General

Productivity boost?

Published on by Nick Wilkins

The Office for National Statistics has in the last month revised its productivity calculations.  According to BBC Radio 4’s More or Less programme (23 Sept 2026), the result of the recalculation is that while the UK’s productivity annual increase dropped from roughly 2% to 1.3% after the financial crisis of 2008, this is a better result than a drop to 0.7% which the previous methods had suggested had happened.  As a result, the UK is no longer considered an international outlier and Chris Giles of the Financial Times confessed that this brings into question the validity of arguments that he and other commentators had advanced in articles during this period.

The reason the figures have changed is that the number of hours people are actually working is now believed to be less than previously thought.  This is partly because, when surveying and failing to get a response, they assumed the numbers would not have changed from those given in the previous period.  But, sometimes the reason for the “no response” was that the person was on holiday, i.e. not working at all.

But let’s think about this a bit more.  Supposing two people work for the same company and on days they are working from home both take time out to pick up their children from school.  The first person deducts this from their time-worked stats, the second doesn’t.  If both achieve the same, the first person will be considered the more productive, even though the volume of output is the same.

Similarly, if a person works unpaid overtime to output more in the working day, they will not be considered as more productive on this measure.  But if you measured productivity as output divided by the amount it cost to achieve it then you would get a very different productivity assessment.

So, depending on what you are looking to learn from a productivity stat, one way of measuring it might be more appropriate than another.  But the notion that you could simply choose one measure and call it the official UK productivity seems misleading and unhelpful.

Even more so when you try to look at the productivity stat for all workers.  If you look into how the productivity of a nurse is calculated, the calculation is extremely complex…but nevertheless, it has been someone’s job to come up with an algorithm so that a nurse’s productivity can be measured and successfully combined with productivity achieved in other disciplines.

At this point it seems to me the whole exercise resembles an attempt to bang a nail into a block of wood using a pack of butter.  The objective is clear enough: you can make some initial progress towards your aim, but as time goes on it gets increasingly difficult to complete the exercise without some form of “necessary” cheating.  Yet we are committing some very capable and subtle minds to exactly this endeavour.  One wonders how one measures the productivity of their work[1]?

Moreover, the figures we are lamenting as being poor are not a reduction in productivity but a decline in productivity growth.  As More or Less explained, a 2% increase in productivity (as was achieved for a prolonged period prior to 2008) means that productivity doubles every 35 years or so.  Asking a similar question to one posed by Kate Raworth[2] when she quizzed economists on why we consider it viable for GBP to grow exponentially, one might ask whether doubling productivity every thirty-five years is a reasonable expectation, desirable or even possible?  Sure, technology will drive some productivity growth, but what about the care sector?  As the ONS notes: “while quantity output may be growing, the value of this growth, and therefore productivity, may be overstated if service quality is declining.”[3]

And yet, we are constantly told that the solution to Britain’s problems are stronger growth and greater productivity.  And whilst I can see that these might deliver to this country (possibly unevenly) greater internationally-agreed entitlement to the world’s assets, these measures alone tell us nothing of the contribution we are making to those assets, be that positive or negative.

[1] More generally, one is essentially asking whether output should really be included in productivity figures if it turns out to be useless.

[2] See Doughnut Economics, published Penguin Books, 2022 edition, Chapter 7

[3] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/publicservicesproductivity/methodologies/publicserviceproductivityadultsocialcaresourcesandmethods2019update

Existential dangers of AI

Published on by Nick Wilkins

Well then, we’ve now been told there’s a one in ten chance that AI could kill us all within the next decade.  The maths of this is interesting to say the least, though the credibility of predictive stats is not just an issue with this particular statement.  The reason for saying that the probability of a coin toss coming down heads is 50% is easy enough to explain.  But when it comes to predicting events that have never happened in the history of humanity, how do you come up with a probability figure?

But you’d like to think that the figure came from somewhere, even if Anthropic’s safety researcher was no more forthcoming on that than he was on the method that AI was putatively going to use for its genocidal attack.

On this maths, the odds of extinction within seventy years slightly exceed the chances of survival, which is pretty alarming to say the least.

I’m not trying to downplay the danger here, but I think it’s fair to say that the figure is more an expression of how worried the commentator is: they are simply using statistics to try to convey the risk.

But what nobody seems to be highlighting is that the dangers are, yes, in part due to the rapid and uncontrolled development in AI, but without the internet this AI would be powerless.  How credible would this prediction have been in 1996 when less than 1% of the world’s population used the internet?

If you examined the disaster recovery plans of top companies and other large organisations, how many of them have plans that mitigate for total internet failure, either because access becomes impossible or it simply becomes unsafe to use?  My suspicion is that many security officers rule this out as either unrealistic or take the view that if we were to lose the whole internet there would be bigger problems to worry about than could be mitigated by any individual disaster plan.

And, until now, there was probably a reason for being reasonably confident that extended loss of continuity of internet service probably dropped into the category of “unrealistic” disasters, alongside meteor strikes and invasion from outer space.  But think of this.  When addressing the so-called millennium bug we knew exactly what to look out for, and by and large avoided a potential problem.  Our faith in the continuity of a reliable internet may just be a failure of imagination over where the risk is coming from.

This warning over AI should give us a clue.  In our determination to improve efficiency, often driven by the “imperatives” of our current economic system, we have adopted and promoted a communications monoculture.  Too many organisation rely on just the one way of working.  Much as the loss of biodiversity makes us more exposed to disease, or the loss through disease of the food and materials on which we depend, so this communications monoculture has left us exposed to global systemic breakdown.

If we had lost the internet in 1996 most of life would have carried on as usual.  We know that’s not the case now.  How did we get to this point?

