Thanks for sharing your thoughts folks, very interesting responses for a subject that we all feel strongly about.

Hello:

If you haven't guessed by now I am very emotionally concerned about the current state of the UK even though I live permanently in the US.

I have made some pointed remarks about UK events in some threads, such as the dumping of unprocessed waste by the water companies, and was surprised by a lack of response from other IET members.

It seems no other IET members care.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay Florida 

Hi Peter,

My personal attitude to social media is that it can be entertaining, it can occasionally be useful for sharing skills and knowledge, but it's an awful place to discuss deeply held concerns - either it starts a flame war or a group of people just agreeing with each other ("ain't it awful") but not doing anything about it. So please don't assume that just because people don't post here it means they don't care, it just means they care by their actions (often in their day job) rather than what they post on a forum.

A lesson that became abundantly clear on these forums during lockdown when we had some awful flame wars. Lisa was kept very busy with her fire extinguisher!

I've been on these forums for nearly 20 years now (back to IEE days) and I've never seen a post on here change anything, not even in IET policy, and certainly not in the outside world. But sometimes they do give useful information on an aspect of engineering or on engaging with the IET to someone who was looking for it, I really think that's the best we can hope for. 

Thanks,

Andy

Hello Andy:

I am not specifically picking on you, but the last  four words you used in your answer reflects the attitude that lies at the bottom of the UK's malaise --"BEST WE CAN HOPE FOR"!

Here is another one of my real work related stories:-

In the 1990's I had the responsibility of auditing all of my company's parts distributors throughout Europe. A parts distributor should operate like a bank with the inventory being considered money.

I visited France, Italy, Germany, Brussels Denmark and England at multiple locations in each country, all in one trip,  

Thank heavens I had a British passport.

I enjoyed meeting the management and seeing their operations - all except the two in the UK which basically followed the words you expressed -- IT"S THE BEST WE CAN DO.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

Hello Andy- following on with "Best we can hope for" I have another real live event that happened this month in the UK.

My 91 year old cousin living in a nursing home  fell in his bathroom and broke a hip. He laid on the bathroom floor for 5 hours waiting for an ambulance to transport him to a hospital located about 10 miles away.

He quickly died when in hospital. 

I guess that a good example of "Best we can hope for" concerning the state of the NHS.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay   

There's the "best we can hope for" from a discussion forum, and "the best we can hope for" from the engineering industry (or wider society if you like). These are very different things, you probably realised that I meant the former.

I found Elon Musk's description of his dream for Twitter / X as "the global town square" to be much more accurate than I think he realised. Think of the conversations that actually happen in a town square - friends and business colleagues meet, usually by arrangement (although occasionally by chance), to have exactly the same discussions that they would have anywhere else anyway. Meanwhile various other people shout loudly into the void in general about their views of the rights and wrongs of the world - and don't get listened to (even the people who agree with them tend to give them a wide berth, as any of us who've tried working on a campaign stall in a public place knows well).

There are ways of "improving" the world (a contentious point in itself as one person's idea of improvement is another person's idea of detriment), but I'm pretty convinced from experience, and from my long engagement with political (small p) activism, that discussing them on social media platforms such as this is, in practice, no more effective than holding up a banner in a town square. All it does is lead to the frustration that no-one seems to be listening. 

The way to change the world is to directly engage with people who are actively involved with running the world...and they're not to be found here...they have more interesting places to be!

P.S. Also, personally I keep my political views and my professional views separate as far as possible for the reasons discussed on another thread. Despite my points above, I do occasionally post on such issues on Facebook whereas I wouldn't here, or on LinkedIn, and I think that's very common. Even if I was retired (so didn't have to consider how such posts might be seen by some as reflecting my perceived professionalism or my employer's credibility) I'd probably feel the same way, it's the same discussion we had before - I strongly consider that we have to work together as an engineering community even if we all have different viewpoints as to what's "right".

