Monday Moan 66

 

POTS AND KETTLES

The Public Accounts Committee under the expert and entirely neutral guidance of its shy and retiring Chair, Margaret Hodge, has produced its report into the rural broadband programme.  Readers may recall the evidence session and the wholly out-of-character combative approach adopted by Ms Hodge (see Moan 57 and others). 

 

The Report contains no surprises.  No mention of who has actually written it, or of who advised the Committee. Most of it looks as though it was written before the evidence session and has just had a few sentences added to reflect what was said on the day, as well as to add things that the Committee “has been told” subsequently. 

 

What I hadn’t realised previously was that the Committee’s investigation attracted only five submissions in total, and that Fujitsu, the last company to withdraw from the bidding process for Government funding, was not one of them.  So the Committee never got to ask them why they withdrew.  That would have been instructive, wouldn’t it?  Maybe there is a clue in the statement from Duncan Tait, CEO of Fujitsu, commenting on their withdrawal from one of the earlier bids – “We withdrew because we cannot currently see a clear path towards a mass market that is required to attract leading retail service providers.”  So, a straightforward commercial decision. No conspiracy. No mismanagement by the Government. No plot from BT.

 

The report is shoddy. It simply reiterates what the Committee thought all along. It has not been swayed in the slightest by the rebuttal of many of its positions by the witnesses it heard. It has taken no account, apparently, of BT’s 83-point response to statements made by Committee members during the hearing.

 

I like the comment from one observer that it’s ironic to have a group of MPs moaning about the lack of value for money for the public in the broadband programme.  Pots and kettles, and all that.  And the same commentator reasonably adds that whilst he’s “not  a big fan of BT, if they don’t install rural broadband who will? No one else sees it as a viable commercial risk to get involved. We don’t see Sky or TalkTalk getting involved, they just moan about BT all the time.”

 

 

 

TIME TO GROW UP AND MOVE ON?

In President Obama’s first term, one of the most important of his achievements was to steer his healthcare reforms through the legislative process against the fiercest of opposition from his Republican opponents (and a few of his Democratic colleagues as well).  As mentioned in Moan 21, Obama’s plan to extend access to healthcare provisions to the poorer members of society – including the roughly 15% of Americans who have no health insurance – was considered by some to be an example of his communist beliefs.

 

I woke this morning to hear on the radio that the US Government was about to seize up, technically running out of money because the Congress has not yet passed a short-term funding Bill.  And the reason for this is that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is still fighting the ObamaCare health law (actually called the Affordable Care Act) passed in 2010.  The Democratic-controlled Senate will vote down the Republican spoiling tactic and Obama himself retains the veto over their proposals.  Leading light in the campaign of opposition is trustworthy Senator Ted Cruz, ex-lawyer, policy advisor to George W Bush, ex-Texan Solicitor-General, endorsed by the Tea Party.

 

This is not the first time the US Government has almost run out of money – and the most recent occasion was also caused by opposition to the healthcare reforms. But why is this still continuing three years after the law was passed?  

 

Lots of angles to this, including the uncomfortable fact that a Democratic President and Senate have to work with a Republican House of Representatives.  The ‘checks and balances’ of the American system actually make governing that country a bit of a nightmare (and that’s without considering the split of responsibilities between the Federal and State Governments).  This system of Government relies upon funding being approved periodically and the Obamacare reforms, although now part of the law, are scheduled to take effect gradually over a number of years.  So still plenty of opportunities for showboating by the opposition.

 

It’s also the case that whilst the healthcare reforms might seem sensible, obvious and mild to many in this country, they are designed to help the 15% or so of Americans who have been too poor or too ill to be able to get health insurance up to now.  The 85% in the other camp are almost unaffected.  This means that gathering the support of the 85% majority to help the remaining 15% is critical and it seems that the great American public aren’t quite ready for this.  Opinion polls suggest that a majority of people think the reforms will make their own costs higher, even though a majority also confess to not knowing what the proposals are or at least to not understanding them or how they will be affected by them.

