Wednesday 31 October 2007

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

Saturday 27 October 2007

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?

Thursday 25 October 2007

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.

Monday 22 October 2007

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.

Friday 19 October 2007

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...

Thursday 18 October 2007

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.

Wednesday 17 October 2007

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...

Monday 15 October 2007

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.

Saturday 13 October 2007

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.

Friday 12 October 2007

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.

Wednesday 10 October 2007

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.

Tuesday 9 October 2007

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...

Monday 8 October 2007

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.

Sunday 7 October 2007

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.

Friday 5 October 2007

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.

Wednesday 3 October 2007

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.

Tuesday 2 October 2007

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?