The Perfect Curve

Jackdaw and the UK energy mix

simon gray — 2026-10-21, 17:13:48 - 883 words

In a not-entirely-unpredicted move, the UK Government has announced that it is going to give the go-ahead for drilling to start in the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea.

In not-entirely-unpredicted counter-news, the Tories have complained about it being too little, too late, and the environmentalists are saying the decision will contribute further to the climate catastrophe.

In reality, it will neither solve the UK's energy security problem or bring down bills for domestic consumers, nor will it lead to further coastal erosion of the east coast of England or flooding of Southport on the west coast. In the global scheme of things there's only a few cubic litres of gas down there, the way energy is priced on the international market is effectively a cartel anyway, and wherever the gas people use comes from, people are going to use the gas anyway.

It's this last point which I want to talk about in order to explain why the decision to allow drilling isn't the disaster the environmentalists say it is, and how it could have the potential to be beneficial, environmentally.

The Energy Mix

In terms of the main sources of where we get our energy from - gas, [...]

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Botched executions in the USA

simon gray — 2026-10-01, 03:24:58 - 264 words

As yet another execution in the USA is botched, it's worth pointing out that the death penalty there is designed to be Cruel And Unusual by design; by design it causes the maximum amount of stress and trauma to the condemned person, even when it is not botched.

Even when everything goes smoothly to plan, the methods used to judicially murder people — gas chamber, lethal injection, electric chair, and firing squad — draw the process out as the condemned is marched from their cell to the execution chamber, and tied to a gurney, a chair, or a post, and any further preparations made before the execution itself is delivered.

And then when the process itself is started, it is not instant; the choices of chemicals and gasses used, the action of electrocution or of shooting somebody, make for minutes of sheer torture in agony for the final minutes of life.

By contrast, the long drop method of hanging as used in Britain in the first half of the 20th Century at least makes for an instant death from the drop, and the whole overall process itself was over [...]

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Conviction and punishment for sexual assault

simon gray — 2026-09-22, 20:10:41 - 552 words

Over on Threads, another user said thus:

Castration for sex offenders should just be a basic requirement.

It's not an unpopular thing to say; the urge to viscerally respond to a viscerally wicked crime is understandable.

There are many reasons why it's not actually a good idea, not least because, as I replied:

Well, it might stop the ability to reoffend with the penis being the principle weapon used in the assault, but there are plenty of ways of sexually assaulting people without using one’s penis as a weapon, and indeed it wouldn’t stop the ability for a physically stronger person to exercise violent control over a physically weaker person, which is mainly what most people who commit sexual assault are doing.

To which the other person replied to the effect that the death penalty could be the alternative. 

Again, viscerally understandable, but in practice an even worse answer.

If you’re going to kill the rapist, they might as well kill their victim when they’re done.

Plus, see the already woefully low — for a variety of reasons, some of which have solutions — conviction rate for rape plummet even further, since the whole reason the death penalty was abolished in the UK was people who had [...]

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Leadership elections

simon gray — 2024-07-08, 07:09:29 - 246 words

Leadership elections for membership organisations — how’s this for a process:

All those who would be leader declare their candidacy and are nominated for the election by however many signatures from whatever constituency the organisation decides as an appropriate gatekeeping method.

The nominated candidates are then put forward to the membership to vote by ranked preferences, the voter marking as many preferences as they wish.

The counting of those ballot papers, however, is done twice — a count using the Alternative Vote method (which will tend towards the most preferred candidate) and a count using the Condorcet method (which will tend towards the least disliked candidate).

If both counts result in the same candidate at the top that’s grand, and that candidate is duly elected winner.

If the counts result in two different candidates at the top, then both candidates then go forward to a second round as a straight A/B choice. Possibly with a reöpen nominations option with an agreed threshold.

To my mind, this should ensure the winner really is the duly elected choice of the membership of the organisation with minimal room for folks to grumble, and whilst it might sound complicated, it’s not really any more complicated than a lot of organisations’ [...]

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Private sector forms functionality - just as bad if not worse than the public sector

simon gray — 2023-10-30, 11:25:28 - 152 words

In #LocalGov #LocalGovDigital we're rightly concerned about how too much of our online service design and user experience falls short of the high expectations many of us would like to see of it.

But having to deal with an online letting agent's landlord/tenant portal right now, oh my days, the worst pothole form I've ever completed is a breeze compared to this.

