Energy has come to define our history over the past few hundred years. The industrial revolution was defined as much by the use of coal and steam power as it was by breakthroughs in technologies.
The industrial age was defined by the spread of electricity, electro-magnetic waves and the use of oil and gas in the energy mix.
Alkaline, dry acid batteries and rechargeable batteries liberated technology. Making it firstly luggable and then truly portable.
Without innovative approach in battery technology you wouldn’t have the ubiquitous smartphone. Nor would you have much demand for three wi-fi in coffee shops, or multi-screening.
Digital photography would still be more of a niche interest and there would be no Instagram or Tinder.
On the other hand you would be less likely to responding to emotional content on Twitter straight away, unless you were glued to your desktop computer or connected TV.
The aspiration for a low carbon economy is another aspect that affects energy and not just oil and gas. 99 percent of materials that we use, even for batteries and capturing renewable energy are not sustainable. Turbine blades are made from composite that eventually end up in a landfill site. Battery technologies rely on rare earth metals, lithium and nickel. They feature a polymer liner in lithium ion battery.
Energy is at the centre of the progress of innovation, design, climate change, consumer behaviour and even culture. Far more so, than people actually realise.
We tend to not pay attention to energy unless there is a problem. A power cut, a price jump at the petrol pump are the times when we notice.
RUSI put together a great presentation on the nature of illicit finance from the perspective of terrorism and terrorist states including Russia and the People’s Republic of China. The foundations of illicit finance seems to be the offshore financial structures that were build up by the United Kingdom in the post-war period to capture the EuroDollar market.
In some ways this lecture on Illicit finance felt very familiar. It is exactly the same structures that John Le Carre outlined in his post-cold war novel Single and Single. The nature of illicit finance was also covered in Michael Oswald’s documentary The Spider’s Web – Britain’s Second Empire. This linkage was not lost on the audience attending the talk.
The concerns about illicit finance now are because these structures are being used to attack democracies at their core and buy influence for hostile states such as Russia and China. It is like the west is slowly awakening from a slumber as its enemies try to slit their throat.
Riding the slow train in China | The Economist – As Mr Xi enters his second decade as supreme leader, his sternly paternalist version of Communist Party rule seeks to draw ever more legitimacy from the provision of customer-friendly public services, supplied via modern infrastructure. In the case of China’s railways, at least, that promise of order and efficiency has been kept.
Wintershall’s empty bank accounts expose plight of western companies still in Russia | Financial Times – “We helped create a very powerful and dangerous Russia without being cognisant of the risk,” he said, while acknowledging that the country had done its best to remedy this in the past 12 months. And he said BASF risked repeating its Russian mistake in China. “What I’m really surprised about, and almost upsets me, is that while this is all happening . . . BASF decides to invest €10bn in China,” he said, referring to a planned chemicals complex that will be the company’s largest ever foreign investment. “That’s the most upsetting part,” he said. “That we don’t learn from it.” – this quote from Thomas Schweppe of 7Square nails the problem neatly
Finance
Thousands of offshore companies with UK property still not stating real owners | Tax havens | The Guardian – wealthy businessmen, Gulf royalty and states such as China have legally bought up billions of pounds of mostly London property, often via jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and the Channel Islands. Stephen Abbott Pugh, head of technology for Open Ownership, a non-governmental organisation focused on beneficial ownership transparency, said the fact that so many of the offshore companies are declared as owned by other companies or trusts means “the public still aren’t able to easily discover the people behind those companies in many cases”. “With access to many European beneficial ownership registers being shut off following a 2022 court ruling, the Register of Overseas Entities shows how useful public data is for tracking how offshore money is used to buy assets,”
Health
The 1964 House Report on how smoking affected the health of Americans went around the world. Sales dropped 30 percent in a week, and then picked up back to normal after existing smokers addiction kicked in.
How Microsoft’s Stumbles Led to Its OpenAI Alliance — The Information – For more than a decade, Microsoft Research, the company’s in-house research group, has touted artificial intelligence breakthroughs such as translating speech to text and software that could understand human language or recognize objects in images. But the company’s effort to commercialize its AI research moved at more of a crawl – this was at the centre of Microsoft’s innovation narrative for the best part of two decades. It’s embarrassing
Inside the secret Facebook groups where women review men | Dazed – then there’s the whole other side of ‘Are We Dating The Same Guy’, which is a lot more ethically ambiguous. Is it ever OK to publicly share someone’s photos and private conversations without their consent? Or in other words, to ‘doxx’? There’s a clear power differential, but if genders were reversed and guys were exposing females to strangers on the internet, it’s unlikely we’d see the group in such a positive light. “If a boy posted me and people were writing ‘red flag’ in the comments, I would genuinely be quite hurt,” says Tara, 20. She notes how, sometimes, users make particularly unfair remarks: for example, they’ll lambast a date for having “shit chat”, or “[talking] like a 60-year-old dad”.
