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20 Oct, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Apparently the "technical reasons" that Denmark and Cyprus alluded to were "“You’re all a load of useless bloody loonies!” ... getting this dreadful feeling that UK is going to come up with a "British Cloud for British People" ... please don't ->
... I suspect behind these wrong headed ideas are concepts of "digital sovereignty" which is amusing because key to "physical sovereignty" are maps (borders etc). In this digital world I suspect we've replaced maps with stories and bonanza time for managment consultants ...
... it's up there with spending huge piles of cash on a satellite company (OneWeb) because we need "satellites" for GPS without ever realising that not all satellites or orbits (in this case LEO) are the same. Slap a haddock in the face time ...
... if UK does decide to build a "British cloud for British people" then I can save them a bucketload and give them the same results. Pay me £25M, I'll sit on a beach drinking G&Ts for five years and then I'll give Gov a call to say "We failed" ... hey presto, billions saved.
I'll also extend that offer to the EU. Pay me $25m of your $11.8bn and I'll give you the same result, saving you ... well, $11.8bn roughly. It's such a small fee. In this case, I'll need to sit on a beach drinking Absinthe for five years before phoning up to say "We've failed".
X : What makes you think you're right that it'll fail?
Me : History. Every EU effort in the cloud has failed for good reasons. I'm also the person who helped steer Ubuntu from 3% of the OS market to 70%+ of cloud in 18 months for £0.5M in outlay ... so I might know a little bit.

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More from @swardley

Simon Wardley Profile picture
21 Oct
X : Are maps used in security?
Me : Yes. What are you after?
X : Single sign-on.
Me : Just use Amazon, Google or Twitter for this.
X : No, how we build one.
Me : You don't. This is 2020 not 2003.
X : What if we don't trust those companies?
Me : Who cares? Users do.
X : We can't rely on other companies.
Me : You do already unless you've been building your own powerplants, water supply, sewage works, farms, automotive factory ... long list.
X : What about Microsoft?
Me : Azure AD? Sure.
Read 5 tweets
Simon Wardley Profile picture
21 Oct
That painful slide from the ridiculous to the surreal ... we will need a committment from future governments for a full investigation into all matters. Lessons need to be learned ->
Of course, I don't take lightly the implied accusations but then I take even less lightly the misuse or exploitation of the public purse. For justice to operate and for trust to be maintained then it must not only be done but seen to be done. Dogma is not an excuse.
Fortunately, as the old phrase goes ... “The profiteering that cannot be got at by the restraints of conscience and love of country can be got at by taxation." US President Wilson.

We will need a reckoning, a great rebalancing for any abuse that might have occurred.
Read 4 tweets
Simon Wardley Profile picture
20 Oct
Gosh, this getting out of control. If we need to raise funds then use a least harm principle across society. A rough calculation says that a 60% wealth tax on wealth over £200m would give Gov around £340 billion whilst impacting only 600 odd families. They would survive ->
Of course, a huge amount of wealth is hidden in offshore trusts and other vehicles. Whilst the global GDP is around $80Tn, I understand that the actual amount is believed to be north of $130Tn.
The good news is that the majority of offshore trusts run through ... the city of London. Ok, obviously we want to keep the industry but I'm sure that Gov can be a bit creative here.
Read 6 tweets
Simon Wardley Profile picture
19 Oct
An all Wales two week firebreak is a start but it seems too short. Put the army on the streets, deliver food and basics to people's homes, suspend all transactions, close it down for eight weeks ->
X : Army on the streets?
Me : See China, Army was delivering food and consumables to homes. You need to stop the transmission of this disease. Still, two weeks firebreak is better than no weeks. Not enough though and this would just be the reset.
X : Reset?
Me : Yep, that's the beginning and I doubt two weeks is anywhere near enough. Wales will still need track and trace (see Ireland for an open source system), use of masks (precautionary), testing and border control (see Nunavut) even after a reset.
Read 4 tweets
Simon Wardley Profile picture
18 Oct
X : Do you know anyone impacted by COVID?
Me : Everyone? But if you're talking impacted directly then numerous friends have had COVID, a couple have been hospitalised (including family members) and then I have good friends who work in healthcare and I've seen their trauma ...
... if you're talking death, then just one in a very extended circle. We've been lucky so far, it's a vicious disease.
X : Yourself?
Me : Well, I look for the positives even in a crisis. At the very least I try to be a rock - more time with family, more social interaction due to less travel. Hell, I've even lost weight but I feel a constant pressure towards that dreaded phone call.
Read 7 tweets
Simon Wardley Profile picture
17 Oct
X : Suggestions for thriving in this post truth world?
Me : Tough one. The most common pattern I see is ... do bad things, become rich, write book about people doing bad things, become richer, produce a film saying how bad you feel, run out of space to store the bags of cash.
X : Is this a new thing?
Me : Oh no. The "road to Damascus" is a common ploy in economics ... you "liberalise" a market like Russia, causing a catastrophe and then build a new career on why liberalisation was a bad idea and how you have the answers etc.
X : Can't we learn from our mistakes?
Me : Of course but the mistakes in such cases are generally believing that your past dogma was right which is then followed up by a solution that involves believing your new dogma is right. Some people are just more wrong than they are right.
Read 4 tweets

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