 

Most telling of all, it seems that 73% of people are already satisfied with their healthcare arrangements.  Assuming that this 73% are to be found within the 85% who have health insurance, it is pretty obvious that human nature and the cult of looking after your own interests rather than those of others means that there is not going to be huge public support for helping the disenfranchised 15%.

 

For the nation that proclaims itself to be the leader of the free world and the shining beacon demonstrating why democractic government is the system all countries should follow, this is a sad state of affairs.  Self-interest, from politicians and citizens alike, appears to be the order of the day.  Posturing for electoral purposes by politicians is an inevitable element of a democratic system, much as we might wish it to be otherwise, but many Republicans in the USA seem so completely detached from anything other than their own rhetoric that, frankly, I don’t know whether to laugh or to fear for the future. 

 

I choose to laugh, but it’s a close decision.

 

 

GNOMES OF ZURICH

The annual extortion that is my house insurance is up for renewal.  The paperwork arrives – showing an increase of around 20% on last year’s premium.  So I call the company concerned (let’s call them Zurich).  Nice young man answers and agrees that my premium has gone up rather a lot, and that I have had no claims since last time.  The explanation is that they have put up all their prices by around 20%.  As if I didn’t know.

 

So we move onto the next stage.  I ask what they can do to reduce this extortionate premium.  Nothing at all, apparently.  Nothing apart from suggest that I take out a reduced level of cover that is.  What a strange idea – trying to sell me less insurance.

 

Gnomes of Zurich = Swiss bankers.  Bunch of them, I’d say.

 

 

 

ENTERPRISING ADVERTISING

Hats off to the Yorkshire Tourist Board for this brilliant example of subliminal advertising on the shirts of German side Wolfsburg.

Monday Moan 65

WANT  TO KNOW WHAT I THINK?

Amongst the deluge of email that appears in my inbox every day I spotted one asking me if I wanted to join a panel called Shopper Thoughts, run by Tesco apparently.  I joined and have been filling in short questionnaires every few weeks when they ask me.

 

Recently I was asked to complete a questionnaire online next time I was in my local Tesco.  I tried, but failed completely as the online form did not appear as promised when I logged on.  I tried again and still no success.  So I called the helpline number provided. This took me to Tesco Customer Services, and although the person I spoke with had never heard of Shopper Thoughts, her supervisor said I needed to call their internet helpdesk on a different number.  The internet helpdesk said they knew nothing about it and I should call their customer services ……… .  

 

Undaunted, I approach the customer information point in the shop.  Oh yes, they had heard of it because another customer had been in earlier that day and had asked the same question.  That customer had then called the customer services number and been advised that Shopper Thoughts was a scam and they should ignore it.

 

Imagine my surprise then, when I check with Tesco online and discover that Shopper Thoughts was launched by Tesco in 2009 and gets plenty of mentions, including on their web pages for investors.

 

I’m very happy to be contacted by Tesco to give my thoughts on all this if they want them.

WALLY FOUND

Political spin doctors tell their masters how important it is to use the current ‘key message’ at all opportunities.  Make sure you manage to refer to it in every interview so that people are in no doubt what they are supposed to remember from amongst the things you have said.

 

Ed Miliband has taken all this to heart.  The current key message is that people should not be taken in by improved economic data but should realise instead that there is a cost of living crisis.  

 

Yesterday’s BBC London news programme had a piece about how the Labour Party in Harrow had managed to split into two and, in the process, lose control of the Borough Council to the Conservatives. Ed was asked for his views on this change in leadership and his response must have brought  tears of joy to the eyes of his spin doctors – “you always get particular issues with local councils, but the point I want to make is that people should vote Labour if they want someone to tackle the cost of living crisis”.

 

Brilliant execution.  Nonsensical response to the question.  But all delivered with his new determination to say the right thing and to say it with a Gordon Brown-like smile on his face.

 

Best of luck with the unions this week mate.

 

 

ACCESS – BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT

Since October 2004, the Disability Discrimination Act has required companies and organisations providing services to the public to ensure that they offer reasonable access to disabled people. In many cases this means ensuring that the building within which the services in question are provided is itself accessible to all.

