Information poverty - why you need to understand what it means and how it will change your life

I saw a really interesting fact yesterday. Dd you know that Advanced AI models that "think" and show their work step-by-step (like DeepSeek R1) can consume anywhere from 1 watt/hour to 10 watt/ hours or more per interaction. A quick AI search revealed that the UK may generate up to 250,000,000 queries a day. This is expected to grow by at least 25% through till 2033. 

Furthermore, as queries get more complex, this will increase. Based on UK energy prices, every four complex AI query you do costs 1p worth of energy. Data centres are going up all over the world and these are power hungry. City AM produced a report stating that data centres will consume one tenth of all the worlds energy by 2050. Given that the UK already has a situation where we are vulnerable to energy insecurity, this situation will completely derail the UK economy.  In the UK, large-scale power stations take anywhere from 5 to 20+ years to progress from initial planning to generation, depending heavily on the technology. While actual construction takes 2 to 10 years, the headline timeline is severely stretched by planning consultations, grid connection queues, and regulatory approvals. If the UK is to cope with the increase in power requirements for the AI economy, then we need to start planning now. 2050 may sound like a long time in the future, but if we decide we need large scale nuclear plants, then if we start planning now, they will just be coming on line in 2045.

Most of us use AI on a daily basis and don't evern realise, half of the time. When you get a Google summary, that is AI. If you use Spotify, they use AI to try and give you songs you like. Over the next few years, more and more gadgets will come into our homes, that are powered by AI. Our cars will use AI, navigation systems already do, to help you avoid traffic.

At present, most people in the UK don't pay directly to use AI tools at home. It is a different story at work. I was having a beer on Tuesday with a mate who works for the authority that regulates inter bank payments, and he was telling me that he is part of a large project using AI to improve their processes. Huge sums are being invested. The reason? So that they can cut staff. Commercial companies that sell AI related products and services are booming. It is not clear to me that all of these are delivering. From what I heard, the jury is out on that. AI will definitely be a major tool in years to come, but I suspect that the executives who are spending the money on the products do not understand the technology and are blinded by salesmen, who probably don't know either.  Companies do not want to get left behind, so they are investing huge sums, I suspect that much of this will not deliver the advantages that the execs anticipated. The challenge is to understand areas where there will be real, tangible gains delivered by the investment. It is clear though that AI is going nowhere and at the moment, it is the area to be in. 

The issue for younger people entering the workplace is that AI may well make many jobs and careers that were previously lucrative and secure redundant. Perhaps more difficult, will be that it will be almost impossible for young, well educated people to plan a career. My advice would be to be prepared to be adaptable and to try and stay ahead of the curve when it comes to seeing where this technology is taking us. 

What concerns me more though, is that many will be left behind. The tech moguls who are investing trillions in these platforms are  not doing it for the universal good of humanity. They are doing it to make money. In the new world, information will be the new currency. As every query costs a tangible amount of money to satisfy, in terms of energy and infrastructure, any rational businessman would seek to recover that money. It is well known that drug dealers build customer bases by being nice and giving away a few freebies. Once people decide they enjoy the hit, then they pay. I can see no way that companies like Google will continue to give away complex queries for free.  What we will get is a two tier system, where those that pay get a Rolls Royce service and those that can't or won't will get a very basic IT environment that is pretty shoddy. In short, they will be victims of Information poverty. What is that, you may ask?

Information poverty is the inability to effectively access, interpret, or apply essential information. It goes beyond just lacking an internet connection; it encompasses a lack of the skills, resources, or systemic support needed to participate fully in society and utilize information for health, wealth, or well-being.The concept is typically driven by three main pillars:Infrastructure & Access: The physical or economic barriers to getting information, such as lacking digital devices, libraries, or robust broadband.Literacy & Skills: Not having the education, language skills, or digital literacy required to comprehend, evaluate, and act on the information.Cultural & Psychological Barriers: Environments where social norms discourage asking for help, or where people become suspicious of outside information, leading to isolation or self-protective secrecy.

Now many people my age, who are well off may say "so what?". Well for us, maybe it doesn't matter. But what about those that have children and simply can't afford to pay for the subscriptions that their children need to acquire the basic tools to thrive in the modern world? It has long been recognised that when people get left behind, we get social unrest and problems in society. 

We recently had elections in the UK. It rather looks like we will have a new Prime Minister soon. We heard a lot about the problems facing the UK but no one mentioned Information poverty or the steps needed to prevent it. If and when the UK starts running short of power to satisfy AI queries, AI will not go away. It will become expensive. This will increase inequality and social unrest in the UK. You may not think this will affect you. But when people are marginalised we become less safe. When you see anti social behaviour and crime, this is driven by inequality in the UK.Back in 1967, Country Joe McDonald wrote a very ironic and bitter song called Harlem, highlighting the social inequality in New York City and the poverty and crime in Harlem.  It wouldn't get played on the radio today because the language used would be totally unacceptable. but it was making a very strong point. You may wish to consider the last two lines "But if you can't go to Harlem, that's New York City, Maybe you'll be lucky and Harlem will come to you"

Every year I set myself a challenge. My challenge this year was to embrace AI and understand its capabilities. As a musician, I used an AI video generation tool to rework one of my bands videos. I've also been using AI mastering tools for the bands new album. The bottom line is that I couldn't do these things without AI. I have to pay for these services. I am a have. Have a look at this, if a fool like me with no experience of animation can do this (it cost about £200) then think what AI can do for people who actually have a clue.

What is going on? I feel like I'm living someone else's life?

