The European Company

I was recently asked about the structure of the oil company Shell. For those who don't know, Shell is a company that is incorporated in the UK, which has its primary listing in the UK, but which has its head office in the Netherlands. It is increasingly difficult to think of a European company as a 'British' company or a 'Dutch' company. It is increasingly the case that we are thinking in terms of a 'European' company.

This is not entirely unexpected. The primary source of company law in Europe, irrespective of the place of incorporation, derives from the EU. Nations interpret the EU directives to suit local conditions - which is why it is much more dfficult to form a company in Belgium than the UK - and may subject the companies to a local Corporation Tax regime. However, the main trend is towards a corporate harmonisation across Europe.

Another example of this trend came to light this week. Barclays, a UK bank, announced that they were in talks to take over ABN Amro, a Dutch bank. Like Shell, the resulting company would be incorporated in the UK, with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange, but with its headquarters in Amsterdam and a secondary listing on Euronext. This is a clever move, as it would give the bank a presence in the Eurozone without leaving the Sterling zone. (See article).

In many ways, this provides further evidence that the European Project is becoming less and less reversible. As we are now thinking in terms of European companies, national distinctions within Europe becime less relevant. I suspect that the next contentious issue will be the European taxation of European companies - possibly in the name of the harmonisation of EU-wide corporate tax rates. There is something like that already in place for VAT (an EU-wide Sales Tax), all it needs is to be extended to EU-wide profits as well as EU-wide sales.

In the coming months, we shall be scanning for progress in the field of tax harmonisation - it is the next milestone in European integration.

The Economist's Curse - Part 2

If it is the case that economic forecasting suffers from an inherent flaw (that of ceteris paribus - the future will be the same as the past), the question arises over why it is that this work continues to be produced? Even to the point of it flourishing.

We can start to understand this as part of a model of consumption - the consumption of information about the future. If there were to be no demand for information about the future, then there would be no production of information about the future. In this respect, it is the demand that creates the supply. Information about the future is demanded because we all have to make decisions in the present that have consequences in the future.

A good illustration of this point was provided this week by the decision whether or not the UK ought to act now to secure the option to renew Trident (the UK independent nuclear deterrent) in about 2020. (See article for story). The decision was whether or not to sanction the concept and design work for the Trident replacement, at a very significant cost to the UK Exchequer. Not to go ahead would mean saving the cost, but eliminating the possibility of renewal in 2020. To go ahead does not commit the UK to replacement in 2020, but does enable the possibility of its renewal.

In looking for an answer to this dilemma, an element of foresight was needed by the government. The key areas of foresight were whether or not a deterrent would be needed in the 2020s and under what circumstances a deterrent would be needed. To answer these questions, point forecasts of future deployment options were taken, and the advice was given to government that it could be envisaged that a deterrent could be needed in the 2020s and 2030s.

To deter which threat is something of a moot point, but we are living in an era of great change where we cannot presume that old relationships will last indefinitely, and Trident can target Washington just as easily as it can target Moscow. In undertaking this exercise, the probable futures have been determined. This is good government, but poor futures, as we have not considered a whole range of possible futures that could happen, but now won't because they have been excluded from consideration.

Of course, by excluding a whole range of posibilities, the act of decision making has been made that much easier. Perhaps this is why we live with the Economist's Curse? The Economist's Curse cuts the cost of making decisions about the future.

Perspectives Of Globalisation

An Evening Organised By The Tomorrow Network

The Royal Society, UK

12th March 2007

Participants:

MARTIN ALBROW, Centre for Global Governance, LSE

GEORGE YIP, Director of Research & Innovation, CapGemini

There are few who would argue against Globalisation being a feature of the Post-Modern age. However, when we go beyond the platitudes, there is little agreement about what exactly constitutes Globalisation and whether or not it is a good thing. On the one hand, it is globalisation that is blamed for throwing out of work thousands of workers in the industrialised West. On the other hand, it is the phenomenon that is responsible for 100 million people moving out of poverty in China and India each year. I was attracted to the evening by the prospect of resolving these apparent paradoxes.

