Season's greetings

You may have noticed that I haven't been writing much at all recently. The people who pay me to be in an office have not only been making me do some work while I'm there, but they've also insisted on paying me to be in an office that takes 2 hours to get to (and another 2 hours to get back). This has meant that I have limited time to write, even though there is plenty to write about. For 2008, I am likely to be writing every week or so. If you would like to contribute a piece once in a while then I'd love to have more authors - please email me at [authorname]@googlemail.com (substituting the first bit for majorgripe of course - I just don't want spambots trawling the website and emailing me about places where I can buy fake degrees or get the little Major lengthened or my man-breasts augmented).


It has been a lot of fun writing this year. I hope that you have enjoyed it as much as I have. Anyway, I wanted to wish all of you, my readers a very merry Christmas. I will write again before it is time to wish you a happy new year. In case you haven't seen it yet, here is something to get you feeling in the Christmas mood:

Copy of an email to Greenwich Council Tax Department

Dear council tax department,

I am writing to you whilst beside myself with rage at the council's complete ineptitude and malevolent collection practices for wrongly taking me to court in my absence and wrongly issuing a county court judgment against me for money that I don't actually owe.

I refer to summons number 1*****4 which you had informed me was cancelled. I will outline here the history of this case and the steps that the council is going to take to rectify it.

Case history

1. I had a summons from you because when I swapped bank accounts you didn't transfer over my direct debit when my bank sent you the details
   
2. As soon as I received it, I called you. I paid the overdue amount and updated the direct debit details. The payment reference for this is CEP0******4 - I paid it on 5th November at 10:39am
3. I was informed that the £95 costs would not be charged and that the remaining payments would go out on my amended direct debit with the first payment happening at the start of November
4. I was also told that the court summons would be cancelled with immediate effect and that I needed to take no further action
5. I requested written confirmation that the council had cancelled the summons, but was told that the council doesn't do that (and that it was unnecessary in any case)
6. I have just received a Council Tax Liability Order Notification and Bailiff Warning Notice instructing me that on 19th November the court sat anyway and decided that the balance of £404 (i.e. the remaining payments and the non-refunded £95) must be paid within 14 days or Bailiffs would call to recover the debt.

This is absolutely disgusting - due to the council's processes not working I now have a County Court Judgment against me and the threat of Bailiffs. The council has also demanded details of my employer so that it can deduct my 'debt' at source. I will give it no such information.

Here is the action that I demand that the council takes to sort this ridiculous mess out:

1. Remove the county court judgment straight away.
2. Cancel the order for Bailiffs with immediate effect.
3. Refund the £95 'court costs' to my council tax account
   
4. Write to me confirming that steps 1-3 have been taken.
5. Collect the outstanding funds from the direct debit that I have set up. That really is a much more straightforward way of collecting council tax for the council and for me. By using this method, the council get its money quickly and cheaply and I do not get my credit record wrecked by unnecessary and invalid CCJs.

I will be calling the department at 10am tomorrow morning to confirm that someone has received this email. I will call again at 4pm for an update on progress against my case. If there has not been satisfactory resolution then you can expect a personal visit on Thursday.

Yours disgustedly,

Major Gripe

cc:

• Kate Myronidis, PA to Nick Raynsford MP
  
• Greenwich Watch: http://greenwichwatch.blogspot.com
  
• Bee In His Bonnet: http://beeinhisbonnet.blogspot.com
  
• Little Man, What Now?: http://littlemanwhatnow.com
  

A plague on Gripe Hall

Well, a terrible curse has befallen the Gripe household. Dear readers, you will be dismayed to learn that your Major has been officially diagnosed with...

...man flu.

It may well be terminal, because all I can do is lie about and groan and whine and snivel.

Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!

Put up your crutches

Hello again everybody. Did you miss me?

I was going to write about so many things this week: first, our government manages to lose all of that data and Alastair Darling still somehow keeps his job. Then I got a letter from Tower Hamlets council rejecting my appeal against a parking ticket and have decided to take the lousy shits to tribunal. Then, Steve McClaren refuses to resign after making his job untenable.

To top it all off, there was going to be something today to follow on from a news item on TV this morning about some people who bought houses on a cliff-top. The cliff is subsiding and their houses are falling into the sea 30 years early, so they want the government to pay to rehouse them. No, no, no, no, no. They had plenty of warnings about this, the first of which came two thousand years ago when Jesus warned of the dangers of building your house on anything but rock. Why can't people pay more attention to the clever things that Jesus said about construction, catering or taxation?

Then, everything changed. Another topic presented itself for your amusement this morning. I got started on, again, in London Bridge station this time. By a disabled man.

I was travelling with Mrs Gripe who he walked behind and trod on. He then shouted at Mrs Gripe that she might like to look where she was going, except he used more floral language than that. I stared at him, and he started to protest. I told him to watch his mouth and he reminded me that he was disabled (he was walking with a crutch). "That doesn't give you the right to shout insults at my wife", I replied. To which he suggested that he would fetch the police. As usual, I suggested that he was welcome to do so, and turned away to say goodbye to Mrs Gripe (for our onward journeys lay apart from then). It was at that point that he issued his coup de grace. "Come back here and fight me, you coward", he shouted - in a scene somewhat reminiscent of the anonymous knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

So there you have it - another anecdote for the Gripe Annual. You can rest assured that whatever is happening in world events, your Major will continue almost getting into ill-advised fights and reporting back to you about it. Have a happy and passive weekend everyone.

A right dilemma

Something of a teaser presents itself tonight for the racist thugs among England football fans. England's qualification for Euro 2008 is out of our hands: not only do we have to beat Croatia on Wednesday, we also have to hope that Israel beats Russia tonight.

The question is this: will those fans who are also members of the far right and would normally rail against Israel stick to their guns tonight, or will they swallow their convictions and cheer them on? And if so, I wonder how they will feel about it in the morning. The sight of all those skinhead thugs sobbing into their Union Jack pillows is almost too delicious...

Gripe and away

While Mrs Gripe and I share a few days away I thought I would share with you a little theory I have held for a time about how that nice Mr Cameron became leader of the Conservative party and in particular the role of Michael Howard’s leadership of the party in this process. I warn you, we have an essay on our hands.

Let’s take a brief trip down memory lane to reminisce over recent Tory leaders. When it became clear that Iain Duncan Smith was in the penultimate week of his leadership, there was a lot of speculation about who would take over. Oliver Letwin was considered to be the most promising candidate by many, Ken Clarke could never be ruled out, and there were a number of others. One person who was definitely not talking about running was Michael Howard.

At this time, the party was still in turmoil. William Hague as leader had done ok with a job that wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Iain “quiet man” Duncan “quiet man” Smith (sorry, I don’t know where to put that in his silly sequence of names) had managed to plummet it down from a party that no-one liked into being a laughing stock. It still had to sort itself out to have a chance of returning to power at all (let alone making good on its claim to be the ‘natural party of government’). That meant leading with a vision that could unite the party (instead of being divided around key questions such as Europe) and present the public with an alternative.

All the while, Tony Blair was getting off lightly. As Andrew Marvell, the great poet and politician of the 17th century, said: the same arts that did gain a power must it maintain. Getting into power through spin and through fudging compromise with the old left meant continuing those bad habits while in office. No-one in the Tory party was lampooning his fabled ‘third way’ for being Tory-style market-centric policies implemented through old socialist methods. No-one pointed out the flaws in the approach of centralising, controlling, setting targets, taxing, spending, pandering to unions and taking people away from what they do best to put them on paperwork duty. No-one was pointing out that in order to negotiate with business over financing schools and hospitals it was crucial first to have business experience – something that many Tory ministers and few Labour ministers actually have. In other words, the great cracks in the foundations of Tony Blair’s approach were being left to grow rather than the whole edifice being condemned. The Tory party was navel-gazing while Tony Blair was left to find an opposition from within his own party.

The Conservative party needed a leader who was capable of the crucial three things: creating a vision that would inspire the public, leading the party with that vision and proactively destabilising Tony Blair rather than reactively chipping away at him. The trouble was that the grass-roots party was not going to give it such a leader: the best that they could hope to be given by the blue-rinse brigade was a leader who could lead with a vision and destabilize Tony Blair but whose vision would be offensive to the majority of the public who were neither xenophobic enough nor Europhobic enough to be inspired by it.