 There are only really two places I ever think deeply about life. The reason? Everywhere else I have constant distractions. One is at mass on a Sunday morning and the other is in the jacuzzi at the Virgin health club in Mill Hill East, on the rare occasion when there is no one else in there. Today, I had a good ten minutes without interruption, I had a good chance to reflect on things, after a strenuous workout. My mind tends to wander in the strangest tangents at such times. As I was enjoying the peace and quiet, half in a slumber,  a really disturbing notion came into my head. I had the realisation that I no longer feel like I am me anymore. I feel a bit like I am somebody else, inhabiting my mind. This was quite a disturbing thought. It jarred me from my peaceful reflection. I felt a need to mentally touch base with reality. I started doing a stocktake of my memories. Early ones as a child, recent ones. I realised that I was still me. But I still felt odd and out of place. It was rather puzzling. 

My mind went into overload, why did I feel so detached. I realised that it wasn't me. It was everything else. I am not quite sure when it first started, but I have noticed that in recent weeks, months and years, people who I thought I knew really well suddenly start expressing the strangest views. When a stranger comes up and starts saying things, I have no context to judge them against. When you've got friends you grew up with and they start expressing views that seem to be the polar opposite of what you thought they believed, it is very difficult. If it was just one or two people and they were dropping acid, I would not really have a problem. When they haven't and it is dozens of people I've known for years, it is hard. Now I have always believed that people are entitled to think and believe what they like. But when you have a firm idea of what you believe people's characters are like, built up over decades, and lubricated with a lot of alcohol on the way, it is different. Were they always like this and did I just not notice?

It is not just people who are acting strangely. When you watch TV, listen to the radio, go to the cinema, we have a portal into a world that is slightly unreal. Before I went to jacuzzi, I did a 20K cycle. The bikes at Virgin allow you to watch TV. Usually I watch Tipping Point. It is the only quiz show I really enjoy, as I like those slot machines you find on piers, and it gives me a warm buzz. Sadly today, ITV had deal or no deal, which is as dull as dishwater. I flicked through the channels. BBC News, Sky News, GB News. I managed about two minutes of each. BBC News? Worthy and as dull as dishwater. Experts giving opinions that were so bland as to be meaningless. Both the right and left criticise the BBC as being biased towards the other. In truth, to me they simply employ bland people who try and sit on the fence and not get too many splinters up their bum. Sky News? The experts all seem as if they have simply spent five minutes googling the subject before they came on and were trying to have a range of mildly controversial to at least gain a modicum of reaction. They all seem to me as if they've never actually walked down the Old Kent Road, let alone go to any of the places they are talking about. GB News? I rarely watch it and now I know why. It seems to employ a bunch of raving looneys to spout the controversial views to get the blood flowing of the normal working man. 

The hot topic was the mistaken release from prison of an illegal immigrant who had committed sex offences. Now I know a little of how prisons run. A friend of mine was Duncan McLoughlan, who was the governor of the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland during the troubles. Over a decade ago, he told me that prisons were at breaking point, experienced staff were leaving and not being replaced, the fabric of the buildings was falling apart and the systems being used were not up to scratch. I asked what would happen. His answer was chilling. As I recall he said "If prison officers are not well paid, well looked after and supported by management, they are susceptible to criminal gangs. If prisoners do not have a basic quality of life, they get unruly and hard to manage and if you do not have experienced officers, who you can trust, using fit for purpose systems, mistakes are made, people are incorrectly released, housed in the wrong wings, etc. When all of these things happen, the prison service is untenable".

The service was being underfunded then and it is far worse now. When you have ignorant pundits calling for the Home Secretary to resign (who has been in place for all of five minutes), because "it is on their watch", you are spectacularly missing the point. Training officers, sorting out dilapidated buildings, putting in systems that are fit for a digital world with drones takes time, costs money and us, the taxpayer has to pay for it. If the Home Secretary gets sacked every time a prisoner is incorrectly released, then you'd have a new one every week and they'd never learn. But not a single pundit said this. As I say, I am not an expert, but I have had access to someone who was, so I have a clear idea of the problems. It seems to me that the BBC don't want to say it because they don't want to express an opinion, Sky News don't want to say it because their guests were too thick to google "root causes of UK prison crisis". Here is an extract of what Google's AI search said

• Underfunding and understaffing: Deep funding cuts in the early 2010s have not been fully reversed, and the prison system has struggled with staff reductions, making it difficult to manage the population effectively.
• Lack of adequate capacity: The number of prison places has not kept pace with the rising demand. A promised building program has also faced delays, leaving the system stretched thin.
• Ineffective alternatives to prison: There has been a failure to sufficiently invest in alternatives to prison and preventive services, meaning more people end up in custody when they may not need to be.
• Systemic issues within the criminal justice system: The combination of court backlogs and a more risk-averse probation service, partly due to high-profile failures, has created pressure at multiple points in the system. 

As you can imagine, none of that was what the bonkers looneys on GB News were interested in. 

Now if it was just one story on the news which was like this, I'd scarcely notice, but it seems to be every story. The news should be the reporting of facts, by reporters on the ground. It has become a procession of talking heads, who seem to me to be completely ignorant, in a studio. It's true of all of the news channels. Each has its own sort of pundits, but none are much good. I have, very occasionally, been asked to be a pundit on the news. Mostly around libraries and music industry issues. What they want is a pithy quote of less than ten seconds. It is impossible to say anything of value in such a short time. 