Getting Personal With State Propaganda – China Media Project – Nanchang Aviation University (南昌航空大学), located in China’s southern Jiangxi province, announced that it had launched the “Jiangxi International Communication Research Center” (江西国际传播研究中心) in cooperation with the China Media Group, the state media conglomerate formed in 2018 directly under the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department. According to coverage by China Education Daily, a newspaper directly under the Ministry of Education, the new center is an experiment in combining central CCP media and universities (央媒+高校) to carry out international communication by using the “overseas student resources” (留学生资源) of the university.
Is nepotism really that bad? | LinkedIn – Jed Hallam wrote an essay on nepotism and the effects that he perceives it as having on inequality. Jed tries to steer a line on nepotism somewhere between recognising that the people may have an interest and talent, whilst pointing out inequality related issues derived from nepotism. Nepotism itself is widespread, whether its impact is small or large.
Jed is concerned that nepotism can actively remove opportunities for less conventional candidates that may do better if assessed solely in merit.
Social, cultural and economic barriers
Even if nepotism disappeared, our unconscious desire to hire people more like us, can mean that candidates face challenges in social, cultural and economic realms. I don’t drink, don’t have an interest in rugby union or football. I knew no one down here and sold my car to pay my first month’s rent when I moved to London. The analogy of a viking burning his boat behind him would be apt. I didn’t, and couldn’t if I wanted to, move to London earlier than my late 20s. I had to put myself through university and build up a modest amount of money to back myself as my parents didn’t have any.
One aspect of Jed’s essay on nepotism particularly surprised me:
“the proportion of people from working-class backgrounds operating in the creative industries has more than halved since the 1970s–falling from 16.4 percent to just 7.9 percent”
The problem with nepotism is that its hard to define and work out the difference between good and bad nepotism. For instance:
I line managed some one who had gone to Harrow and had found it harder to get into a creative agency because he was considered to be too posh by interviewees. He since went on to work successfully for other agencies, inhouse at a well loved brand and now runs his own shop
Would someone following on into the family profession be a case of nepotism? A classic example from the creative industry would be Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk, whose father is disco producer ‘Daniel Vangarde’ aka Daniel Bangalter. One could imagine how being exposed to music and a studio environment from an early age made Thomas the kind of producer he was.
Or the Arnault children taking roles in LVMH? European business often rely on intergenerational family ownership and management
Nepotism is more obvious when you have events like the recent US college scandal. The problem with debate about any hot subject like nepotism is the lack of room for nuance and good judgement. A second aspect to it is making people feel like victims of nepotism and inequality, rather than encouraging striving. Admittedly that is even made harder to do when inequality that underpins nepotism has become much more extreme.
People look for easy solves and clear lines for issues like nepotism, when what we really need are better decision making and good judgement.
Nepotism unresolved
There will always be people who feel hard done by, it wasn’t them it was X external factor. Sometimes it isn’t your time, or you didn’t make clear how good you were. Equal opportunity doesn’t equate to equal outcomes, the case in point that nepotism can learn from is currently going through the US Supreme Court. In an age of algorithmically filtered CVs I can see nepotism become attenuated rather than resolved.
V Shanshan, “Why are you Forcing me to Embrace Solidarity?” – Reading the China Dream – Weibo post from someone whose uncle had died from complications from covid the previous day, writing to express his anger and bitterness at the hectoring calls in China’s official media to “come together” and “look to the future” as China decides to live—and die—with covid. That such calls ring hollow for many Chinese makes perfect sense, since China’s mighty messaging machine seems to have turned on a dime, suddenly arguing that Omicron is no big deal and that “everyone is responsible for their own health” after insisting for years that the virus is deadly and that collective behavior was the only way to control it
A Place for Fire – The Paris Review – the primal draw of fire in the home. This reminded me of the central role of the turf and wood fuelled range in the Irish farmhouse where I spent a good deal of my childhood
Project MUSE – The Surge of Nationalist Sentiment among Chinese Youth during the COVID-19 Pandemic – Since 2012, Beijing has been promoting a strain of populist nationalism which underscores both the institutional superiority of the ruling party and the cultural superiority of being Chinese. At the international level, however, the image of both the regime and the Chinese has been marred due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in Wuhan (December 2019–January 2020). This study examines the extent and the form that the surge in nationalist sentiment of Chinese young people has taken during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on a questionnaire survey of 1,200 students from a sample of 20 colleges/universities in China (June–July 2020), this study shows that the respondents express high satisfaction with the state’s performance in tackling the pandemic, and that there is a substantial surge of nationalist sentiment with a high level of hostility towards other nations (e.g. the United States). Such nationalist sentiment, however, is found to express a bifurcated pattern in that young Chinese also tend to embrace the opportunity to work and study in the Western societies they ostensibly dislike – yeah, is it smart to let them in though, given Chinese laws obligating them to cooperate with the MSS if requested?
