Welcome Home, Vowels

Here's a funny thing. In August 2021 the giant investment group Aberdeen Standard Life ditched nearly all of its name and presented a glittering, down-with-the-kids, cool, resonant and exhilarating new name - abrdn. That's right, out went the much respected Standard Life bit, the vowels were stripped away from the rest and they saved thousands of caps lock keys from jamming by binning the capital letter as well. 

This attracted much contumely from around the financial world but, most notably, in these very columns. The company became a laughing stock. My warnings went unheeded and the outcome all too predictable - employees of the unpronounceable enterprise found themselves publicly sneered at in the streets of the City, cat-called in coffee bars and satirised in the squash courts.  Matters reached breaking strain when the Chief Investment Officer declared that the risibility and jeers were "Corporate bullying". But he failed to draw the obvious conclusion and just doubled-down on the original, stupid, renaming decision.

All has changed. Today in a stunning U-turn, the company has gone rummaging through its waste bins, retrieved those long-lost 'Es' and resinstated them in their rightful place.

Source: AJ Bell

 

Should we let the church bells ring out and pop the corks in celebration of a victory for the English language? Perhaps. They omitted to find the capital 'A' and are stuck with the lower case. However they have added the word "group" to the name. Now this is going to increase the cost of typing and wear out more letters on their word processing keyboards [Do they still use those? Ed] and I would expect the markets to mark their shares down quite heftily once the implications sink in. Should I risk the Ramblings Retirement Fund on a quick flutter by selling their shares short, or should I leave it safely in the big blue-and-white striped jug on the mantlepiece?

Implausability Corner #2 - The Merger

 This month's award for the most blatently self-serving load of PR flummery to be heard for a long time goes, by huge popular acclaim, to the spokesman for Vodafone. The mobile comms giant wishes to merge with another massive company, Three, to form a conglomerate that will have something like half of the UK mobile phone market.

Naturally there are concerns that this is an attempt to stifle the market and use economies of scale to drive others out of business, significantly reducing competition and enabling the directors to give themselves huge salary boosts plus bonuses because they will now be directing a much bigger enterprise than before. Oh, and presumably profits will have to go up to justify whatever the cost of the merger is, and in an essentially static market place there is only way for that to happen (and I'm not talking about cutting portion size in the middle-managers' canteen).

The Competition and Markets Authority has provisionally concluded the proposal would weaken competition. Good spot guys, but lose several house points for the weasel-like chickening out of "provisional" [erm, weaselly and chickening in the same phrase. I don't like it, I don't like it one little bit: Ed]

 Naturally the big boys of telecomms took their fight to the airwaves and I caught the interview on the morning broadcast on the BBC

Vodafone's CEO for European Markets, Ahmed Essam, told the Today programme, on BBC Radio 4, that he still believed the merger would make a better network for customers, and add to the competition in the market.
source: BBC

 Well he would, wouldn't he? There has never been a merger in history that has increased competition. The entire purpose of mergers is to reduce it without the economically efficient way of being better than the others. Because a merger does it quickly whereas actually being better and gradually atracting business through lower prices, better network coverage and better customer service ¹ takes time and requires taking risks. Although this is supposed to be what competitive markets are all about, the Vodafone/Three tie-up is all about cutting risks so that their future investment has a guaranteed customer base.

But the Vodafone CEO says it will add to competition, and sure he is an honourable man. 

There is one potential technical justification for the claim. If a very dominant player already controlled the market, and this merger would create a business sufficiently strong to challenge it, then there might be good reason for approval. But the mergees² already have the market in their grip. Does this in Vodafone seem like competition? But Mr Essam says it will increase competition and he is an honourable man, so all they are all, all honourable men. 

I suppose I must declare an interest. I am indirectly a customer of Three, via a reseller called Smarty who, for a very small amount of monthly cash, give me all the minutes, texts and internet data I could wish for, and throw in European roaming as well.  I am a little nervous that this happy state of affairs may not last once the merger goes a little sour, as they usually do, and costs far more than expected to make a single system of the two existing ones, as invariably happens, and the shareholders begin shifting uneasily in their seats at AGMs and things begin to be said about whether the merger was delivering all that had been promised. But by then, no doubt, Mr Essam and his chums will have taken their massive bonuses for making it happen and it really won't be their problem at all. It will be ours, the consumers.

Footnotes:

1. This was never going to happen, comments of forums such as on Reddit make it very clear how awful it is

 2. Do you like it? I may launch a Kickstealer campaign for a book called "My 100 best neologisms" if there is enough support.

The Blight of the Lawyer

 I reproduce a news story in the Daily Telegraph that is sparking so many ideas in my head I can barely sit still - see if you concur

This story is all too familiar in these days of unrestrained global capitalism. A big firm threatens to sue a tiny one for a breach of copyright, knowing that the costs of even a small court action will be disproportionately large for the defendant and therefore seeking to intimidate heedless of the justice of their claim. In this case the big firm, Campari, has a brand called Skyy Vodka. The little firm, owned by Steve White, is a microbrewery selling Dark Sky beer. Campari market their drinks around the world. Dark Sky beer is only available in a handful of pubs in the north of England. 