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The Clash Of Civilisations

by Samuel Huntington

ISBN 0-7432-3149-X

I came to this book through the recommendation of others. In our research for the America 2025 project, we continually bumped into references to the model laid out in this book. This made it important for us to consider the model, if only to use it as a base line in assessing the work undertaken by others. In turn, the model has been quite influential in the formation of foreign policy in recent years, particularly as it provides a metric whereby we can include the Islamic world. For this reason, it would be inappropriate for us not to consider a work of such influence.

The civilisational approach is a useful start to considering international relations. It can be used to explain a number of conflicts within the contemporary world (e.g. in the Ukraine), but it also has its shortcomings. It is a useful tool for us to use, but not the only one. For this reason, I would recommend the book.

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Paradise And Power

by Robert Kagan

ISBN 1-84354-177-7

Mr Kagan sets out his stall in the very first sentence of the book. We are told that: “It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world.” I think, more than anything, it was this first sentence that drew me into the book.

We live at a time when many in Europe are seriously questioning the role of the USA in the world. This questioning of US leadership in world affairs has caused many in America to reconsider what the commitment of the US to world affairs ought to be. The rise of a unipolar system of international relations has also seen the increased willingness of the US to act unilaterally in world affairs. In taking up the book, I hoped to gain a deeper insight into this apparent rift that is developing between the US and its key supporters in Europe.

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The Rise Of The Creative Class

By Richard Florida

ISBN 0-465-02477-7

We seem to be living in a world that defies explanation. There are many features of the world in which we are living that we cannot explain from our past experience. We know that we are living in an era of very rapid change, and we do not have a framework that we can use to understand those changes. It is this sense of bewilderment – “Futureshock” as the Tofflers would have it - that attracted me to the book. I felt that it might help me to explain the world in which I find myself. We decided to incorporate the book as part of our Small Business Project, which has a keen interest in the future direction of the UK economy over the next 15 years or so, because it seemed to have something useful to say about small business formation and regional development.

The real test for an academic work such as this lies in its utility. Does the book help us to understand the world in which we live? I feel that it does, and I also feel that it advances our knowledge by a considerable degree. It provides an alternative to the established location theory, which might not be working as effectively as it needs to. By way of conclusion, I am very convinced by the arguments advanced in the book, and I have no hesitation in recommending it to all of those who have an interest in local regeneration, social development, and the Knowledge Economy.

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The Economist's Curse

What are the key attributes of a good piece futures work? In my mind, one of the key attributes is that the futures work does not take the future as a given. If, for example, we are looking out to the year 2050, we ought to acknowledge that there are many permutations of the future that are, at the present time, possible. It would be silly to argue that there is only one fixed and given future on the path to 2050.

It is odd, therefore, that economists do precisely this. We have moved away from the monsters of central planning that dominated life in the 1970s, but we are still plagued by those who feel that the path out to the future is inherently knowable and determined. That the future is nothing more than a set of simultaneous partial derivatives. As an example of this type of thinking, our attention was recently drawn to a piece emanating from the LSE which predicted that, in 2051, there would be 1,735,087 people in the UK living with dementia. (See article).

Even allowing for healthy margins of error - the number could be achieved in 2048, say, or 2053, or whenever, or never - this does sound a curious piece of work. To start with, the precision is so great that the number is not quite believable. A more credible prediction would be 1.7 Britons, which is eactly how the press reported it, rather than 1,735,087 Britons. The precision almost invites us to ask where the numbers came from. A summary of the report is publicly available (see report), but that is missing the point.

The point is the assumptions that the forecast uses. It assumes that the future will be like the past - ceteris paribus, as the economists call it. However, what happens if the future is not like the past? What happens if there is a major pharmaceutical breakthrough in the next 44 years? What happens if the nature of dementia changes? What happens if society changes the way in which it treats dementia? What happens if society doesn't age quite the way it is forecast to change in the report?

This is why economists are so often wrong - their curse is ceteris paribus. The future is rarely like the past. It is the understanding of this point that gives futurists, as a group of professionals, something to add to the debate. Futurists accept that the past can guide the future, but also that the future may not be like the past. It will be diffferent. We try to lift the curse of ceteris paribus.