Project MUSE – Living with the State-Led Order: Practical Acceptance and Unawareness of the Chinese Middle Class – China’s expanding middle class is often found to support the regime and lack democratic aspirations. We find that one section of the middle class depends upon the state for jobs and other material benefits, and the other works for the private and foreign sectors of the country’s economy. Once separated as such, we found that the non-state middle class clearly shows lower support for the regime. Furthermore, unlike the state middle class, which registers lower democratic support, the non-state middle class shows a similar level of democratic support as other social classes. In general, however, while only pragmatically accepting the current order, both middle class groups nonetheless appear lacking practical knowledge and understanding of liberal democratic institutions such as free media and multiparty elections. The unforthcoming attitudes toward democracy might also derive from a general sense of fearing the loss of order and the other related uncertainties
Economics
The true priorities of the global elite – by Judd Legum – The New York Times’ Peter Goodman, author of “Davos Man” — a blistering criticism of the WEF and its neoliberal ideology — recently offered this brief description: The World Economic Forum is not a secret government or organized conspiracy. It is a giant business meeting, a chance for the heads of multinational oil giants to sit opposite Persian Gulf potentates — fronted by the performance art of earnest panel discussions aimed at solving the problems of the day. More than anything, Davos is a prophylactic against change, an elaborate reinforcement of the status quo served up as the pursuit of human progress. Tuesday’s WEF program included a panel with Senators Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV). The pair shared an on-stage high-five in celebration of the filibuster, which has been used to block increases in the minimum wage, protections for voting rights, and efforts to maintain access to reproductive health care.
German tank manufacturer’s warning puts pressure on Ukraine’s allies | Ukraine | The Guardian – Battle tanks from German industrial reserves wanted by Ukraine will not be ready to be delivered until 2024, the arms manufacturer Rheinmetall has warned, increasing pressure on Nato allies to support Ukraine with armoured vehicles in active service instead, ahead of a key meeting this week.“Even if the decision to send our Leopard tanks to Kyiv came tomorrow, the delivery would take until the start of next year,” Rheinmetall’s chief executive, Armin Papperger, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. Rheinmetall, which manufactures the battle vehicle’s gun, has 22 Leopard 2 and 88 older Leopard 1 tanks in its stocks. Getting the Leopard tanks ready for battle, however, would take several months and cost hundreds of millions of euros the company could not put up until the order was confirmed
Macau gaming: Chau’s jail term warns punters and investors alike | Financial Times – It is worthwhile considering this in part of the wider picture of how China is trying deal with capital flight. It also chimes with efforts to move Hong Kong from being about ‘wealth management’ i.e. schemes to allow capital flight out of the mainland to the west to trying to pull in western money to invest in Chinese businesses. Macau was part of that process too.
Expect a clampdown on insurance policy sales people. At the moment a lot of them sell these things via WeChat with a view to providing financial services to mainlanders in a similar way to what daigou do with luxury goods from abroad. I know work at home mums that do this for Prudential as a side hustle
Auction houses have expanded like crazy in Hong Kong during the pandemic and I would expect the authorities to look at how they can shut this off or use to only import items into China rather than having them leave again. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are strongly encouraged to shutdown in Hong Kong and up up in Sanya on Hainan island instead so they stay inside the yuan firewall
Expect pressure on foreign banks on wealth management / capital flight vehicles. There maybe some latitude through mainland banks where the government can monitor the flow through back-end access into their systems
Ultimately, Singapore will be the new Hong Kong – which is happening already due to ‘run culture’ and a plethora of wealth management and family office services being provided.
Hong Kong’s financial hub is at a crossroads | Financial Times – Look for a senior job in Hong Kong these days on LinkedIn and you’re unlikely to find any openings unless you’re a speaker of Cantonese or Mandarin, or both. “That’s a big change,” confides a longtime British expat in the territory. “It’s understandable. But it’s a big change.” The evolving jobs market is just one of the visible signs of the tilt to mainland China that promises to redefine Hong Kong’s role as a global financial centre. Beijing’s growing influence on the former British colony — evident in four years of security crackdowns and tough Covid lockdowns — has raised existential questions about the sustainability of the territory’s role as Asia’s unparalleled bridgehead to global finance – yeah soon even the finance bros will go
Japan was the future but it’s stuck in the past – BBC News – Japan had emerged from the destruction of World War Two and conquered global manufacturing. The money poured back into the country, driving a property boom where people bought anything they could get their hands on, even chunks of forest. By the mid-1980s, the joke was that the grounds of the imperial palace in Tokyo were worth the same as all of California. The Japanese call it the “Baburu Jidai” or the bubble era. Then in 1991 the bubble burst. The Tokyo stock market collapsed. Property prices fell off a cliff. They are yet to recover. A friend was recently negotiating to buy several hectares of forest. The owner wanted $20 per square metre. “I told him forest land is only worth $2 a square metre,” my friend said. “But he insisted he needed $20 a square metre, because that’s what he’d paid for it in the 1970s.” Think of Japan’s sleek bullet trains, or Toyota’s “just-in-time” marvel of assembly-line manufacturing – and you could be forgiven for thinking Japan is a poster child for efficiency. It is not. Rather the bureaucracy can be terrifying, while huge amounts of public money are spent on activities of dubious utility – this says more about the persons values than about Japan. Also coming from Britain’s public broadcast service, it is ironic that Japan is at the centre of many critical global supply chains and Britain is being stripped out of them. A bit of introspection is required
Luxury Brands Beware: Angered Chinese Tourists Are Avoiding Japan And South Korea | Jing Daily – South Korea issued yellow tags for China’s inbound travelers to wear at its airports, and Japan followed suit, giving red tags to passengers coming from the country. The initiative has elicited outrage online. On Weibo, the hashtag “Japan issues red tags to mark Chinese travelers” has gathered 200 million views, becoming the fourth most trending topic at one point. Many Chinese travelers complained that they not only had to pay for COVID tests and potential quarantines in subpar conditions upon entering South Korea but also had to wear a yellow tag on their necks to identify themselves as coming from China for special inspection at airports. The tags, along with South Korean reporters snapping photos at them, made them feel like they were criminals being transferred
Good to see that we’re finally beyond the 3D printing hype bubble and its true benefits can be appreciated. This article is a good run down of the pros and cons of 3D printing in an industrial setting. In some ways it reminds me of the ‘manufacturing cells’ concept were a computer controlled machine tool with switchable tool faces would do multiple jobs and process multiple types of products in small batches.