 

It’s not easy to work your way through the mountain of helpful guides produced on this topic, like the 360 page code of practice produced by the Disability Rights Commission (described as a 'practical guide for small businesses), but I’m pretty sure it means something a bit more appropriate than this ……………..

 

 

 

SUNDAY NIGHTS

Downton Abbey has returned.  

Oh joy.




 

 

The Earl and Countess of Grantham still seem the least likely couple to be in bed together since Eric and Ernie.

 

And Lady Mary is still searching for her facial expressions.

 

 

Monday Moan 64

TOO BRAINY? TOO AGGRESSIVE?  OR JUST GOT A BOOK TO SELL?

Interesting piece in the Daily Mail last week from Kate Mulvey, wondering if love had passed her by because she was too intelligent.  She confesses to being challenging and wanting to let everyone know how well read and clever she is, and how she has an opinion on everything.  She admits she has been told she is intimidating, scary, difficult and opinionated, but her interpretation of this is that men think she’s just too clever.

 

Here’s a great quote  - “Unlike the canny girls who learnt how to flirt with men from an early age, the brainy ones, like me, were too busy with their books to master the art of flattery. Instead we challenge rather than charm, we control rather than compromise.”  

 

Not for me to comment – you can make up your own mind.  But it’s also interesting to see that she’s about to have a book published on the ‘humorous’ guide to the ‘art’ of being single, so maybe that’s all we need to know.

 

 

PLEASE LET ME FINISH!

I can’t be the only person in the country who sometimes watches a film or programme on television and wants to read the credits in order to find out who that actor was that I recognised, or what that music was, or something similar.  Sometimes I just want to use the time watching the credits as a means of absorbing what I have just seen, particularly if the programme has been emotionally involving or challenging.

 

Fat chance of any of this, as the scrolling credits are compressed and pushed aside in order to allow a picture of what is usually some completely unrelated programme to be plugged, complete with the continuity announcer’s voice exploding out of the TV destroying whatever atmosphere has been created.

 

Please STOP.  If you want to plug a programme then do so once the current one has finished and give the viewers the opportunity to reach the end of the programme they have just been watching.  I cannot believe there is any serious market research that says that viewers welcome this loud and intrusive action, or that many have ever said how grateful they were that they were told about the other programme.

 

 

AND WHILST I’M ON THE SUBJECT …….

Why do the TV companies insist on messing with the volume control all the time?  It’s not just that the adverts or programme plugs are so much louder than the programmes themselves.  Even within programmes the volume seems to be altered far too often.  There I am with volume level set at, say, 12, and then I find I can’t hear what’s being said, so up it goes to 14 – and then it will suddenly get louder so I have to put it down again, perhaps as far as 7 before I am fairly confident that my neighbour won’t be disturbed by it.

 

Why are the local and national news bulletins set at different levels, or the local and national weather reports?

 

And in cases where there is more than one presenter, please can they be encouraged to speak at similar volume levels?  Julie Etchingham on the ITV News, for example, is almost inaudible.

 

 

WHO SAYS MPs HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOUR?

It’s good to see that some of our MPs still retain a sense of humour whilst preserving the dignity of being elected as our representatives in Parliament.  Of course it’s important to talk about things like the economy, or Syria, or famine, or any of those other predictable and intractable problems that fill most of the Parliamentary timetable. But hey, we all need some time to lighten up, to relax, to talk about things just for the fun of it, don’t we?

 

That seems to be the approach of three Conservative MPs Peter Bone, Chris Chope and Philip Hollobone.  Between them they have been pushing a number of wacky ideas as Private Member’s Bills, including the Margaret Thatcher Day Bill, which seeks to have the August Bank Holiday renamed after the lady in question – yes, honestly it does!

 

Hollobone appears to have become something of a spokesman for this motley crew, appearing many times on television recently to talk about his Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill, which would make it a criminal offence to wear anything that covered the face in a public place if the primary purpose of the garment was to obscure the face.  So, no more balaclavas intended to obscure the face when the intention is to burgle a property or take part in a demonstration.  But not quite clear about balaclavas intended to obscure the face as a means of keeping out the freezing winds in winter.  