As I lay and soaked, I realised that what was making me feel so disconnected was the fact that I was born and raised in a different world. One where facts, rather than opinions was the main content of TV news. Reporters went to the scene of newsworthy items and dug up stories. I suspect most news teams now simply trawl Twitter for good clips, that fit their agenda. Elon Musk claims Twitter has democratised information. The problem is that if every news story has a million tweets, where 99% of the people do not know the facts and are simply banging keyboards in their bedrooms, how can anything be deemed worth reading? It isn't Musks fault that finding the truth on Twitter is like spotting your relative in the crowd at Old  Trafford, when you watch Match of The Day. 

I realised that it wasn't so much I feel I am inhabiting someone else's body, and I've stolen their memories. I realised that I am now in a world that is completely alien. There is little on TV that interests me, except football. Actually finding anything interesting on social media becomes harder every day. I am lucky, I am into music and I play in band. Watching live music gives me some respite from a world which is completely dysfunctional. I almost feel like when they switched on the Hadron collider, they warped us into a parallel world, where things superficially look the same, but are in truth completely different and alien. It's just that they didn't, it happened on this world and none of us noticed. If you want a dose of reality, why not come to the Dublin Castle on Saturday and experience something real and raw for a change. The False Dots may not cure the world, but we may take your mind off the fact it's become a lunatic asylum for an hour or two!

Your religion and nationality do not make you smarter, more entitled, chosen or better than any one else

See the light

I am British and a Roman Catholic. I can think of nothing else I'd rather be, either as a nationality or for a faith. If push came to shove, I'd like to think I'd put my life on the line for either, although who knows until you are confronted by such a choice, what decisions you would really make.  Both work for me rather well. Both are irrelevant to what I have to say next, but I wanted to put that there, so you can read what I have to say, being informed of where I stand. 

Being born in a Western, Liberal Democracy is the nearest thing you can get to being born with a winning lottery ticket in life. For me, it means that I got a free education, a nutritious school dinner when I was hungry, free milk at school, a life untouched by war and civil insurrection, free medical care, access to the library, access to pubs, the ability to buy the records that I wanted to buy and the books I wanted to read. Such things, which us people born in Edgware General hospital in 1962 took for granted, are for some people only things to dream of. In fact, even in this country, people born a few years before me or after me will not have access to all of them. I took it all for granted and perhaps, you could say, my generation have squandered it and pulled up the drawbridge behind us. Did it make me smarter? I wish I could say it did, but I think, if anything, it made me a bit lazier than my father's generation. When he was born in 1917, most of those things were not available. His generation fought a war, so that we could have a better life. We stand on the shoulders of those giants. I see so many pages on the web misappropriating the imagery of WWII, claiming that our mollycoddled generation are in some way the same. We are not. It is for each generation to build on the achievements of our forefathers, and I can see very few nations that my generation can claim to have done that in. When we say we have pride in our country, we rarely are referring to our country now. Most people who claim to be "proud patriots" have little pride in our current generation. Not so long ago, the country was ablaze with anti immigrant riots. To my mind, terrorising women and children in hotels is despicable, when I see it compared to my fathers generation facing down Panzer tanks and Fokker Wulf fighters, I feel sick. As far as a I am concerned, you can only consider yourself a patriot if you left the country a better place than you born into. If you have made a difference somewhere, then sure, call yourself a patriot. If you just like the idea of being a British patriot is because your Dads Uncle Tony flew a Boulton Paul Defiant during the Blitz, you are just sad and deluded. JFK once said "Ask what I can do for my country, not what my country can do for me". That was his definition of being a patriot. We've lost our free milk and our free education, they want to take away our free NHS, shut our libraries and tell us what is OK to read and listen to. If you really are a Patriot, those are the things you should care about. 

When you kids say "What did you do when they wanted to charge us for education, health, when they shut our libraries and restricted our reading, listening and viewing choices" what will be your answer? If it is "nothing", you can post all the Union Jack emoji's that you like, but you are not a patriot and you have let your country down.

And then we come to religion. Belonging to a religious group can be a life enhancing experience. Many people who have faith give huge amounts of time, money and energy in the cause of making the world a better place. Many lay down their lives for the cause of peace and justice. Some of the best people I've ever met, have made massive contributions to the wellbeing of their fellow man and this was inspired by faith. But it was not 'being religious' that made them good people. It was the fact that they put something back into society. Sadly, for too many in our society, being religious is simply an excuse to pretend they are chosen, they are better or they have wisdom denied to the rest of us. Such people give religion a bad name. Their entitled attitudes and their sense of being the part of a chosen minority, for me, is sickening. I am not directing this at any one faith. All major religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc have zealots who think visibly identifying themselves and shouting loudly about their sense of entitlement is enough. They don't have compassion or feeling for their fellow man, the lesser, non chosen ones. I am not a theologian, but I do believe that God will take a very dim view of those that exploit religion for political ends, to the detriment of fellow human beings. I am perfectly happy for people to chose their attire according to their beliefs, their tribe or their musical tastes. I am comfortable with people making diet choices based on medieval texts and holy books. If people want to believe in what I consider to be completely bonkers nonsense, that is fine. Where it is not fine is when such people start feeling and acting as if they are superior to the rest of us. They are not. If God has chosen you and you have faith, all you have been chosen for is to join a particular club with like minded people. If you believe you are enlightened, it is your job to persuade the rest of us that your chosen path is right and that your lifestyle is exemplary do it by making choices that all decent human beings will applaud, not just like minded zealots in your little club. If I look at you and see someone who has something good to bring to Planet Earth, you have my respect. If your religion is simply a tool to wield power and influence that your actions do not deserve, then you are the opposite of what you purport to be. There is a saying that God moves in mysterious ways. As far as I am concerned though, the devil does not. The devil seeks to corrupt by tempting us with power and influence. Perhaps his biggest and best trick is to persuade those who claim to be ultra religious to act like complete dickheads to the rest of us (treat that as a metaphor if you are an atheist). 