Not all manufacturing is true Fordian production lines. Just in the same way that digital printing has been good for small run books and catalogues or printing on demand; yet ‘traditional printing’ is still used for bigger print runs – additive manufacturing will be alongside traditional manufacturing processes.
Chinese Celebrities’ Political Signalling on Sina Weibo | The China Quarterly | Cambridge Core – Recent studies have revealed how the state disciplines and co-opts celebrities to promote patriotism, foster traditional values and spread political propaganda. However, how do celebrities adapt to the changing political environment? Focusing on political signalling on the social media platform Sina Weibo, we analyse a novel dataset and find that the vast majority of top celebrities repost from official accounts of government agencies and state media outlets, though there are variations. Younger celebrities with more followers tend to repost from official accounts more often. Celebrities from Taiwan tend to repost less than those from the mainland and Hong Kong, despite being subject to the same rules. However, the frequent political signalling by the most influential celebrities among younger generations suggests that the state has co-opted celebrity influence on social media to broadly promote its political objectives
Macs In the Enterprise: A Cisco Case Study – Creative Strategies – Despite extremely high desire from employees to use Macs (66% according to a study we did last year), most IT organizations keep the Mac users in their organization at arm’s length. Offering true platform of choice matters when it comes to employee experience and employee satisfaction with their workplace, tools, and IT departments. This is exactly what Cisco found when they studied internal employees. A Cisco report on IT satisfaction of employees found satisfaction to be significantly lower when employees were not offered their platform of choice in a laptop – this bullshit has been going on my entire career, HR departments are a major issue as well
I subscribe to all kinds of weird and wonderful newsletters to get content for these posts, the idea of a Ukraine beta test was inspired by this post on SOFREP: Combat Sandbox: Ukraine’s ‘MacGyver Army’Tests Western Weaponry | SOFREP. SOFREP is written a self-described team of a team of former military, intelligence and special operations professionals. While some of their stories are repeats of tabloid fantasies: UK Apache helicopter gunships for Ukraine, they also provide some smart editorial thinking.
Western military ideas were designed to run against Russian and Chinese campaigns. The Ukraine beta test seems to have failed for Russia’s hybrid warfare concept, when it was executed on a large scale basis. Russia were trying to execute on an idea first outlined by an American theorist Frank Hoffman in his work Conflict in the 21st century: the rise of hybrid wars for a think tank. The Russians themselves call it ‘non-linear warfare‘. After careful preparation, Russia used non-linear warfare to capture Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014. On the surface of it, a successful Ukraine beta test for Russia. Yet 7 years later on a larger scale approach Russia failed and is having to go back to older ways of doing things.
Part of the Ukraine beta test works because of the Ukrainians and everything that they have on the line. Part of it was down to better tactics by Ukraine compared to Russia and at least some of which was down to the use of western weapons systems used in an innovative way.
There has since been a Ukraine beta test of western military ideas:
Delta is a system for collecting, processing and displaying information about enemy forces, coordinating defense forces, and providing situational awareness according to NATO standards, developed by the Center for Innovation and Development of Defense Technologies of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, founded in 2021 at the base of the A2724 military unit, which, in turn, was created in 2015 from the volunteer group Aerorozvidka.
Delta is used for planning operations and combat missions, coordination with other units, secure exchange of information on the location of enemy forces, etc. In particular, Delta has integrated chatbots developed by the Ministry of Digital Affairs – “eVorog” and the Security Service of Ukraine – “STOP Russian War”.
The system is equipped with modern means of monitoring suspicious activity. From 2021, allied cyber units are constantly scanning the system for vulnerabilities, intrusion attempts, data leaks, and more.