With this in mind, let’s return to the times in question. Once it was clear that IDS would be getting more time to spend in quiet reflection, the speculation started to mount about who would come forward (as discussed above). When he was finally ousted, not a word came from the parliamentary party. Then, within a short period, all of the expected candidates (apart from Ken Clarke) came out and backed Michael Howard. Howard appeared shocked and humbly declared that he’d better lead the party after all then. Then he set about (mildly) duffing Blair up in parliament before fighting (and losing) the 2005 election on old Tory values. After the defeat, he announced that he would step down but only after he had succeeded in changing the way in which the party elected its leaders. Once he did this, the party had an open leadership election and returned the freshest-seeming candidate – that nice Mr Cameron.

I am not a conspiracy theorist and do not, as a rule, like coming up with theories such as this. But it is not an outlandish leap of logic to conclude from all of this that the parliamentary party got together and decided that if it was ever to regain power it would need to put someone in to prove to the party that it had to change, and then change how leaders were elected so that the most credible candidate, rather than the most right wing one, got returned. Only one of the old guard of Tories could possibly convince the party faithful that change was necessary. In this theory, Michael Howard would have done a rather noble thing in deliberately losing an election with a campaign based on old Tory values in order to give the party a fresher leader who could renew its voice.

If my theory is correct then that is what he did – if so then that nice Mr Cameron owes him a great debt of gratitude because he could never have been elected (and now inflicting Grievous Political Harm on Brown’s government) without him.

Clarifications

Following the recent posts, I have had a lot of questions. Many of them have focused on the same subject area, suggesting that a few clarifications are in order:

1. I don't always get into fights
2. I don't actually like fights
3. The fact that I have been posting less frequently recently is a function of how busy I have been rather than a sign that all I have been doing is fighting
4. If I had been fighting, I would have told you all about it
5. Yes, the people who pay me to be in an office during the day from Monday to Friday have been putting more demands on me so I have had less time to write
6. No, I am not bored of doing this - I hope that you are not bored of me doing this either
7. No, the reduced frequency of posts has not been because I am reluctant to follow readers' advice and inhale more live insects for your amusement.
8. Yes, I am reluctant to do that but no it is not the root cause.

I hope that helps. If you too have a bee in your bonnet and would like the opportunity to rant about things occasionally then please let me know by emailing majorgripeNO@SPAMgooglemail.com (removing the capital letters obviously) and we can chat about making you an author.

On the game

I promised a match report and here it is. I also need to give you an incident report - you will see from recent posts that I clearly have one of those faces that enrages people and makes them want to attack it and the person that it belongs to. Just such a thing came close to happening (again) at the match.

What a game for the neutral - cup tie, 7 goals, the lead changing 4 times, almost a giant-killing. Proof again from Leicester that if you get right in the face of big teams like Chelsea and then score the first goal then the sky's the limit. The only disappointment was that Leicester put 10 men behind the ball to try to defend their 1-0 lead, which was a massive waste of the opportunity. At a time when their plan started working and they could have sent an even bigger statement to Chelsea, what they did instead was say to them we've scored, we've probably been lucky and we're going to try to hold on to that. It just handed Chelsea back the psychological advantage that Leicester had worked so hard to win. It was great that they came out so positively in the second half though.

I was in a box at the game, and as always in a cup match (and as a neutral) I was rooting for the little guys. When they scored, I and a number of others in our box stood up and cheered. The man behind me grabbed my jumper and tried to pull me back into my seat. I turned around and he was trying to stare me out, so I obliged and then when he threatened to have me chucked out I suggested to him that he might like to have a laugh and enjoy the game. There were a number of other people cheering for Leicester and the guy got really upset at them all. The stewards started to get involved to try to calm him down, and then some other Chelsea fans from behind him tried to get him to calm down. My neighbour and I did our best not to laugh out loud when he turned to the man next to him and said in a wounded voice "what really hurts is I've got me own fans turning on me now". Yeah, nice one. Don't let that be a signal to you that maybe you're being a total twat or anything.

Anyway, at the end of the game he wanted to shake my hand so I obliged. He grabbed my hand and pulled me close and started to lecture me that it was 'culturally unacceptable' to cheer for the opposing team in the Chelsea end. He wasn't convinced by (or made happy by) my risposte that it was fairly culturally unacceptable to grab people's jumpers and pull them down - so dissatisfied was he, in fact, that he started to suggest that we make something of it. That was the point at which the stewards got involved in trying to calm him down and I made my way out.

So, 7 goals and one home fan made angry. All in all, a successful night at Stamford Bridge

Bridging the gap

Quick message to all of my disGriples: I am in on a residential course in Stamford Bridge all week (somewhat painfully for me as a Spurs fan) so posts will be light (as already seen this week). One of you (Roberto, estoy hablando de ti) is on my list for coming here and not having a beer with me. Amends will need to be made.

Box for the League Cup game tonight against Leicester so there may be a match report Gripe-style at soheme point.

Hope all is well

The Major

Tealeaves

I am lucky to have a very happy and full life. But I've decided that what is missing is a thumpingly good campaign about something. I'm not particularly fussed about campaigning to save the world, as most of the possible ways already seem to be campaigned about. So it's going to be something far more insidious: thieving restaurateurs.

I always make a point, before leaving a tip, of finding out how much (if any) of it gets to the staff. I commonly find that the restaurant dips its filthy digits into the tip pot and steals some (and in some cases all) of the money. Usually, cash tips get to the staff - and may be shared around. But usually card tips don't get to the staff in tact.

On top of the fact that this is bad for their business (by making tips low, their staff will start to resent people who don't tip much rather than appreciate people who do, so service will suffer and hence the restaurant's reputation will suffer), it is also deceptive. I have not found a restaurant yet that says 'we will deduct an admin charge from tips' - they let you think that it is all going to the staff. And what they deduct is huge in some cases. Some take all of it, but many others say, if asked, that they take 7% (Tootsies) or even 8% (Pizza Express). Push further and they will admit that this is not a percentage of the tips, it is a percentage of the total bill and therefore more that half of the tip that you are leaving. So even if you ask, they still try to deceive you into thinking that it is not an unreasonable amount.

Let's not mince words here: this is stealing, and should be punishable as stealing. The restaurant may have to pay the staff, but I pay them for that when I buy my meal and my (generously marked up) drinks from them. As a minimum, I expect that they put some of that money towards paying staff a legal hourly wage (and ideally a fair hourly wage) - after that, the money that I give the staff as a tip is precisely that: money that I have given them to say thank you. If they asked me to contribute some extra money towards the cost of their premises, I would tell them to shove it - so why should I do that with the tips that I leave. For how long will this continue to be legal?

Sitting ugly

What is it with those people on the train who, when sitting in the aisle next to an empty seat, and when you ask to sit down, glare at you and give the slightest movement of their knees to indicate that you should lift your large, heavy bag up high and struggle past them through the short gap to take the seat? Not only does it seem like really bad manners, but surely it would be much easier for them to shuffle across and let you sit by the aisle.

I have taken it upon myself to make it easier for them. I am doing this by turning the moving your knees slightly and glaring approach into the much, much harder (and more painful) approach. It is amazing how my motor skills deteriorate during that struggle past them. Almost uncanny. My bag always seems to knock into their kneecaps and I always seem to stumble and accidentally tread on their feet. Full of apologies, naturally. One wouldn't wish to be ill-mannered.

I calculate that I will have changed the culture on Southeastern Railway by the time I retire, in 30 years.

Did you miss me?

All was quiet here on Saturday because I figured that since half of you were at Gripe Hall anyway I could just talk to you. Then yesterday my head hurt, as I'm sure did most of yours. To the other half of you, I hope you enjoyed those bits of the weekend that didn't involve defeats for British sportspeople.

Mrs Gripe sprang a surprise on me at the weekend: an early birthday present, my very own Wii. I'm not really a games person but I really wanted one. My verdict? Awesome - really great fun. My back hurts a bit today from playing it yesterday, but at least that's better than it would have been if the boxing on Saturday night had been real instead of punching towards the TV.

I tried the fitness age test yesterday and it told me that my fitness age is 70. I like to think that it was more of a feature of not knowing what to do while it was firing tennis balls and baseballs at me, but the irony is that the day afterwards I am actually walking like a 70-year old.

All I can say is: get one.

Silver Cock

Have you noticed how in many cases the service doesn't actually get better in expensive restaurants, it gets worse? It always intrigues me. You go into a very cheap restaurant and aren't surprised if the waiting staff don't have a clue about how to wait, or are not very friendly. There are some honourable exceptions to that, yes, but the point is that it is not a surprise.

Then, you go into a mid-range restaurant and the service is a lot better. It is attentive but not pushy, and the staff are polite and friendly. Again, not always that way but frequently the case.