 

Hollobone defended this Bill on the basis that covering the face was not the way we did things in Britain, where he says we all exchange cheery smiles and waves with each other as we go about our daily business. Oh really? 

And even if we were a friendly bunch and felt miffed if someone transgressed against this ‘code’ by covering up, what next – a ban on beards, or bushy eyebrows, or wide brimmed hats, or sunglasses?

 

Anyway, there will be many who, looking at the three MPs in question, might feel it more appropriate to have a Bill to require faces to be covered in public.

(Monday) Moan 63

“AND NOW FOR SOME ROLE PLAY …..”

These were words guaranteed to make my heart sink.  In my working days I was all for a spot of out of office training, of getting to know your colleagues better, of having time away from the daily bustle to be able to think about what we were doing and how we might do it better, of planning for things we knew we had to do in the year ahead.  All sensible stuff.

Team building events came in many shapes and sizes, and those that involved learning how to juggle, or engaging in what amounted to a game of Twister with your work colleagues always seemed of questionable value – even if you enjoyed them.    But I could rarely see the point in role play activities.  Occasionally one of them would have some relevance to work to some degree, but often it just seemed like someone had taken a look at a list of wacky things to do and decided which to pick on the basis of the random-finger-on-a-page-whilst-blindfolded approach.   

So, my full sympathies to Alan Bacon and his fellow job applicants who were asked to do a dance at a recruitment session for a Currys store in Wales.  I’d like to think that whoever came up with this bizarre and demeaning idea is now looking for a new job, although one where they don’t have to jump through hoops to the command of some half-brained idiot who thinks they are at the cutting edge of recruitment strategies. 

 

 

SOMETIMES INSTINCT IS A BETTER GUIDE THAN THE RULEBOOK

Alan Chittock has worked for the railways for thirty years. He knows what the rulebook says and my guess is that on most occasions he will happily follow its guidance.  But with that amount of experience he has also accumulated a keen eye for potential danger and how to deal with it before it escalates. He can assess situations instantly and take the appropriate action – even if that sometimes means deviating from what the rulebook might dictate.

 

Alan saw a woman in a wheelchair topple over the edge of the platform and onto the tracks at his station, with the next train due in a short while. Rather than heading off to alert the signaller so that the train could, hopefully, be halted before it appeared at the station, he decided that instant action to get the woman off the track was the better option. Alan was helped by other people who had seen the incident and the woman was brought back onto the platform – job done, safety maintained, no disaster at this station.

 

Except, of course, that Alan hadn’t followed the rulebook. So, instead of a word of commendation from his bosses for swift action to save the woman, he was suspended from duty pending an investigation into his breach of procedures. 

 

It may be that all Alan would have needed to do to stop the trains was reach behind him and press a button.  Or it might be that he would have had to go from one end of the platform he was on, over the bridge, down to the end of the other platform and then find the button, which might have jammed because it had not been used for so long, to alert the signaller, who might have been distracted by other urgent matters for a few seconds. Obviously, I don’t know the full details.  But I do know that life is full of moments when you need to make an instant decision based on the knowledge available to you and using the wisdom and experience you have accumulated in however many years you have been on this earth.  There isn’t always time to do whatever it is that you read about somewhere, or even the thing you have been trained to do. Sometimes, commonsense and instinct are the best guides.

  

 

ED MILIBAND COULD RESHAPE BRITAIN AS MUCH AS MARGARET THATCHER, SAYS TUC LEADER

So said the headline in the Daily Mirror last week.

Now, given that Ed’s performance as leader of the Labour Party so far has borne a closer resemblance to Wally than to a potential Prime Minister, I thought this a rather bold statement for Frances O’Grady, TUC General Secretary, to make. But when I read the article I realised that Frances had not come up with this rather glowing assessment of Ed's abilities.  No, her call was for Ed to stand up and make a name for himself, to show a bit of character, to remind people that he is a serious politician.  Essentially, she was telling him to find some balls other than those represented by his Shadow Chancellor. The headline to accompany that article would have sounded critical of Ed, so the editor decided to change the emphasis from Ed should to Ed could - subtle but important.

