Vaccine Passports

It’s looking like Covid will be with us for a long time. As the virus mutates faster than we can ever conceivably vaccinate the planet the likelihood increases that we’ll be living with some form of restrictions for a while. How should we deal with it? I won’t answer that more specifically than “test lots of things in a scientific manner across the world, and copy what works in a way that’s best for society”. A bit of a wash-out answer, though probably beats the last twelve months’ approach.

One (of the many) things to consider will be identifying to society those at risk (of hurt/vector-of-contagion/something) from those not at risk. Whether this should be done at all is another philosophical question – we have done for a long time with Yellow Fever – but how to do it should be easy. Digital certificates.

The Chinese use phone apps, or Borg-implants or something, and similar has been suggested in the West. These have the benefit of flexibility: they could include all sorts of goodies like visible displays and Big Brother being able to track you. Strangely this might discourage some use. Having to install government-written software on phones mightn’t always be popular.

A digital certificate is just a number in a certain format. It contains some info, and is cryptographically ‘signed’ by a trusted body. Cryptography and signing just mean it was put through a mathematical sum. We use them all the time at the moment. All encrypted websites – anything with ‘https://’ and a padlock in the address bar, i.e. most of them – use them. If you look at the certificate details you’ll see all the contained data: what websites can use it, their contact details, when it’s valid for, who signed it, where you can check it, what it can be used for (web, email encryption, signing other certificates, etc); it can even contain pictures.

Certificates work in a hierarchy: there’s a ‘Certificate Authority’ at the top which signs certificates for websites. Each website requests its cert of a CA. There’s a bunch of major commercial CAs which have some data built into your web browser, so when you go to a website your browser can tell immediately if the cert is genuine. You can have a CA sign a sub-CA, so a top-level CA could authorise a company’s own Certificate Authority to issue certificates for its own webservers.

Being just a number means it can’t actually do anything; it can’t run malicious nasties on your phone. But it can carry trustable information. It can be downloaded, saved on a phone, saved on a USB stick or written in longhand on paper. Any number of apps can be written to download, save and display them. And all the software and experience to manage them is already out there, and is mature. The ITU X.509 standard that governs certificates is fairly mature in computer terms, being around since 1988.

A Covid certificate could work in a similar way to website ones. Maybe the WHO (who.int) signs each state’s health authority CA, which issues certificates to individuals as they get tested or vaccinated. The certificate could have mandatory fields like ‘name’, and optional fields like ‘vaccination status’, ‘antibody test status’, ‘QR code’, and a plethora of local others. The health authority would issue a new cert whenever there’s a change in status, such as vaccination. You could automate the processes, conceivably easily… if your government stores your vaccination on something better than an old spreadsheet.

This doesn’t answer what information should be stored or shared. But it does provide a trustable way to share information if that becomes necessary. And it doesn’t need a central store open to the world to look at – because we know state websites of private data are always a good idea. It’s akin to printing a document that says “This has serial number X, the bearer is called Y, and has vaccination Z” and has a contact phone number. You could call the number and ask “I have X, owned by Y who has Z. Is this true?” And they would answer Yes or No.

Insulation (2) – Grenfell and aftermath

There’s a load of media noise about all the buildings covered in Grenfellesque flammable insulation. Who should pay to remove it?

The owners? They can’t afford it. And it’s not fair to punish them for what the surveyors’ said was OK when they bought. Owning a building brings lots of unforseen expenses though, it’s a gamble. It’s not unreasonable they should have to contribute something, but it shouldn’t bankrupt them.

The manufacturers went out of their way to sell it, knowing it was lethal. Should they pay? Look, nice idea, these guys were vicious and caused deaths. But did they break the law? What we can build with is governed by building standards. If there was money to be made out of it, and building standards said we could build with Semtex, then someone would. It would be immoral, but it wouldn’t be illegal.

In reality if we screwed the manufacturers to the wall for every penny they have it would pay a miniscule amount of what’s needed. In financial terms blaming them is pointless. Making a model of killer salesmen (and women) wouldn’t be a bad thing though… screw them to the wall to demonstrate that we like our capitalism to have morals. This ought to be done in a way to screw the management and shareholders, but let the manufacturing base be taken over and keep going. No point in putting people out of work and moving the industry to China because of a handful immoral salespeople. It should be a demonstration without structural consequences.

The fault lies with our building standards. This is a state responsibility that failed. The state (i.e. us taxpayers) have to foot the bill I’m afraid.

One thing that should come out of it is a more rigorous process for maintaining and enforcing building standards, not least so less people die.