In short your religion and nationality do not make you smarter, more entitled, chosen or better than any one else. It is your actions and efforts for your fellow man that you should be judged by. I happen to believe that there are too many small minded people, living in echo chambers, populated by other small minded people, reinforcing each other in the stupidity, shouting down the voices of reason. I happen to believe that most are not evil or bad. They have just insulated themselves from information and data that contradicts their viewpoint. It took me a long time to realise that the reason many people hold what I believe to be stupid and idiotic views is not that they are stupid and idiotic. It's just that the only information and data they are exposed to is data that supports their stupidity. Let me explain. For millennia, even the wisest and best educated scientists and astronomers believed the earth to be flat and the centre of the universe. There was no credible data to contradict this, so it was a perfectly reasonable and sensible view. When the likes of Copernicus proposed otherwise, wise people listened to his argument but religious authorities called on him to recant. That is the difference between closed and open minds and it tells you everything you need to know. 

My question to you is whether you are on the side of Copernicus and reason or are you on the side of the zealots of the day who persecuted him. I started this by saying I am a Roman Catholic and proud of it. I am not proud of the Catholic zealots in my religion who persecuted Copernicus and whatever religion you belong to, you should not be proud of such zealots in your faith who similarly bring it into disrepute. 

Barnet Council - The land where everything is opaque

 I have just reviewed the minutes of the Barnet Council Cabinet meeting on the 17th June.

I asked the following question

In the paperwork, the following comments appears "The new Culture Strategy was launched as part of the ‘Art in Barnet’ campaign and a prestigious public art trail ‘Barnet Legends’ was commissioned with specialist public art agency Create London. The trail unveiled 20 commemorative artworks recognising historical figures who made an impact on the borough. 140 45 events were hosted across our libraries team as part of the UKSPF funded Creative Communities Programme. Activities included intergenerational events for ‘Grandparents Week’, green activities, a creative writing course, dance, crafts and an improvisation show for children." As the owner of Mill Hill Music Complex, London’s oldest independent music studios, which has hosted artists such as Amy Winehouse, Kate Nash, Flo and Raye, seeing all win prestigious Brit Awards, can I ask why local arts providers have not been contacted with regards to this initiative. Surely the musical history of Barnet should be properly celebrated and the contributions of these amazing artists, with strong Barnet links should have been recognised. I am also interested as to whether local artists were engaged to produce the art works. 

Dr Aashish Bansal also asked a public question. I received the following response from Barnet Council.

Further to the email below, you are welcome to attend the Cabinet meeting this evening. At the meeting, the Chair will provide a response in relation to your question. Following which, you may if you wish ask a supplementary question in respect of the response given. Further details about the meeting can be found here: https://barnet.moderngov.co.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=1010&MId=11718&Ver=4

I hadn't realised but this was the first time I have asked a question of the Labour administration, elected in 2022 and the first question to Cabinet since Richard Cornelius, former Tory Leader abolished the Cabinet system over a decade ago, in an attempt to improve transparency at Barnet Council. The Tories, for all their faults, would always provide a written answer, and you could decide whether to ask a follow up question. You also had time to compose it. I was shocked to learn that if I wanted to know the answer, I had to turn up in person. I also had no time to compose a thought out response. 

When I approached the chair, I specifically requested that responses from the committee be properly minuted and recorded. I was under the impression that this was agreed. However, when I reviewed the link above, there was no mention of what the member (Councillor Anne Clarke) who responded said. 

I have long been critical of the Cabinet system in local government. It means that decisions are made behind closed doors, without proper scrutiny from councillors. It makes councillors who are not in the cabinet largely redundant (not that their allowances reflect this). When Labour were elected, I suspected that they would have a few faults and make a few mistakes, but I did not anticipate that the would make the previous Tory regime look like a model of transparency and accountability.

It is clear to me that the reason that we no longer get proper responses and what we do get are not properly minuted is because the Barnet Labour Party have no interest in public accountability. To me it reeks of contempt for the public. I am most disappointed that my fellow Barnet Bloggers have seemingly lost interest in holding the council to account. All I can say is that I will continue to do the job that has fallen on my shoulders. If we want good governance in Barnet, we need citizens who are engaged in the process. The reason Councillors of both Tory and Labour persuasions don't want engagement is because it is nice and comfy for them if we take no interest. Ten years ago, the Barnet bloggers were setting the pace in the UK in terms of public accountability. The requirement for this is stronger than ever, but no one seems interested (apart from me) in doing it. If I wasn't so bloody minded I'd give up, but sadly for our councillors, in Barnet, the land where everything is opaque, I will make the case for transparency until they listen or I can't anymore. Barnet residents deserve better, but they won't get it unless they get off their arses and put some work in. 

Barnet Labour doesn't know what art is!

 Barnet Labour recently launched its "There's Art in Barnet Campaign" (with your money). When I saw their offering, I nearly cried. How on earth could they get it so wrong? As someone who has spent their life trying to create a music scene in the London Borough of Barnet, this is a really painful debacle for me to watch unfold. When Labour were elected, their Leader Barry Rawlings asked me to help him draw up a Strategy. I did one for free. I took two weeks out of work and sent a draft to officers and councillors. I had not one comment back and eventually they all admitted that they hadn't bothered to read it. I have discussed this on the blog before. I also predicted what they would do. I said they'd bring in outside consultants, spending huge fees, to produce something that was completely useless and irrelevant. There is nothing I'd have preferred than to be proven wrong. But sadly, even the low expectations I had have not been met. 

