of argumentation.