One could be forgiven for expecting that this quality continues into the most expensive restaurants, but I am struck by how often the opposite is true. The staff, apparently trying to test whether or not you are worth their time first, show none of the good manners and only give attention grudgingly. This was the case today in the Coq d'Argent, a fantastic place but with a really lousy waiter (and not for the first time). One of those places where the staff, if they are coming the opposite direction to you, won't hold back for you to pass but will push forward expecting you to wait for them (and not acknowledge that you've done so either). It always makes me smile inside to wonder what must be going through their obnoxious gallic minds as they sneer and tut.

I am not a vindictive man, but when the waiter has behaved like that, I always take great pleasure in asking them to remove the service charge. Then again, I'm sure he took great pleasure in spitting in my food...

Auntie loser

The staff cuts in the flagship news team at the BBC could end up being a good thing if it responds in the right way. News on the BBC has gone down in quality massively. Both the content and the standard are not worthy of the tradition that the BBC claims. Much of it is obsessed with celebrity and with advertising its own programs. When they do report a story, a lot of it is no better than the journalism that I posted about some time ago.

For example, they rely heavily on interviewing their own correspondents as if they are the experts. Even if they interview real experts, the effect is the same - once they have an expert opinion that agrees with the story they want, they create that opinion as a fact. This is at best shabby journalism and at worst misinformation. Nothing worthy of how the BBC likes to see itself.

If there are cuts, let's hope that they cut the celebrity bits. Let's hope that the cuts focus the minds of those who are left into reporting less, but higher quality (i.e. better researched and presented) news. This would be more than straightforward if they shifted the focus of the news away from being instant towards being more valid. After all, is it that important for us to about what is going on straight away? For us to have 24-hour presence at the scene of everything?

Studio Hack: Let's go to the incident site. Field Hack - any developments?

Field Hack: Well, nothing since I last updated you 7 minutes ago, Studio Hack. To cover this appalling refusal of life to imitate art, I plan to garner further shallow opinions from yet more passers-by whose ignorance is beneath contempts.

Very simply, no it isn't. We don't need 24-hour news for every single event. Why not reallocate some of those staff to reporting less news with more rigour? That way, fewer staff could be the way for us to get the news that the BBC claims to give us on its flagship programmes.

Pea-souper

An interesting side effect of the smoking ban is the territory battle that has taken place. I never like to waste fine weather, particularly not when winter is around the corner, and definitely not when summer was another winter.

So recently, walking along a row of restaurants and coffee shops, I thought that I would sit outside and read my book in the sunshine - and of course enjoy some coffee. Naturally, outside is the place that people sit to smoke these days, but it seems to have stiffen smokers' resolve - I can't see any fewer people smoking, all I can see is a concentration of smoke outside the front. That means getting to the inside of the establishment that the government has kindly rendered smoke free for me means traversing a pea-souper fog in the doorway. So my clothes, my hair and my lungs are still exposed to the smoke that the government wanted to protect me from.

I can pretty much understand this from a smoker's point of view. If the government told me that drinking inside was hazardous because I might get drunk and spill my drink and create a slip hazard, then I think I would be fairly likely to tell the government where they could slip their hazard. It would only make me want to drink more. So here we are, in a situation where people don't actually seem to be smoking any less - in fact, they may be smoking more. I will await the official figures (and then the accurate, unspun ones) before passing judgement.

The only observation I have is that banishing smokers outside in the warm sunshine and keeping ourselves squashed inside seems rather like sending all of our convicts from dreary Industrial Revolution Britain to sunny Australia such a long time ago. I know that it was no picnic there in the early days, but I sometimes wonder why we didn't all pack up and move down under and leave the convicts behind in England to freeze.

Perhaps we should bear this in mind the next time we try to ban something...

Principles of change

Seth Godin has an interesting analysis of behaviour in relation to the Radiohead album. He discusses the order in which people move to alternatives. First the losers (because they have nothing to lose), then the winners (because they can afford to and want to keep winning, and then everyone else.

This is consistent with the 60:30:10 principle of change that a Project Director I worked once suggested to me. I didn't see it at first, but after observing a few large-scale changes it started to resonate with me.

It says that when confronted with a significant change, as a rule of thumb, 30% will always be against it and 10% will always be for it. The remaining 60% sit on the fence, watching the contest between the other two groups. At a certain point, when it appears that one side is going to win (whether or not they are in fact going to win), the 60% makes its decision. This means that you will either end up with 70% in favour or 90% against. The key thing in effecting any change is to make sure that you are not on the losing side of at any stage.

That wisdom has been very interesting in watching a number of large scale changes recently, and in particular the shift of opinion (and action) in relation to climate change. Bear it in mind the next time you observe any significant change - I hope it proves interesting.

Radiohead review

Now that the Radiohead album has been released, here is my view of things:

There was another, overlooked, reason why Radiohead might have put their album out for download with people choosing how to much to pay. It is rubbish.

There are a couple of songs that the most die-hard fan may like, such as the echoes of the peaks in melancholy and the stressful cacophonies that could both be found filling space on their previous albums. But this is nothing like their previous best - none of the achingly good songs that could be found on Pablo Honey, and none of the sense of journey (and also beltingly good songs) from The Bends or OK Computer.

I am left wondering if they put it out in that way as an experiment because they weren't happy with it as an album. Or perhaps they lost it and descended into a haze, taking Pete Doherty's place now that he is rumoured to have cleaned up.

Economists are very good at discussing how something is going to turn out using economic theories, and then - when they are wrong - admitting it and citing another, overlooked, theory about why that was. The academic equivalent of falling in your sword to protect your subject. In that spirit, I suppose that this is another lesson in economics - the 2001 nobel prize winning theory about pricing in used cars. The theory goes that whatever the car, the possibility of it being a lemon (i.e. a dud) is factored in, but to varying degrees according to the certainty. This will have been the case here. If they do publish the purchasing data for people to study, it will be very interesting to see how much the price goes down afterwards.

The lowdown

Well I guess it is time to spill the beans on what happened, now that it is over. It is, truly, a very random story. I sometimes wonder if merely having a blog to write is the trigger for bizarre events to happen to me. Perhaps, perhaps not. I'm sure someone has written about it somewhere in the blogosphere if I felt like looking.

Anyway, let's describe the event:

[Major on telephone to Mrs Gripe, entering corridor that leads to toilet (at work)]

Large Man Cleaning Corridor: You can't come in here. GET OUT!

[you will know me well enough by now to know that my response was 'hmm, being barked at. Ok, ignore that command'. Major proceeds to toilet. Large Man follows Major into toilet.]

Large Man, No Longer Cleaning Corridor: I will have security walk you out. I know my rights. I will not let you go to the toilet.

[Major ignores man and proceeds to urinal. Large Man, No Longer Cleaning, grabs Major by the arms and drags him back.]

Large Man, Eyes Flashing: I will not let you go to the toilet. I am going to get security.

Major, Cheeky Scheme In Mind: OK, off you go.

[Large Man leaves, Major's plan works, Major returns to urinal. Large Man, Vanquished returns and pushes Major into corner]

Large Man, Enraged: You are disrespecting me as a cleaner

Major, Perplexed and Dishevelled: Umm, well I'm fine with you being a cleaner. I do disrespect your people skills though.

[Large Man, Desperate now moves in front of urinal and leans back against wall. Major considers, and then decides against, pissing on him, and walks away into the cubicle. Large Man, Desperate follows Major into cubicle]

Large Man, Apparently Fighting Now Not Just For Family But For The Honour Of The Whole Of Nigeria: I WILL NOT LET YOU GO TO THE TOILET

[Large Man, Lost It Long Ago now at the edge of despair, lunges at Major and uses bodyweight to push him to floor. Then grabs Major by torso and drags him out of the toilet.]

Major, ruffled, manages to get out of toilet and gets to Security, who intervene.

Major, somewhat shocked by the surprise events, heads off home to Mrs Gripe.

So there, now you know. Thank you to Animal for his concern. No recovery necessary, though.

Sorry I had to fight at your party

Apologies to anyone who was looking forward to the daily digest of bile yesterday. Your Major was recovering from an unprovoked physical attack by a large man. He is OK now and will be spewing forth more carp again.

Following on

I was planning yesterday to have put the whole thing to bed, but some emails that I have had today about yesterday's post are worth discussing.