So lets start with their video. I suggest you watch it, so you can get a flavour of what I'm talking about

If you make a video that asks the Question "Did you know there's Art in Barnet?", you'd think that there would be an answer to the question, with some examples. What do they give us? A bloke walking around the RAF Museum, which is a culturally important site, but its primary role is not as an arts venue. Now I am into music, I would have thought that the Council would use this opportunity (created with your cash), to look at genuine arts venues and examples of great art. 

As a musician, here's a list of venues I've personally played at in the Borough in the last three years.

2022

11th June, Mill Hill Music Festival, The Adam and Eve, Mill Hill

19th August, The Bohemia, Finchley

2023
17th February, The Edgware Services Club, Burnt Oak 
6th May, The Mill Hill Services Club
28th The Bull Theatre Centre, Barnet 

2024  
13th April, The Bull Theatre, Barnet

17th May, Mill Hill Music Complex Studios
29th June East Barnet Festival 
4th September, Mill Hill Music Complex Studios 

2025
12th April -The Builders Arms, Barnet

That's eight different venues, all of hich have regular live entertainment, including two local festivals. They are just the venues my band have played at. Theres plenty of others that I've been to, all of which I feature in my regular Friday Fun round up of local music. This week, we listed 26 gigs in the Borough. This is just a normal week in the London Borough of Barnet, but there is no mention of this in the video.

There are other forms of art apart from music. I am less well qualified to comment on these, but they are equally as important. We have some amazing public art in the Borough, which I was amazed to see was not featured. A great example is the Handley Page memorial Mural, that I made a video to celebrate the launch of in 2020 (just before Covid)

I also found it bizarre that there was no mention of Barnet's wonderful libraries. There are all manner of fascinating events at these. I was amazed that there was no mention of the Barnet Libraries literary festival in May.

Of course it is easy to moan and groan. I suppose you could say something is better than nothing, if we weren't paying through the nose for such sub standard rubbish, I may have kept my mouth shut. But that is not my style! So I am going to make Barnet an "Art in Barnet" video absolutely free. And if they like it they can have it. When it's done I'll give you all the opportunity to say which one you think is better. 

Updated 29/4/2025 - I had missed the fact that there is a whole swathe of "There's Art in Barnet" videos. Oddly, it seems Barnet Council thinks Tennis is Art?

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What Barnet Council needs is a bit of DOGE and Elon Musk, not baleouts from Government!

The biggest mistake that inept politicians make is that they cannot accept that people they disagree with have some good ideas. The last thing I am is a fan of Donald Trump, but I have no doubt at all that the creation of the Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) will save American taxpayers billions. I say this based on my experience of dealing with the inept bureacracy that is Barnet Council, having written this blog since 2008. It appears to me that much of what DOGE is doing is what the Barnet bloggers spent a decade urging the leaders of Barnet Council to do. Perhaps the greatest victory of the Barnet Bloggers was to force Barnet Council to hold the "Metpro Inquiry" in 2011. This exposed the total failure of Barnet Councils oversight of suppliers. The fallout lead to savings of millions of pounds and tightening of fraud controls etc (You can read about it here). At the time, the convention in the Council was that an opposition councillor chaired this committee, to ensure that a critical eye was passed over the council's business. The chair was LibDem Lord Monroe Palmer. He did a good job and gained the confidence of all. Eric Pickles, then local government secretary congratulated the Barnet bloggers for our efforts exposing waste and potential fraud. What did the Barnet Tories learn from the debacle? Well they learned that they had lost control of the process. They abolished the convention of putting an opposition councillor in charge of audit. This had the added bonus of giving another Tory a healthy fat 'special responsibility allowance'. One of the biggest critics of this change was Labour councillor Arjun Mittra. Sadly, when Labour won, his criticism of the concept of a member the administration running the audit committee disappeared and he copped a nice fat allowance himself. 

Last week, it was announced that Barnet Council were receiving a big fat £55 million baleout from central government to plug the holes in their finances. It may surprise you to learn that Barnet Unison union came up with a plan to slash costs. Here are the key cost saving measures that they have identified.

• Reduce Executive Directors by deleting the following 3 Executive Director roles: Strategy and Innovation; Resources; Assurance and Public Protection. 

• Delete the Deputy Chief Executive role 

• Create one Executive Director role: Corporate Resources. All of the services covered by the deleted Executive Director roles transfer to the newly created Corporate Services Directorate with the exception of Public Protection which should be transferred back into the Environment Directorate as it was before the TUPE transfer to Capita in 2013.

• Greenspaces should be moved from Communities, Adults & Health back into Environment.

 • The Assistant Director (AD) role for Greenspaces and Leisure should become the A.D for Libraries and Leisure.

 • The Senior Management Team (SMT) restructure should incorporate all Heads of Service and Assistant Heads of Services levels of management in order to ensure greater equity in terms of numbers of staff managed by individual managers. 

• The Senior Management Teams (SMT) of The Barnet Group (TBG) and Barnet Education and Learning Service (BELS) are to be included in this restructure to deliver savings, avoid redundancies and making cuts to services.

 • For transparency and accountability Barnet Council should instruct BELS and TBG to publish all salaries over £50K as per the Localism Act 2011 – Openness and accountability in local pay. 

