Say it’s so, Joe

He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age 

Goodness, where do I start? I woke up on Friday morning with half the working world staring at a blue-screen-of-death, thanks to a huge computer outage. I went to bed last night with the news that the President of the USA, Joe Biden, has decided to pull out of the race to run a second term.

First things first: just as it was when an erroneous piece of code in an upgrade crippled the French air traffic control system, grounding thousands of planes, last August, a faulty update at cyber security company CrowdStrike caused havoc amongst many, many users of Microsoft Windows software across the globe.

It affected the NHS, train companies, supermarket payment systems, and flights. EasyJet and Tui are still cancelling flights across Europe – one of my 17-year-olds was stranded in Crete when hers was cancelled at 11pm Saturday night. Some people she got talking to at the airport had been there since 9am Friday morning, unable to get a flight back to Gatwick. Luckily, she and her friend are on their way home now, 36 hours and many, many euros later.

Microsoft estimated that around 8.5million users were affected, which doesn’t seem that many when you think that around 1.6bn people use its Windows software. Systems are, it appears, gradually returning to normal operations. 

What was so scary is how easily systems were hit, and in what quantities. Although Crowdstrike’s  CEO George Kurtz is adamant that it was a glitch, and not a security or cyber-attack, it drives home how vulnerable we are with our reliance on connected technology for everything. The cyber-security chap,  Charlie Blackmore, at the NMBS Conference last month couldn’t have spoken more presciently.

Now for the US.  Until yesterday evening, the choice for who would run one of the world’s superpowers was between an 81-year-old who has spent the majority of his life serving his country politically, and a 78-year-old who hasn’t. Who probably only ran for President in the first place because he thought it sounded like a cool thing to do.

The Trump campaign so far has majored on attacking the cognitive faculties of an octogenarian. Well, that octogenarian is out of contention, and is endorsing his Vice President (still, of course, to be officially nominated by the Democrats). What did Trump do for his former Vice President, Mike Pence? Oh yes, agreed with protestors that Pence should be lynched for not overturing the results of the 2020 election. Hmmmm. Sorry, Donald, but you’re the ageing liability now.

Biden has done what Trump could probably never understand: put the needs of his country and his party ahead of his own self-interest.

My political heart is on my sleeve on this issue. #Sorrynotsorry