I took myself by surprise yesterday.
One of my sons and I have been attending an event in early April for a number of years. It's on this year; April 6 to be precise. And tickets are on sale. So I went to book them. And then had second thoughts. This event is a week after Brexit may happen. There is no one anywhere who knows what may be happening in the UK by that weekend and whether or not normal events, such as the one I want to go to, will be taking place or not.
It is possible everything will be running pretty much as normal.
And it is quite possible that we may be suffering the onset of mayhem.
The question I asked myself was whether a 10% discount was enough to make me take the risk of mayhem.
It wasn't. I did not buy. I discovered I am now putting a price on meltdown.
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You clearly didn’t notice that the world ended after the millennium bug crisis!
If you think there is any similarity then you are deeply deluded
A programmer I know brought a very large house outright on the money he made fixing millennium bugs. It didn’t happen (although a few systems did go down) because of the planning that happened before – unlike the present shambles.
I well remember doing my own firms planning – and testing – for this
We could literally run a parallel system on the hardware to see if it managed the date change
It did
So we could at least relax
There is no similarity with Brexit then
Hmmm…. Millennium bug…
Eighteen years after the (non) event, I still have never had a straight answer as to whether that was staved-off by the assiduous efforts of bands of techies or whether they were just taking the piss. Or indeed whether there was a bit of both to it.
The key to this is there wasn’t an actual millennium bug: there were potentially thousands of them which could be triggered by the date rolling over to ’00’ from ’99’. Some computer programs might decide we’d been transported back to 1900, others might have been using ’00’ in a date field to indicate an unknown date.
So in response to your question: it’s both. Depends on the system in question. On some of them, only a massive effort prevented meltdown, and on others nothing much changed.
I’m not sure what this kind of whataboutery has to do with Brexit though. Presumably all potential disasters can be waved aside by mentioning the “millennium bug”, and we need never fear anything ever again.
I was planning a trip down to Kent from Edinburgh 31st March-1st April and then decided against it for exactly the same reason.
I’m supposed to be flying out of the country on the 8th April to an EU destination – wish me luck!
At least you didn’t book a ferry …which is what I did. I didn’t want to be in the UK on 29th March, I’m having a rare head-in-sand attack…so out of here early March, then we’ll see, I may be back, but not for that event, and they may pack me in together with body bags.
I’ll watch it unfold on EU side, and I’m quite sure no one around will go WOW!
March 29th? …… I am still struggling to come to terms with the Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson’s chilling (and bizarre) speech today: eager to assure a presumed ‘gung-ho’ electorate that “… since the new Global Great Game will be played on a global playing field, we must be prepared to compete for our interests and our values far, far from home”; and “Britain must be willing and able to lead the [NATO] Alliance, to bring stability in a changing world.” Lead it? Lead it! “In an era of ‘Great Power’ competition we cannot be satisfied simply protecting our own backyard. The UK is a global power with truly global interests.” What does that mean? It means you have been warned – “And action, on occasion, that may lead us to have to intervene alone.”
One of the sub-headings of this post-Brexit “defence” statement is “Transforming Defence through Increased Lethality”. In other words, the Ministry of Defence will effectively now become the Ministry of War; the decades dissolve in front of our eyes, and we return to the past. Lest you think I am misreading the connection between Brexit and a War strategy (Williamson uses the word “war” no less than ten times in a single speech), here is the evidence: “And Brexit. Brexit has brought us to a moment. A great moment in our history. A moment when we must strengthen our global presence, enhance our lethality, and increase our mass.”. Increase our Mass? Pray tell, does that include ‘people’? May we expect conscription?
I have always believed that Brexit entailed an aberrant, freakish attempt to resuscitate the long dead British, toxic, Great Power, ‘balance of power’ pretensions. Nevertheless, I can rarely remember anything quite so belligerently presumptuous as this speech, since the Opium Wars in the 1840s; and at that time Britain’s opponent was not armed with modern technology, much beyond the threat of fireworks, and a communications network consisting of cutting-edge flags.
The Conservatives cannot even wait for March 29th to bang the drum. You have been warned. Now that is what I call “meltdown”.
I agree with you
A sickening display by a man promoted far beyond his competence
I share JSW’s dismay at Williamson’s ludicrously naive statement which reeked of ignorance, arrogance and unjustified entitlement. Williamson has clearly never lived and worked abroad for any length time or he might be aware that, as a result mainly of Empire, the default setting for Britain in the minds of foreigners I met and worked with in the course of a career that took me to four continents was distrust.
Add to that the incompetence being demonstrated daily by Brexit and the resultant Schadenfreude being enjoyed around the world at Britain’s self-inflicted chaotic mess, and his utterances are bound to be dismissed everywhere as the rantings of ignoramus.
The Guardian’s John Crace has now achieved the ultimate hat trick with his labelling of Williamson as Private Pike (of Dad’s Army fame) to follow his creations of the Maybot and Failing Grayling. Sheer genius.
Would you recommend everybody to follow your lead?
Not just to decline a spending opportunity, but to discuss it publicly, for some purpose which is unclear. What good can come of it if everybody followed you actions?
I am not declining the opportunity
I rather hope it happens
But are you really saying I should not risk manage?
How bizarre
Thanks – I imagine if everyone followed your lead and stopped purchases on what might happen to the economy, the spiral would become a self fulfilling prophesy. It would happen, leading to chaos and hardship.
I’m not sure your delay in this purchase has the common good in mind, and I would discourage your readers from doing the same.
Have you heard of the paradox of thrift?
If not, start reading
For all sorts of reasons
Oh, and get out more
We have booked Eurotunnel to France for the Saturday before Brexit with no return date in case of problems in Calais post 29 March. Apparently 30 March is being dubbed DINDE (Day 1 no deal exit) which rather aptly is the French word for a turkey! And of course the first working day post Brexit is April Fools Day.
As an IT professional who worked on the Y2K project in my bank for 2 years, I can assure you that if we had not done all that work it would have been a nightmare.
Jan 2nd would have been bad enough but that would not have been the end of it for weekly and monthly tasks would have been in the wings.
One system that was fixed would have been wiped clean of all accounts when the first monthly run to delete outdated records took place – in mid January.
Oh and some clean-up processes run quarterly.
I had a pretty difficult end to last year and, because I’ve only a limited budget, I’m planning a weeks break in mid-March. Like you, I can’t risk losing money by booking something later in the year. Just in case…