Its time to change the record: Our future society

I for one am sick and tired of living in this fake capitalism. Since 2008 we have been living in a ridiculously convoluted world where we have been wagging the dog by its tail. Here are some examples:

1. The economy is terrible and demand from 99% of consumers has been truly destroyed - yet profit margins are up and companies have reported record profits due to low interest rates, lay-offs  lack of salary increases, channel stuffing and cash hoarding

2. None of these low interest rates have been passed on to the real economy - y'know, the one that creates wealth and generates innovative ideas for future generations. All we seem to care about is keeping fake money in a system which is desperate to deflate so we can pass it around in a carousel and reward ourselves with a pat on the back for "generating" a profit.

3. China is continually lying about its progress and failing to actually implement demand led changes that would allow its society to grow more affluent. This is mainly because the ruling parties are terrified of losing control once the population has enough time and money to escape the tight rule of fake laws for the poor.

4. US Congress is continually doing nothing whilst waiting for the US economy to fall of its inevitable fiscal cliff. There will be one because mathematics, unlike humans, can't lie forever. Again, it seems better to do nothing so you don't get blamed than to try and fail. I always thought trying and failing was the cornerstone of American culture - it seems they have been subverted by the 1% of the population who are perfectly happy with the inequality that exists.

5. Europe is in a constant state of bailing itself out. Every 3 months the same countries receive a bail out from themselves! Again, its obvious this doesn't lead to anything that generates value - but I think a certain part of the baby boomer population just wants to get to retirement so its not their problem any more - hence the constant requirement to keep the system going at all costs on 3 month intervals.

We're all pretty tired of trying to make sense of a world that doesn't make sense. Capitalism kind of died in 2008. Its historic aim - to generate future wealth by investing older people's supply of capital in younger people's ideas to generate demand seems to have been completely disrupted.

On the news, talking heads still discuss everything as if this is a momentary blip suggesting "in a few years time when we are back on the road to growth...." things will be different". How long before people realise that this system, set-up only one generation ago, clearly isn't fit for multiple generations in a globalised world? We now have immediate information transparency through social media, constant global travel and automated computer driven productivity. These things break the models of the past. For instance, imagine a world where we could generate energy for free - it would totally destroy this economic model currently build on raw material wealth. As we work out more ways of implementing our energies in a more efficient manner we destroy the society construct we created in the Bretton woods agreement. This kind of thinking reminds me of the future in the HG Wells book, The Time Machine. Set in the far off distant future where a small minority of humans are looked after with food and leisure time by an underclass that simply maintains them like cattle as they toil underground committed to the labour system we have today. They slaughter the humans as their food source but provide them with humane grazing conditions - at least its organic produce! Unless we sit down as a human race and discuss our long term future requirements we will never reform this economic mess.

We are clearly not meant to live as long as we do now. Where is the discussion on Euthanasia for the elderly or chronic pain sufferers? We are not able to sustain the levels of immigration into Europe and US borders via Eastern Europe and Mexico. Where are the conversations about building up these economies so there is less mass migration? We obviously cannot continue to expect constant world growth above population growth. Where are the new economic models to discuss tax havens and successive increases in money supply which dilute the purchasing power of everyone?

I'm sure the human race will continue but we do make these things painfully difficult for ourselves. Whilst this zombie economy keeps going millions will go hungry; lose sleep; and lose the essence of living life whilst they worry about their futures. 

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Quick review: Tesco shaving foam

<I have not received any payment for this opinion>

 Review Date: 19/7/2012

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.

 I bought some Tesco everyday value shaving foam after realising the extortionate cost of branded shaving foams these days. As an example:

Gillette Series Shaving Foam (their cheapest foam) is £2.80. Tesco shaving foam is £0.26 - thats 11x more expensive! I decided to trial the Tesco Foam for a month. Prices continue to rise for gels which have become fashionable but actually make you do the work to create foam!