The Future Of Security

An Evening Organised By The Tomorrow Network

The Royal Society, UK

28th February 2007

Participants:

AUDREY CRONIN, Changing Nature of War Programme, Oxford University

MICHAEL CLARKE, Kings College, London University


A secure future is something that we all hope for. However, our concern about the security of Civil Society is a recent phenomenon. In many ways, it is true to say that our concern started on September 11th 2001, as that was the date that the US engaged with the issue. Since 9/11, security has been an issue that has dominated international affairs. Not that 9/11 touched many nations. It did, however, draw in many nations as the US engaged with the issue.

9/11 has also determined how we define ‘security’. It has come to mean that we are secure from terrorist attack. However, in a wider definition, ‘security’ could have a number of different meanings. It could mean that we – the human race - are secure from hunger. Or poverty. Or disease. There could be a number of manifestations of ‘security’ that we have lost in recent years.

It is with these points in mind that I attended the evening. I did rather expect the programme to reflect the modern usage of the term ‘security’, as Dr Cronin is the Director of Studies at the Changing Nature of War Programme, Oxford University, and Prof. Clarke is part of the Centre for Defence Studies at Kings College, London. However, I was also interested in finding out how they thought the issue of ‘security’ might develop in the future.

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The Breaking Of Nations

by Robert Cooper

ISBN 1-84354-231-5

I was attracted to this book for a number of reasons. To begin with, Robert Cooper is a much respected commentator on International Affairs. He is one of the UK’s most senior diplomats and was formerly a special adviser to Tony Blair on foreign policy. Merely by being at the centre of events at an important point in recent history ensures that we ought to listen to what Mr Cooper has to say. However, Mr Cooper does have much to say that ought to be heeded if we are to understand events in the contemporary world. In the context of our “America 2025” project (see project), his book delivers an important conceptual model, which we will find of great use when undertaking the creation of the scenarios.

I see this as an important book, one that is worth reading. I liked the style of the writing and I found that I could follow the arguments without a great deal of effort on my part. Parts of the book were very illuminating and parts of the book contributed greatly to my understanding of the world. For this reason, I would recommend the book.

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The Russian Upswing

There is one school of thought that believes that much of what happens in the world is the product of cycles. If this theory is correct, then there would be no beginnings and no endings to human affairs - just undulations revisiting territory that we had seen before.

My attention was attracted to a piece in the Engish edition of Le Monde Diplomatique that seemed to take the view that we do, indeed, live in a cyclical world. Apart from providing an interesting perspective from the non-English speaking world, the article argues that we are about to see the re-emergence of he Cold War between Russia and 'the West'. (See article) Ignoring who 'the West' are, an interesting spin in the article is that President Putin is increasingly behaving as the Tsars behaved. (See list of characters).

This resonates with a view that we have taken for some while now. Enriched as a petro-economy, there is much evidence to suggest that Russia is likely to enjoy a resurgence in the short to medium term. How profound that resurgence is will depend upon how 'the West' reacts to it. We suspect that this is an issue where the interests of Europe will diverge from the interests of the US. We produced a scenario on this last year, where the US is isolated by a resurgent Russia and Russia wins the Second Cold War by 2018. (See scenario).

Of course, a scenario is not a prediction. It is a vision of what the future could hold. If we wish to avoid this vision (I certainly do), then we need to act in the present to avert this particular future coming to pass. So, when you leave a room, turn off the lights. It will help to lessen our energy dependency.

The Chaos Point

by Ervin Laszlo

ISBN 1-57174-485-1

Some would say that this is not an easy book to read. It throws out so many questions to the reader that, as you read the book, you find that your mind is moving off at a tangent for most of the time. It is, however, a book worth struggling over, as it is quite an important book.

I enjoyed the challenge of the book. It is a hard read – both in terms of style and content – but an important read nonetheless. It is worth the effort to struggle through the book because of the macro-model of the world that it presents. The argument is well reasoned – if obscure at times – and does actually sound a clarion call to action. I was convinced by the future worth creating and I rather hope that others rise to the challenge.

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The Fourth Power

by Gary Hart

ISBN 0-19-517683-9

This book is one of the most important books that I have read in recent years. Additionally, for those whose aims are to supplant the US in global geopolitics, this is an extraordinarily dangerous book. Gary Hart has simply re-stated the fundamentals that made America a great power. In doing so, he has breathed life into the concept of what it is to be American.