Whether you applaud the suggestion that "we could become the Britain of Danny Boyle's Olympics opening ceremony" depends on what you thought of that monumentally expensive, clichéd, naff and embarrassing depiction of 'all that is good about Britain'. Guess you know where I stand on that - but it's just an opinion.

  

 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR FAITH IN ME …..

Kevin Rudd ousted Julia Gillard (born in Barry, South Wales) as Australian Prime Minister a few months ago (see Moan 53). 

He had little time to bask in his new position, however, as he and his party were soundly beaten in the Australian general election last week.  He has been replaced by Tony Abbott (born in London, England) – most famous recently for his comment that “What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing ……..”.

Politics in Australia seems so much more interesting than in Britain.   Abbott’s coalition has secured 91 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, giving it a significant overall majority. But is doesn’t have a majority in the Senate, so will be beholden either to the main opposition party it has just replaced, or to a rag-bag of independent Senators elected under Australia’s complex proportional representation rules.  These include Wayne Dropulich, an ex-rugby player, whose Australian Sports Party has few, if any, policies beyond supporting lots of sports, and Ricky Muir, whose Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party is in favour of exactly what it says on the tin.  

Poor old Julian Assange failed to plot a seat in the Senate from his Ecuadorean Embassy bolt-hole in the UK.  No great shame in that, I suppose.  Although he was beaten by the aforementioned Australian Motoring Enthusiasts, as well as the Sex, Family First and Australia First parties, he can be proud of his achievement in having overcome the challenges of the Shooters and Fishers, Help End Marijuana Prohibition, Animal Justice, Australian Fishing and Lifestyle, No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics, Bullet Train for Australia, Drug Law Reform, Stable Population and Bank Reform parties.  I can’t help thinking that the Shooters and Fishers and Australian Fishing and Lifestyle parties might have done better if they had amalgamated.

 

Of course, this rejection by the citizens of Australia will do nothing to damage Assange’s opinion of himself as the saviour of the world – his first quote afterwards was along the lines of ‘time to get back to the real work of publishing secrets’.  I don’t suppose many of the tiny number of people who voted for him would have been surprised by this. 

 

And please spare a thought for those hardy souls of the political system, the voluntary party-workers who pound the streets and knock on every door to canvass the views of residents before polling day.   It’s a thankless task in parts of Australia, not least in the constituency of Durack, in Western Australia, which is almost 1800 miles from top to bottom – further than from London to Moscow, and covers an area more than three times the size of France.   ‘Sorry you were out when we called ’ would be a very sad card to have to leave, wouldn’t it? 

 

 

COME AS YOU ARE PARTY ……..

Regular readers will know how much I love people whose desire to say something clever leads them to say something silly.  So, we had the reality show contestant who was trying to describe how he got bored listening to another contestant because that other person wasn’t saying anything interesting.  He decided to do this by using one of those little foreign phrases that people like to pitch into conversations to show how intelligent they are – but unfortunately, in describing it as leaving himself “non compos mentis” he was probably nearer to the mark than he intended.

 

And once again we had someone misusing the under-estimate/over-estimate expression.  Marin Alsop, in her speech at the end of the Last Night of the Proms having conducted this annual jamboree, said that “you cannot under-estimate the power of music”.  Oh yes you can – ‘music is of no importance whatsoever’ – there, I did it.  Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should use the opposite expression instead, because quite clearly you can easily over-estimate the importance of music.  No doubt what she meant was a genuinely felt “please do not under-estimate the power of music” – so why didn’t she say it?  

 

But more importantly than any of this, who decided that a free-for-all concert dress policy for the choir for last Saturday’s concert was a good idea?