Shops, cities and insulation (1)

The news is another chain of shops went bust and an internet retailer bought the brands but not the lossmaking premises. Eh, not much news really. What is news is that there’s much agonising in the media over this and the future of ‘The High Street’. It seems the commentariat have had their heads in a bag for a while. Oh, and the UK government’s making a mess of its home insulation programme. It’ll take 10 years to do its limited plans at the current rate.

There are a number of connected issues here. In no particular order (but if looking for priorities note that one says ‘going to destroy our world’):

1. Post-war redesign of cities to move life out and make them entirely dependent on shops and offices left them economically brittle (and soulless).

  • The world has moved on. Thanks to the internet (of a quarter century ago) shops and offices aren’t needed so much, removing cities’ attraction and economic raison d’etre.
  • People not commuting to the office means the death of cities’ peripheral service industries.

Covid accelerated – not caused – these changes.

2. Global warming is going to destroy our world unless we do something about greenhouse gas emissions.

  • We need many technical and lifestyle changes to fix this. The biggest single one in the UK is to insulate our buildings, though we’ll have to change how they’re heated and powered too. We’ll also have to turn down our average travel.
  • There’s a shortage of skills to do any of this building, insulation and alteration.
  • There’s a shortage of low and medium skilled work in the economy.
  • By the by there’s a shortage of places to live.

3. The economy’s collapsed, and the government’s looking for ways to spend money that’ll do something beneficial. ‘Looking for’ might be an overstatement, but ‘should be’ at least.

Am I being overly simplistic here? This seems so blindingly obvious it hurts.
Cities have too many shops and offices, but not enough people. People have not enough homes. The homes (and the shops and offices) need modification. There’s a shortage of skills for this modification. There’s a surplus of labour.

Well start with building standards and training. Huge training, there’s going to be a lot of baristas and shop attendants who could be lagging attics. Stop the Mickey Mouse insulation sideshow and start a BIG building rejuvenation project. Convert much of the commercial property to residential, then people will be in town anyway bringing spending (and walking not driving there).

This will be a large job; crossing many ministerial, central and local government, and education and industry boundaries. It needs to be led by a senior figure, say… the Minister for Climate Change.

Why the Liberals should become the New Tories

Westminster politics is split into two groups: The Conservative Party and the Not-Conservative Parties. The latter traditionally fish in the same pool of votes. The Conservatives themselves are split into two: The Business-Friendly – a practical centre-right bloc, and The Little Englanders – a blend of nationalists, tub-thumpers and fantasists.

On policy
The Liberal Democrats have been unsure where to stand relative to Labour; meandering left and right as the main NCP does the opposite. Flexibility has its benefits of course, you’re free to express your dynamism in the changing world. But having to be always in reaction to the big guy doesn’t look free. And voters like relative positions on firm foundations, not shifting sands.

On vote base
Fishing with a smaller net in the same pool as Labour will never be a big-catch tactic. So where’s there a bigger pool to fish in?

Forget fishing, just take a pool.

Now the Conservatives’ two groups aren’t a natural mix, nor an easy one. The stolid bunch who want a stable economy and free trade to keep making money from considered themselves the Tory base. They’d be happy to drop the other lot overboard. The other lot, flag-waving and living in a dream world of returning empire, also consider themselves the Tory base. Could you split them? Could you have ‘New Conservative’ and ‘Conservative and Bigots’ parties? No, the oldest party in the world won’t be officially dividing soon. Could you peel away one half? Maybe, but which and how? Let’s face it, peeling the Little Englanders rightward would be hard. Nigel Farage, with his pin-stripe suit and brown shirt, used his charm. He succeeded in breaking the country, but there’s limits. Most old conservatives consider themselves well above him and his sort of thing.

How about the Business-Friendly half? Well they’re the pragmatic bloc. Pragmatism was the Tories’ defining characteristic since Robert Peel, so arguably they have the claim as inheritors, but what’s in a name when there’s more important things to be done. Honest Boris and the Tub-Thumpers haven’t exactly made them welcome (have they Ken, Phil, Michael…?). And they crossed the aisle in reasonable numbers when Blair rebranded Labour as pro-business.

So the first question is what would happen if there was a centrist party: socially liberal, economically sensible (if not a little conservative), appreciating social services (the NHS was built – whatever they tell you – to keep workers working), conscious of the environmental work to be done (we can’t leave a wasteland to our children… and there’s business in it), and with some credentials – not a flash in the pan? I’d say if it could advertise a competent front bench the business-friendly Tories would cross aisle again, maybe for good.

And the second question: what would it take to turn the Lib-Dems into such a party? Not much. Elect Rory Stewart as leader, stir the mix and leave to rise for 12 months.

The result of such a migration might be a large sensible socially progressive centre-right party, a large centre-left party – currently sensible but has had its accidents, and a bunch of xenophobes fading into irrelevance. And in 350 years it’s not the first time Whigs and Tories have made up.