I really enjoyed this book. It is well written, the argument flows very well, and, although the topics are quite difficult at points, it is an easy read. The book is not too long, and does not dwell on points, which helps it to avoid being long winded. We can thoroughly recommend the book as it covers an important topic in an informed way, with a style that helps the reader to understand the points being made.

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The European Dream

by Jeremy Rifkin

ISBN 0-74-563425-7

It would be hard to argue against a proposition that something is happening in Europe. There is a force that first emerged after the Second World War that gathered momentum during the final quarter of the Twentieth Century, and is now starting to assert itself on the world stage. Defining exactly what that force is poses a much larger problem. We know that something is there, but we can’t quite say what it is. This lack of clarity on my part drew me to this book. I hoped that it would help me to define the essence of the European Project.

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Where Will It End?

It's always interesting to watch TV with young people. This week I was watching MTV with one of my daughters. We were watching the show 'My Super Sweet 16', which is a programme about the 16th birthday parties of reasonably well off children. (Click here for the Wiki page on the series). To date, all of the shows have been based in the US, but this is mere accident. They could equally apply to youngsters in London, Paris, Tokyo, or wherever there is a class of people with large amounts of money and not too many things to spend it upon.

I managed to catch Episode 23, where Nicole from San Francisco was given a party by her parents that cost $200,000 USD, along with a present of a car costing $49,000 USD. There were about 50 to 60 friends at the party. If the San Franciscans follow what we would see as normal rules of hospitality (if you come to my party, you are obliged to invite me to yours), then, on this level of spend, the group of friends would have had something in the region of $10 million USD to $12 million USD spent just on birthday parties.

Juxtaposed in my mind is this image from Hurricane Katrina (Click here for the image). What concerns me most is the apparent insouciance displayed by the Sweet Sixteeners towards groups such as the victims of Katrina. It appears that, in 'the West', we have great disparities in income, almost unbridled greed, and an indifference towards the less well off.

And perhaps that is where the futures point comes into play. In the past, in societies where there have been great inequalities in wealth, greed, and an indifference to one fellows, things have not ended happily for the well off. We think of France in 1789, which ended with the guillotine. We think of Europe in 1914, which ended on the Western Front. Even the Debbies of the 1920s - their world ended in the crash of 1929.

If this is a model that has relevance today, then are we close to an epoch ending event? If so, how will it all end?

Cold Winters Ahead?

A couple of articles on the BBC web site caught my attention this week. The first reported a survey from Scottish Widows (an investment company) that only about a third of self-employed people are saving enough for old age (see article). The survey is riddled with holes (for example, it only discusses the acquisition of financial instruments, which have been out of favour in recent years, and not property, which has been in favour). However, despite the reservations, the article sat well with a piece on the inability of UK pensioners to stay warm his winter (see article). We have just experienced a cold snap and this is something of a topical issue in the UK at the moment.

The articles describe the situation in the present. It becomes more interesting if we flesh the trends outwards into the future. If we add an overlay of climate change on top of the diminshed purchasing power of retirement incomes we start to see a point where our behaviour may change. For example, two people can enjoy the warmth of a room as much as one person. And so on until the capacity of the room is reached. I wonder if, in an environment of acute cold snaps, of soaring energy prices, diminishing purchasing power of pensions, we might see a move towards a form of communal living?

In many ways, we are. Many retirement facilities include a communal 'day-room' of some sorts. Churches are starting to place emphasis upon parish visitor groups. And, as the costs of elder-care soar, we are also seeing the reconnection of the extended family. It is now more common to see three or more generations living in the same house.

Perhaps we have reached a high water mark for the atomistic family. Perhaps financial circumstances will re-connect the family as a unit?

Made In Britain?

We often buy goods and services that have a stamp for their country of origin - Made in Britain, Made in China, and so on - but how often do we think about exactly what this means? There was an interesting note on the Interactive Investor web site this week that poses this question from the perspective of an investor (See Article).

The main tenor of the article was to argue that an investment in the largest of companies (e.g. the FTSE 100 in the UK) is, actually, an investment in the world economy, only from a peculiarly British slant, as British companies bring all of the baggage of the British commercial heritage.

