High finance

An incomprehensible piece in yesterday's Guardian about the new owners of BHS. It seems that a bunch of finance types - Mayfair based? -  bought BHS from a certain Mr. Green for £1, a BHS which one assumes to come encumbered with debt and with pensions. They then, more or less the same day, get BHS, which they by then owned, to lend them them £8m, £3m of which is now in the trouser pockets of four of said finance types. The unions who look after all the shop assistants are wondering what might be in this deal for them.

Then we have the nuclear power deal for Hinkley Point, which one set of commentators is saying is a dreadful deal for us, and another set of commentators is saying is a dreadful deal for them. So dreadful that the relevant finance director has walked off-stage, rather than be tarnished by association. The only one who looks like a winner is our Chancellor, with his penchant for grandiose projects. As the Guardian reminds us, our government looks set to fail us in one of its basic duties, that of keeping the lights on in our homes. Something which they sometimes even manage in the so-called developing world.

All dwarfed however by the possibility that Google's Go program, Alpha-Go, may, over the next few days, beat the world champion in Korea, a country where it seems they take the game very seriously indeed - rather more seriously than I did as a school boy, playing on a home made, quarter-size board designed for travel, just about fifty years ago. My first feeling was one of excitement: computers are getting there if they can do Go. My second feeling was one of sadness: how much will be left for us humans to do? When google has it all, what will we have left? I suppose, as a former white collar worker, I am just getting a small dose of what coal miners and textile workers, to take just two examples, have already had a big dose of.

Another angle was the sense of anti-climax, emptiness even, which comes when you get to the Grail. As is well known, the Holy Grail is supposed to be a quest, a quest which runs for ever; actually getting there rather spoils things. See reference 1 for a sample from the extensive online collection of granular materials.

Perhaps the future will be us taking it in turns to flip burgers for each other - as most people will be happy to pay that little bit extra to be served by a fellow human. Assuming, that is, that global warning doesn't get us first.

Reference 1: http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/theme/holy-grail.