According to the developers, Delta provides a comprehensive understanding of the battle space in real time, integrates information about the enemy from various sensors and sources, including – intelligence, on a digital map, does not require additional settings, and can work on any device – laptop, tablet or even on a mobile phone. Roughly speaking, Delta is such a modern real-time command map and troop control center
It has taken years for western powers to build comparable systems. Delta is powered by a mix of human intelligence, Ukrainian open source intelligence and also includes NATO electronic intelligence and satellite imagery. Integration of NATO for Delta is a Ukraine beta test in itself. NATO will learn from the successes and challenges of Delta. At a tactical level the idea of a Ukraine beta test shows how well weapons systems work under real-world ‘near peer’ war conditions, giving them valuable understanding of what systems are most effective against Russian systems.
The Ukraine beta test shows where the gaps are in NATO systems. For instance the Gepard tank is a short range anti-aircraft system phased out by Germany a decade ago, that has shown the value of similar gun based systems against drones and low flying aircraft as a cost effective method to engage.
All of which makes me wonder why the arms industry aren’t taking the obvious step and ‘donating’ trial systems to the Ukrainian military for a Ukraine beta test to show their mettle and value to western clients? The closest that we’ve seen to this is the GLSDB. The GLSDB is an existing Boeing bomb mated to recycled rocket motors. But the arms industry could do so much more as part of a Ukraine beta test.
China
The politics of China’s Belt and Road workers in Africa – Asia Times – strong empirical evidence that democracies host significantly fewer Chinese workers than autocracies, all other things being equal. The results hold up using a variety of different statistical modeling techniques. In Ghana, a vibrant democracy, we found that both the country’s main political parties faced pressure to ensure that Chinese-built projects delivered local jobs. For example, in the construction of the Bui Dam, the agreement between Sinohydro, the Chinese state-owned behemoth contracted to complete the project, and the Ghanaian government stipulated that a certain proportion of the workforce would be local. In Algeria, on the other hand, Chinese labor has been used to quickly complete projects seen as politically expedient. Algeria is a “hybrid” regime that was ruled by a single man, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, from 1999 to 2019. Even when domestic discontent over Chinese workers prompted measures to limit their presence, the measures were not implemented. Our findings have several important implications. First, host country agency is important. Host governments have the ability to ensure Chinese companies hire locally. Second, projects that hire locally may bring more long-term economic benefits to host countries. This can happen both directly through the jobs that they create, and via knowledge and technology transfers into the wider economy. Our analysis, therefore, suggests that the wider developmental benefits of Chinese-built infrastructure may actually be stronger in democracies than in autocracies
China is flashing red on the skewed consensus indicator | Financial Times – The only strong standout finding is on China, around which a strength of current optimism has no offset. Morgan Stanley didn’t think to even offer one. It’s a Goldilocks scenario with no bears – this doesn’t make sense. Wall Street seems to have an irrational belief in China as a market. For example: China moves to take ‘golden shares’ in Alibaba and Tencent units | Financial Times – expect this is to be about more than censorship. More like military – civil fusion – also likely to have big implications for media engagement on social platforms
Ryanair unsure if softening in UK demand here to stay – “There’s no doubt that the UK economy by any stretch of the imagination, in terms of going into recession or whatever, is different than the other European economies,” – interesting that they are concerned about travel overall rather than thinking about a pivot to them from BA etc
Is this the end of the bachelor pad? – The Face – the bachelor pad has been gobbled up by the economy. Nearly a third of 20 – 34-year-olds in the UK are living at home with their parents. I did feel a bit triggered by the author’s dismissal of stainless steel as a material and good quality furniture like an Eames lounge chair as being emblematic of toxic masculinity. But the economic points are very valid
Mainland rush to return to Hong Kong, Macau post zero-Covid nears 1 million | South China Morning Post – travel demand has been growing since China relaxed its border restrictions in December, with around 998,000 mainland residents applying for travel documents to Hong Kong or Macau, and 353,000 people applying for a new passport – expect Hong Kong fatalities to surge. Hong Kong has an even older population than mainland China. There is a corresponding low vaccination rate amongst them, partly down to vaccine distrust due to often Chinese orchestrated misinformation
Wokeness as prairie fire – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – Anyway, with all that said, the point of this post is that wokeness’ role in American society is evolving as we move into the early 2020s. In particular, I see three simultaneous trends:
An increasing anti-woke pushback from conservatives
Increasing entrenchment of woke ideas and practices within liberal institutions
A general exhaustion with wokeness among thought leaders and young people
Who Are You Calling a Great Power? – Lawfare – trying to define great power status is difficult in ways that are evident from the mismatched assortment of candidates that emerge in the recent literature. Power varies across issues and domains in ways that are glossed over when international politics is reduced to great power competition. It can be a convenient shorthand, but policymakers should not lose track of the nuances: Who counts as a great power may vary from issue to issue