Monday Moan 62

 

GIBBERISH ON THE AIRWAVES

One of the problems with the proliferation of channels available these days is that the airwaves are now full of people who don’t appear to understand what it is that they are saying.  Without wishing to sound like a pedant, the frequent misuse of language is driving me mad.  Listen any day of the week for more than a short while and you will hear something that initially might sound right (as it must have done to the person saying it) but in fact is wrong for one reason or another.

 

For example, last week we had Lindsey German, spokesperson for the Stop the War Coalition telling us that “the honest truth is that …..”, presumably so that we were not confused into thinking that was she was saying was, in  fact, “the dishonest truth”.  

 

Sports commentators seem to be particularly prone to this kind of verbal nonsense. Yesterday we had two of them agreeing that “Columbia and Belgium will be most people’s dark horses for the next World Cup”.  Now call me old-fashioned, but I thought that a ‘dark horse’ was someone unknown or unfancied who came to prominence or to achieve success when nobody expected it.  How can Columbia and Belgium be ‘dark horses’ if they are being tipped by everyone?

 

And later, in a different sports programme, we had the classic misuse of ‘under or over-estimate’.  Apparently, “you cannot under-estimate what it would mean to Arsenal supporters to win this fixture …”.  

 

Well yes, actually, you can. But you shouldn’t.

 

 

 

 

IT’S JUST TOO MUCH EFFORT

The rash of summer music festivals is almost over for 2013 – and the task of clearing up the rubbish left behind by people who cannot be bothered to clear up after themselves will continue for some time to come.  The pictures from the recent Reading Festival were fairly typical.

 

But this is not a problem specific to Festivals, much less to the sorts of people who go to such events.  It’s actually a symptom of the wider malaise affecting society. Look around you and you will see smaller scale examples of the same kind of behaviour wherever you look. 

 

Last week, for example, there were the shopping trolleys left where they were emptied, rather than being returned to the designated collection point; the newspapers left on trains rather than being put in the bins or taken away; the person who emptied their pockets of rubbish whilst standing in a queue for a bus and then walk to the side of the pavement to leave it there, rather than find a rubbish bin, put it in the bin on the bus, or take it home. 

 

And then there was my visit to our local hospital.

 

 

 

There was a water dispenser located in the corner of the waiting room and it was obvious that a number of people had managed to haul themselves up from the chairs, drag themselves the 3 metres or so over to the water, operate the complicated mechanism to extract water from the dispenser, hobble back to their seats and then consume the water they had transported across that great distance.  Equally, it was clear that the physical effort involved in doing all of that had left them exhausted, such that they couldn’t manage the shorter journey over to the rubbish bin to throw away their empty water cups.  No doubt they were conserving their energy for the much longer journeys that would be necessary to get to the consulting rooms and then back to their cars once they had seen the medical staff.  

 

Or perhaps they were just too lazy to get up and dispose of their rubbish.  People sometimes say we live in throwaway society.  Maybe we should call that a throwaway-wherever-you-like-and-expect-someone-else-to-clear-it-up society?

 

 

 

 

SHOCK TRANSFER NEWS?

I fell asleep yesterday evening and woke during the BBC News to see Andre Villas-Boas peering at me from the screen from the Arsenal interview suite.  In a moment of pure panic I thought this was the shock transfer news that Arsenal had been promising all summer – a new manager rather than a new player.  Fortunately, once I had woken properly, my fears were unfounded and Arsene Wenger had not signed AVB after all. 

 

In the most predictable of all the summer’s transfers, AVB was just confirming that Gareth Bale had become the most ludicrously over-priced footballer of all time, with Real Madrid spending £85m on the transfer fee, and paying Bale £300k a week in wages.

 

Tottenham, of course, were committed to the deal the moment they started to buy virtually an entirely new team over the summer – spending around £110m on transfer fees before Bale had been sold.  

 

No doubt most Tottenham supporters will consider this to be money well spent.  After all, they were able to celebrate losing only 1-0 to Arsenal (summer outlay of zero prior to the game) yesterday, rather suffer another of the 5-2 thrashings they had endured in each of the two previous seasons.  A sound £110m investment I reckon.