In many ways, this is quite a natural development. As globalisation progresses, we would naturally expect there to be a larger incidence of inter-connected companies. What is, perhaps, most interesting is the degree to which non-European countries (especially Australia and South Africa) are integrating with UK companies. The integration of European companies with UK companies is to be expected as the process of European Integration gathers pace at the commercial, if not the political, level. We can expect this process to continue more rapidly.

From what we can see so far, this distinguishes Globalisation 2 (G2 - which ended in 1914) from Globalisation 3 (G3). G2 involved a dramatic increase in world trade, but without the financial integration that is accompanying G3. This has to be a good thing, because it reduces the chances of G3 ending as unhappily as G2. Certainly, there are still many factors that could blow G3 off course, but most people reading this post will have an interest in keeping G3 on track. This is something that continues to underwrite our prosperity.

In the end, does the country of origin matter? In many ways, this is a litmus test for how we view the future. If it does matter, then we are unlikely to progress that far from the nationalistic divisions that blighted most of the twentieth century. If it doesn't matter, there is a chance that we may have moved on from that point.

Counter-Trade In Rubbish

I came across an interesting story in the Independent this week. Just before Christmas, the world's largest container ship - the MS Emma Maersk - docked in the UK, laden with our Christmas presents. The boat has now turned around and is back on its way to China. (See article).

An important part of International Trade is the concept of counter-trade. It isn't efficient for a boat to sail half way around the world full of goods, and then to sail half way around the world again empty. If so, then an interesting question arises of what it is carrying. With the demise of manufacturing in the UK, what is it that we can export to China?

The answer is our rubbish. The UK has a real problem with waste disposal - there just isn't enough land for landfill sites and the relative cost of recycling rubbish is just prohibitive. Equally, China has a large demand for recyclable plastics, paper, steel and electrical goods. It is now cheaper to send plastic waste from London by sea to China than it is to send it by road to Manchester.

Of course, the cynics would argue that as most of what we import from China is rubbish anyway, the trade simply redistibutes it from one part of the world to another. On a more positive note, the trade is providing a much needed facility for the UK. I wonder if the Chinese would be interested in importing our nuclear waste?

Global Remix

By RICHARD SCASE

ISBN 0-7494-4871-7

At first I was confused by this book. I couldn’t quite make up my mind whether it was a futures text about the future of management, or whether it was a management text about the application of foresight in management. About half way through the book I decided that it was both. There are elements within the book that will appeal to those who wish to engage in management issues, and there are elements in the book that contain some very useful insights into the future.

This book is an ideal purchase for those managers and corporate planners who are looking for an introduction to foresight and futures studies. It is not too demanding and it does not require a great deal of technical knowledge in order to get the best from it. I would thoroughly recommend the book as a corporate gift for junior managers looking to raise their game. This is the demographic to which the book is aimed.

READ the full review.

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Why Europe Will Run The 21st Century

by MARK LEONARD

ISBN 0-00-719531-1

I really enjoyed reading this book. Mr Leonard has a style of writing that makes it easy to follow the argument. The book is divided into digestible sections, which makes it easy to put down and pick up again without losing the thread of the argument. This book is well recommended to those who would like to study the case for Europe put by an enthusiastic Europhile. The fact that Mr Leonard is a British Europhile is just an added bonus.

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Turning The Future Into Revenue

by GLEN HIEMSTRA

ISBN 0-471-79293-4

I really enjoyed this book. It is well written, the argument flows very well and the topics are quite easy to follow. This makes it an easy read. The book is not too long, and does not dwell on points, which helps it to avoid being long winded. We can thoroughly recommend the book as it covers an important topic in an informed way, with a style that helps the reader to understand the points being made. I would recommend the book to strategic planners as a text to describe the preliminary activities to strategic planning, and to act as an introduction to the study of the future.

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More Pieces In The Jig-Saw

Sometimes I find it useful to consider the future as a large unmade jigsaw puzzle. A puzzle where we currently do not have all of the pieces, and where, in the course of our travels, we find the odd piece here and there. Generally, the pieces that we find are relatively small and do not always link with other pieces that we have found. Every now and then, however, we do find a couple of interlinked pieces that help to reveal a good part of the overall picture.

