Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
If you want to survive the next big technology failure, and it’s inevitable there will be one, here’s my tip; keep a fiver in your back pocket and a tray of cash in your car.
No harm in that fiver being twenty quid. But don’t abandon the readies just because your bank asked you to. Just have enough to see you through the crisis when shop tills have gone down, banks can’t open, petrol pumps are silent and airlines can’t fly.
At least there are some kind people in the world like the person who offered to pay for a friend’s shopping last Friday when she discovered card payment was no longer on the cards in the local shop.
There were just a few items in the basket and my friend thanked her potential benefactor. As it happened none of it was urgent and she politely declined the generous offer and said she’d try again the next time she was in town.
I bet this outage has cost billions across the world. I can’t fathom how one company in America is responsible for everyone’s Windows set up. So when they botched an upgrade the whole network of businesses, services and little people suffered.
I’ve always said, the fat man in Korea need not keep building rockets. A technical wizard with evil intent can bring down whole countries at the press of a few keys.
This total reliance on technology is dangerous. They constantly badger us to pay everything by card. But don’t ditch cash. I may sound like a dinosaur, but I could afford a curry at the weekend with my spare £20.
The fragility of the foundation of our digital lives is what’s so frightening. How could a company as vast in its reach as Microsoft be thrown sideways? How small and helpless the human race becomes. We go totally digital at our peril. On this occasion it seems to be human error, not a foreign government hacker with evil intent. CrowdStrike quite simply loaded a faulty software update which affected Microsoft Windows and darned nearly brought the planet to its knees.
I mean it was such a crisis that BBC news reported GPs, poor lambs, having to actually write out prescriptions by hand. Not that they were legible in the old days.
The wisdom of having such a crucial part of the system controlled by just a small number of companies has to be questioned.
In this world of suspect technology, the man or woman who can jingle a few coins in their pocket or purse can rightly feel smug.
We have become, as a species, too dependent on machines that are only as reliable as the material fed into them. I maintain it will be AI that finally does for the human race.
Pure fantasy
Having mentioned GPs, there was an article online last week about the Royal College of Physicians urging doctors to lecture patients about the impacts of global warming on our health. I thought it was a joke, but no. I bet we all can’t wait for that on our next visit to the surgery.
You go to see the doc about an ingrowing toenail and come out with a recipe for a vegan pie when you were expecting an anti-biotic cream.
If doctors are as busy as they say they are then this recommendation by the Royal College is pure fantasy land. In a five-minute appointment the last thing a patient wants is a lecture on how many trees were cut down in Brazil last Thursday.
The urban minister for rural affairs
In between jetting across the Atlantic and getting to know fellow world leaders, Sir Keir Starmer has made some interesting appointments, not least the inspired choice of Sir John Timpson, the man who cuts your keys and mends your shoes, as prisons minister.
However I’m not sure where the prime minister is going with his appointment of a distinctly urban MP as new Defra minister.
On the face of it Steve Reed, MP for Streatham and Croydon, is about as urban as it gets. He is former leader of Lambeth in London and was in educational publishing before he turned to politics.
There have been 10 secretaries of state in this department since the 2010 General Election. Four former Defra ministers lost their seats on July 4th.
Some big beasts have held office in the past ranging from Michael Gove to John Prescott and, whisper the name, Liz Truss.
As long as the Secretary of State understands the countryside and the people who live there then no problem. Just being a good listener would help. But clearly Keir Starmer could not sift out a more rural candidate from his lengthy list of newbie MPs.
Past relationships between Westminster politicians and the countryside have not always run smoothly. A new Government, a new party in charge. How will the new secretary of state approach his task with such apparent lack of rural credentials?
He likes camping as a relaxation away from politics and once spent a week trying to cook the perfect roast potato. It’s a start I suppose.
