Handling money and flu transmission

Although I miss the Evening Standard newsellers in London, my all time favourite used to give me now and then a lobster or a brace of crabs caught from his lobster pots off Portland where he now lives, I recognise that if they have to be replaced by piles of free newspapers that this is a better time than most for it to happen.

How come? Well the Evening Standard was selling 250,000 copies 5 nights a week. Money changed hands each time, often the only time in the day that people handled money. If you want to spread influenza quickly it is a good way to do it. So perhaps the unintended consequence of the loss of Evening Standard newsellers is a slowing of the transmission of the H1N1 flu virus.

Furry peril

Here is another example of unintended consequences reported by Kiwi Conservation:-

"Possums are not native to New Zealand. The first possums were brought to New Zealand in 1837 from Australia.Possums are native to Australia and are protected there.Possums are not a problem in Australia. Many trees in Australia have possum defenses such as spines, prickles or poisonous leaves.In New Zealand possums have no natural enemies.That is why possum numbers increased so fast. The possum is not protected in New Zealand, it is a pest.Most native New Zealand trees have yummy leaves and no possum defenses.The possum is doing a lot of damage to the native plants, animals and birds."

There are now 70 million possums in New Zealand.

Risks and type

Anne Fadiman is a wonderfully perceptive reader and she throws up lots of risks which attentive proof readers salivate over, some of which have serious consequences. In no particular order:

* misplaced apostrophes and spaces- my example would be man's laughter or manslaughter.
* misspellings as in the opening paragraph of Beverly Sills' memoirs -" When I was only three and still named Beverly Miriam Silverman I sang my first aria in pubic."
* key words missed out - here her example of the 1631 edition of the St James Bible which had the 7th commandment as "Thou shalt commit adultery."
* misplaced decimal point in a ship's mortgage in 1986 by a New York Law firm which cost their client $11 million.
* omitted hyphen by a NASA computer progammer from Mariner I's flight programme which sent the probe off course so badly that it had to be destroyed, thus wasting the $7 million investment.


However in writing this appreciation of her book "Ex Libris, Confessions of a Common Reader" I find myself at risk of offending her by describing it as a masterpiece, which has far too masculine an overtone for one so alert to gender issues in print, yet mistresspiece seems inappropriate and presumptuous and mispiece reads like the female equivalent of codpiece. So here we are, the only way around is to advise you to read her piece de resistance.

Careless Talk Costs Jobs

We have all enjoyed a good laugh at the Government's expense over their loss of computers and personal records. Yet I wonder how savvy we are when it comes to protecting sensitive information regarding our work.



Everyday on the commuter train you can hear detailed conversations of business contracts, disciplinary procedures and named individuals. Less obtrusive, but potentially even more damaging are those who work at their laptops on company documents with people standing or sitting next to them and well able to view what they are working on.



The same relaxed attitude is true of guests in restaurants and people talking or working on flights. I have seen documents across an aircraft aisle relating to a company which I was very familiar with, being worked on by a Japanese executive, which led me to believe that he was running his slide rule over them with a view to taking them over. A former Chairman of mine bragged of overhearing a conversation in a restaurant which led him to bid for the work under discussion and obtain it.



"Careless talk costs lives "was a watchphrase of World War2. We don't face such dire consequences but perhaps we need to revive it to read " Careless talk costs jobs" - starting with our own.

There's nowt so queer as folk

Looking at some of the news stories I am continually amazed at the low probability high impact stories which surface. It is, of course, the low probability which provides for the surprise element.

Talking of "surprise element" one of the stories was the tragic tale of the Polish visitor to England who relieved himself on the railway track. Not a problem in Poland where, if I remember rightly, the electricity cables are overhead. Sadly in the UK with the live rail right next to the usual track his mistake was fatal.

Then there were the three US crew who were found asleep on the job. Problem was that their job included access to nuclear weapon codes. Question I would like an answer to is" what were the conditions that made them all doze off?" Then it turned out we had not been in as much danger as it seemed as the codes they were guarding were out of date. Maybe we should go back to using geese, at least they don't sleep on the job.

Then there was the report that there have been 300,000 traffic accidents which have been caused, it was claimed, by SatNav, or rather by listening to SatNav and not using enough gumption. Imagine what a swarm of lemmings could do with SatNav - they might avoid going over the cliff. Unintended consequence.

Licensed to Hug

In the months after 9/11 I had a call from Frank Furedi, the Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent. He wanted to research the reaction to 9/11 and he needed to talk to risk managers and he needed funds. I arranged for AIRMIC to provide the risk managers and Lloyd's the funds. The result was Frank's report, which went out under the sponsorship of AIRMIC and Lloyd's called "Refusing to be Terrorised". Well worth reading.

Now he has just published with Jennie Bristow, a new report "Licensed to Hug"about vetting adults who work with children . Here is a brief section from his website http://www.frankfuredi.com/ on the subject- once again Frank is dealing with the fears of society and exposing how we are in the grip of idiots:

"The alleged protective effects of a system of vetting are largely illusory. Aside from the fallibility of record-keeping and technical systems, vetting takes into account only what somebody has done in the past. The most sophisticated system in the world cannot anticipate how individuals with a clean record might behave. Thus, the CRB provides little guidance about people’s behaviour in the future. It provides the impression of security, but not the substance. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the national vetting scheme represents an exercise in impression management rather than offering effective protection. Vetting measures also fuel suspicion about adults. In that sense, they are not just harmless rituals, but negatively influence the conduct of adult-child relationships.

