The Infrastructure and Projects Authority annual report 2020 appeared in July.

The ‘glossy brochure’ section of the report has lots of good news stories about UK Major Projects. The A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme pops up repeatedly. Possibly because it’s the only transport infrastructure project in recorded history to come in below time and budget.

Meanwhile in the defence world, the Type 31 frigate is nearly sorted – it has a design, just like Future Carrier had in 2001. The roots of Type 26 and hence Type 31 are in the mid 1990s so this is encouraging progress.

There are some less encouraging infographics when we finally get to the annex; some interesting projects are rated Amber/Red for risk.

In this context, Amber/Red means the following:

“Successful delivery of the project is in doubt, with major risks or issues apparent in a number of key areas. Urgent action is needed to address these problems and/or assess whether resolution is feasible.”

Some of the following might be important in a few months’ time. Let’s say 4th January 2021, to allow for the Bank Holiday “transition period” and the weekend:

Digital Services at the Border. DSAB “aims to deliver digital services that will provide systems capable of transforming the way that Border Force and its partners operate”;

Customs Declaration Services will provide a more flexible customs declaration system to meet future needs (allegedly)

And maybe shortly afterwards:

Immigration Platform Technologies (IPT) Delivering the technology and information systems to support the immigration service now and in the future.

One advantage of going to see niche (i.e. unpopular) films was that social distancing came free with your ticket. The last film we saw in the old days, when people just casually went to the cinema and watched a film, was Little Joe. For one (Monday) night only, with about 20 punters – positively crowded.

Of course the social distancing really was social back then, rather than safety-critical risk mitigation.

Just harmless stuff – keeping out of earshot from people having a final chat, right up to the first line of dialogue. (How do you ask someone nicely but firmly to STFU without making more noise than they are? The hard stare doesn’t work in pitch darkness.) Or trying to keep a smartphone out of your eyeline while someone says a tearful au revoir to their social media presence.

With time on your hands you can catch up with all the smart thinking books which once looked so interesting in Waterstones. But then you need to retain what you’ve read, ideally in some sort of order. The authors don’t help you with smart memorising tricks because then you might realise they’d basically written the same book six times.

One of these books said that nurturing a houseplant boosts your happy hormones and creativity or something. I’m guessing 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman but I foolishly returned it to the library, so I can’t check.

Little Joe takes this a step further. It’s about a houseplant which is deliberately bred to waft oxytocin around, so everyone feels connected and happy. Which sounds lovely, except universal happiness may not be all it’s cracked up to be… So we’re back to risk mitigation and distancing.

A key influence is Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the atmosphere is very unsettling. It’s colourful, but not in a good way – helped along by a disconcerting Japanese score. But overall, a very well made and amusing film. There’s an illuminating interview with Jessica Hausner on this episode of the Radio 4 Film Programme. Good performances from Emily Beecham, Ben Whishaw and all of the cast, really (including Little Joe).

DVD/Blu-Ray combo is available from the usual sources, or streaming on BFI Player.

Little Joe – Official Trailer

Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/littlejoefilm/ LITTLE JOE follows Alice (Emily Beecham), a single mother and dedicated senior plant breeder at a…

One does wonder – when did the team responsible stop thinking that “MENSA” was a frightfully clever and amusing name for one of these nuclear infrastructure projects? As Marvin the Paranoid Android might have said: “The first £500M over budget was the worst, and the second £500M, that was the worst too…”

An unkind reader might think that the Mensa IQ criterion had been spread across the whole project team.

In another classic, building started early on an expensive facility – before the equipment to go inside it had been fully designed. To save time, of course. Unfortunately Moore’s Law does not apply to nuclear equipment and it turned out to be too big for its new home. (Spoiler alert) This meant that rather than saving time, there was a non-trivial delay.

As usual, a clear and well written report form the NAO. Unfortunately, much of the story sounds depressingly familiar, as do the key ingredients – requirements, commercial arrangements, oversight and all that. However it seems a bit unfair to criticise failure to learn from previous UK nuclear infrastructure programmes 30+ years earlier – corporate knowledge would surely have disappeared. But there is recognition of the skills/knowledge gap, and recruitment issues – hardly a new story.