Saudi Aramco bets on being the last oil major standing | Financial Times – What is often forgotten is how oil is also needed as a feedstock for materials. You want electric batteries they need a plastic based insulator and cables need plastic insulation. Mercedes et al tried soy plastic based cable insulation in the late 1990s and the wiring looms of these cars have had to be remade. All of which will be needed if you want a LiON or hydrogen economy. Then there are seals, bushings, coatings, medicines etc all of which rely on hydrocarbon feedstocks. Oil isn’t just about carbon emissions. Aramco is being prescient about this, Companies like Shell etc are increasingly looking at plastics manufacturing for exactly the same reasons
Lidl, Zara’s owner, H&M and Next ‘paid Bangladesh suppliers less than production cost’ | Retail industry | The Guardian – Lidl, Zara’s owner Inditex, H&M and Next have been accused of paying garment suppliers in Bangladesh during the pandemic less than the cost of production, leaving factories struggling to pay the country’s legal minimum wage. In a survey of 1,000 factories in the country producing clothes for UK retailers, 19% of Lidl’s suppliers made the claim, as did 11% of Inditex’s, 9% of H&M’s and 8% of Next’s. A majority of suppliers of those four brands, and also of Tesco and Aldi, told researchers that almost two years after Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic they were still being paid at the same rate – despite soaring raw material and production costs in the interim
EU draws up plans to stockpile scarce medicines | Financial Times – “a systemic challenge with numerous vulnerabilities”, including overreliance on a few countries for certain products, and the way drugs are regulated and bought. The EU’s Health Emergency and Response Authority (Hera), established in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, could organise joint procurements for several countries to improve supply. Health commissioner Stella Kyriakides outlined the plan in a reply to Greek health minister Thanos Plevris, who had demanded action in a letter to her last week. “There is a shortage in certain branded drugs containing paracetamol, antibiotics and inhalers . . . particularly for children,” Plevris said at a news conference last week where he announced a series of measures that would tackle the shortages. – because China
UK supermarket uses facial recognition tech to track shoppers – Coda Story – In July, civil liberties group Big Brother Watch filed a complaint to the U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office against Southern Co-op and Facewatch — the company providing the surveillance system. Joshua Shadbolt, a duty manager at the Copnor Road supermarket, told me that high levels of theft have forced him and his colleagues to hide, for instance, all the cleaning products behind the till. Without the technology, he fears customers would be given free range to steal. Since Covid restrictions were lifted in the U.K. in early 2021 following a third national lockdown, shoplifting has been on the rise. This is likely to have been compounded by a cost-of-living crisis. Still, even if theft has not reached pre-pandemic levels, for Shadbolt, the biometric camera has been an effective and necessary tool in tackling crime. For Big Brother Watch, the camera is a breach of data rights and individual privacy. Every time a customer walks into a shop or business that uses Facewatch’s system, a biometric profile is created. If staff have reasonable grounds to suspect a customer of committing a crime, whether it’s shoplifting or disorderly conduct, they can add the customer to a Facewatch list of “subjects of interest.” Facewatch’s policy notice says that the police also have the power to upload images and data to Facewatch’s system. Anyone uploading the data, which includes a picture of the suspected person’s face, their name and a short summary of what happened, must confirm that they either witnessed the incident or have CCTV footage of it. But the policy does not indicate what the bar for “reasonably suspecting” someone is.
Group B rallying was the stuff of my childhood. Its history was complex. In the 1970s the motorsport governing body FIA was in dispute with formula one team owners. As a result the FIA reformed one of its own committees related to formula one called CSI, in 1978, into the autonomous Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA). This came under Jean-Marie Balestre. He was a former journalist and president of the go-karting association.
Reorganisation
Just a few years later, FISA re-organised racing and rallying standards. It replaced groups for unmodified and modified production cars. That was largely a like for like swap. Secondly it combined grand touring (sports cars) with a race circuit only production-derived special builds class into Group B.
Group B allowed really small production runs of really fast cars with only a superficial relationship (if any) to cars that could be sold in a showroom. Regulations had a generous minimum kerb weight and allowed rear wheel drive or four-wheel drive. Audi had just launched its Audi Ur Quattro which showed the potential of four-wheel drive in a normal car package. There was no restrictions on turbo-charged engines ‘boost pressure’ – allowing for small engines in a light car package with immense power.
1984
1984 was a crucial year for Group B, when the format would form its ultimate shape.
For the first few years Audi’s production derived Ur Quattro had won loose surface events and a rear-wheel drive Lancia 037 doing better on tarmac roads. Other manufacturers were bringing cars into the championship as well including Toyota, Porsche and Opel. Peugeot brought the first car that fully took advantage of the regulations. A two seater, four wheel drive, mid-engined car in a space frame. A slew of similar competitors followed the year after, including the Ford RS200. This was the stuff my dreams were made of. My exercise books covered in sketches – side profile designs of vehicles that would be optimised for Group B regulations.
The end
1986 saw a series of fatal accidents that would result in Group B being shut down for safety and PR reasons. This created the illusion of a safer sport, but the reality was that the body count peaked some three years later in 1989, due to the way rallies were organised back then and how South Europeans conducted themselves as spectators – playing chicken in the road, dropping rocks on the road to hinder non local drivers and trying to touch cars as they went by.
This is where Richard Madden (of Game of Thrones) short film comes in capturing the difficulties of a driver managing a Group B car and dealing with trauma.