PROS

• Very cheap!
• Lathers very well
• Allows a close shave
• Didn't give me dry skin or irritation
• The bottle does not rust if left in the shower

CONS

• Has no smell or fragrance

Overall

9.5/10 - Good product, which shouldn't need advertising to sell. These days people's heads have been turned by celebrities endorsing products but the reality is there is very little difference between mass manufactured products and most are sub-contracted to other factories. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesco everyday foam was made in the same factory as Gillette shaving foam.An excellent product if you wish to bring your house hold budget under control. If you want your shaving foam to "say who you are" buy Gillette or King of Shaves for 11x- 20x the price. If you're content to realise that shaving is a chore and hydration simply comes from washing your face - just get on with it and buy Tesco everyday value shaving foam.

Stock Market Crash 2012

Will the stock market crash in 2012? With all the bad news the S&P 500 and FTSE still seem to be remarkably high. Why is this?

There is a school of thought that suggests we are in such bad shape that the very foundations of our debt based monetary system is unravelling. Capitalism ( i.e borrowing from the future to invest wisely in the present to continue growth ahead of general population growth ) is in crisis. We have invested our capital badly into projects of little future vaue and given power to a minority who are hell bent on skimming as much as they can - because they don't know any other way to act. The system has been left in tatters. Every time it tries to self-regulate e.g failing banks (RBS, Citigroup etc) , failing business models (US solar energy, General Motors), failing accounting standards (IFRS banking book rule changes in 2009) the bankers use their politican friends to re-write the rule book and bail everyone out.

Life just doesn't work this way. We are just prolonging the inevitable reset of the system. Math is not influenced by cunning political debate or bonus increases - society in the West has become too unproductive to provide anything of value to the rest of the world. FACT. Instead of spending time educating our workforce and actually teaching them to enjoy learning and creating "new" great things - we put them into Finance to scam the system a little more. We need to make R&D not only acceptable but cherished. Researchers should come on TV and show children cool things. They should tour factories and laboratories to see and hear scientists talk about the cool science that people are looking into. Forget about Finance - the journey of designing and creating will be what they live for. Money after all, never used to buy you happiness. I know its hard to believe but the get rich quick schemes only really benefit those selling them. Even bankers realise their bonuses are peanuts compared to what those at the top of society receive.

You need to follow your passion to be happy.

Why is the economy so bad 2012? - simple

Here are the simple facts:

1.Most people who have jobs in the West are not creating value that is required by the rest of the world

2. More and more people just don't have any jobs because their education level is not high enough (a combination of poor degree choices and lack of unskilled jobs).

3. We, the western nations, have spent so much on non profitable endeavours (mis-allocated capital) that we can never hope to pay back the debt we have collected.

4. The East will never be able to buy stuff at the rate the West did from 1999-2007 (stimulate demand). It is ingrained in Chinese/Japanese culture to save.

5. The Euro will collapse in its present form due to excessive debts and an entitlement welfare state that no longer provides a cushion in hard times but an alternative to actually working for the economic benefit of the nation!

6. There are less people (as a percentage %) in work today than ever before since the 1920s.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the Kelptocracy that has been run as a pretend "Democracy" for the last 25 years is collapsing under the strain of its own lies.

We are in the end game of this political and monetary system. It cannot go on like this - the masses need to break free and educate themselves without the supervision of the "chosen few" elites in government

If you are reading this as a UK citizen here are the harsh realities you will face:

1. Working much harder for less
2. No state benefits or pensions unless you are actually fully disabled
3. A movement down in your quality of life to something approaching 1970s levels - e.g many grown up children living in a small house with fewer people owning their own properties and a lack of credit to purchase anything in advance e.g furniture, clothes, appliance repair
4. Watch the lives of "celebrities", politicians  general capitalists diverge from your own to a point which will become un-recognisable. You will be ruled by a class which does not face the same hardships you do and that will really be the final nail in the coffin as widespread looting and rioting will begin. 