Fortunately the NAO identify some signs of improvement, so perhaps there will be a happy ending after all. Not like Dr Strangelove.

Managing infrastructure projects on nuclear-regulated sites – National Audit Office (NAO) Report

This report examines the Ministry of Defence’s management of its large and complex infrastructure projects at nuclear-regulated sites.

The fashion police really exist after all – based in Surrey.

Rather than scouring the West End for offences against arcane style guidelines, they are using the longevity of modern clothing to solve crime.

Here we can see  two members of the fashion police in action as they examine the angle of some flared trousers to date some unfortunate discovery. The original article has a caption to helpfully identify which one is the garment analyst.

‘Underwear dates well’: how fashion forensics are helping solve crimes

Police officers aren’t known for their sense of style, but now a former vintage clothing buyer is using her forensic knowledge of garments to help solve crimes. It’s time to call the fashion police…

The influence of Monty Python continues to emerge in unexpected places across British culture – this time it’s Ministry of Defence acquisition reform…

Fortunately, as Lord Levene reported, a “sea change” had taken place in the years leading up to 2015 (“A leopard really can change its spots.”) so the next review shouldn’t take too much time or effort.

Any references by Lord Levene to a Holy Grail are entirely coincidental.

Monty Python- Déjà Vu – video dailymotion

Monty Python- Déjà Vu

Some indications are emerging of what the US side wants from a UK/US trade deal, once B*****t is eventually “done”. But with fearsome negotiator Liz Truss promising to “drive a hard bargain”, US business lobbyists surely know that they need to keep British cheese off the table. Anything less would be a disgrace.

However in an unwelcome development, British cheese exports are already being “bludgeoned” as part of the ongoing EU/US trade war. This sounds potentially messy, especially for something like Stilton. However the firm rind of a mature Cheddar should give it more ballistic tolerance, as we can see in this front line photo of some defence works. Encouraging to see that Wired UK seems to have a broader definition of ‘technology’ these days.

And on another front, a potentially existential threat is emerging from award-winning US artisan cheese. As with many modern conflicts, the position is complex, with a number of factions and shifting loyalties. Even within the USA, this has escalated as far as a war on artisan cheese led by the FDA.

Some of the allegedly cheese-based aerosols etc described in the Wired article sound very dubious from a CBW perspective, so this could end up at The Hague rather than the WTO.

This Is What US Business Wants From A US-UK Trade Deal

A post-Brexit deal should make it easier to build supermarkets, avoid tax and sue the UK, US business lobbyists say.

This year we’re hearing about some genuinely scary stuff at Halloween, even though no-deal has been postponed for a few months at least, so we probably won’t have more than the usual seasonal shortage of medical supplies.

The scariest thing, apparently, is the volume of plastic waste generated by leftover plastic witches hats or whatever.

This seems like a second order issue – surely the basic problem is the shops being filled up about six months in advance with random seasonal crap, which many of us probably don’t need and maybe don’t even want. Even worse, people are then persuaded to actually buy it, which encourages the whole thing to keep going in a vicious circle of overconsumption.

Fortunately this scenario not scary any more, because we’ve had many decades to adapt to it – otherwise we might all be too anxious to buy anything and the whole system could collapse.

And you better watch out… because even as this lot is being frantically discounted to within an inch of its life, another avalanche of superfluous delights is coming to town. If there is no snow left anywhere by the time you read this, there should be some pictures of it on the internet, so you can see what an avalanche was..

Anyway, the second scariest thing is the amount of leftover pumpkin which gets thrown away after people have inexpertly carved some sort of ugly face into the rind. This is less scary because the leftover pumpkin can be eaten, e.g as a key ingredient of the imaginatively named pumpkin pie. Whereas eating enough leftover plastic to make an impact on the problem might not be such a good idea. Microplastic residue in the food chain may not have been proven 100% to be harmful but it doesn’t sound very wholesome, even from a non-expert perspective – this is probably not the extra fibre we need in our diet.

And a quick glance at the news suggests that there may be such a thing as the boogeyman, no matter what Jamie Lee Curtis may have told us in 1978.

Scariest thing about Halloween is plastic waste, say charities

Equivalent of 83m plastic bottles in often throwaway outfits sold by leading retailers