Who are the rioters who stormed Brazil’s government offices? | Financial Times – many pro-Bolsonaro truckers blocked highways across the country, choking supply chains and at one point forcing the closure of Brazil’s main international airport. These hardline backers are nationalist, socially conservative and often evangelical Christians. They accuse Lula and his Workers’ party of being corrupt and against family values, claiming the left intends to implant socialism in Brazil.
The Nokia Risk | Phenomenal World – Denmark, Israel, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, and Taiwan a handful of firms account for a hugely disproportionate share of both profits and R&D spending. The firms which dominate these seven economies have all been extraordinarily successful in the knowledge economy of the past three decades: Samsung Electronics in Korea, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in Taiwan, Novo Nordisk (pharmaceuticals) in Denmark, and Roche and Novartis (pharmaceuticals) in Switzerland
Dim Future for Hong Kong’s Rural Industries – Varsity – the government tends to avoid underutilised plots controlled by village gentries and land banks of property developers when it tries to resume lands for urban development. – Hong Kong oligarchs still have some pull for the time being
Why Beijing Wants Jimmy Lai Locked Up – The Atlantic – Beijing has weaponized the courts against its longtime adversaries—just as Chinese state media continues to promote Lai as the poster boy of everything nefarious in Hong Kong. For both purposes, Lai has a sufficiently high profile and is convincingly rich enough to have fomented a subversive uprising; and, amid the nationalist atmosphere that prevails in Beijing, Lai also had highly suspect foreign connections that reached close to the center of power in Washington, particularly during the Trump administration. By turning to its old playbook of assigning blame to a hostile force at home backed by support from abroad, the Chinese Communist Party is falling into a trap of its own creation. Given the sentences that Lai is likely to receive for his alleged crimes, Lai could very well be imprisoned for the rest of his life. In looking for a scapegoat, Beijing may find it has created a martyr.
Indonesia
The Liem family and The Salim Group and how crony capitalism busted Indonesia in 1997/8
Innovation
How Silicon Valley was build on the back of defence research
Interesting commentary on materials development and the role that the Apollo space programme played to create a chemical and materials science golden age that had applications in other areas.
Tory MP leads warnings over UK security after Chinese spyware ‘found in Government car’ – “If these SIM cards have been duplicitously installed, then this is CCP espionage. If the SIM cards are operationally standard, then it is a failure of security not to have removed them to protect the data of our Government and sensitive Government sites.” – I wouldn’t be surprise if it was the latter rather than the former
The Long War in Ukraine | Foreign Affairs – Western strategists have sought to preempt a military standoff in two ways. Some, such as the leaders of several Baltic countries, have called for arming Kyiv with more of the heavy weapons it would need to expel Russian forces from all Ukrainian territory; others, including Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, have suggested that Ukraine’s political leaders should consider a negotiated solution that falls short of complete victory but would at least end the fighting
Style
Lacoste moves to collective model as Louise Trotter exits | Vogue Business – The British designer joined Lacoste from Joseph, and previously worked at premium high street brands Whistles and Jigsaw. At Lacoste, she applied her creative vision to both Lacoste’s fashion shows and general collections, bringing “real consistency” across its designs, according to the brand. “She has also accompanied the shift initiated by Lacoste towards womenswear, imagining a new wardrobe combining comfort and style,” the statement reads. Lacoste’s last fashion show was in October 2021 for Spring/Summer 2022, for which Trotter drew inspiration from her passion for cycling. Sales reached €2.5 billion in 2022, according to the brand.
Taiwan
Taiwan plans domestic satellite champion to resist any China attack | Financial Times – “Our primary concern . . . is facilitating the societal resilience, to make sure for example that journalists can send videos to . . . international viewers even during a large-scale disaster,” Tang said, adding that the system would also support “telephoning and videoconferencing — think [Ukrainian president Volodymyr] Zelenskyy’s daily addresses.” Starlink, the mobile internet satellite constellation operated by Musk’s SpaceX, has helped Kyiv maintain communications with its forces despite Russian attacks
Technology
I wrote a story for a friend – by Julian Gough – I wrote the End Poem for Minecraft, the most popular video game of all time. I never signed a contract giving Mojang the rights to the End Poem, and so Microsoft (who bought Minecraft from Mojang) also don’t own it. I do. Rather than sue the company or fight with my old friend, who founded the company and has since gone off in the deep end, I am dedicating the poem to the public domain. You’ll find it at the bottom of this post, along with a Creative Commons Public Domain dedication.
2022 kicked off with the start of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free trade agreement. It eclipses the European Union – it covers nearly a third of the global population and about 30 per cent of its global gross domestic product. [i] It’s hard to overstate how important this agreement is to the world economy.
Russia’s intervention in Kazakhstan to quieten unrest triggered by a rise in the price of LPG (liquified petroleum gas) and general government dissatisfaction is seen at the time as a good thing on balance.[ii]
The number of global COVID cases exceeds 300 million worldwide[iii], contrast this with the estimated 250 million infections experienced in China alone right before Christmas 2022.[iv]
By the end of January, we had 10 billion vaccinations conducted.[v] But that didn’t stop anti-vaxxers, including celebrity tennis player Novak Djokovic who was deported from Australia due to not being vaccinated.[vi]
In other medical developments, we also saw the first successful heart transplant from a pig to a human. The operation was carried out in the US. [vii] This represents a huge step forward in dealing with the shortage of available organs for transplantation.