Firstly, there is a point to clarify: when I say that it is a good thing if banks are able to go to the wall occasionally, I do not mean this because I and all capitalists are evil. I mean it because that reinforces the incentive that the management have to guard against the risk of their bank collapsing. If banks could never collapse (which is looking like a danger under Brown), then there is much less incentive for them to manage their risks prudently. This would harm shareholders (many of which are your pensions, not just evil capitalists) as well as customers (through less competitive and more reckless banks).

Secondly, a former colleague of mine was laughing about the idea of the FSA supervisor of NR ensuring that the last liquidity return was appropriately filed in triplicate, and not noticing the glaring holes in the figures. I would love to have been a fly on the wall in that week's one-to-one with their line manager. My ex colleague also admitted that he had shares in Northern Rock - well done, old friend, more cash down the pan. Maybe you should put yours under the mattress.

Finally, the implications for Gordon Brown are serious. Over this, and the economic climate generally, he is now being found out as a con artist over his claim to be the prudent manager of the economy. With levels of disposable income now lower than before Labour went into power, the economy's growth predictions being slashed and taxes still going up, the picture is looking far from rosy.

So, to finish, a basic lesson in economy management for the badger. When the economy is taking a nose-dive, putting taxes up in order to increase spending will worsen, not improve, that cycle. If you would like any further advice Mr Darling, you can email me on Major Gripe at Googlemail dot com.

Can't move on

Now that the Northern Rock episode has disappeared from the papers and seems to have slipped back under the radar, let's consider what happened and how it makes Gordon Brown look.

As soon as he arrived, fresh-faced, at number 11, one of his first (and most trumpeted) acts as Chancellor was to give the Bank of England independence on rate-setting. He then proceeded to write the Financial Services and Markets Act that created a single regulator for financial services firms. This took banking supervision away from the Bank of England and gave it to the FSA, because the Bank was seen by some key people as having done a poor job of it.

At this point, I should declare some expertise (lest you think I'm being misleading). I used to work in the Major Financial Groups Division at the FSA supervising major banking groups. So I do know what I am talking about. Not that I don't normally, but in this case I actually do.

The FSA's aim (unlikely to have been approved without the evil Scot's say-so) was to 'Maintain markets that [were] orderly, clean and efficient, and to get a fair deal for consumers'. It said, rightly in my opinion, that it was the sign of an advanced and competitive banking market if a bank went to the wall occasionally (through solvency or bank runs). Capital requirements were based around solvency, and liquidity requirements around being able to survive for 5 days (i.e. to the next weekend when the bank could be sold). We focused on credit controls and risk management to assess the stability of each bank, and based their capital requirements on the likelihood of them getting it wrong, but at the same time aimed not to stifle the innovation that would be part of any banking system.

Let's summarise quickly: banks assumed not to be keen on going bust, FSA monitoring the banks' overall controls, Bank of England still as lender of last resort to give a chance to bail itself out in a crunch, and the occasional bank slipping through that system (with deposits fully protected up to £30k and 20% refunded over £30k) seen as the bi-product of an efficient and competitive financial system.

So, what happens the first time that this was properly tested? Brown bails out on the system that he so carefully constructed, and has the new Chancellor step in with full depositor protection to avoid the bank going bust. Let's assume that it is no coincidence that the bank they are trying to save is very heavily concentrated in the North-East, one of Labour's core heartlands. It still shows that 'Bottler Brown' is not so bad a nickname, that he is petrified of anything undermining his reputation. Is this the sort of man that you want leading the country?

Finally, a mention must go out for the woman who appeared on BBC Breakfast saying that she would 'never trust banks again' and that 'in future, all of [her] money [was] going under the mattress':

seriously?have you never heard of burglars before? Space-cadet...

Factualising

Never let a fact get in the way of a good story, the adage goes. Metro took this to another level this morning - never let the story get in the way of a fact. In an article entitled 'young use 'sharks' to buy booze', they wrote:

Young people are using loan sharks to find pin crawls and pay for new clothes. A total of 77 per cent of young adults have been in debt by their 24th birthday and 20 per cent have been left with £50 a month or less to live on after their debt repayments, a survey by young people's charity Rainer showed. Spokesman David Charter said: 'Significantly, 15 per cent
said they had "other" debt aside from normal sources. This could be from loan sharks.'

Yes, David, it could. It could also be from friends, from credit unions or a number of places. We don't have any definition of what you define as normal sources. Nonetheless, your comment is valid - it could be from sharks. You and I are fine, we have no quarrel, David. My quarrel is withMetro. There is sensationalising, and twisting facts, and then there is this. Such is the contempt for your readers that you haven't even bothered to disguise the doubt that your own quote casts on the 'fact' that you so confidently assert.

The attempt to portray the young in this light is becoming depressingly common. Yes, young people drink and many outlive their means. When was this not true? They're young. But they also have to cope with debts like never before as they try to get through university or buy a tiny place to live.

Forgive them a but of fun now, because when they (and everyone under 30) are paying the price of the wealth transfer to the baby boomer generation for the next 40 years, they will be able to have none.

Sloping back down under

The most enjoyable element of England beating Australia in any game and on any occasion is how it seems to affront the Aussies. There is always the predictable mind-games ahead of any fixture and then carping afterwards - especially moaning about being robbed.

Yesterday's result is a great example of this. Now it wasn't the most dignified or noble win ever - I won't pretend that it is. But it was delicious for that - they were beaten by an England team from whom nobody had expected much (if anything) at all.

More details about this emerged today when it was revealed that the Aussie team, such was its confidence, didn't even have any travel plans to get home. That meant that they have had to fly back to London tonight, and will have to stay here overnight before flying back to Australia tomorrow.

I'm guessing Heathrow airport. If anyone wants to join me, I'll be the former military man in civvies wandering around looking for deflated antipodean rugby stars to abuse - they just make it so easy.

Rant

Metro always runs a column on Wednesday called MetroSexual, about relationship matters etc. This week, it was about men's obsession with the size of their penises. It mentioned a film made by Lawrence Barraclough about his relationship with his penis, called My Penis and I. I feel very strongly about this:

IT'S MY PENIS AND ME YOU ILLITERATE HACK.

I will admit to being a bit of a grammar fascist, but this is the one error that particularly gets under my skin - way more than Lynn Truss and misplaced apostrophe's apostrophes. People saying things like 'are you coming to the pub with Bernard and I' is just plain wrong, and plain stupid.

Maybe my rage comes from a dark and unexplored corner of my childhood, or maybe I was born with it. I don't know. But it has been disastrous. For example on an occasion when, fresh out of university and at the beginnings of a really exciting new job, my manager (Steve) handed me back a corrected version of a draft memo that I had written. I didn't usually bother spell-checking these documents because my errors were few, and it gave him stuff to correct - and took his attention away from some of the logical holes in my arguments. When I looked at the sheet, I saw a red line through 'please speak to Steve or me' and the fateful script 'please speak to Steve or I'.

[cut to black screen]
[fade in words 'Three minutes later']
[fade to black screen]
[fade back to original scene - Major now standing on Steve's head and looking crazed]

Major: It's... not... wrong... you... wouldn't... say... speak... to... I... would... you...

Or at least that's how the fantasy version of my revenge played out in my head. So consumed was I with rage and so engrossed was I in my fantasy violence against him for the trespass that I sat there, lost and silent, for about 5 minutes before looking back up at him with an evil stare that made him think that I was actually going to hurt him. So ended a great working relationship.

What irks me so grievously is that this is not even a grammatical rule. No-one would say 'Come to the pub with I', they would say 'Come to the pub with me' - so it should be 'Come to the pub with Bert and me'. They wouldn't say 'Me am going to the pub', they would say 'I am going to the pub' - so it should be 'Bert and I are going to the pub'. That's the distinction, there is no rule or complexity to it.

To prove the 'stupid' theory, let's turn to Aussie soaps for a demonstration of this. Mrs Gripe yearns for a return to her happy days living in Sydney and so enjoys Home and Away. She is unable to watch it without me yelling over the theme tune, because it has contained this error from the beginning up to the latest version. That's 18 YEARS OF THE SAME MISTAKE.

So be prepared, if you hear anyone uttering this faux-pas, and if a military fellow happens to be standing nearby in civvies, to witness an angry former Major standing on the speaker's head and imparting - alto vocce - a lesson in non-grammar.

Right. Now that's off my chest, I need to cool down. Me am off to the pub.