Speaking to somebody from the letting agent's office just, she said 'I have a word for it', which I responded 'the word I have for it is abomination!' She went on to say at the previous place she worked they tried the particular product portal for a week and got rid of it it was so bad.

It's the year 12,023 of the Human Era. The Internet should be better than this by now.

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Never Mind The Glen Miller, Here's The Sex Pistols

simon gray — 2023-10-28, 11:27:27 - 381 words

I posted the following on Facebook two years ago. The people who were 16 when Never Mind The Bollocks came out are this year now 62.

#marketing #advertising #stereotypes

Today is a significant day not just in music history, but in marketing history.

It's 44 years to the day since the UK release of the Sex Pistols' debut album, Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols.

'What is the significance of a 44th year anniversary?', I hear you ask.

Well, let me answer that question for you.

44 years ago today, when the album was released, people who were 16 on that date would have been born in 1961. ie, people who were born in 1961, would have been old enough to get married, have children, do various other things which are the first steps that the UK's legal framework considers to be 'becoming an adult'. And those nascent adults in 1977 when Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols was released will now be 60.

So when those people who were 16 when NMTB,HTSP came out, when their grandmothers were 60 they would have retired. Indeed now, although the [...]

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So you want to build a new council website, but why? What's wrong with your current one?

simon gray — 2023-09-28, 18:25:55 - 967 words

The public sector digital legend that is Dave Briggs has recently started a collaborative project, the New Council Website Playboard - a shared generic high level plan for councils to use as a starting point for their own website redevelopment projects.

One of the cards I've added to it is 'Carry out an Irritations Audit'.

What does this mean? Well, pour yourself a drink and get a biscuit and I'll tell you.

If you're wanting to rebuild, redesign, re-whatever your council website, then there's obviously something wrong with the existing one. In my experience, what people feel is wrong with it boils down to one of two things (or sometimes both) - either the technology that makes the website happen, the web Content Management System, or the content itself. This analysis of what might be called the Problem Statement often ends there - 'our CMS is old now' or 'our site is too hard to navigate'. Teams might dig a little deeper and do something of a content audit to decide what pages are no longer relevant (or outdated, or trivial...), or they might have concluded there's no way the existing CMS can be adapted to deliver pages meeting modern accessibility [...]

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Make a plan for the system going down

simon gray — 2023-08-30, 11:41:52 - 370 words

So it's looking almost certain that what caused the UK National Air Traffic Services' computer system to go down for several hours was some dodgy data in an inbound flight plan.

Make a plan for the system going down .

The Royal Family figureheads

simon gray — 2023-08-19, 17:15:33 - 202 words

Notwithstanding I’m actually interested in neither the Mountbatten-Windsor family nor the football, but I am interested in passing comment on the internets, but…

When Prince William, the El Presidente of the Football Association sends a good luck video message to the English ladies ahead of their forthcoming performance in a noteable challenge cup final saying he’s sorry he can’t be there in person, isn’t that a bit rude of him? I mean, yeah, he’s a busy man, he has important work to do, but is what he’s got scheduled for the weekend so important it can’t be put off, so he can be there to support the people he’s the figurehead for in person?

One of the tenuous arguments in favour of the retention of a monarchy is that the royal family are supposed to be a figurehead unifying force in a disjointed and divided world. If they manage to find excuses to absent themselves from that responsibility when there’s some actual unifying figureheading on the table to be done, what is the actual point?

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To Microsite or Not To Microsite, or, What’s the council website actually for?

simon gray — 2023-08-15, 18:49:44 - 2048 words

I’ve not been involved in council website content for a good few years now, but obviously that hasn’t stopped me taking an interest in it. 

In my early years working in local government, my job was as Web Communications Officer, working initially as part of a directorate — a group of related service areas — communications team, then moving to the Corporate Webteam in the Corporate Communications team. As a directorate Web Communications Officer it was essentially my job to take facts from service areas within my team’s portfolio and turn those facts into engaging web copy. Sometimes I got to play journalist a little too, such as when I attended the statutory public inquiry associated with a major infrastructure project within my portfolio and summarised the proceedings as part of the latest update on the project for the website. 

One of my regular frustrations during that period was the near-daily occurrence of me walking out into town for lunchtime and seeing the headline boards in front of the newsstands selling the city’s local paper, splurging a big announcement about some big new initiative within our portfolio, and seeing that headline would more often than not be the first I’d heard of [...]

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