Quick Review: Bobble water bottle

I, like most people find reviews a bit tedious. You never know how biased internet reviews are and they end up being too long. What you need is a simple review that gives you pros and cons and a final verdict.

Here's my first review. I received a bobble water bottle for Christmas 2010:

<This is not an advert and I have received no renumereation from any corporation to write this>

PROS

• Looks good
• Filters water
• Small & light

CONS

• Filter makes annoying loud hissing sound every time to take a drink
• Plastic is "too hard" when you need to squeeze it for water
• If you squeeze the plastic too hard (easy to do) the bottle deforms permanently 
• High chance of losing the lid as it is not attached to the bottle
• Expensive filters - albeit after 1000 refills

Overall

5/10 - Good design, but most work places have filtered water anyway and the bottle is difficult to drink from in a hot desk environment because of the hissing noise and difficulty in squeezing the bottle. A cheap 1L volvic bottle would do the same job - only buy this if you need to actually filter your water.

"No country can defend itself if bankrupt." - head of Britain's armed forces, General Sir David Richards (2011)

Like all empires before it, USA and the UK is now crumbling because of their need for growth. Rome collapsed bacause of government greed and their inability to pay their armies. To the victor go the spoils and as an army keeps expanding and winning new resources they can continue to reap the benefits. But ask yourself this - when you have expanded and there is nothing left to take over how do you continue to increase pay? How do you continue above inflation pay growth when the low hanging fruit is gone? You pray for technology or invention but that is sporadic at best.The same will happen to the West. Without innovation we are dead in the water and the government is praying for something because right now the "plan" is a blank sheet of paper

The mainstream media will suggest that it is impossible to predict another financial collapse and eventual world war but it is coming. Timing is difficult to predict but the wheels are in motion. The political elite are only in it for themselves. Despite what they say, its what they do that counts. The UK has sided with the US and left Europe entangled in a web of debt. The politicans know their children will never be in the firing line in a war, and their fat salaries and pensions will be all but guaranteed in a war situation. They have nothing to fear. What do we receive for the £50m a day that we provide to "Europe"? The groupthink herd mentality has good and bad. We could walk blindly off a cliff if we don't think for ourselves. I'm not affiliated to any political party because they are all useless but David Cameron has released that the European system may need Britain more than Britain needs it! Yes, we need the free trade zone, but we can negotiate our own agreements with standalone countries, we're used to doing it. In fact it creates more work for our business services, legal and accountancy workforce!

If you are in the army you will be sold the "for king and country" line but the harsh reality is that the war is really for the political manipulators who have no intention of giving up power and will use any tricks to convince a desperate public that they "must fight" for "the good of the nation and freedom" . Rhetoric over substance. In the end, the absolute crux will always be personal survival.

The title of this blog post really summarises where we are. We are fast approaching the point of bankruptcy with high fixed costs and massive debt to repay. Germany was in a similar position after WW1 (albeit they were losers of WW1) before they embarked on an assault on Europe to gain growth. Our army will be contingency planning, first to protect their masters in the event of wide spread civil disobedience and second to determine how to prevent the system from collapsing by giving the public growth.

The Failing London Tube system - why reform will come soon

The London tube network is falling apart at the seams.

Everyday most of the workers in London can see the trains becoming too crowded, the delays becoming more frequent, disruptive and for spurious reasons like leaves on tracks. Using the network every day I can only foresee a catastrophic accident occurring which will bring this commuter mouse trap its day of reckoning.

The unions will use such an event as a way to exert even more power, hiring more of their staff to fulfill non-roles.

Its time to get serious about automation on the tube service. Other signalling systems around the world can fit twice the number of trains into a one hour window. Driverless carriages will become the norm because the cost of drivers is rising too fast. The DLR works perfectly fine with this system, the tube will too. If something is trapped in the door, the train won't run, this has been an automatic safety feature since automatic doors, they rarely require human intervention. Platform staff can handle other issues.