Last week was a bit like that - we have acquired two important and linked pieces in our puzzle. The first was a very small piece on ITV News (ITV is the tabloid TV Channel in the UK) on the fate of the Carteret Islands. Click here to access the piece. I spent a little while trying to find out more about the islands. The Wiki entry is the best I have found so far (click here to see this). Anyway, it appears that the residents of the carteret Islands are about to become the first climate refugees.

The second piece to my jigsaw came from a piece on Yahoo News about Carbon Footprints (click here to access the piece). It always struck me as odd that Dubai, whilst being as hot as the desert, has the worlds longest indoor ski-slope. An estimate by the WWF now suggests that the UAE (of which Dubai forms a part) has the largest per capita Carbon Footprint in the world. What will surprise many in Europe is that it even larger than the US.

We can argue that the small population of Dubai rather limits the impact of this per capita footprint, but that is not the point. The point is the degree to which the indoor ski-slope impacts on the climate refugees. We are soon to reach an important milestone in global warming - the point at which we can no longer say that our activity (or inactivity in some cases) does not impact on the plant as a whole. Far from being a victimless phenomenon, global warming is now becoming personal, starting with the Carteret Islanders.

The Search For Meaning

An interesting invitation came across my desk recently - to go Tankballing. Tankballing is the latest version of the sport of Paintballing, which I believe, is known as 'wargames' in the US.

The idea of Paintballing is that a team (usually a group on a corporate team-building day) dresses up in army fatigues and goes around an enclosed environment shooting an opposing team with pellets of paint. Tankballing is the mechanised version of this, where teams go around a course, in a tank, shooting paint pellets at other tanks. (See Link).

It is interesting to reflect on why people do this sort of thing, as it has something quite profound to say about our futures. If we accept Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs', then as our more basic needs of, say food and shelter, are met, then we find that we are likely to progress on to higher orders of needs, such as finding meaning in our lives. Looking at this globally, last year over 100 million people in India and China moved out of poverty. As their disposable incomes rise, so, once their more basic needs are met, will their consumption on goods and services that help them in their quest to find meaning in their lives.

Tankballing might be at the extreme end of the spectrum in finding meaning - it recognises that we weren't always human - but it does represent a desire for adventure that is within modern societies. This desire manifests itself in many ways. For example, those who desire adventure in the form of the Merchant Explorers could be catered for by companies such as Fred Olsen, who operate a Star Clipper service (see http://www.starclippers.co.uk/), where the traveller can sail the seven seas in a Tall Ship. Once the rising consumers in the BRIC nations latch onto this form of consumption, demand is likely to grow commensurately.

This will have quite an impact on resource use and the environment in the future. One could question the sustainability of ever more growth in adventure tourism. A diminishing resource is likely to be peace and quiet when on holiday. Paradoxically, it could become the case that the only way to find peace and quiet is to stay at home!

Demographic Redundancy

We nearly lost a dear friend over Christmas - the Little Chef chain of restaurants. The Times had a piece that gave the facts of the story (View Article), but there is more to it than the financial pages can convey.

We need to provide a bit of background for those who are based outside of the UK. The road sytstem in the UK has been constructed at a number of levels. The primary routes are the Motorways (the 'M' roads). The secondary routes are Trunk Roads (the 'A' roads). Facilities are provided on the Motorways by a series of service stations that are regulated by the Department of Transport. Facilities on the Trunk Roads are not regulated so closely, and are determined by market forces. The Little Chef is a national network of facilities (about 300 of them) based almost exclusively on the Trunk Roads. They normally provide a petrol facility, a dining facility, and a rest room facility.

The emphasis of the Little Chef chain is 'slow'. In a world of instant service and fast food, the Little Chef restaurants provide a counter-balance to the pace of modern life. The chain works on a model of service at the table and the food is cooked to order on the premises. It is almost diametrically opposed to the McDonalds model of food service. They appeal to people like me, who like to travel slowly, who want a bit of company when on the road, and who want their meals individualised rather than mass-produced. Sadly, this demographic is diminishing.

