Ideas

An Ideas Factory?

Looking back on my working life I find that there is a common thread. I worked in various roles in IT and businesses but the common thread seems to be that I was above all paid to think and to think differently (outside the box). That holds true from my days in teaching, through the early fundamentals of computing to drawing up business plans. Thinking originally, differently is what has done it for me, often borrowing ideas from others that related to other contexts. So here are some more thoughts along those lines, of whatever import.

My balcony is an obvious place to have an aperitif or late night drink for much of the year. Up one side I have a honeysuckle growing and over the balcony itself is a jasmine, providing beautiful scent through the spring and summer. Anybody else might have planted the same but the way I came to this is as follows. An American architect, Christopher Alexander, had a significant influence on software development through his ideas on how to use space and to define and connect spaces and I was familiar with his ideas. His prime criterion for how to design within a defined space (my balcony in this instance) is a dependence on how that space is going to be used. I have read that he was given the task of designing a university campus and plotted out the main buildings, halls of residence, lecture theatres, laboratories, etc, but left the canvas otherwise blank (grass actually, between the buildings) and said he would complete that 7-8 months later. When he returned, students had defined paths between the buildings by tramping grass down and also defined areas where they congregated in leaisure hours. He simply endorsed the status quo, creating concrete paths where the students had shown where they were needed and leaving grass areas with tables and benches where students congregated. This was not artistic design but design according to use. Others may well have decided on my balcony plants by another route but this is how I decided on mine.

Friend Steve and I often have discussions of a semi-political nature and recently he said that governments should be care ful not to tax the rich too luch because then they might decide to migrate and they paid the most tax. I said no they didn't and Steve, being a friend, rather than tell me to piss off said something like «well I must have been misinformed«. It was a misunderstanding. Steve was talking about the tax individuals paid and I was talking about the revenue that the Exchequer receives. Leaving aside for the moment tax avoidance and how much tax rich individuals actually pay, the open question is what is the importance to the Exchequer of tax paid by the rich? We're still looking for data on that, to test my off-the-cuff contention that if all the rich buggered off it wouldn't make that much difference to the Exchequer.

I had a follow-up thought. Tax avoidance is obviously a reason many tax specialists/accountants are hired. So what if all such costs above some earnings threshold, say £100,000 for an individual and £1m for a company, were made non tax-deductible? There would obviously be a bun-fest on cost attribution but could that have a useful impact? I don't know but it's a thought. My focus on tax currently is, incidentally, because that is what I believe that Brexit is fundamentally all about; all the rest is theatre to sidetrack the plebs.

A final thought for football fans. Technically gifted players get fouled constantly. In the last season in the UK Hazard and Saha were the most fouled players in the Enhllish Premier League. Some of the fouls are no doubt unintentional but there are fairly obvious attempts to avod red and yellow cards by spreading the fouls out between defenders. Referees already keep count of the number of fouls committed by a player, issuing yellow cards to repeating defenders. So what if they also kept account of he number of fouls commited against one player, with a ruling that, for instance, the fifth foul against one individual automatically incurred a yellow card irrespective of the player who committed that foul? It might be unfair to the player committing the foul but would protect technically gifted players (whom everybody wants to see display their skills) and would send a message that such players can't be taken out of a game by fouling them.

Ah well, just thoughts.