Although proponents of the scheme contend that it is designed to prevent “worst-case scenarios”, the very institutionalisation of the scheme encourages worst-case-scenario assumptions to become the norm. One consequence of this process is that adults feel increasingly nervous around children, unwilling and unable to exercise their authority and play a positive role in children’s lives. Such intergenerational unease has not made children safer than in the past: if anything, it is creating the conditions for greater harm, as adults lose the nerve and will to look out for any child who is not their own. Perversely, it inadvertently encourages grown-ups to avoid their responsibility for assuring the well-being of children in their community. One of the principal consequences of the vetting of grown-ups is the legitimisation of the idea that it is not the responsibility of the older generation to take a direct interest in the lives of children. "

Click here to read the AIRMIC Press Release from 17th June 2002...

"Bungling,confusion,misplaced power"

Richard Overy in his remarkable book "Why the Allies won" describes how the Germans frittered their technical lead and their scarce resources away during World War 2 ;

"The German armed forces pursued technical excellence for its own sake..... The military domination of production had mixed effects. There is no dispute that Germany developed weapons of very high quality...but the pursuit of advanced weaponry came at a price. Instead of a core of proven designs produced on standard lines the German forces developed a bewildering array of projects. At one point in the war there were no fewer than 425 different aircraft models.

' Nobody could seriously believe that so much bungling, confusion, misplaced power, failure to recognise the truth and deviation from the reasonable could really exist.' complained a group of German engineers."

Well today we have news that the National Audit Office has discovered 8 Chinook helicopters which have been so specially modified to the requirements of the British military establishment that they are unsuitable for use seven years after original delivery, despite them being badly needed, and the modifications to bring them back to service will double their original cost.

In trying to get certainty you often miss achieving your objective.

Major sound bites

"A free and open society is worth a certain amount of risk," so said John Major, last Conservative Prime Minister, at the Guildhall last night where he was the guest speaker at the Chartered Insurance Institute's dinner and in snappingly good form.

He also pointed out that " if we are to control the liberty of individuals we need more uncertainty than that (by which he meant the current threat levels)".

He went on to inveigh against identity cards and dna databases and to point out that governments, of any party, with large majorities did not have to take as much care with legislation and so many poorly drafted got passed which would be better scrutinised by both sides if the government's majority was small. He admitted to there being" Too much legislation- I accept a degree of mea culpa".

" Simplicities in politics so often backfire,"was his phrase which conjured up all the unintended consequences of knee jerk reactions by politicians to tabloid headlines.

Amongst the guests were his old colleagues,such as Lord Heseltine and Lord David Hunt, the President of the CII. Most interesting was the presence of Charles Clarke, the ex Home Secretary. I wonder where he stands now on identity cards and why politicans out of office make so much sense.

Hoist by your own robot

The history of warfare is full of stories of people turning their enemies' weapons against them with disastrous results.Today's report from AFP that armed robots could be reprogrammed by terrorists to attack us should come as no surprise.

Prior to an address to the Royal United Services Institute, Sheffield University Professor Noel Sharkey is reported as saying " Military leaders are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost effective and give a risk-free war......The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern."

It seems stating the obvious that if the robots can be turned against you then you do not have risk-free war.

"Terminator" style machines will eventually be developed. Will they make better , more precise decisions than troops on the ground who get confused, angry and scared? Probably. Will we feel safer, more secure, more willing to find a peaceful solution? Probably not.

The unintended consequences of Berwick-on-Tweed

If, as the latest straw poll suggests, the inhabitants of Berwick-on-Tweed were to seek to join Scotland after 500 years of being English then the Scots should think through the unintended consequences for Scotland’s claims to the Shetland Islands. After all these islands were pawned in 1469 by the King of Norway and Denmark for a Scottish loan, so they have only been in Scottish hands 13 years longer than Berwick-on-Tweed has been English. There was a right of redemption in payment of 210 kgs of gold , which seems a rather reasonable sum for the oil rich Norwegians to find for 566 square miles, even at the present price of gold.

The financial attractions for the Shetlanders of joining Norway might be even greater than those enthusing the burghers of Berwick-on-Tweed. They would not only be able to expect amongst the highest living standards in Europe, the end to direct EU interference in their lives, but they could also make off with whatever oil reserves are left in their section of the North Sea.

Downhill Risk

Last week in the Daily Telegraph there was the obituary of a Richard Burton who died on January 6th 2008. Not the one who married Elizabeth Taylor twice, but the one who survived 65% burns in a racing car accident , married five times and employed Sarah Ferguson before she became Duchess of York. As my father would have said "He was quite a boy." He was also the direct descendant of Robert Burton who wrote "The Anatomy of Melancholy." Melancholy does not seem to have been a problem, rather an excess of joie de vivre.

One wonderful snippet went as follows " Burton married often and was a fount of knowledge on the art of making love; for example, he insisted that when doing so on a mountainside it was important to be facing downhill."

In the interest of think risk, smarter decisions I leave it to my readers to think through the possible consequences of Burton's downhill tryst.