How to fix these issues:

1. There is no quick fix. There are some options which we as a society need to decide upon

a. Have a war which brings increased production and reduces consumption
b. Generate exports & jobs through innovation and real engineering to fulfil this demand in the economy
c. Ensure our children are given the skills to innovate, risk and learn from failure without destroying their hopes of having a stable family life
d. Cut the welfare state and non-means tested pensioner benefits

Should I keep my money in Santander UK?

Should I keep my money in Santander UK?
Is my money safe in Santander?
What will happen to Santander?
Should I move my money from Santander?

These are all ligitimate questions. Many people are asking if their money is safe in Santander UK. Of course Santander tell you all about their subsidiary account structure and lack of European exposure. The reality is slightly different.

Once a market participant loses confidence in the market place counter-parties will not deal with you.Full Stop. Think about your regular dealings. If you dealt with a tradesman who has a bad reputation in the market are you more likely to commit to a transaction? No, you'll wait until he proves himself.

If the Spanish Santander fails most banks will begin to examine their position against all Santander subsidiaries and any monies owing will be clawed back from anywhere they can get their hands on it. They will not honour any payments to/from Santander regardless of where in the world they are made. How do I know? The same thing happened with Lehman Brothers. Remember how Lehman said it wouldn't go bust even one week before it actually did? As soon as it did go bust, banks evaluated their global risk against Lehman and even liquidated client accounts they held on behalf of the failed bank to claw back anything that was owed. Why should it be any different? If you are owed money and you have the chance to take it you will - you can be asked questions later, but its in your possession. Yours to lose. In my opinion there are too many Spanish property losses and it's only a matter of time before Spanish banks are nationalised or allowed to fail.

Of course retail deposits are covered by the FSCS guarantee of £85,000 but how long will it take to get back? Have you ever known a government organisation to react quickly especially in a crisis? You could lose you're money for 6-9 months. What about the interest? Whilst a larger Eurozone crisis rages on in the background do we really trust the government to think of the Santander deposit holders when banks across the world will be struggling? And do we remember MF Global where they "discovered" that the bank had used client money as collateral for risky derivative bets? Or the recent JP Morgan "hedging" loss of $2bn where they used Chase Manhattan retail deposits to hedge the risk in the investment bank?

If it were my money I would be moving it to a bank with more of a global presence - HSBC or Standard Chartered. Or better yet a building society or credit union that does not get involved in high risk derivative bets like Nationwide or Yorkshire Building Society.

It is slowly dawning on the UK population that there are real structural problems within the Western economies. Printing money because no one wants our debt. Stock markets rising and falling 1% on a daily basis. Nothing getting better years after the supposed short lived great moderation. They are slowly beginning to realise that debt takes a long time to wipe out. This will last for a decade or longer as long as our politicians protect banks over their own populations. If we had let them fail but continue operating as deposit taking institutions we would have purged the system of crazy underwriting and terribly bad loans that should never have been extended. Instead we continue the socialist capitalism where everything banks do must be protected! But the ultimate question is what if your government goes bankrupt protecting the banks? What then?

Good luck Santander deposit holders!

Innovation: Simple diagram - How to execute an idea

The execution of an idea is the most difficult thing to master. It takes many soft and hard skills to take something from your head to a drawing board, and finally into real life production. Just having a vision is important, but its not enough. In the western world we have been given to tools to create just about anything we want with the right amount of time and dedication we should be able to accomplish amazing tasks.

Simplistically, you need to have the conviction to tackle any problems put in your way; multi-task and cajoule and use any means necessary to deliver your objective.

Firstly, take a blank sheet of paper and write down the 10 or so high level tasks you believe you would need to accomplish to complete your idea.

Break each task down into a series of 20 steps marking down what you need to do in order to complete your high level task. Then start executing the simple ones in parallel and begin to recruit people to your cause for the tasks you don't have the skills to accomplish. Set small deadlines for each mini task and keep the list handy so you can move from one task to another easily when you hit a bit of a brick wall.