• Save £7.299 million annually by insourcing services thus avoiding the increase in national insurance which has been imposed on the private sector by the Labour Government. 

 • Impose financial penalties on Capita for underperforming of the collection of Council Tax and Business rates. 

 • Conduct an urgent review of the back-office services of TBG and BELS.

 • Use economies of scale to help deal with the increased wage bill 

• Barnet Homes, part of TBG, should be brought back into the Council. 

 • The Housing Service should be merged with the Directorate of Growth to become the Housing & Growth Directorate.

This, to me, looks like some serious cost cutting that Elon Musk would be proud of! The slashing of highly expensive and completely unnesscary management roles and boards seems like a very sensible idea. It also improves transparancy, seeing where taxpayers money is being waste on fat salaries.

The best way to beat your opponents is not to ignore their good ideas. It is to nick the good ideas and make them better. Barnet lead the way in the UK for citizens holding the council to account. We have replaced an inept Tory council with an inept Labour council. You may be tempted to vote Reform. Well, personally I wouldn't bother. They have one councillor in Barnet, who defected from the Tories. Brian Coleman reported "He has an appalling reputation in Barnet . In May he stood for Group Leader and was roundly defeated by his colleagues who recognised that he is known for his lazyness" 

Sury Khatri campaigniong for the Tories

They have also acquired two former Tory Councillors as candidates, one of whom was deselected in 2018 and then endorsed both the Lib Dems and Labour in 2022! Coleman said of him "He was never capable which was why he was deselected in 2018 by Hendon Conservatives"The other was a former Barnet Tory Mayor. Coleman said of her "As for Lisa Rutter she applied to be the Conservative candidate in the Barnet Vale by election in July and was rejected (she is as thick as two short planks) and this is a fit of pique". Now I wouldn't give Brian's views too much credence normally, but these people were all mates of his, not too long ago. It is widely recognised that the Barnet Tories were inept and according to Coleman, the most inept of them are now running as Reform candidates. If you think they will sort Barnet Council out, then you must still believe in Father Christmas. 

Sadly, the UK is unlikely to have a DOGE style authority any time soon. Whatever I think of Musk, the fact that we've got completely inept councils run by people who are useless is something that his approach may sort out. I'd have no problem paying higher salaries to the best people to sort Barnet Council out. Sadly we have a bunch of stuffed shirts who's primary concern is their own wallet. That is why we have litter filled pavements and potholed roads. Every year tax goes up and the Borough deteriorates. I quite like Elon Musk's idea of getting Federal Staff to justify their employment. People like me, who run small businesses don't carry passengers. I see no reason why the taxpayer should. In Barnet, whenever their is cost cutting it is the people who do the work who suffer, whilst the bosses simply put up their own wages. I'd reward the people who do the work, get the fat cats on high salaries to justify their wages and get people who understood what they were doing to run the place. I'd also cut the number of councillors by 1/3rd. In Mill Hill, we have three councillors, one of whom doesn't bother attending. He gets paid £11,000 for the privelidge - Members allowances paid 2023 to 2024 (ODT, 22 KB) -You are paying that. Has anyone in Mill Hill actually noticed his lack of work? Barnet does not need 63 councillors. Council Leader Barry Rawlings said of the bale out "The pressure on our finances has never been greater. As a council, we face an unprecedented crisis in financing our services, driven by a perfect storm of a decade of funding cuts from central government, high interest rates making services more expensive to deliver, and ever-increasing demand for complex and costly services we have a legal duty to provide, such as adults’ and children’s social care and temporary accommodation." -

Cutting 21 councillors would save nearly a quarter of a million quid a year. It may be a small amount in the budget, but it would be there for other services that matter.  It would also show that the political classes are willing to share the pain. But that will never happen without a DOGE style purge and that won't happen in the UK because no one has the balls to actually call out the waste. We have a culture of laziness in public sector management and political leadership. They are happy so long as someone else does the dirty jobs and their wallets bulge. 

AI isn't a form of intelligence, it is just plaigarism on a massive scale, ripping off the hard work of generations of creatives

AI is the big thing right now. I was reading about the new quantum chip from Google yesterday. It can perform calculations trillions of times quicker than current computers. This expands the possibilities for AI beyond our comprehension. The biggest limitation will be how quickly we can write software to exploit the capabilities of these chips. As someone who had a long career as a freelance IT consultant, I understand the complexities of this and the fact that it is a big constraint, but it is also fairly clear that this will only be an issue until the tools are developed to fully exploit the capabilities of quantum computing. And then....

A couple of years ago (7th January 2023), I was having a curry with my son, who is a graduate with a maths and economics degree. He has grown up with the burgeoning development of AI. We were discussing its capabilities. He had used it as a tool as part of his studies. I wasn't familiar with the capabilities. Since I stepped back completely from the world of IT, I've not really had any interest in it. We got to discussing my blog and AI. He suggested that AI could write my blog as well, if not better than I could. I was intrigued. I said Ok, show me. So he said "Give me a blog title and lets see what comes out". So I said "Write a blog about the London Borough of Barnet in the style of the Barneteye blog". within about 15 seconds, a blog was produced. When I read it, a few things were instantly noticeable. It had absolutely accurately mimiced my grammatical style. It had identified linguistic ticks that I didn't even realise I had, but as soon as I read it, it was clear that it was exceptional at plaigerism of style. Then there was the content. This was far more interesting. When I read the blog, it had the air of an "abandoned Saturday list" blog. Often I start these and realise I don't have ten things that are interesting enough to complete a list. It was boring and bland, I guess someone in the USA who was curious about Barnet may have found it vaguely interesting, but it was very "fat free" and dull. Just rather generic facts about the Borough with no real insight. My son explained that the modern way to write essays was to get AI to generate such a template and then spice it up. I told him that to me, it was unusable. When I write a blog, I start with something I want to say, then build it up from there.  

