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22 Mar, 5 tweets, 1 min read
Using one of my fave quotes in a Quiet Leadership talk tomorrow.

"I was called at 0500 & not before which meant that nothing bad had happened or I should have been called."

Admiral Ramsay's diary. 6th June 1944.

The dude knew when to step back and let his peeps do their shit.
Ramsey's planned the D-Day landings. He knows everything is in place and ready to go. He knows once the signal is given, he can't influence it.

It either works or it doesn't.

He's built a team round him that he trusts and knows will come to him if they need him.

So he's just:
And when he DOES get up, he has the confidence of knowing his people will have been doing what they need to do, and can then just focus on the things they bring to him.
Admiral Ramsay was an UTTER MASTER of Quiet Leadership. Arguably one of the top five commanders the Royal Navy has ever produced.

Dunkirk. D-Day. Neither happen without him. Nor Husky, probably.

Fighting Admirals get the girls (and boys). Quiet Admirals win wars and have naps.
(Deleted original version of this short thread because the gif didn't pick up the alt tag so needed to fix. Soz to anyone who had already shared)

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John Bull Profile picture
24 Mar
Not surprised by this.

TfL did a whoooooooole bunch of research on this a while back.

Short version: people have a hierarchy of transport needs.

The curve of price as an incentive drops off MASSIVELY once you hit "affordable". Then the big wins are frequency/cleanliness/safety
The sweet-spot is thus as cheap as you can make it to keep frequency, cleanliness and investments in stations high.

Not that they can do any of that of course, because COVID and government grandstanding.
The whole:

"Make it free. They will come" has always been just a different flavour of wishful thinking as "privatisation will make transport more efficient."

Both have never reflected actual reality. Just someone's vision of how they THINK reality should behave.
Read 19 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
23 Mar
Factual answer: We're changing nuclear warheads to a more modern one.

So it's a temporary increase in warheads during changeover. You can't decommission at the same time as you install.

Whether we should have ANY is a fair debate. But that's the reason.
Indeed I think the debate on whether we should have any nukes is an important one to constantly have.

Personally, I still land (just about) on 'necessary evil'. Mostly because once you LOSE the capacity, it's nigh-on impossible financially to get it back.
I hope that we can build a better world where the NEXT generation can, when faced with this same decision, confidently and definitely reject nuclear weapons and the horror they represent forever.

That has to be our goal, at home and how we assert British soft power abroad.
Read 20 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
17 Mar
A quick morning follow up thread on this, now I can see which why the big paper stories are going.

Let's revisit the subject of narrative, why controlling it is important to Uber, and I'll explain how they exploit the lack of continuity in UK newsrooms. /1
Controlling the narrative is important to Uber because, as I've talked about before, they're an investment package first and a provider of services second.

To be snarky, the services don't pay the bills (they make a loss). Fresh investment is a continual need.
For investors to invest, Uber needs to at least be able to claim that:

1) They are meeting minimum legal obligations
2) They have a path to profitability.

I won't go into why 2) is dodgy. Short version: transport doesn't scale like tech. See thread:
Read 14 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
16 Mar
Before everyone starts getting excited:

1) Uber didn't reclassify its drivers as workers, the COURTS did. Uber is just doing the paperwork
2) Drivers already earn more than the minimum wage
3) They're still refusing to count idle time as work

So what's it mean? /1
Well first up, a reminder that if you've not read my previous Uber stuff over the years, and how they tech-broed themselves into an unnecessary (but hilarious) encounter with the Duck Test in UK law, then start here:

Now you're caught up, what does this announcement mean?

Well... nothing really. Nothing new anyway. They're doing what they had to do. If they hadn't made these changes promptly they'd have lost their operator licenses.

Uber are just very good at writing press releases.
Read 12 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
15 Mar
UPDATE: Got to the surgery in the pissing hail, only to be told this is, in fact, a TELEPHONE appointment.

This is information not included on the text message in any way.

Not that I've had a phone call yet.
I'm fully expecting now not to get one, and then to be told that they rang my landline - the number of which even I don't know. Despite them being aware I was standing outside the surgery at 11:05am and do not own a warp drive.

And, obviously, sending me the text on my mobile.
Thing is, if they DON'T call now I'm not just going to be super annoyed at how much this has fucked up my day, but also massively disappointed.

I've turned my phone off silent for this now so I don't miss it.

After 3yrs I'm excited to find out what my phone actually sounds like
Read 8 tweets
John Bull Profile picture
15 Mar
Agreed. To be slightly facetious, something you quickly realise if you study WW2 beyond the 'Channel 5 documentary' level is that Churchill largely saved the nation by not being Lord Halifax, and then being a stubborn git when required.

Both skills, but not that interesting.
The REALLY fun history is the social, logistics, codebreaking, tactical, politics etc stuff that went on AROUND him. And the people involved in doing all that.

Although Churchill's interactions with Roosevelt are pretty fascinating and important. That's true enough.
But the obsession with the myth gets in the way of exploring the darker consequences of his mindset, approach and biases (both personal and 'of his time').

And that's what leads to Ladybird Book Churchill being an icon for people like Johnson, and them learning the wrong lessons
Read 4 tweets

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