Record breakers

I have been out of touch for a couple of days and have only today found that Radiohead are letting people choose how much (if anything) to pay for their new album. I won't bore you with the fascination this causes from an economist's point of view because many, many others have already done that. I also won't do it because I'm not an economist. Let's just say that two noteworthy entries are The Economist and Vidico's piece too. It is really fascinating from an economics perspective, but I'll spare you that and just say that I hope that they publish the data on the average price paid as well as the distribution of prices.

What interests me most about this is how it might change the landscape for music publishing. Chris Anderson wrote in The Long Tail about technology democratizing the means of production, the internet democratizing the means of distribution and web 2.0 creating ways for content to find enthusiasts - meaning that people's tastes end up as niches of one. This has been possible for a number of obscure bands, and The Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen are the two most obvious examples of how it is possible to become a big hit through this channel today.

If it becomes the norm for bands to publish music independently of record labels then the labels will be severely undermined - perhaps permanently. What is most interesting is that this will be a temporary state. In personal lines insurance, my current area, the move from brokers to direct insurers was significant. Now that there are so many direct insurers, shopping around becomes very labour intensive. Enter Money Supermarket, Confused.com and a host of other aggregators that claim to simplify the job for you. There are so many aggregators doing this now that there is even speculation that there will be an aggregator of aggregators soon.

This is a demonstration of the theory that all markets end up intermediated. If musicians start to publish independently on a significant scale, that market will end up intermediated again. There would be a market for a music aggregator just to allow you to sift through the vast choice. iTunes and others would soon find their deals with record labels inadequate and would need to change their business model fundamentally.

I will be watching the Radiohead album launch with great interest.

Relax the tax, man

Yesterday the duty on fuel increased, no doubt as some sort of green tax. BP was among the first to say that they would be passing the cost on to customers, according to the BBC.

I'm sure that what I am about to say will have me villified by the same sort of people who went for Scott Adams when he alluded to an interview with Bjorn Lomborg. I really don't care, I'm not making any judgements on climate change.

What I would like to suggest is that it is plainly not working. Not I nor anyone I know makes the decision to drive or not based on the price of fuel. Many of us make it for green reasons, but the price of fuel is not the driver. An extra 2p will be fine to splurge on striking public sector workers but will not make an ounce of difference.

As well as better transport, we need another system to reduce people's use of their cars. What about personal carbon allowances and trading? Perhaps Gordie could look at that? Not only would it be something to cap carbon emissions, but it would potentially be a source of revenue for poorer people.

It's just a thought. Does anyone else have any ideas?

Moanbile

After 2 weeks of trying, a long phone-call to the network and five visits to their shops, today is the day that I finally managed to get Vodafone's 'plug-n-play' 3G broadband to work on my laptop. A little slower than Vodafone's claim that it would take me 12 seconds.

I want to set up a couple of web ventures and need to do some research online (as well as find a developer and look down the back of the sofa for some startup capital for I have none), and I need to use the downtime that I often have at weekends - but I am often not at home at those times, so I wanted to get some 3G broadband. Not only that, but I agree with Stephen Levitt that mobile broadband is a very, very good thing in principal for people who have a lot of travel time and a lot to do online. With 3G up and running, there would be no more need to subject myself to sub-par bars just to get free WiFi.

Vodafone's excuse for this is that it doesn't work on some laptops. Particularly Sony Vaio laptops. Now these aren't exactly rare things, so wouldn't it have been good if they could have mentioned it, perhaps? Anyway, working it now is.

The only trouble is that it is not giving me anything like the claimed 7.2mbps. It is marginally faster than when I used to use dial-up. Living in London and in an area where there is supposed to be very strong 3G signal for Vodafone, I don't really think that is up to it. So they're going to get a 3G card brought back to them.

Which brings me back to the original solution. I am left with no alternative but to find pubs that offer free WiFi and set up my ventures whilst out of my skull on the beer I have to drink to justify staying there. Centuries ago it was said that drink was the scourge of the working classes, but I'll wager that even they didn't see it being so literal a problem.

Big Auntie

The BBC is showing more of the big brother characteristics of a normal state broadcaster than it would like to admit, according to Vindico's attempt to get on to Question Time. Read his post to check out the information that they require from you before they'll let you get into the 'unscreened' audience for Question Time and tell me if you think it's unbiased...

Also, if you're local to Blackheath and Greenwich, here's a post from Greenwich Watch with a link to the Facebook group 'no to Greenwich congestion charge'.

Empty void

I'm afraid that today (Friday) you will be left with an empty void where the Major's insights can usually found. There are far more important things to focus on:


Happy Birthday Mrs Gripe. Thank you for being such a wonderful (and tolerant) wife. I hope to make your birthday (and your Friday) a very special day. xxx

Surplus to requirements

You don't need me to comment on the news on days when the news parodies itself. That happened today - police taking delivery of Tony Blair's £100k bomb-proof BMW 7-series were surprised when they opened the 'impenetrable', 'secure' container andfour asylum-seekers jumped out. It seems that the asylum-seekers were less pleased at jumping out of a container into the middle of Scotland Yard.

You couldn't make it up...

Revelations

A special bonus for you - 2 posts today.

It is time to reveal the man behind the pseudonym. Well, sort of.

I have been invited to contribute to Little Man, What Now? and will be doing so under a sub-pseudonym, Bertrand Boer-Waugh.

If you visit the blog you will be able to see my posts, particularly yesterday's one. If you haven't read their blog yet, you should. It's good stuff.

Archbishop chooses religion over faith

Not a good day for the Archbishop of Canterbury, for the Anglican Communion, or for open-mindedness. The Episcopal church has had to put ordination of gay bishops on hold, along with blessings on same-sex marriages, in order to avoid the Anglican church dividing.

This is a classic example of the conflict between religion and faith. All faiths are largely similar in their values, and all are forces for good. Religions, on the other hand, are the man-made political institutions that purport to represent the faiths but often pursue a separate agenda to them. It is religions, not faiths, that have done harm.

Agreeing to exclude a group of people from a spiritual body just to keep the body together is a shameful act. Let's not forget that it isn't that long ago that people were issuing threats if women were allowed to become vicars. Only a century before that, it was up for debate whether some ethnic minorities should be allowed in (and interestingly it is the same ethnic minorities that are at the centre of the resistance today). For a Christian body to find it controversial to treat people the same reflects very, very badly on Christianity and goes completely against the spirit of the faith.

This post is not about homosexuality. It is about the response to it. Let's be clear: Dr Williams is making the preservation of an institution more important than upholding the faith that the institution represents. This is wrong. As a spiritual leader, you have an obligation to uphold the values of the spirituality, not to compromise them in human politics. This is what Rowan Williams should be doing. The gospels are all about Jesus confronting the religion of the day - he wasn't worried about the popularity of what he was saying, or whether it would cause a divide in the religion, and gave no compromise. Ask the monks in Burma, or Ghandi, how they feel about appeasement in the face of their values.

For how much longer will people within the religion try to use the teachings of Jesus, the core of which is 'Love Thy Neighbour As Thyself' let's not forget, to justify their exclusion of others from their church? It's a depressing reality that the church lags society by about 50 years. A true church should not be lagging society, it should be leading it.

Yeah, thanks

And thanks to my one respondent for damning me to more horrific hospital visits.

A plague on both your houses

Never assume that all the gumph you hear about western democracy translates into open and honest government. If you are in danger of assuming it, look at Greenwich Council and Ken Livingstone.

It appears that Greenwich Watch, Little Man, this blog and many others are on to something when we predict that all of the games played with the Blackwall Tunnel are a cynical plot to create enough of a problem in Greenwich to permit a triumphal entry of the congestion charge.

It's like those films that are supposed to have a clever twist, but actually the ending is pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain. The decent man loses again, Ken screws over the Gripe household (earning himself the nickname c**t) another time, and the whole farce carries on for another revolution. I may be bored of writing about it, but I'll be on the front line when we resist this hairy trucker (rhyming slang) and his plans to bleed us dry of yet more money.

You may win this time, Ken, but it's not over between us. I will have my day. Ya ha ha ha ha.....

The Sleuth, The Whole Sleuth...

Miss Marple wants to be more careful if the entire UK population does indeed get put onto the DNA database. While slothfully tangled in the duvet eating breakfast in bed, I have just witnessed her sneak into the murder scene in the library at the back of a stately home, while the police were at the front door trying to gain entry. Not content with breaking and entering, she proceeded to wander round the murder scene picking up all sorts of objects without wearing any gloves. She must have left a fingerprint and DNA trail that even the most useless police officers could follow.