Find the experts who can help you on sites like www.rentacoder.com or find people to help build a prototype of your idea. Its all possible don't give up just put your head down and go for it!

The question of funding this grandiose plan comes firmly into view when you realise that prototypes and services cost money. If you're in a full time job that pays reasonably well then you can assign some of your savings into fulfilling your ideas. Count it as a hobby. If you need a lot of capital, you need to create a proof of concept and a business plan and take these to private financiers or your bank. In the current market although banks aren't lending, there are a host of private equity firms looking to invest in a good idea. They expect to lose 60-70% of their investment money because they invest in many different ideas. They're playing the numbers game, and hoping that one of the ideas pays off providing a return that more than covers their losses on initial investments. Finding and meeting these companies is a challenge but they do exist - especially in California.

Delete mass or multiple sms on iphone ios 5

Unfortunately, there isn't a way to delete all your SMS messages in one go unless you have "hacked" or "jailbroken" your iphone. (For those that have a jailbroken phone search for "Clear all SMS" in Cydia repository)

For those that have a regular iphone you have a few options. 

1. Side your finger in a backward motion on each message you want to delete. A red delete button will appear after your gesture.

2. Or hit the edit button and select the tick boxes for those messages you want to delete and hit the red delete button that appears at the bottom of the screen.

That's it I'm afraid. This is the downside of letting Apple control your experience. You have to wait until they upgrade their system rather than thousands of developers doing it for them concurrently.

Britain’s failed service economy

Have you ever looked around and wondered if your job or even your friend’s jobs add any value to UK PLC? Excluding jobs that actually provide a tangible service i,e hairdressers, newsagents etc. Lets take a look at middle class jobs. You may have a good education, a wealth of ideas and a degree in engineering/ astrophysics etc. But, more likely than not, you will be in an office somewhere typing letters or slides, discussing orders or writing powerpoint involved in “IT projects” improving existing processes. Occasionally, you will be involved in capital allocation discussions but as an employee these are rare – its not your capital!

Britain’s ever growing list of services jobs continues and you wonder if we need so many?

Gym instructors, lawyers, accountants, asset managers, retail assistants, traffic wardens, social service “consultants”. [not an exhaustive list – nor am I singling out these professions]

Are these people actually do’ers? Do we gain more benefit from these professions than say, an inventor, or a trial researcher? I mean, we do need them, but should they be so large as to eclipse our manufacturing staff? Or our teachers and research & development facilities? Do we really care more about what T-shirts people buy over developing the next fibre optic breakthrough? Do we need people to police the rules rather than simplifying them and creating the on-line technology to aggregate and improve?

Wouldn't it make sense to allow more people to create, invent and develop? Actively encourage the masses to do this rather than just “get a job”. Everyone isn't capable of this but yet the human brain is a feedback system, give it enough information and knowledge and its capabilities seem limitless. How do we manage our people to deliver this value to society? Do all people even want to create marginal social benefit? Or are they happy with a roof over their head, a well fed family and a nice television program for entertainment?

We sell each other groceries, houses, effort, time and even money (with interest), yet at the basis of all of this are just a few simple resources. Time, natural resource and invention. We need to focus on these and never allow ancillary services to overtake them. For instance, management consultants provide different ways of viewing the same problem, but how often do they genuinely create something new? How often are they simply performing the functions which management should be doing themselves, namely, aggregating business information and analysing this to develop new strategies for shareholder value? Why have they abdicated fiduciary responsibility for their business? You could argue that these ideas and strategies are created by competition driven consultants which should create more ideas, but is this actually happening?