Campari's lawyers argued that, and please put down any hot drinks before reading on, you don't want to splatter it all over your clothes, "consumers might get confused between its vodka and Mr White's beers". Yes, indeed, easy to mix the two up. Here they are, side by side.

Skyy vodka            Dark Sky beer

I suppose these lawyers are reasonably intelligent and are only acting on instructions. Nonetheless, they could have told their aggressive client that they were just being bloody stupid. No, they took their fees and went to court and to his great credit Mr White refused to be bullied, fought his case and won.

I am inevitably reminded of another lying lawyer, convicted felon ex-President Trump's friend Rudy Giuliani and somehow, given that Skyy Vodka's base is the US, it does seem that we are destined to have another eavesdrop on the American legal system.

Scene: a courtroom in California. US flags, policemen wearing sunglasses, palm trees waving gently outside in the breeze from the Pacific.

Clerk: Yo there, dudes, show some respect and give it up for his honor, Judge D. Crockett
Crockett: Sure is hanging looser here than in my previous courtrooms. Okay, okay, let's all get mellow and see if we can't finish up here before the surf gets up. This is some sort of brand copyright issue, am I right?
Hamilton Burger: Your honor, as usual I represent the plaintiff, in this case the Skyy Vodka corporation of this very state, and my colleague Mr Mason is appearing for the defendants from England, some two-bit moonshiners who aren't even American.
Crockett: Looks pretty bad for you Mr Mason, even before the get-go, whatever that is.
Mason: Your honor, I shall be vigorously contesting this case and I reserve the right to call at least four surprise witnesses at the last minute, as usual.
Burger: Damn.
Crockett: Proceed, Mr Burger.
Burger: I show the court this bottle of my client's vodka, and this bottle of beer from England. It is our contention that the beer has stolen my client's brand name and appearance and it is impossible to tell the difference. Anyone going into a bar anywhere in the world wishing to drink my client's excellent white spirit short drink and having forgotten what it is called, will inevitably see this beer and order it instead. Or if they are aware of the name of Skyy Vodka and wish to order it, will find their tongue twisting to say "Dark Sky beer" instead, everyone knows this happens all the time and my clients are losing literally billions. Every day. At least, I think they are. I mean, aren't they? They told me they were, or might be, or something. Billions. If not more.
Crockett: Mr Mason?
Mason: Your honour, the plaintiff makes a very strong case. I can see that, using the same argument as my distinguished and honorable friend, that anyone wishing to watch Sky TV might well find themselves downing a few shots of vodka instead, having confused the two. Indeed, I have referred this matter to the legal advisors for Sky and they tell me they are going to sue Skyy Vodka for, consults paper at least forty-eight squillion dollars, plus costs, for stealing their name but they are not concerned about Dark Sky beer because, in their words, only a drooling moron could confuse TV and beer or indeed beer and vodka.
Burger: Oh, shi...Your honor, may I have a recess to consult with my clients?
Crockett: Take as long as you like, young feller. Mr Mason, Let's have a beer at the bar, I hear they got a new one called Skyy.

Going to Extremes

 I received a puzzling message from my energy supplier today and I need some time to decide how to respond.  Perhaps one of my readers with a better insight into modern corporate thinking can assist.

Hello Anthony,

 You've been in contact with us recently and I hope that I was able to help. 

 We're keen to hear what your experience was like so we can make improvements to our service. If you have a spare minute, please answer below and give as much feedback as you can.

Have a great day,

So Energy

And it ends asking me to click on one of three buttons, labelled Extremely Satisfied,  Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied and Extremely dissatisfied. I am not allowed to be mildly pleased or a bit miffed. It's the extremes or the middle.

Jolly nice of them to wish me a great day and my degree of chuffedness has undoubtedly risen a notch or two. But that is where the pleasantries must end, I fear.

Let us, if we can, pass over the "I was able to help" and the corporate signature; no name of any real person (or even bot) was appended to the missive, leaving us in some doubt as to who the mysterious "I" may be. I don't suppose they have a autonomous AI brain running the customer communications.

No, the issue at hand is that the reason I contacted them was of a problem entirely of their making. The facts are these clears throat, refreshes memory with a quick glance at notes, reassuring smile to the jury  Last summer, after much pleading on their part, I permitted the installation of a smart meter to monitor my use of gas and electricity, both being supplied by the aforementioned SO Energy. I was assured this process would be seamless with the previous billing system based on my reading the meters every two months or so, backed up by the odd¹ visit from a man in a brown overall and a clipboard. 