It was an interesting exercise and very useful. I immediately started to recognise when people/BOTs were using AI to generate content. There is a rather soulless and bland presentation of facts, wrapped up in grammatic tricks to make it look authentic. The most interesting thing of all though was what happened to my blog stats. The number of hits per day, for that day went from the average of around 1,000 to over 100,000. It was clear to me that the AI BOTS were hammering my stats, learning everything about me. Since then, every month or so, I get a large spike of between and 10-30,000 hits for no apparent reason. It is clearly BOTS trawling the blog for info. As I've been researching and investigating this blog all week, oddly, my average for the week is around five times higher than normal. 

So what do I conclude? Well first of all, I am on the AI BOTs radar. The question is, what are these BOTS doing? The answer to that is more interesting. They are harvesting information. Someone somewhere is making a profit from my hard work and I'm not getting a penny from it. The BOTS and the multi national companies that run them are making huge profits and content providers such as me don't get a penny. It is plaigarism on a massive scale. The concept that sixteen years of hard work writing this blog, is being monetised by some else is rather galling. For all I know, the words I've written, the research I've done are generating huge amounts of cash for all manner of individuals and companies. 

Dog bless you all!

It is not just bloggers like me that are being ripped off. AI BOTS are generating music, images, film scripts, anything that a creative person can do. The thing is that the BOTS are not innovating. They are just picking over the carcasses of other peoples work,  and churning out something for the non discerning masses. None of this would be possible without creative people doing the heavy lifting. It is ironic that script writers in TV are being put out of work by BOTS regurgitating their own words. When we say "AI generate me an image of an Angel on a dalmations body" The AI BOT finds someones picture of Angel, someone else's picture of a Dalmation, it then strips it of anything to make it too obvious and gives you a hilarious picture.

AI doesn't know what a dalmation or an angel looks like, without a source picture. It may be that the picture is an aggregation of many pictures, but the point is that someone, somewhere has done work and it is being exploited without payment. As an artist and a content maker, it is clear to me that this is theft of intellectual property. AI gets the credit, not the people who's work was sourced.

I have a prediction. Unless this is addressed, it will not be the likes of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin who will own the future. It is the people who own the quantum chips and the AI BOTS. They will own everything.

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I am a fervent believer in supporting artists, their intellectual rights and their financial wellbeing. I've spent my life doing gigs. I've heard AI generated music and it's awful, but it is cheap. Please support artists and if you like what I say, please support me as a writer, an artist and a creator. There are three ways you can do this. 1. Come along to my bands gig at The Dublin Castle on Friday (we're on at 8pm) and buy me a beer and have a chat. 2. Like my band's page on Spotify and actually listen the music. 3. Do the same for all the other artists and writers who's work you enjoy. Do not always just look for "Free music". 

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Oh and finally, just for fun, here is what CHATGPT produced when I put the following query in. I waited until I had finished my effort before I put this in.

Tell me what you think?

AI Isn't a Form of Intelligence; It's Just Plagiarism on a Massive Scale

There’s a lot of buzz about artificial intelligence (AI) these days. From self-driving cars to chatbots that can churn out essays, some claim we’re standing on the brink of a technological revolution. But before we get swept away in the hype, let’s pause for a moment and consider what AI really is: a souped-up photocopier with internet access, masquerading as a genius.

AI doesn’t think. It doesn’t create. It doesn’t innovate. What it does is rip off the hard work of generations of creatives, assembling their efforts into something that looks clever but is, in reality, a chimera of stolen labor.

Take the music industry, for example. AI-generated songs might sound catchy, but those algorithms weren’t born with a gift for melody. They’ve been trained on libraries of music painstakingly created by real humans—people who poured their blood, sweat, and tears into their craft. AI’s role is to mix and match pre-existing pieces into something vaguely new, but the soul, the intent, the human experience? That’s missing. It’s the difference between a heartfelt ballad and elevator music.

The visual arts are no better off. Platforms that spit out AI-generated images rely on datasets pulled from millions of artists, many of whom never gave permission for their work to be used this way. The results might be stunning at first glance, but they’re hollow. It’s art devoid of meaning, created not to express or communicate but simply to dazzle. And where does that leave the artist? Out of a job, perhaps, or relegated to chasing trends set by machines.

Then there’s writing. Some see AI as the future of content creation. Need a blog post? A script? A love letter? Just plug in a prompt, and AI will handle it. But let’s not kid ourselves. Every sentence an AI writes is cobbled together from patterns it has observed in human writing. It’s not drawing on personal experience or original thought. It’s plagiarizing—albeit with enough remixing to skirt copyright laws (for now). And the more we rely on this process, the more we cheapen the value of human creativity.

The defenders of AI will tell you it’s just a tool, like a paintbrush or a camera. But a paintbrush doesn’t decide what to paint, and a camera doesn’t compose the shot. AI, on the other hand, is designed to simulate creativity. It’s a mimic, an impostor, and its rise poses an existential threat to the very idea of originality.

So what’s the solution? Transparency, for starters. Tech companies need to be upfront about how their algorithms work and whose work they’re exploiting. Regulation should ensure that creators are compensated for their contributions. And as consumers, we need to be more discerning. Let’s not be dazzled by flashy facsimiles when we can support real human talent instead.