OK, someone might retort "but you do post your views on climate change here" (or equality and diversity), which is sort of fair enough. But what I try to post is my understanding of the scientific evidence, and what I have picked up from friends. colleagues and family who work in scientific research in the fields, I try to keep it based on peer reviewed evidence, but probably have occasionally let my own views slip in. Main thing is that I do try to remember to say "I'm not a scientific expert in this field, this is just my understanding..." If we are going to post on politically contentious areas here - and sometimes there are engineering discussion reasons for doing so - I do feel very passionately that we do need to relate to peer reviewed evidence, and clearly state the limits of our expertise, which at that point gets into something that is typically much too long for a forum post.  

Which leads on to, Peter, you mentioned my "long" reply on the "right to repair" thread, and of course you were absolutely right, for a forum post it was a ridiculously long post, but for a discussion of the issue it was negligibly short - maybe half a side of A4 if it was printed out? If I was actually going to describe a summary overview of the issue (let alone make any comments on potential ways forward) in a professional role we'd be looking at a 20-30 page report - the sort of thing we routinely produce in our day jobs. So I know you really don't like the phrase, but that's a really good example, for someone who needed professional advice on that topic "the best they could hope for" from these forums was that maybe they'd meet someone on the forums who understands the subject in depth (not me!), so that they could engage professionally off-forum to go into in sufficient depth. 

But the forums work really well if you have a one sentence question needing a one sentence answer e.g. if you want to know whether to put a ferrule on single core wire. And yes, don't!

I think that's me drained of all my views on this subject now - I did just think of the Elon Musk point last night which I wanted to add as that so neatly for me summarised the issue with trying to have these discussion on social media (or indeed in the pub, which is the place I traditionally used to relate these forums to). And gave an opportunity to get down some thoughts that had been running around in my head for ages about what these forums are "for". There's some really interesting reading around now about the effectiveness or not of social media (and it's potential for appalling impact on users mental health for all the frustration reasons expressed here) which goes into it much more scientifically than I could.

Sun's come out now so I will now go into it and saw some wood!

Thanks and out,

Andy

P.P.S. Bother, only got as far as pouring myself a pre-sawing cup of coffee before having another thought. One of the things I am passionate about is that the engineering industry is rubbish (in the UK at least), when compared to all the other professions, in the way it supports engineers moving into and up the profession. It is the only UK profession where you graduate and that's it, it's up to you from then on with no post graduate structured training or guidance.

I feel very strongly that the PEIs need to help provide that support and guidance, and when I look back at what I've seen on these forums over those 20 years-ish it is, just occasionally, one of the two things they can do and can be really good at doing (the other being the Wiring and Regs forum which has always really been its own beast). It's a place where rising talent can talk to a range of engineers outside their own company (which may have its own agenda for them) and get a range of useful, if sometimes contradictory, unbiased advice from lived experience.

So if there was anywhere I think these forums could grow and develop to provide a real service within the IETs remit that would be it.

For discussing how awful the world is there's Facebook (other depressing social media platforms are available). For engaging with engineers to actually develop solutions to the world's problems there's IET conferences, or some truly excellent environmental consultancies! (Not wanting to mention my employer in particular of course  )  

I will really stop thinking about this now and let others come in if they want...

Hello Andy:

I have never used or intend to use any social media like (Twitter/X or Facebook)  because of computer security concerns.

There is no fully secure computer system.

I also do not have a smart phone- I only use simple plain wireless phones,  again for security reasons.

Oh (going on in another direction) how does one handle (what I call digital assets) for reference in one legal will or Trust?

By the way the most difficult questions are usually the shortest ones involving the word "WHY". 

Example WHY is the UK undergoing so much wet/damp cold weather at this time?

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay   

Hello Andy:

I have never used or intend to use any social media like (Twitter/X or Facebook)  because of computer security concerns.

There is no fully secure computer system.

I also do not have a smart phone- I only use simple plain wireless phones,  again for security reasons.

Oh (going on in another direction) how does one handle (what I call digital assets) for reference in one legal will or Trust?

By the way the most difficult questions are usually the shortest ones involving the word "WHY". 

Example WHY is the UK undergoing so much wet/damp cold weather at this time?

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay