How often has a friend or relative told you of some battle with officialdom where they have repeatedly provided personal information yet have been unable to get the service they require? “I rang them up and they said they couldn’t find my file,” or “they’d apparently not received the application form” or “I have personally delivered the information to their office on several occasions but they are still claiming not to have received it”... and so on.
It occurred to me that other day, as we suffered yet another shower of news about lost laptops, computer disks - and ergo lost data - that it’s nothing new. In fact it's happening every day but most of the time we don't make quite the same fuss about it.
The only difference between computerised and paper-based systems is that when a laptop goes missing it could contain a million personal details, whereas a piece of paper is a piece of paper. The mislaying of the piece of paper is still a loss of data. If you can’t find the CD it’s lost, if you cannot say where someone's file is, it's effectively lost and could be in the wrong hands.
Maybe the next time someone says they cannot do their job because they cannot find information which has clearly been given to them, the solution is to mention two words “Information Commissioner".
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Monday, 14 January 2008
Everlasting cheque clearance
I had the misfortune recently to take an action in the small claims court against someone who owed me a significant amount of money. By a chance of fate – into which I won’t go here – the action is already complicated, having been lodged in one court, then transferred to one halfway across the country, and now probably residing halfway between that court and yet another.
My delight at having received a cheque for the full amount owing, was tinged with caution. I didn’t want to call off the case too early in case the cheque were to bounce. I waited the four working day period after paying it into the NatWest. Because of the Christmas break I was advised to give it a little longer “in case of postal delays”. So I have given it 10 working days – but still the bank refuses to give me a guarantee that the money is irrefutably mine. In other words, at any time in the future, should the debtor’s cheque be returned unpaid, my account could be debited the amount.
What about all those lost letters, the ones that people said they've sent and never arrive, the tales of correspondence that turns up weeks, months - sometimes even years - later? Mistakes happen (we've heard a great deal things getting lost recently). What happens I wonder when returned cheques from ages of yore manifest themselves in rediscovered banking postal bags?
There appears to be no specific time after which a cheque is “safe”. I should have paid it in as a “special”. What’s a “special” I hear you ask? Well a “special” clearance is a service that would have cost me £15, paid to my bank the NatWest, but which would have guaranteed that the cheque had been “cleared”.
We live and learn. What I’ve learnt from this episode is that the cheque clearance system appears still to be dependent upon the banking postal service. Here’s to the digital age – may it not be too long in arriving at UK banks.
My delight at having received a cheque for the full amount owing, was tinged with caution. I didn’t want to call off the case too early in case the cheque were to bounce. I waited the four working day period after paying it into the NatWest. Because of the Christmas break I was advised to give it a little longer “in case of postal delays”. So I have given it 10 working days – but still the bank refuses to give me a guarantee that the money is irrefutably mine. In other words, at any time in the future, should the debtor’s cheque be returned unpaid, my account could be debited the amount.
What about all those lost letters, the ones that people said they've sent and never arrive, the tales of correspondence that turns up weeks, months - sometimes even years - later? Mistakes happen (we've heard a great deal things getting lost recently). What happens I wonder when returned cheques from ages of yore manifest themselves in rediscovered banking postal bags?
There appears to be no specific time after which a cheque is “safe”. I should have paid it in as a “special”. What’s a “special” I hear you ask? Well a “special” clearance is a service that would have cost me £15, paid to my bank the NatWest, but which would have guaranteed that the cheque had been “cleared”.
We live and learn. What I’ve learnt from this episode is that the cheque clearance system appears still to be dependent upon the banking postal service. Here’s to the digital age – may it not be too long in arriving at UK banks.
Friday, 11 January 2008
Rejoice! Do we see the beginning of the end of stuff?
I couldn't help feeling pleasure at the news that Marks & Spencer's not done too well over Christmas. It's not that I wish the store any harm, it's just that I cannot see how we can go on acquiring 'stuff', and retail businesses can go on expanding, in perpetuity - growing profits, selling more stuff to consumers (who already have too much stuff anyway) - without completely trashing the planet.
Eventually this greed has to end. I would rather it ended in a slow and sustained retrenchment. I would prefer an understanding that sustainability means keeping what you have, mending it, re-using it, recycling it and also entails eating less, throwing less away and growing more. I'd prefer that to what I fear might be a big bang of economic disaster with all the deprivation and poverty it will bring.
Clone street Britain will eventually reach a point at which expanding business and increased profits, the greed of consumers, shareholders and private equity investors has to stop. It's logical. It simply cannot go on the way it is.
Do all those people who rush out to save £399 by buying a new three piece suite really need one? No, very few of them do. As soon as they get home they're wondering what they are going to do with the old one, which isn't worn out, isn't unusable but just a bit saggy and needs a good clean.
Does Tesco really need to pull down the store it already has in order to build something which is even bigger, with even more stuff in it? Are people queuing to get in, queuing at the shelves to get the stuff that's there because it's got to be shared out fairly? No, of course not. Go into that supermarket and you're spoilt for choice. There's so much stuff, so many varieties of the same stuff, that it's difficult to find the stuff you really want.
We are running out of room to put stuff and money with which to buy stuff, and we've already run out of holes in the ground into which to dump the stuff which we've discarded in favour of new stuff. Could this be the beginning of the end of excess stuff? I do hope so.
