The Wolfsburg Group and the OECD both say in recent documents that Critical Thinking is important. Welcome: I've been applying that in consultancy, systems design and training for more than 30 years. Shame it took you so long to work it out. 

I have written a paper called 

"Critical Thinking is the mother of invention and the saviour of societies."

I don't think I'm being over-dramatic.  Many of today's ills can be laid at the door of those who have designed it out of modern education systems. But in financial crime risk, i's a core skill. 

There is a rising number of articles, often by academics, saying that the UK is ungovernable. 

This argument is classic misdirection. The UK is not ungovernable - it is ungoverned, in that it has not been governed in an appropriate way since, and including, Major. 

The government does not run the country - that's the civil service. It does not run the lives of its citizens - that's the civil service and tech companies. And radical mayors and leaders of councils. The government works against the people in so many ways. The annoying thing is that we were warned. 

All politicians and "community leaders" lie. They all promise great benefits for those that follow them and the ideology they espouse.

But, ignoring the supernatural aspects of religion, they are promising things they cannot guarantee to people who ultimately suffer from reliance on those promises. 

In other fields we would call it fraud but in politics, it's business as usual. 

And of all the lies, the socialist lie that everyone's life will be better if their salaries are higher is perhaps the most pernicious. 

I’ve never been under any illusions: I’ve always been short, fat and ugly. And now, by the measure of many, I’m old, short fat and ugly. I’m rubbish at most sports and I’m socially awkward. The word “nerd” might have been coined for me (it wasn’t).

In fact, I have only two saving graces and the first is a consequence of the second.

I am witty and expressive but my main strength is my intellect.

    Then in one terrible moment, it broke...
 

The case of the murder of Henry Nowak in December last year is not a financial crime. So why am I writing about it? Simple: it is a case study in suspicion, how it is formed, what is done with it and how presumptions over-ride evidence.

Can we confuse computers so much that everyone else works out they are unreliable? 

I'm quite well known in my field. I bloody well should be.  That, it appears, makes me a target for every chancer who wants to earn from my brand and effort.

The CoVid-19 pandemic ushered in the surveillance society and with it controls over how ordinary people lead ordinary lives with the result that we are now living in a society where we are all treated as if we are under suspicion. 

When we look at the pandemic in a historical context we learn that there was one massively different aspect to it, compared to previous pandemics. Well, two, there was a rush of academic papers that had little or no relevant data beyond that needed for reportage. The other one was an opportunity some had been waiting for.

We all know the stories about goldrush towns and similar shooting-star microcivilisations. They are dramatised on TV, in film, in books but rarely taught as history, rarely becoming part of what we grow up knowing. 

 

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