I wonder whether all of the smug 'if you've got nothing to hide' brigade would condemn the octogenarian busybody if she were to be hauled up on charges. After all, it's not like she hasn't got form. She leaves a trail of murder wherever she lives. After all of the deaths in her village, the population must be decimated - and yet the fresh meat to cull in each episode must mean that people continue to move there. Perhaps this is because the programme didn't go out live, or perhaps they didn't check the relevant part of UpMyStreet.com. Bet they're regretting it now, from the other side.

Anyway, I've wandered off the point. Perhaps I've been looking at this whole DNA database thingy the wrong way. Yes, the loss of freedoms undermine our case for being the 'free world', but just look at the benefits. Long after Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot and Dr Mark Sloan are in The Clink, we can turn our attentions to TV property developers and celebrity chefs. Then the great society that we all crave will truly be born, free from their menaces.

Major change of direction?

It is now 2 1/2 months since I started on this journey. Credit (or blame) can go to Roberto, an esteemed colleague and friend who led by example. My first readers (excluding the one or two friends who read by a combination of coercion and emotional blackmail) came on 27th July, when Roberto showed me how to get Facebook to import my blog entries. Together, we journeyed far around the world, and have explored and moaned about many topics since then - 113 topics to be precise. Hasn't it been fun?

I suppose those two comments are the basis of this post. They're questions for you. You see, I've got regular visitors (and even some subscribers) - I hope that I succeed in what I want to do: give something to ponder and raise a chuckle. But one day stands out in the history of this blog as the most read: the dreaded hospital trip. It had 4 times more visits than my next highest day. It even got dugg.

I'm don't want to be a crowd-pleaser, but at the same time, I am left with a couple of questions. Do I need to cover more topics, or less. Is the tone right? Most importantly, do I need to become an insect-snorting maniac?

I'd love some feedback if you're able to give me some. If you think I should do more of the same, if you would like to see some changes. Anything would be great. Just leave a comment and let me know. And thanks for reading. It's been emotional.

Big Trouble In Little... Peru

Strange things are afoot in deepest, darkest, southern Peru. It appears that everyone has become ill in a small town where a meteorite struck. This could, in many ways, be alarming. Perhaps H.G.Wells is uncannily accurate in his prediction that lifeforms do not react well to extra-terrestrial bacteria and viruses.

Or, on the other hand, it could be total crap. I say this as a person who has a good knowledge of (and a deep love of) Peru after three visits there and a year living and working there as a teacher and interpreter in the high Andes and in Lima. One of the things that should be celebrated most about Peru is the industriousness of those who feel indignant at not sharing in the successes of the capital city, Lima. They conjure up all sorts of ways to get a piece of the action. This includes, in extreme cases, faking phallic tourist attractions. Let's see if there is any proof this time...

Menzies the Merciless

The Liberal Democrats have clearly lost their heads under Sir Menzies Campbell. The man is clearly detached from reality, judging by his plans for redistributive tax.

So, apparently the point at which you become a snout-in-the-trough fat cat stealing from society is at a household income of £70,000 per year. Let's repeat that - a HOUSEHOLD income of £70,000 per year. Has he given this even a moment's thought?

Let's look at the type of people who might have this income. Two graduates living together might concievably be earning £35k each, from which to pay their student loans and rent a modest flat. They will be taking home £4,300 between them per month, or £4,000 after optimistically low student debt repayments. In London, their basic living costs will be at least £1,000 plus bills and council tax, so call it £1,400. That leaves £2,600. Now take into account the fact that they will have to top up their own pension (unless they work in Whitehall or parliament). Contributing 6% would be modest. Out of gross contributions, that would work out to be about £300 per month for both of them. So £2,300 left for both of them. Deduct £200 for their travel per month, and £100 because being fat cats they have probably indulged in that classic emblem of bling - a clapped-out small car. That leaves £2,000 per month. Now deduct £400 for their groceries for the month, leaving £1,600. Let's assume that they need to save a small amount for the future and for a deposit on a house. £500 per month will give them combined savings of £6,000 per year (so that after only five more years these idle rich will have saved enough for a deposit on a flat). Assume that they take one 2-week holiday in Europe every year, so £1,200 each per year. That's another £100 each per month. So we now have £800, or £400 each, per month left over.

That is £400 to clothe themselves, for any entertainment, for gifts that they need to buy. I don't know about you, but I don't classify that as having 'done "too well" under Labour'.

This is another example of how people currently under 30 have been completely screwed over in the last 10 years as part of the massive wealth transfer to the older generations and part of the massive cost transfer to younger and future generations. Leave alone, Menzies, and stick your lefty nose somewhere else.

More on Northern Rock

A few follow-on thoughts from my previous post on Northern Rock and on the housing market today.

1. If Northern Rock are facing being put out of business, why in the name of all that is fiscally prudent are they running longer opening hours to allow more people to withdraw more money?
2. There was a letter into Metro this morning saying that it is the banks' fault for over-lending in sub-prime markets and that it isn't fair that customers should be punished by higher interest rates. Sorry to pass the buck back to you, but if you are pushed closer to default by a rise in interest rates then you have borrowed too much. Yes, the banks must take some responsibility for over-lending, but you too should take responsibility for over-borrowing.

1. Another letter to Metro slated property developers for making profit from doing up flats and houses and making them inhabitable again. The correspondent said that they were to blame for higher house prices. I'm afraid that in your ignorance you have blamed the wrong people. Property developers are putting their own funds at risk to make a small profit on each property. Furthermore, they are not raising house prices. By making more places inhabitable/desirable, they are in fact increasing the supply of homes and therefore diluting house price rises.

What is most interesting of all is how the Labour government has presided over a Thatcher-style credit boom while it has been increasing its tax take.
Sorry to get all 'political and stuff'.

You wouldn't steal a handbag. Copying car designs is theft.

I'm no kleptomaniac but I'm confident that I could give McClaren a few pointers on how to steal better.

Ferrari yesterday dedicated their victory to 'an English gentleman in a print shop in Woking'. It turns out that the whole 'spygate' saga came to light because the wife of Mike Coughlan took a Ferrari technical dossier into a print shop in Woking and asked to have some pages copied. The owner thought that there was something suspicious about a dossier from Monza turning up in a small Surrey town where a rival team was based, and contacted Ferrari.

Now, McClaren pay their drivers millions per year, and they have just been fined £50m by the FIA. A colour photocopier would set them back less than £5000. Given the amount of money involved in R&D on a car, you would presume that the team (or the individual) would regard £5k to be able to do it in the office (or at home) to be very, very cheap.

One thing that I certainly wouldn't do is walk into my nearest print shop and openly ask to copy part of the document. Does this rank as one of the stupidest things anyone has ever done?

Offensive offender

An unusual and unforeseen experience befell me today. I was sitting in the ruins of Reading Priory, which are next to Reading prison (famously the place where Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for homosexuality). From the place where I was sitting, you can see the windows of some of the cells on the top floor. Immersed in my book, I heard:

Male voice, shouting: Wwwaaannnker

[I look up]

Male voice, shouting: Yeah, you. W*nk*r.

At this point, I was thinking 'OK, so now I am going to get in a fight with someone from the other side of a prison wall'. I paused. 'Again', I added to my thought.

Unsure as I was about how to deal with being heckled from within a prison, I returned to my book. Unsatisfied with this reaction, he continued his monologue.

Male voice, shouting: Is that a map, mate? Are you lost? Do you need directions?

Now I don't know about you, but I don't spend much time loitering outside prisons. Particularly prisons for homosexuals. So I don't really expect to be seen by people loitering within prisons. Less so sworn at by people languishing in their cells. And what was he doing at 10:45am on a Sunday morning still within his cell? Shouldn't he be tending the vegetable patch? Or, more pragmatically, in the chapel finding his faith and improving his chances of parole?

Heckled and helped by a prisoner within 10 seconds. What a Sunday morning for me.

You are the Rock upon which I build my bank

Sorry Jesus for ripping your line off in my title.

I'm really amazed at how stupid people can be when it comes to banks. Witness the drama being made out of the Northern Rock situation. People have so far withdrawn £1bn from the bank since its announcement that it was using Bank of England emergency funding. If ever there is a self-fulfilling prophesy, this is it.

It's quite simple. The banking system is fundamentally solvent but illiquid because they make more interest lending your money than they pay you for depositing it with them by lending it out for longer. If you go and demand your money, they have to give it to you - but they have given it to someone else as a loan for a long time. So they keep some deposits lying around in cash to ensure that enough people can get their deposits in normal circumstances. Its liquidity relies on lots and lots of confidence in the system, and lots of interbank lending on the money markets to back it up.

