Extremely saddened to hear of the Christmas Day passing of Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, aged 53, globally known as George Michael, the London-born singer, songwriter, producer and influential global pop star.
Born in East Finchley and raised in Kingsbury, George's death evokes a genuine outpouring of grief and sympathy across London and throughout the world.
George Michael is also the first artist to have sung at the new Wembley Stadium when it opened in 2007.
Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (25 June 1963 – 25 December 2016).
The car
guzzles unleaded petrol from the pump and the supermarket slurps £1.15 per litre from my
wallet.
I know that geo-political chicanery, oil-producing dictatorships and petro-dollar deals somehow fill my tank with this
explosive pollutant mix.
But I'm not troubled by all of that today. I'm joining a queue of other
drivers fuming as they watch an elderly gent struggle to inflate his tyres. Visiting a London
petrol station in 2016 feels expensive and archaic.
Grasped
Even car manufacturers agree.
They say driverless cars, or ‘autonomously
driven vehicles’, will be ubiquitous within five years. Makers like
Mercedes-Benz say driverless cars will be the biggest paradigm shift since
society replaced horses with horsepower over a century ago.
As soon as 2020, according to some vehicle
makers, we will be able to sit with our backs to the traffic reading our iPads whilst
automatically being driven to our destination.
For instance, Mercedes Benz says its autonomously
driven F015 interacts with passengers, pedestrians, other vehicles and its
surroundings (above).
Mercedes-Benz describes the F015 as a ‘mobile
living space’ that allows passengers to use their time in a variety of ways
while on the road.*
‘Anyone who focuses solely on the technology
has not yet grasped how autonomous driving will change our society,’ says Dr
Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler AG and head of Mercedes-Benz Cars.
‘The car is growing beyond its role as a mere
means of transport.”
Render Naturally, Londoners will have to trust the autonomous
technology to be safe.
But even if we embrace technology that replaces
us as drivers, is London anywhere near ready for a transformation that will
render everyone a passenger?
Driverless vehicles would make thousands of taxi, bus and mini-cab
drivers and chauffeurs not only redundant but also obsolescent.
Piloted How will Dr Zetsche’s ‘mobile living spaces’
impact on London’s existing roads and on other transport modes?
Will they eliminate human error, accidents
and fatalities?
Sure, electric cars will cut pollution but will there be enough charging points?
Would London’s ‘petrol heads’ that like to
own and drive their own cars have to pay a premium to stay on the roads?
Will police cars, ambulances and fire engines
be automatically piloted too?
Londoners would also be able to forget
drivers’ insurance, driving tests and licenses. Londoners might be riding in
Apple and Google cars – and most might share or hire cars, just like they rent
bicycles in 2016.
So many questions – and yet, barring a few
magazine articles, there is little or no conversation in London about possible
answers.
For instance, bus passengers are already
using two operational driverless buses in Lyon, the French city that pioneered
self-service bike rentals.
Up to 15 passengers can ride two electric
minibuses that operate a ten-minute route at an average speed of 10km (6 miles)
per hour.
The four-metre long Navya-designed ARMA buses (above),
costing £170,000 each, carry lasers, cameras and sensors to avoid collisions –
although they cannot manoeuvre in traffic.
However, Navya chief executive Christopher
Sapet says bigger driverless buses and then cars will soon follow.
‘A
driverless French car operating in cities can become a reality as soon as 2018.’
Inflating Amidst all of this welter of innovation and paradigm shifts, I notice one thing about the driverless bus. Those tyres will still need inflating.
*The F015 is over five metres long and just 1.5 metres high,
similar to an S-Class Mercedes. A capsule-like bodyshell is constructed from
carbon fibre reinforced plastic, aluminium and steel. A flat front windscreen
covers the roof. LED lights provide a variety of lighting functions. Inside, a
lounge-like cabin offers swivelling seats that can be turned to face each other
while travelling. Six high-resolution display screens integrated throughout the
interior allow passengers to use touch, gestures, or eye movements to navigate,
browse, or see outside the car.
The first basic rights in a
democracy must be the right of people to elect those who make their laws and
the right to remove them. Those rights had been denied to the British people for 43 years by the
complex structures and anti-democratic institutions that saw a Common Market mutate into a European Union superstate. Hence, lashed by mid-summer rain, 17,410,742 British people (52% of
voters) exercised a much-delayed and long-promised democratic right to vote to
‘Leave’ the European Union.