The world is full of potential how we tap into that depends on the system human beings use. Capitalism on the face of it seems like a good way to allocate resources in a “perfect world”, but what economics doesn’t seem to discuss is that human beings are very adept at breaking any system. We find loopholes, develop strategies to cope and manage situations to our advantage – we are – ingenious! To fight this, we need constant change to stop the status quo gaining a foothold and forcing a change in mentality. We need this because inherently we all wish to settle in equilibrium but this creates fulfilment which, if it lasts too long, destroys humanity’s hunger and ingenuity. We are like the oil that settles at the bottom of the lava lamp. Without energy we stagnate but with enough momentum we use the energy to create a beneficial cycle that is virtuous.

Britain will continue to have the same divide which exists in every country. Those that want to achieve something and those that want to just use up the time given to them until they die. I for one certainly want to create more people in the former category through better education and a clear path from ideas, prototyping and market execution. Socialism always seems doomed to failure because of human greed at the top of any pyramid and a reflectance to reward human innovation. How do we get the middle class to innovate? As Steve jobs said - he was middle class so he never would have starved if he started a business and failed. He also wouldn't have had a house, family or a decent job if he'd failed - that is the dread that most people cannot contain when thinking of starting a business.

What will get our economy going again? Using time, natural resource and innovation. Namely material sciences, oil, gas and renewables, genetic, medical and software computer innovation. These are the things that other countries will really pay us for in the long run. Not financial services.  Elements of both socialism and capitalism is probably what we need to create a well balanced economy but then - who would lead? How would the political class not be corrupted by vested interests? I don't have an answer to that.

The number one principle is "Don`t believe anything; think for yourself." - Ray Dalio [Bridgewater Capital]

The talking heads and commentators around the world want to be paid to tell us what they think. But what if its all talking just for talking's sake? What if the information is just data? Simply telling us data points without the "so what" or the "what if"? Is this why no one ever checks the predictions these people make? Will any current affairs programme spend January 2012 going through the predictions they made in January 2011 to check if they were right? No they won't. Why? Because it is not in their interests. They are simply providing a repeatable gimmick, a promise of correct future predictions with no accountability or rigourous analysis. No different to a common con man.

We have created a society where we value the attention of crowds. We simply take their economic value and pass it on to a smaller group of wealthy individuals/corporates. The concept of "society" for the middle classes is being eroded and no longer exists except for the wealthy high society. We raise money for charity only to give most of it to the administrators and corporates who provide the services to the poor at prohibitively expensive rates thus ensuring people in the middle class have jobs; whilst the wealthy have assuaged their guilt and the poor will continue to remain on hand outs forever.

Would it not be better to enable the masses to apply their talents for economic benefit. Surely it is a numbers game, ensure enough of them develop a mindset to solve problems and then adapt people who learn to apply their talent to commercial applications. Its a grand social engineering challenge that politicians have tried to create but they have never managed it. In an age of instant communication we need less and less innovators to benefit the world. It just takes one idea and prototype and the whole world can copy and benefit from it. As information is set free and the world learns through distributed networks like www.khanacedemy.org and http://www.codecademy.com/ we are beginning to create a world in which we can all learn. The cheap computers from http://www.raspberrypi.org/ will be the final puzzle to engage the poor. We just need more electricity from sustainable renewable resources and we will create a virtual society where economic value will no longer be dictated by where you were born and more about what you can do for society. Every bit of economic value can we generated from using your on-line skills to attract crowds to your virtual shops,  games, consulting or engineering. Once we get a few people doing this a flood will follow and the status quo may begin to be up for debate. If its a numbers game the children in the West certainly aren't the ones who could capitalise on this opportunity. Can we create this virtual society? I think we can, we just need to by-pass the vested interests. Remember, have an idea, write down the final goal and the steps you need to execute it - then try and do it! Failure along the way makes you better - and when you look back it will be fun!

Desktop search without administrator rights access

Ever needed a desktop search on a work or remote computer where you don't have admin rights?  I've found one -

Its called Puggle Desktop Search. Its Java based. You can download a windows/linux/mac installer or the portable version which can just be run as an executable file on windows machines without installation.

You might also want to try DocSearcher which is also Java based but a little less user friendly.