AI isn’t intelligence. It’s glorified plagiarism on a scale humanity has never seen before. If we’re not careful, we risk losing sight of what makes art, music, and writing worth doing in the first place: the people behind it all.

Credit - CHATGPT

You tell me which you think is the better blog!

General Election Parliamentary Petition - I agree with Brian Coleman

Although many people suspect I spend all of my life on Twitter, I actually rarely look at it and when I do, I even more rarely look at Political Accounts. The only time I do is when I am researching a blog. I  am really not that excited about the changes Elon Musk has made to Twitter, however a comment posted on my blog  recently made me curious. I wasn't actually aware thatt Musk had changed it so that you can see the tweets of people who've blocked you. This was the comment

PurlyQueen commented on "Why I am staying on Twitter/X"

Nov 18, 2024

Why quit Twitter? Endless p*orn bots, spammers, blocked users being able to see my Tweets again and the search function is shot to pieces. Can't say I miss Twitter since I padlocked my account

Although it was posted last week, I only really thought about it today (been a bit busy). My first reaction was "Is this right?". I thought I'd do a little experiment. The only person I could think of that has blocked me, is disgraced former Tory Councillor Brian Coleman. I am sure there are a few others, but TBH their tweets were so dull that I've not missed them and pretty much forgotten them. So I did a search on Brian's account and sure enough, I could see all of his tweets. The only thing I can't do is comment on them. I realised that this also means that anyone I blocked can see my tweets. Does this bother me? Not really, I just don't want to interact with them and if they had half a brain, all they needed to do was set up another account to spy on me. What alarmed me more was that the first post I saw by Brian was one I thoroughly agree with. Much as I dislike the man, he sometimes does post sensible things and one of the few things I do quite like about him is that he will pull up fellow Tories when they talk nonsense. In this case, his ire was directed at Matthew Goodwin-Freeman, a rather dopey councillor from Harrow. Mr Goodwin- Freeman was getting terribly excited  about the number of people signing the Parliamentary petition to call a general election overtaking the number of votes The Greens got. 

Click for more readable version

Brian said 

Brian Coleman

@BrianColeman251

This is just silly and not the way we run our Country . Government by petition ? not for me

I have long been rather sceptical of such petitions. I recognise that petitions have a place, especially on local issues. If a school needs a new pelican crossing or you want to save a library, they are a good way to mobilise support. I recall when we got a huge petition for the Save Barnet's Libraries campaign, the local Tories got rattled (much to Brian's annoyance no doubt) and had a rethink. Sadly for the local Tories, the bloke who was the "Cabinet Minister" responsible was a bit dim (sorry his name escapes me, I could look it up, but he was a nonentity and life is too short) and botched the new proposals so badly that he lost his seat at the next election, having thought that closing Friern Barnet library was a good idea. 

The reason why pettitions are effective at local elections is that something like a campaign to save a library is hyper local and councillors know that it is worth listening to voters, as a few votes can cost a seat. What struck me was the number of Tory voters that were cross about it, when we collected signatures. Engaging them enabled us to ask them to speak to councillors they knew. I suspect every irate Tory supporter telling them off was worth around 2000 signatures from Labour members. This is very different to a petition calling for another general election, which is a national matter and involves huge numbers. Another point our nice but dim Harrow Councillor may have not understood is that the Greens and The Lib Dems, who he refers to in his Tweet are both opposition parties and supporters of both are probably just as likely to sign the petition as Tories, as most of the ones that I've spoken to have been distinctly underwhelmed by Starmer and probably feel their parties would do better if there was an election, and it also may persaude Starmer to lean more towards the policies that would shore up the centre left. 

To me, the whole idea of this petition is wrong headed and lazy. The idea that signing a petition, which takes a minute to do and no investment in time or effort, might force a government to call a snap election is ridiculous. If the 2 million people who signed really want change, join an opposition party, pay your subs, knock on doors, stuff envelopes, hold tea mornings, stand on street stalls etc. If the Tory memberhip went up from the current figure of 172,000 to 2,000,000 then Keir Starmer may worry. 

Given that nearly ten million people voted Labour, the fact that people who support other parties might want an election and be silly enough to sign the petition means nothing. If every time the government was forced to take unpopular measures, it resulted in a petition and a general election, we'd never have any peace. After the last 18 months of the last Tory government, I doubt too many sensible Tories would actually want an election now. I suspect that if there was, all we'd see is Reform taking a lot of votes and a few seats off the Tories. I suspect that the difficult truth for the Tories is that even though Labour's policies are highly unpopular with Tory voters, this is far less true for Labour support. I doubt too many farmers and small business owners are Labour. The bottom line is that there won't be a general election any time soon. This might annoy whoever signed the petition, but as Brian says, this is not how we do things in Britain.

It will be interesting to see if Kemi Badenoch raises the petition at PMQ's on Wednesday. Unless it has reached ten Million (ie more than the Labour vote at the General election) she'd be silly to. One thing I am sure Brian realises that his dim colleague in Harrow doesn't is that General Elections are expensive. Another one now would probably financial cripple the Tories and it's unlikely they'd win. The new leader hasn't got a her feet under the table yet and needs time to get on top of her brief. In all honesty, I suspect that by the time we have an election in the real world (as opposed to in exciteable and dim councillors dreams), the Tories will be on their next leader. I am sure that Sir Keir Starmer is having a few sleepless nights at the moment. I doubt any of them are caused by this petition.