Their 'Brexit' choice ought not to be so surprising. Frustration marked with a cross in a box.
For decades, successive ideologically driven neo-liberal Conservative and New Labour governments presided over the deliberate destruction of the UK's manufacturing base, destroying communities in the process. The EU did nothing to halt this destruction - and its corporate free market process fuelled it.
So, the 'Leave' vote has been a light-sleeper for the past 30 years. Ignored The referendum shows people still understandably vote with one hand on their wallets
and purses. Londoners inside the London economic bubble voted 60-40 to
‘Remain’. But white working class people struggling inside a low-wage economy in
the North, Midlands and Wales swung the UK out of the EU. They don't believe the EU offers economic security or better life chances. They ignored crude ‘Remain’ campaign threats that economic meltdown,
financial Armageddon and armed conflict will result from a ‘Leave’ vote. More subtle propaganda has come out of North Korea. What next?
Hence, the British people’s troubled historical relationship with
Europe enters another uncertain phase. So, what next? Londoners aside, the British people have decisively rejected any
withering idea that the EU could be democratically reformed. An honest and open
United States of Europe, with an elected President and Congress, now seems a dead
duck. German and French corporate interests dominate the EU. An unelected European Commission still prevails in Brussels. Far-right nationalism scapegoats refugees and seeks race, civil and
interstate war. Greek, Spanish and Portuguese economies, bullied by the EU's dominant bankers and politicians, teeter over a precipice of
meltdown and bailout. The entire EU edifice looks very shaky. It isn’t surprising that citizens
of the UK and other European countries don’t like being subjects of the EU. Referendum contagion across the EU might ensue. The EU house looks set to stagger and crumble. Commonwealth
A brighter future, though, remains possible. An alternative could be that the UK harmonises economic, trading, education and cultural exchange relationships with EU, European and other nations across the world –
each relationship agreed with the consent of the British people through
Parliament. A negotiated peace with Russia would also bring major dividends. Mutual Inevitably, all of this would be a slower process but would prove more durable, rewarding and moral. Britain, of course, already has a Commonwealth, that emerged after the decline and fall
of the British Empire. But Britain largely turned its back on the Commonwealth. And London turned its back on the rest of the UK. India/Pakistan and Bangladesh, South Africa, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand and the West Indian nations will need to forgive Britain and appreciate
the mutual trading and cultural opportunities that can arise. And, Londoners will also need to forge new economic links with the rest of England, Wales, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It's time for us to forget the crumbling EU - and move on and embrace a wider world of opportunities and hope.
Rain falls on Londoners this morning (Thursday 23 June) as we cast our votes in what is billed as the ‘most important
ballot of a generation’.
We're being asked: ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a
member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’
A vote today in favour of British exit from the European Union
might adversely impact the UK economy in the short-term and bring down the government.
And a vote to remain – the status quo –
might provide a short-term boost to share prices and the pound.
Troubles
But whether ‘Brexit’ or ‘Remain’ triumphs, the
bigger structural troubles for the UK, European and global economies will still
be there on Friday morning – unemployment, a lack of investment, low or no economic
growth, massive banking and corporate leverage and increasing delinquency, rising private
householder debt, prohibitively expensive housing markets, creaking public
services and austerity, and ever-widening income inequalities.
Immense
To some extent, the likely political
fallout from the UK’s EU referendum distracts from weak economic growth and perverse
asset markets, such as London real estate.
A ‘Remain’ win might rally markets and
the pound.
But this rally won’t alter the status
quo nor change the structural faults that undermine the UK and European
political economy.
We’ll still be in debt and bubble
territory.
We’ll still be mired in Austerityville.
EU, stay or go, there is no exit from these immense problems.
“We
sell coffees, tea, hot chocolate, cakes, croissants, muffins, pies and
pasties,” says Umar Khalid.
He stands beside an iconic ‘K6’ telephone
box on Hampstead High Street in north London.
Converted to a ‘micro-retail unit’, the K6
is formerly the kind of compact phone box in which Londoners used to shelter
from the rain, to secretly canoodle, and to even make the odd phone call.
Umar and Alona Guerra lease the box from the
Red Kiosk Company that equipped it with power, a lock and – crucially – with
retail planning consent from Camden Council.
“Passers-by are really surprised,” says
Umar. “We’re getting busier everyday.” Red Kiosk leases such boxes around the UK
from £6 per day. The company donates some of its profits to the Thinking
Outside the Box charitable trust that helps local unemployed and homeless
people.