By panicking and pulling their money out, people are going to send a liquid bank solvent. It's the same 'me first' attitude that saw us run out of petrol last year because a few people started panic buying and the rest followed like drearily stupid sheep.

I wonder if this will hit Ginko Bank again...

Epitaph: I told you I was ill

Thanks to the late Spike Milligan for the title of this post.

I am helping Mrs Gripe with her revision for her acupuncture degree as she has an exam tomorrow. We are looking at syndromes.

I was reminded of how spurious the application of the word syndrome can be. In particular I am thinking of a western medical syndrome that is rather permanent in its effect. It's called Sudden Death Syndrome. Not really a syndrome in that it's characterized by, well, suddenly dying. Now I recognise the tragedy of that, but is it really a syndrome? I wonder when there will be a No Syndrome Syndrome.

There'll always be an En-ger-land

You couldn't script this stuff. England goes to football world cup expecting to win it. Packed with oodles of talent. And Theo Walcott. Turns out average performance and quarter final exit to first big team. Then the assistant coach takes charge. Qualification looks like it may be in doubt despite the new oodles of talent.

Then two matches close together. The new big stars all injured or suspended. Some players brought in from lower in the pecking order, and others recalled from the wilderness. Including Emile Heskey, chief fodder for the boo-boys for so long. And what happens? 6 points. 6 goals. Owen proves why we can't do without him, and Heskey earns his place over Wayne Rooney. And also provides an aerial threat that is superior to that offered by our 6'7" striker. Classsic.

Also, congratulations are due to Scotland for a top performance. I hope to see you joining us in the finals.

My wings are like a shield of cack

Two friends of ours have just been ripped off by Ryanair. They were at the end of their holiday and were due to fly back from Santiago de Compostela with Ryanair on a £20 flight on Thursday. Ryanair cancelled the flight and told them that they wouldn't be able to fly until Tuesday. They also have them no help with food or accommodation, meaning that they would be out of pocket for that time. The bigger problem was that they were due to start new jobs on Monday. Since Ryanair was the only airline to fly from there to Blighty, they had to get a standby flight to Barcelona and fly home from there. It took them 24 hours and EUR1000 to get home. Worse still, when Thomas phoned Ryanair to complain , he was told that he could only complain by fax. He asked for written confirmation of what happened, so that he could claim from his insurance company, and was told that he would have to pay EUR20 plus postage to get that.

They said that Ryanair told them that they wren't liable because it was a technical problem, and therefore not the airline's fault. I can't believe that any company would so willingly waive its ethical responsibilities to its customers, let alone a company whose whole business model is aimed at budget passengers - who often can't afford that sort of unforeseen expense. They said that behind them in the check-in queue was a family of seven. How much will it have cost them to stay an extra five days and nights?

Where does this leave my friends in terms of trading standards? They were sold a cheap journey that eventually cost them more than a schedule airline fare.

The key to a successful budget operation in any industry is volume. In the long term, that can only be achieved through accuracy and availability. This means minimizing errors and ensuring that where they do occur they are rectified without customers - who have already identified themselves as price sensitive by flying with a budget airline - having to pay more.

This is penny-pinching by Ryanair. If it is not, i.e. if the cost is too great for them to bear because too many customers need this sort of help, then they need to change their business model. Either way, such sharp practice as this will not work in the long-term.

To the gate staff at London Bridge

This is some guidance to the staff who look after the main gateline for platforms 1-6 at London Bridge railway station. If a passenger is pulling a case that he says won't fit through the electronic barriers, let him through the 'with luggage' gate. He is not of the devil. He just wants to get home. And when he lets himself through the open gate, don't shout at him. He isn't doing anything wrong. He doesn't understand why it is such a key battle for you to stop people going through the gate, he just wants to make his journey a little easier. Try helping him, and maybe the world will be a better place.

If you are Ali from the gateline, then when (in response to you shouting at him) he asks you to remember customer service, try to remember that he is your customer, you are not his customer. This means that shouting back 'You remember your customer service' to him is in its essence a toothless and unnecessary exclamation that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

If you are Brian from the gateline, try not to threaten the passenger with the words "I'll knock your f***ing block off, you f***ing c**t". Also try not to threaten that the next time you'll check his ticket, because he has a ticket - a valid ticket - and therefore does not fear your threat.

If you are Southeastern Rail and you run the station that the gateline is part of, then please have a look at the situation. If the battle that the staff want to fight in not letting anyone with luggage through the 'with luggage' gate is a valid one, then please explain to your customers why this is - it isn't clear to us why these individuals want to argue. If you agree with the customers that there is no reason for them to fight the battle with such determination, then try to stop them doing it. Your posters telling your passengers that you do not tolerate abuse of your staff have much less credibility when your staff shout and swear at your passengers, and even threaten them with violence.

Let's see if we can bring some civility and service ethos back to your railway system.

Hustings

As promised, here is a short review and opinion of the four Tory candidates for Mayor of London. I am doing this for three reasons:

1. Because it is the only party that is likely to have much competition for its candidacy (Labour will stick with Ken, and in the absence of anything on their site I am guessing that the Lib Dems will stick with Simon Hughes).
2. Because any alternative to Ken Livingstone should be explored and hopefully followed.
3. Because that nice Mr Cameron could do with having some attention distracted away from his policies at the moment.

So, here they are. I will spare my personal preference until the end:

Boris Johnson





In many ways, Boris Johnson should be the credible candidate for these elections. I was also surprised by the quality of his campaign statement - I was expecting 'an inverted pyramid of piffle'. But I think he will find these elections difficult, because as far as I can tell no-one takes him seriously. This may be the moment that he finally wakes up to the fact that his class clown act, lothario misdeeds and (albeit entertaining) TV satire presenting has meant that people don't see him as a leader.

Victoria Borwick



Victoria 'Last time Ken ran London it took a woman to stop him' Borwick appears to be the toughest candidate - her reference to Thatcher (quoted above) and her Giuliani-style 'zero tolerance' stance on how to sort the city out is very reminiscent of him. One element that I don't like about what she has said (and I agree with Boris about) is talking about scrapping the congestion charge without proposing an alternative is bonkers and just comes across as populist. If she hasn't got an alternative then she should talk about reforming it (an idea which also has plenty of scope).

Andrew Boff




I really don't have a lot to say about his policies. He talks a lot about devolution of power, which is important in London, but doesn't really address the issues of crime etc very well.

The only thing that I can say about him is that if the Tories gave us, in Michael Portillo, the Harrison Ford of politics, then in Andrew Boff they have also given us the Graham Norton of politics.

Warwick Lightfoot



Apart from telling us that he went to Oxford, and that he will deal with the problems facing London, Mr Lightfoot doesn't really tell us very much about things. His leaflet reminds me of the TV adverts that Peruvian presidential hopefuls were running during the 2000 election: 'We have problems - let's move forward, with xxx' without anything said (apart from an occasional mention of giving bowls of rice to poor people) about how to move forwards.

Despite this, I have high hopes indeed that Warwick Lightfoot will turn out to be the man who removes Ken from City Hall. Not for his policies or even for himself. I hope that he will remove Ken through scandal by turning out to be his secret love-child. Have another look at his photo and tell me what you think.

Conclusion

None of the candidates have really given much detail on how they would solve problems and still cut spending, apart from one reference to £8m of wasted spending.

For me it is between Boris and Victoria Borwick. If he can be taken seriously, then I think that Boris would be the more credible candidate, but I can't see it happening. So it is Victoria Borwick who looks best. Let's hope she moderates her populist stance on the congestion charge.

Running for the hills

I was going to grace you with an amusing and insightful piece analysing each of the four Tory candidates for Mayor of London, but that will have to come tomorrow. For in a move reminiscent of the cold war, I am running for the nuclear bunker. We appear to be about to go to war with Russia.

Let's hope for the best, but start stockpiling the baked beans and bogroll in case.

Shining whit

I am a peaceful man by nature and I try to see (despite many of the posts in this blog) the best in things and in people. But I have to say that if I had the chance, I would put that five-bellied, quarter-witted numbskull agitator Bob Crow against the wall and blast his brains out with a blunderbuss.

What is the point of him? Yet again there was a strike on the tube over nothing, yet again he was deliberately trying to cause trouble for its own sake, and yet again when the strike finally ends (after getting the same assurances before as after the strike) the lazy Number-One-Hits that pretend to maintain tube lines hold off from hauling their rabid arses back to work for another 12 hours. Genuine safety checks would have meant firing most of them before they got back into work, not allowing them to carry on their stupid wannabe comrade crap back into the underground system. Have they forgotten the photos a few years ago of tube engineers drunk at work and sleeping on the lines during shifts?