The Potency of Left Field ideas

Published on by Nick Wilkins

Baroness Jones caused quite a stir when, in reaction to the appalling murder of Sarah Everard, she proposed a curfew on men going out after 6pm.

Chair of the Women’s Equality Committee, Caroline Nokes called it “a bonkers suggestion”[1] whilst Nigel Farage tweeted it was an example of the left being “deranged”[2]

Jones’s suggestion came in the context of advice to women from south London police “not go out alone”[3].  That so few detected any irony in her proposal reflects how few sadly saw the police’s advice as “a bonkers suggestion”, as well as revealing the predisposition of many to expect politicians of the left to advance “deranged” ideas.

And that was both the point and the power of Jones’s idea.  Being ironic doesn’t mean you are only joking.  There’s a logic in her proposal that holds up.  If women out on their own are in danger from men then it surely follows that men’s liberties should be curtailed, not women’s?  Ah, but not all men are to blame.  That’s true, but all women suffer the consequences and the police advice (and hands up who amongst us mightn’t have called it “sensible”) was to all women.

We’ve all experienced it from our schooldays and look back with a groan.  Someone drew a fat penis on the white board, nobody’s owned up and the whole of the class is held in detention.  But did you ever hear of a case where the class down the corridor were punished instead, even though it was known the culprit was not among them?

So why am I writing about this here?  Because left field ideas have the power to release us from our intellectual shackles.  To ask questions of ourselves, to challenge our prejudices and assumptions.  We need to do better than just cast them off as “bonkers”.  Otherwise we’ll carry on doing things, believing things, just because we always have.

However much we want to protect our ecosystems, you could never completely overhaul the tax system – that would be bonkers.  Like Jones’s idea, or imagining the earth a sphere that orbits the sun.

[1] https://theconversation.com/baroness-jones-why-did-so-many-people-take-her-6pm-curfew-for-men-proposal-at-face-value-157183

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/13/men-curfew-sarah-everard-women-adapt-violence

[3] https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/peer-jenny-jones-calls-for-6pm-curfew-for-men/

What we value

Published on by Nick Wilkins

Back in December this blog issued two warnings about borrowing to finance the Covid support measures:

  1. That deferring tax raises until the point of return risked a sluggish recovery
  2. The “we can’t afford pay rises” narrative was likely to be trotted out again as an excuse for further austerity.

Arguably, last week’s budget partly recognised the former as a concern for there were few significant tax rises announced apart from the proposed Corporation Tax rise, and even that was deferred.

Nurse

However, NHS workers have been told they are to receive a paltry 1% rise, almost certainly representing a wage cut in real terms once inflation is taken into account.  And the reason for this lack of generosity?  You’ve guessed it: “We can’t afford it.”

There’s been a lot of debate in the media about this, but the question that seems to have been missing was to ask how much it was that we supposedly couldn’t afford?

So, I got out my fag packet and tried scribbling out a few sums:-

According to the government’s website there were 1,164,729 NHS workers last December of which 299,184 were nurses[1].  Payscale puts the average wage of an NHS employee at ₤26,974[2], so multiplying 1% of this by the total number of NHS workers gets you to about £314 million.  That would mean a 5% rise takes you to about £1.59 billion.  Now I know that there are pension costs and other benefits to add (I’m not including employers NI because that goes to the government) and that the cost of any increase is year-on-year, but…

The cost of the stamp duty holiday to date is estimated at £3.8 billion[3].  This has now been extended in full to June and in part to September, plus the chancellor has announced help for people to get 95% mortgages.  In comparison, the Royal College of Nursing’s 12.5% claim, widely condemned as unrealistic, would have first year costs (based on an average salary of £33,384[4]) of less than £1.25Bn.

One can’t help thinking that it’s more important to this government to shore up house prices than it is to address the structural inequalities in our system of rewards so starkly exposed during this pandemic.  And with average house prices set to rise by £10,000 this year[5], how can this subsidy be justified?  This is a double-whammy for health workers trying to buy their first homes.

“Levelling up” needs to amount to more than just throwing some sweeties around in red wall constituencies.  Many nurses and care workers have risked their lives and long-term health to help save those of others and are suffering from physical and mental exhaustion.  They won’t be the only ones with deep scars following this pandemic, but if a city worker performs heroically during a year they will usually be rewarded appropriately.  This is what needs levelling up.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/record-numbers-of-doctors-and-nurses-working-in-the-nhs

[2] https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Employer=The_National_Health_Service_(NHS)/Salary

[3] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2020-0082/

[4] https://www.nurses.co.uk/nursing/blog/a-quick-overview-of-nurses–salaries-in-the-uk-in-2021/#average

[5] https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/mortgageshome/article-9338495/What-happen-house-prices-2021-Savills-predicts-4-growth.html

Campaign launch

Published on by Nick Wilkins

We are now inviting all interested parties to contribute to this campaign with your impressions and comments.
We would be delighted to hear from anyone who would like to work with us to put some more flesh on these proposals.

I see the process going something like this:-

1) Sanity check the basic ideas by seeking feedback from a largely invited audience
2) Further research, fact-finding and modelling with the aim of publishing a more substantial publication
3) Publicity efforts, events, outreach to sympathetic organisations
4) Lobbying of politicians in any country where we feel there may be traction

I’d expect the campaign to be a broad church with as many variants as there are minds contributing, and this will be reflected in the published literature that this web site will host. However, I will reserve the right of editorial control over the “authorised” version of these proposals, so that original intentions are not lost or unduly watered-down.

Please do fill in the contact form if you’d like to be part of this process or simply kept informed on how we are getting on.

Nick

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