BT sold disused K6s in 2012 after mobile
phones killed off demand for phone boxes. Designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott,
some 8,000 K6s punctuate city streets and village greens and country lanes around the
UK. In London, homeless people still take shelter inside some of them.
Barack Obama's second term as United States President is coming to an end.
But the 'race for the White House' is already heating up.
Click on the links below to check lively interviews and interventions from the past few days.
Joe Klein of Time talks tough to Hillary Clinton. Klein asks Clinton: "If the former Secretary of State were to talk to her younger self about
what she knows now, what would she say to her?"
Humiliated at the 2015 General Election, how does an opposition party seek a viable new economic policy? A clue emerges on a rainy night in
central London’s Mayfair (Tuesday,26 January). The steeply banked seats of the Royal Institution's atmosphericFaraday Theatre are almost full. An audience of about 300 people glare down at the speakers' lectern. This famous science amphitheatre is named after south London-born scientistMichael Faraday
(1791-1867). Faraday's discovery of electromagnetic
induction helped to - pardon-the-pun - transform electricity into a powerful
technology. Scribbles
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK's main opposition
Labour Party, doesn't look particularly electrified. A casually dressed Corbyn looks comfortable to simply be a member of tonight'saudience. Corbyn allows his colleague, Shadow ChancellorJohn McDonnell, to enthusiastically introduce Mariana Mazzacuto, Professor of Innovative Economics at the University of Sussex. As Professor Mazzacuto speaks, Corbyn starts to scribble notes into a small notepad - and finds he needs to write quickly. "I know I talk way too much and too fast," says Mazzacuto, after a breathless 15-minute prelude to the core of her main argument. "It's because I'm an Italian from New York." Successful Mazzacuto tries to debunk 40 years of perceived wisdom. She rejects the "cartoon image" of the State as "a necessary butboring, lethargic, bureaucratic and inert dinosaur" - and dismisses the idea that only businesses can be "dynamic, creative and able to think out of the box". Mazzacuto contends that, far from being a "free market paradise", the United States is in fact a successful "entrepreneurial state"with an interventionist public sectorthat has invested billions of dollars in shaping economic innovation and growth. Smart For instance, she reminds the audience that a nascent Apple received loans from the US government in 1978. The US Defense (sic) Department created the Internet. Global Positioning Satellites began as a US military project. A publicly funded professor at Delaware University "made our smart phones smart and not stupid" by creating touchscreen technology. 'Siri', the iPhone voice-recognition tool, started as a US state-led artificial intelligence programme. "No private companies were trying to put a man on the Moon when NASA undertook the Apollo project," adds Mazzacuto. Create Professor Mazzacuto acknowledges that Apple's Steve Jobs and other entrepreneurs of his ilk brilliantly harnessed these technologies. But her point is thatpublicly-funded, State-led research and development fuelled these beneficial developments - and others more recently in clean energy, biotechnology and nanotechnology. Historically, says Mazzacuto, the State in countrieslike the United States and China does "create markets". But since the financial meltdown of 2007-09, State-led research and development has diminished. Politicians target public sector debt, even thoughcareless private sector greed caused the meltdown and taxpayersresuscitated private banks. Mazzacuto argues the State should act like venture capitalists again, investing long-term in cutting edge industries and companies. "We need a tense, symbiotic public-private eco-system," says Mazzacuto. "We need growth that is smart and innovation-led.We want growth that is inclusive and sustainable - that produces less and not more inequality." Signpost IsMazzacuto's position a signpost to Labour's own deal? To a 'smart State' economic policy direction that a Corbyn/McDonnell Labour Party might take? Mazzacuto's lecture is the first in a year-long series of Labour's nationwide ‘New Economics’ seminarsthat McDonnell says
will "raise the level of discussion about our economy". The seminars follow on from Labour setting up an economics advisory council peopled, says McDonnell, by "some of the globe's most prominent economists", including Mazzacuto. McDonnell also promises a 'State of the Economy' summit next May. Mariana Mazzacuto is Professor of the Economics of Innovation in the Science Policy Unit at the University of Sussex. She is the author of The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, (AnthemPress, London, 2015). Mazzacuto lectured an audience attending 'Economic Policy: from market fixing to market shaping and creating', hosted at the Faraday Theatre at the Royal Institution, Albemarle Street, London W1, on 26 January 2016.