19 April 2018
Lens on the Week
UK
MESS OF THE WEEK: Mrs May and Amber Rudd have had a busy week apologising for the sinister mess the Government has made in dealing with the Windrush migrants who, despite having a legal right to be in the UK, have been threatened with deportation and, possibly, in some cases, deported. The migrants in question came from the Caribbean and have a statutory right to remain indefinitely in the UK. Unfortunately, a failure by the Home Office to keep proper records, and in particular their destruction of landing cards in 2010, has made it very difficult for the individuals concerned to establish their status or to get the documentation which is now required to rent premises or to get a job. Result: officials demanding “your papers” from elderly long-term UK residents and threatening to deport them. Not exactly what we fought the war for!
The backdrop to this is the pressure on the Home Office to limit immigration. Mrs May, in her previous role of Home Secretary, was responsible for setting the culture here and clearly did not adequately protect the public against the heartless pursuit of figures. She bears her share of responsibility accordingly. Then, when appraised of the problem, the Home Office failed to tackle it, believing the numbers to be far smaller than was actually the case. That is down to Amber Rudd.
One way or another neither of them (and perhaps the same goes for previous Home Secretaries too) has managed to make the Home Office function properly. That has always been a difficult thing to do, one frustrated Minister writing a note to Henry Brooke, Home Secretary in the early 60s, as follows:
“The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small;
at the Home Office, dear Henry, they do not grind at all”.
It doesn’t sound as if they’ve improved much.
PARLIAMENTARY AUTHORITY: Those trying to make trouble for the government over the Syrian air strikes find it difficult to suggest that the use of chemical weapons on women and children should go unpunished. Accordingly, they are focusing their attack on the process and the failure to consult Parliament. Much has already been said in this debate, which balances the supremacy of Parliament on one side against the need for flexibility and the difficulty of adequately informing MPs on operational matters on the other, and there is little point in adding to it. Readers may be interested to know, however, that the issue was addressed in clause 3 of the Act of Settlement 1701, which runs as follows:
“That in case the Crown and Imperiall Dignity of this Realm shall hereafter come to any Person not being a Native of this Kingdom of England this Nation be not obliged to ingage in any Warr for the Defence of any Dominions or Territories which do not belong to the Crown of England without the Consent of Parliament.”
That was passed in contemplation of the Hanoverian succession, which did indeed put a foreign Prince (George 1) on the throne. Presumably the point was to prevent him dragging us into Hanoverian quarrels.
BULLYING: Comments reported as having been made by recruitment consultant Josh Harrison to the effect that it is ““easier than ever” to get a job and that anyone without a job at 25 was a“lazy little shit”, drew well-merited fire from Jack Parsons of the Big Youth Group. Fair enough, but then Mr Parsons went on to say that Mr Harrison’s comments might be construed as “bullying”. Oh dear, it sounds as if they deserve each other.
International
SYRIA: The USA, France and Britain launched air strikes against carefully selected Regime military targets in Syria in a punitive raid as a gesture against the alleged use of chemical weapons by Assad’s forces in Douma last week. The West is on the alert for possible revenge attacks by Syria or its allies, Iran and Russia.
Even more worrying, Israel has said that Iran could be planning to attack it within the next week, in retaliation for Israel’s strike against an Iranian drone base in Syria last week. The Israeli military has released satellite images of Iranian bases in Syria, surely a warning message saying “we know where you live” to units of Iran’s elite Quds Force based in Syria.
President Trump, who has said that he would like to withdraw US troops from Syria now the war against Isis has largely been won, is attempting to put together an alliance of Arab states to take over the job of eradicating Isis and stabilising the region when those troops have gone.
CHINA: Last week, Australia and New Zealand protested against alleged Chinese plans to build a military base on the Pacific island of Vanuatu, east of Australia and north of New Zealand. Vanuata, which has received huge amounts of aid from China, is one of the few countries to support Chinese claims to territories in the South China Seas.
This week, China conducted its largest ever naval parade, in the narrow strait between China and Taiwan. President Xi oversaw the manoeuvre, which included live-fire and involved 10,000 personnel, 48 ships and 76 warplanes. Taiwan undertook its own military exercise at the same time, staging a simulated invasion.
TO BOLDLY GO: Nasa began a new survey of outer space by launching a probe which will examine 200,000 stars in the galaxy and record planets in their orbit. Tess (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida, and will orbit 220,000 miles from Earth. It’s hoped that it might find Earth-like planets among the ‘exoplanets’ (planets beyond our solar system), and will search for them in each star’s so-called Goldilocks Zone, the area of orbit which is not too hot and not too cold but just right for the existence of liquid water and hence life. Tess replaces the satellite Kepler, which is about to run out of fuel but which has managed to record 2652 exoplanets and indicated the probable existence of another 2724; Tess is expected to find about 20,000 more and will cover an area more than 400 times the size of the area covered by Kepler.
Financial
WORK AS FUN: Some readers may think the words “work” and “fun” are mutually exclusive – and should stay that way. But talk to colleagues under the age of 30 and a very different attitude emerges; one that an unusual American real estate company has taken as the basis for a whole new idea of workspace. The company is WeWork and it is starting to completely change what an office is. The young team that founded the business in New York eight years ago looked at how workers might want to work – especially if they were young, tech conscious, innovative, and entrepreneurial – and came up with a work space concept for the C21st. WeWork is a club, with its customers being also its members, and it offers highly flexible space, with informal layouts, on easy all-inclusive terms. One payment for a week, a month, a year, three places or three hundred, gets you just want you want; full service, part, or none, so members can arrive with a laptop and start work. There are cafes, ping-pong tables, bars, gardens, relaxation zones. It is a concept that has rocketed off the ground and WeWork has become the largest taker of office space in many American cities and notably in London. Traditional landlords have given up trying to let buildings on conventional terms and let them to WeWork instead – or start their own versions as have British Land, the largest UK property company, and Brockton, a property fund noted for innovation.
Not all is bright and cosy in the WeWork world; the company has been very coy about its financial performance (though it has raised large sums of equity from some very reputable backers, in particular the Japanese bank Softbank), and it is rumoured that WeWork let buildings are more difficult to raise mortgages on because of that. Some competitors have complained of very aggressive marketing (it is a business founded in New York after all). Informal mixed space can be noisy and distracting. But it is clearly a business model that is here to stay, and WeWork mark two is now emerging, with sophisticated groupings of partners so that partners are placed alongside others who might find opportunities to do business with them, and specialist advanced businesses mentoring start-ups on how best to succeed.
FUN AS FUN: Another techie company that has found new ways of doing things: Netflix. Not the favourite business of cinema managers or the higher echelons at the BBC, Netflix is also changing our lives – this time how we flop on the sofa and watch the telly. The American owned business has assembled an enormous catalogue of TV shows, documentaries and films suitable for almost any viewer, which are easy to download and available by subscription. By tech standards Netflix is ancient – founded 21 years ago as a DVD rental business, it leapt to streaming (on-line) provision in 2007, growing slowly initially but then taking big financial risks in acquiring the core of its catalogue, and it is now reaping the rewards of that. In 2012 it also started making its own TV programmes, feeling it knew more about what its customers wanted than anybody else could, and that too is a resounding success, after a slow start. The big success to date is The Crown, in many series and parts, about the British Royal family. It may be controversial, but is exceptionally well made and produced and has pulled in astonishing viewing figures. The figures tell it all – total revenue in the first quarter of 2018 was US$3.7bn; profits were up 40% on last year for the same period. The company, whose shares are traded on NASDAQ, is now worth $130bn. Nice play if you can get it.