Eventually this greed has to end. I would rather it ended in a slow and sustained retrenchment. I would prefer an understanding that sustainability means keeping what you have, mending it, re-using it, recycling it and also entails eating less, throwing less away and growing more. I'd prefer that to what I fear might be a big bang of economic disaster with all the deprivation and poverty it will bring.
Clone street Britain will eventually reach a point at which expanding business and increased profits, the greed of consumers, shareholders and private equity investors has to stop. It's logical. It simply cannot go on the way it is.
Do all those people who rush out to save £399 by buying a new three piece suite really need one? No, very few of them do. As soon as they get home they're wondering what they are going to do with the old one, which isn't worn out, isn't unusable but just a bit saggy and needs a good clean.
Does Tesco really need to pull down the store it already has in order to build something which is even bigger, with even more stuff in it? Are people queuing to get in, queuing at the shelves to get the stuff that's there because it's got to be shared out fairly? No, of course not. Go into that supermarket and you're spoilt for choice. There's so much stuff, so many varieties of the same stuff, that it's difficult to find the stuff you really want.
We are running out of room to put stuff and money with which to buy stuff, and we've already run out of holes in the ground into which to dump the stuff which we've discarded in favour of new stuff. Could this be the beginning of the end of excess stuff? I do hope so.
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
Disposable clothing - I think, girls, that it's our fault
I braved the centre of our town on Sunday although it still goes against the grain to shop on that particular day of the week. I guess you could call me old-fashioned. The object of my quest was boots. A pair of large – my feet are very large – low boots with a small heel; you know, the ones that you can tuck your jeans into.
What I discovered in every shop in town – bar one which had absolutely nothing in the style – was plastic shoes. Hardly a hint of leather anywhere. No, it was plastic shoes and boots with ridiculously thin soles and looking unlikely to last a week, let alone a month or 36. I normally keep my shoes for years – well I have to with my feet, because large shoes are so hard to come by.
This plastic disposable footwear lark got me thinking. It's us, the women of the western world, who are responsible in the main for the current trend of disposable possessions. We are culpable. We are probably most to blame for for the landfill, for the carbon emissions, for the Kamikazi nature of the modern world. Think about it. Disposable fashion clothes. What a terrible terrible waste. And the worst thing of all is that our eastern cousins think our way of life is something to be desired.
Yes, we’re back into buying small lumps of nylon or polyester which, if you put a match to them, would immediately sizzle into a small plastic lump. Do you remember those heady days of synthetic fibres – the early days that is? It was so exciting. Crimplene in all its glory served us well. But we advanced beyond that. But now it’s back with a vengeance. Cheap nasty clingy stuff, thin, no warmth at all, without an ounce of style, pulled tight and stretched in furrows of tension past mounds of over-ample bosoms. It’s not even very attractive.
It’s not men that shop this way is it? OK, men might follow fashion to a certain extent but it’s not men who undertake retail therapy. (I would also hazard a guess that it’s generally not men who pick most holiday venues in far flung corners of the globe, necessitating air travel, but that’s another topic.)
So there we have it, China, labouring under its pall of pollution is churning out millions of these pieces of tat – clothes and shoes. We women wear them a couple of times and then consign them to the charity shop or Freecycle them with a smug feeling of satisfaction that we’re doing the planet a favour, whereas in fact we are doing quite the opposite.
When the history of the 2000s comes to be written what will they say of us girls?
What I discovered in every shop in town – bar one which had absolutely nothing in the style – was plastic shoes. Hardly a hint of leather anywhere. No, it was plastic shoes and boots with ridiculously thin soles and looking unlikely to last a week, let alone a month or 36. I normally keep my shoes for years – well I have to with my feet, because large shoes are so hard to come by.
This plastic disposable footwear lark got me thinking. It's us, the women of the western world, who are responsible in the main for the current trend of disposable possessions. We are culpable. We are probably most to blame for for the landfill, for the carbon emissions, for the Kamikazi nature of the modern world. Think about it. Disposable fashion clothes. What a terrible terrible waste. And the worst thing of all is that our eastern cousins think our way of life is something to be desired.
Yes, we’re back into buying small lumps of nylon or polyester which, if you put a match to them, would immediately sizzle into a small plastic lump. Do you remember those heady days of synthetic fibres – the early days that is? It was so exciting. Crimplene in all its glory served us well. But we advanced beyond that. But now it’s back with a vengeance. Cheap nasty clingy stuff, thin, no warmth at all, without an ounce of style, pulled tight and stretched in furrows of tension past mounds of over-ample bosoms. It’s not even very attractive.
It’s not men that shop this way is it? OK, men might follow fashion to a certain extent but it’s not men who undertake retail therapy. (I would also hazard a guess that it’s generally not men who pick most holiday venues in far flung corners of the globe, necessitating air travel, but that’s another topic.)
So there we have it, China, labouring under its pall of pollution is churning out millions of these pieces of tat – clothes and shoes. We women wear them a couple of times and then consign them to the charity shop or Freecycle them with a smug feeling of satisfaction that we’re doing the planet a favour, whereas in fact we are doing quite the opposite.
When the history of the 2000s comes to be written what will they say of us girls?
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