February
The winter Olympics were held in Beijing, China. The International Olympics Committee have found it harder to get countries to host both the summer and winter Olympic Games. Holding these events in authoritarian countries posed hard questions for sponsors and legal sanction including the Beijing Winter Olympics Sponsor Accountability Act bill submitted to the US Congress.[viii]
No sooner had the Winter Olympics finished than Russia started its invasion of Ukraine, and the west made a remarkably cohesive response in terms of sanctions, this would be followed with military aid throughout the year.[ix] By the end of February,[x] Russia had indicated a willingness to use its nuclear forces. This was a remarkable turnaround from just seven weeks after Russia, as part of the United Natios Security Council affirmed that ‘a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.’[xi]
March
The global death toll due to COVID passes 6 million worldwide.[xii] In a potential resurgence of corporate Japan, Honda and Sony are partnering in creating sophisticated electric vehicles.[xiii] Equality may have taken a major step forward in the US, with young women in 22 major cities have a higher average salary than their male peers.[xiv] Part of this might be down to a decline in male participation in higher education and economic activity.[xv]
April
Global food prices rise to their highest ever price according to the UN’s Food Price Index, which began in 1990. This adds to supply chain related inflation due to COVID and energy price rises.[xvi][xvii]
May
There was an outbreak of monkeypox first recorded in the UK[xviii], which sparked concern about a possible new global pandemic.[xix] A mix of demand for electric vehicles and continued supply chain problems meant that Volkswagen had sold out of electric vehicles.[xx]
June
Amazon finally closes its Kindle e-book store in China. [xxi] Low economic growth combined with supply side inflation due to disrupted supply chains and the war in Ukraine causes concern about the short term and long term future of the UK economy.[xxii] Meanwhile perceptions of China across Europe reach a new nadir.[xxiii]
July
Heatwaves pummelled Europe, killing 53,000 people through July and August.[xxiv]
August
September
The UK was hit by a double whammy. Queen Elizabeth II died.[xxv] The queen had been a constant in the life of most Britons as the country had moved through imperial decline. Her death was notable for the sustained wall-to-wall media onslaught. Secondly, the 50-day career of prime minister Liz Truss shook up the UK economy due to her proposed government policies. [xxvi]
October
Footage is released that shows construction of linear city The Line is already well under way.[xxvii]
November
The FIFA World Cup was held in Qatar and managed to survive controversy which also engulfed sponsorships. FIFA managed to dodge many of the brickbats slug at the IOC. But both events raise questions for western brand sponsorship strategies moving forward.[xxviii]
December
Will 2022 be seen as the start of the fusion age? In February, the JET (Joint European Torus) facility in Oxford managed to produce more energy than had been created in a controlled fusion reaction. At 59 megajoules over 5 seconds, it was twice as large as the previous record set 25 years earlier.[xxix] But the ‘Wright Brothers’ moment for nuclear fusion may have occurred in December. The US government managed to achieve nuclear fusion with net energy gain.[xxx]
2022 in review for this blog
Site basics
No review of 2022 would be complete without looking at you, the readership of this blog
Audience
The internet has become a global phenomenon, but my audience numbers read like they could from the late 1990s. My readership is predominantly from the US, which surprised me a bit.
Top five countries that my audience comes from
%
Country
33.2
United States of America
9.53
Indonesia – this surprised me
7.41
United Kingdom
3.95
Japan
2.72
Germany
Most trafficked blog posts
Rank
Title
1
Metaverse discussion paper – or why the ‘open’ metaverse won’t be happening anytime soon. Web 3.0 doesn’t solve any of its problems and neither do 5G wireless networks.
2
The Line – Saudi plans to build a high rise, high density linear city.
3
Hino Trucks – one of my regular round-up posts, but it led with a celebration of the Hino Truck brand and how it took Irish roads by storm during my childhood
4
AI and Creativity – the results of an exploration and me and a colleague did into Midjourney and the likely impact it would have on creative agencies.
5
The Gay Blood Collection – a project by Mother London to highlight and protest against a long-standing regulation that keeps gay blood donations restricted in comparison to other members of the population
6
Moviedrome – probably one of my largest long form posts ever (excluding the Metaverse discussion paper) looking at the impact of a long running weekly film screening on BBC curated and presented by film director Alex Cox
7
The World of Visuals – was a trend presentation that provided Adobe’s perspective on areas like artificial intelliengence.
8
StetWalk – a trend that has sprung up amongst book editors, where they talk a walk outside to clear their heads and be inspired by their surroundings. I was introduced to the concept by my friend Siobhan.
9
Naked Power Politics – the invasion of Ukraine was a transgression of several norms and seems to be part of a movement to a more ugly world.
10
Bong Bong Marcos – the scion to the Marcos political dynasty became a president in the mould of former president Duterte.