No-one outside Bob Crow's own mirror could possibly think that the man is anything other than complete rabid festering turd. The thing that is worst about him is that despite being a former card-carrying communist he isn't even a decent one. If Marx were alive today and writing a column in the Observer or the Morning Star or some such, he would haul Bob Crow over the coals in the same way that he pulled apart the French socialist revolutionaries in The Communist Manifesto. He doesn't advance anything that his proclaimed doctrine should try to advance. I am no communist (far from it, as you will find out in tomorrow's post) but I have a deep interest in Marx and have actually read many of his works. Under Crow, workers' protected rights basically means that they continue to be bound to the apparatus of the employer, be it bourgeois or state. Meaning that they don't have the freedoms that Marxists argue that they should have. In fact, he has a perverse incentive - to maximise union membership (surely the aim as witnessed by all of the union consolidation over recent years) he must take big, 'bold' public action against 'the system'. His incentive is to appear to be taking action, not to be working for the long term achievement of the members' rights. Hence the fact that every other union called off their strikes based on the guarantees that they got, and RMT only called their strikes off after they got identical guarantees repeated to them. Clearly public posturing. Even Ken Livingstone proclaimed this strike pointless, and readers who know me well will know how much pain it causes me to use him on my side in an argument.

I have tried to find out how much the pork-porting reprobate has enriched himself thorugh his leadership of RMT. It is not a matter of public record. Does anyone know? I will bet that the smug fool has a 7-figure asset base out of his posturing.

You are soooo busted

The garage I used in Lee Green are losers. This is the story of how I will have my revenge on them. They were due to collect the Gripemobile yesterday, between 9am and 1pm, to take it in for repairs. Mrs Gripe had an emergency appointment and needed to leave home at midday, so I called them at 8:30am:

Major: Hello, you are due to take my car in this morning. My wife has had a problem and needs to go for an appointment. She needs to leave at 12 - please can you ensure that you come in time for that.
Monkeywoman: No, we can't do anything like that.
Major: But I've just told you the circumstances, my wife needs to go to an emergency appointment. You are only 5 minutes away, I'm sure that they can do it.
Monkeywoman: No, we can't. Don't use your wife's situation on me. You'll have to rebook for 10 days time. I'm not going to help you.
Major: That's not acceptable. I'm not going to wait 10 days. All you need to do is send a driver up the road in the next 2 hours.
Monkeywoman: But our drivers are on a job now and they have to get to the next person before 11 because we promised her.
Major: So you do do that then.
Monkeywoman: Alright, we do, yes, but our drivers are all on the road.
Major: And they don't have mobile phones?
Monkeywoman: There is only one driver and he is deaf and dumb.
Major: You are telling me that you only have one deaf-mute driver...
Monkeywoman: Yes, what's wrong with that?
Major: Nothing's wrong with it, but your story sounds very improbably given how hard you've been trying not to help me.

Monkeywoman: Alright, I will try but it's probably not going to be possible.

To give the garage its credit, I had a very humble phone-call about an hour later, saying that they would do what they could. They did turn up in time for Mrs Gripe to get to her appointment. It also turns out that the driver was indeed deaf-mute, so it wasn't made up - which is what it sounded. Nonetheless, it is terrible service to have a refusal and then to be argued with when you try to reason with the person on the other end. And it doesn't inspire confidence about the repairs when all they want to do is argue with you.

Anyway, what they don't know is that I am employed by the insurance company they were working for as their in-house strategy consultant. Which means that I have a very good relationship with the MD and with the people who maintain the approved repairer network. So they will be getting a dressing down. It's nice to be able to do some mystery shopping once in a while.

[I have removed the garage's name from the post as I have taken it up with them and have resolved the issue with the owner and passed it on to my company.]

Bunch of useless, lazy...

Why exactly are London Underground workers striking again? Is £40k for a 35-hour week for an unskilled job not good enough for them? And all week, on the week back to work? I can't believe them - they totally warrant the description of them from the classic song.

During the 2002 strikes, I was at Kings Cross when the strike started, having missed the last connection before the strike started. I went to the gates that had closed off access to the Northern Line, intending to cut through to the Thameslink station. Passing the Northern Line platform, I
heard a train so I went to look. It turns out that they were running a service to take themselves home. I mean, deny us the service and still run it for yourselves at our expense?

I was pretty incensed, so I decided to get on the train with a plan of refusing to get back off. Thankfully they didn't clock me until we had set off, so I sat enduring their old-school socialist solidarity songs. When asked for my view, I was pretty frank - and was especially candid about my view of the suggestion that they should earn £90k per year. One of them responded "well, that's no different to a CEO seeing his shares go through the roof". OK, so it wasn't a good idea, but I couldn't let that stand and pointed out to him that steering a company into massive growth, and running a train sort of on time, were hardly equal achievements and hardly deserved comparison.

That was their view, though, that they should get lucky on their earnings because some other people do - and hang the expense. Can't anyone stop them and frog-march their crapulent arses back to work?

I will finish with a quote from the great song about them: 'They're all greedy ****s, I'd like to shoot them all with a rifle."

Evil, my donkey

Some interesting, if possibly a touch brown-nosing, coverage of Google in this week's Economist. In a leader and a briefing, they write about the company's motto 'Don't be Evil', and discuss the concerns that many parties have about the growth of Google, of its privacy issues and of its staff issues too. Just in time for Google's birthday.

As the Economist notes, it will be interesting to are how well Google's approach holds firm once their earnings growth stalls or market conditions tighten against them. I'm sure that is a long way away but it will be important to watch.

Also interesting is their strategic diversification and their apparent strategic flexibility. There are always blind-spots in any strategy, and the more diverse the strategy the greater the number of blind-spots. I will look forward to seeing how they handle that.

One thing that is striking is how often Google is talked about as if it holds the monopoly on genius, particularly with the algorithms that it employs for advertising (its core revenue). I wonder if people think that they are more hallowed than they are. They are very impressive, yes, but they are not infallible.

Here are two screen-dumps of this blog, taken at the same time on 2nd September. As you can see, one is advertising stair-lifts for the elderley and disabled, and the other is advertising skiing. Now I can appreciate the diverse nature of posts on this blog, but surely no-one is going to be interested in both adverts. Since Google's ad placement strategy involves minority and diverse pages, shouldn't it be able to handle things like this and even far more obscure ones?

Yes, Google outperforms the other search engines, but the performance is still not massive. I saw today that the PPC for Google is 3.6%. Is it possible that Google's algorithms are more about redundancy than about relevance? After all, if you throw enough brown stuff at the wall, I'd guess that about 3.6% of it will stick.

Beautiful game

I was in Liverpool earlier in the week, and that - along with the football (soccer, for the benefit of the transatlantic readers) yesterday - reminded me of the Everton v Blackburn game last weekend, which I was listening to on Radio Five Live whilst driving. At the start, they were discussing the minute's silence in honour of the Rhys Jones murder, and discussed whether the players' minds would really be on the game. This just served as a reminder that football commentators should commentate on, well, football, and leave news to the professionals. They just can't do it. Rhys Jones' murder has been a horrible tragedy, that goes without saying - and the club's response has been very good. But for the commentators to suggest that footballers who are paid £50k or more per week to win games would be distracted from the game by the murder of someone they had never met is crazy - they way that everyone always wants to be involved in some way in these things just devalues the tragedy completely.

It reminds me of finding out about 9/11 on Talk Sport - my boss at the time refused to retune the radio. As if there wasn't enough anger and sadness to feel from the events, having to listen to them being debated and sensationalised by people who struggled to formulate a complete sentence in English, and listening to their predictions of world doom if George Bush were to be assassinated during the day, just added to the anger.

So, football commentators of the world, I beg you, stick to what you are qualified to discuss.

On the subject of football, I hope that they don't sack Martin Jol after the draw yesterday. It was negligent, yes, to give away 3 cheap goals. But the season is still young, and he has given us European football twice and our two highest Premier League finishes in his two full seasons in charge. Talk of replacing his is crazy and I really hope that they don't do it. To help him out, I have some thoughts to contribute.

We scored three goals yesterday. One came from our star striker's first of the season. The other two came from defenders. So, to put it another way, 2/3 of our goals came from defenders while at the other end we conceded 3 cheap goals. Wide, expansive play with defenders galloping up the wing is fine, but you do sometimes have to leave people behind to defend. Just a thought.