The Olympics will be the catalyst for these future improvements. It will finally show the world that the tube system is well beyond capacity and any major breakdown or accident will require herculean man management and planning to prevent world wide coverage of London Transport failure. [see update below]

Part of its failure is due to its overriding success. More and more people are using the tube system for shorter journeys  We need to remedy this with more than just the bike system ("Boris Bikes"). We need to allow commuters the ability to have small electric transport that can carry them through London quickly and safely without pedal power. I think the YikeBike is ideal for this purpose. A small bike that can be folded and fit into a ruck sack which weighs 10kg! Its the best idea I've seen, unfortunately our laws in the UK do not permit this or the Segway to be driven on public fairways because they do not have pedals! Eventually the government will have no other choice as the tube network will reach capacity faster than they can build more track or homes. Neither of which they have been very proficient at in the last two decades.

Its a shame people don't launch preventative change until there is an incident which damages members of the public. What ever happened to long term planning?

Update: Having attended a few events at the Olympics I have to admit I was wrong. Although it was full to capacity the Tube service did an admirable job preventing a transport disaster. Although, this was achieved by what looked like a trebling of staff and a assertive campaign to prevent normal commuters coming to work with horror stories of terrible congestions.

Corporate Governance is a complete joke in the western world

The principal-agent problem surfaces time and again with public companies. Management in no way have the collective guts to shout when the "emperor has no clothes".In fact none of them are incentivised to do so. The myriad of committees, Audit, Remuneration, Risk , Income, Sales etc. are all just talking shops. The sad truth is that everyone in lower rungs who works at these companies knows this but they aren't given the voice to tell anyone. If you are a "normal" employee and you're reading this, have you ever wondered what the senior management do in their board meetings? Or even the non-executive directors who are paid your yearly wage for 3 days work? We were told that these wages come with great responsibility. Where is the repercussions that come with failure then? I haven't seen any board members accused or sent to prison for their fiscal failures. Surely, we tell even our children that actions have consequences. Well, where are the consequences to presiding over management failure? Even if you are fired you keep your benefits and the ill gotten gains of million dollar salaries to tide you over whilst you look for your next "consulting role" from one of your other management pals? Would you care about your decisions if you knew you would walk away with your pension and a million pound salary for the rest of the year?

If you think about it, mid level employees (managers etc) have the most to lose from a bankruptcy or fraud, they are the people with values most in alignment with the retail shareholders and pension fund owners. The management are simply paid too much to care. We've all seen the obvious scenarios, longer term incentives are bought out in cash/incentives when a senior employee moves from one organisation to the next. They have no long term skin in the game as they can simply cash in whenever they take a new job. With the removal of long term job security, we now have a merry-go-round. The latest I saw the other day was the CFO of RSA Insurance moving to Lloyds Bank as the new CFO. So, Lloyds Bank (now the taxpayer) has to pay to "buy out" the employee of his previous long term incentive plan.

Why is this not obvious to everyone? The gravy train has been running for years, through remuneration committees recommending each other's pay or "recruitment professionals" announcing market rates and persuading staff to constantly look at other job. These shenanigans are plain to see and benefit the upper middle class and elites who run companies which are owned by pension funds (whose owners are teachers, nurses and policemen). What a ridiculous system. With current social media shareholders should be able to broadcast and evaluate all decisions a board makes within minutes not in an annual report and we should physically tie compensation to a role. If they choose to leave the role, they can forfeit their compensation and make it a rule that their future company cannot replace it through salary or additional compensation.

I think its time to truly tie generational performance, pay and responsibility to monetary remuneration. Without this, the agents will simply skim into their own pockets using stooges to make it look legitimate. Put rotating workers from each corporate level on the board so they can understand and disseminate what the board are doing and where they are taking the company - 99% of decisions aren't market moving.

What a joke we have become - the systems set up to safe guard our investments in society have been circumvented for rich rewards for the few and a lifetime of debt servitude for the many.