As we rush into the future at even greater speeds, the emphasis is on 'fast'. The Motorways are congested, as people choose this route in an attempt to travel at faster speeds. This is despite having a parallel network of Trunk Roads that are almost empty. We all consume food that is ready to eat as we purchase it, in a restaurant that is designed for 'throughput' rather than comfort. Sadly, this demographic is growing.

The Little Chef chain is in trouble because it no longer provides what the public wishes to buy. It has become a victim of a demographic shift away from the core of its business model. Even though the rescue package has been agreed, we fear that the chain will be saved by becoming more like its nemesis. This could make it even more demographically redundant. We have become used to the concept of being 'technologically redundant' (remember the 'typing pool'), but it may take a bit of time to become accustmed to being 'demographically redundant'.

Perhaps that's one of the costs of the Information Age?

New Year Predictions

The New Year is traditionally a time when the press reviews the year that has just ended and the year that is about to commence. There is a plethora of material in this vein. We normally point people to 'The World In ...' series by The Economist as a reasonably authoratitive source (see magazine link). The World in 2007 has a number of interesting articles - we particularly like Angela Merkel's vision of Europe. This year, we are also recommending a longer article in The Business as being of interest (see article link). In our view, this is a useful reminder that, in the markets, what goes up can also come down again.

The reviews of the year ahead always contain a number of predictions for the future. As futurists, we try to avoid making too many point estimates for the future. It is more interesting to provide a number of range estimates as to what the future might hold. This gives us more material to work with and recognises that the future is not pre-determined. This is one of the lessons that we try to instil into our Interns at an early stage. To underline it, we ask them to take an old copy of 'The World In ...' series and to update us on a number of predictions.

For example, in 'The World In 1997', we were told:

"British voters in 1997 will eject the Conservatives after 18 years and, without enthusiasm, elect a new government under Tony Blair. As a result, Britain will not find a new world role: it will finally cease looking for one. Mr Blair, born in 1953, will be Britain's first genuinely post-imperial prime minister."

At one level, this forecast was wrong - Tony Blair is the most interventionist prime minister since Anthony Eden, who has involved the UK in more overseas adventures than the previous five prime ministers put together. However, at another level, the forecast was right. The entanglement in Iraq is deeply unpopular in the UK and a vast number of Britons have simply lost the taste for an imperial adventure. To us, this is an example of getting a trend right but a point forecast wrong.

We always have to keep in mind this reservation when we read about what the future holds. None of us knows for certain what the future will be - the best we can do is to discuss the ranges in which it might be located.

Happy New Year!

Is the experiment irreversible?

Our current workload includes an examination of the future of the European Union (EU) as a political entity. In many ways, the EU is something of an experiment for Europe - an attempt to integrate the European nations peacefully and voluntarily instead of integrating Europe forcefully. Much of the discussion surrounds the degree to which Europe should be integrated (the Federalists with a tight economic and political Union, the Atlanticists with a close economic Union but a looser political Union, and the Nationalists with no Union at all).

However, underneath all of this high level debate are over 400 million people who are just getting on with their lives. They wake up, go to work, eat, sleep, and dream as people always have done. Individually, they make decisions about their lives in an attempt to improve their situations. Collectively, their decisions reveal preferences that are of interest to futurists. We can develop theories and models of how we expect people to behave, but it is their actual behaviour that validates our theories and models.

Their was an interesting report this week that told us that about 10% of the UK population currently lives overseas, either full time or part time (see News Item ). The top locations are currently Australia and Spain. Within Europe, Spain, France, and Ireland are the top destinations for expatriate Britons. We feel that this is evidence of a big trend that will have some significance in the future.

The more we find Britons retiring to sunshine destinations in France and Spain, the more we find French companies locating in the UK to enjoy a lower tax regime, the more we find Polish plumbers locating in the UK to find a better lifestyle, the more Europe will become integrated from the 'bottom up'.

We can talk about European integration at a high level, but this suggests a presumption that a 'top down' solution will be imposed upon the populations of Europe. This couldn't be further from the truth. What is actually happening is that hundreds of thousands of people are voting for integration by making it happen. Actually integrating into another European nation by living there. As this trend continues, the European experiment is more likely to become irreversible.