Four months elapsed. My account was credited with the monthly direct debit that I pay them. But no charges for fuel. Consequently a hefty credit balance built up. When I looked at the account online there was apparently not a volt of electricity or therm of gas being consumed at Ramblings Towers. I emailed them to point this and was reassured that they were receiving my meter readings and it was all the fault of their dastardly billing team who would "reach out" to me very soon to fix the matter.

Three months later I politely emailed again if the team were now ready to do a bit of reaching, perhaps followed by a bit of pulling their bloody fingers out and doing some actual work to complete the apparently mind-bendingly difficult task of linking a meter reading to a customers account. A couple of months passed and I finally received a series of statements showing the fuel used since the meter was connected and giving me a correct statement of my account. Case closed, I thought. But no. Yesterday came this message

Hello Anthony,

Thank you for your email regarding bills.

Firstly we would like to apologise for not responding to your email query within our usual timeframes. We have received unprecedented levels of customer contact recently due to the ongoing energy crisis, which has meant we have not been able to keep to our usually quick response times.  

I've checked for you and I can see your previous query has already been resolved therefore I'm now closing this ticket.

and this was actually signed by a named person²

 Alright, it's taken them three months to acknowledge my email but I don't care because the account has been sorted out. End of story, yes? The ticket has been closed, the papers are filed away in a plain manilla folder marked "The Ramblings Affair" over-stamped with "Closed" in red ink, and in turn deposited into a heavy cardboard box along with similar cases, the whole being labelled "Embargoed until 2035" and placed in a high security warehouse somewhere near Loughborough.

 No, this one won't die. Today they are back in touch with the message displayed at the top of this column,  to say that they hoped they had been able to help in a problem entirely of their own making, and asking me to rate the "experience".

I don't know what I being asked to rate. The fact I had to chase them to bill me correctly or that they eventually got round to it? Is it the experience of raising the issue with the surnameless ladies of Customer Care? And how do I rate it? Wishy-washy, middle-of-the-road, don't rock the boat opinion or plump for an  "extremely", let them have it with both barrels as it were.?And that, my friends, is why I brought you here today and presented you with the full story. Over to you.

Footnotes

1. There was nothing actually odd about the visits per se. Or about the meter readers. It's just that they only came occasionally.
2. It was only a first name, as it happens, but it feels like I have been contacted by a real person. Or do they call their bots by ordinary English names?

Petrol, panic and perception

 Here we go again. Another news story blown up out of proportion with serious consequences for huge numbers of people. Nine years ago the fears of a tanker drivers' strike (that never happened) created massive demand for petrol that saw many stations run dry and others besieged by long queues of motorists desperate to top up.Now, with a few BP stations having to close because of a shortage of tanker drivers, the fear has returned, generating the self-reinforcing "rational" behaviour of drivers queuing to fill up because they don't want to be trumped by all the other drivers queuing to fill up because they don't want to be the ones left out repeat ad nauseam.

 These are some of the typical comments on the Ruislip Facebook group posted today:

The cause of the shortage of tanker drivers is, of course, Brexit which at a stroke forced large numbers of drivers to return home but provided no home-grown replacements. We learned today from the hapless "Minister of Transport" that his department is considering whether temporary visas might help' naturally the most dysfunctional government department, the Home Office, is unhappy and will probably block it on the grounds that the British people voted to take control, or something.

Wholesale gas prices have increased sharply and shortages of other workers is pushing up inflation,  President Biden  has made it clear to prime minister Johnson that the UK is not in any sense a priority for a trade deal, a headline I saw in passing on one of the Irish daily papers stocked by my supermarket noted that UK exports to Ireland were down a third since Brexit, and now the media are raising alarm about whether the shelves will be fully stocked for Xmas. Jeepers. We really are the guys, aren't we?

 

Taking the pss

 Many years ago I took out a personal pension through a well-known institution in the market - Standard Life. In 2006 it floated on the London Stock Exchange and I subscribed for a few shares. I have held them ever since.

Standard Life merged with another institution, Aberdeen Asset Management in 2017 and the new entity traded as Standard Life Aberdeen. 

This year the old names have been jettisoned. The business is now known as abrdn. Yes, you saw it right. Out goes the old fuddy-duddy capital letter at the start of the name. Out go any unnecessary vowels. We must now think of this organisation as something both ungrammatical and unpronounceable.

Here is how the business news portal Bloomberg reported the change, in April this year:

Standard Life Aberdeen Plc decided it was the vowels holding it back.

One of the U.K.’s largest asset managers is changing its name to Abrdn -- pronounced “Aberdeen” -- in a bid to attract a younger client base by mimicking the naming approach of some startups. In a major rebrand complete with its own video, the company created by a 2017 mega-merger announced the new name Monday.

The rebranding is “modern, dynamic and, most importantly, engaging,” Chief Executive Officer Stephen Bird said in a statement. “Our new name reflects the clarity of focus that the leadership team are bringing to the business.”

 Incidentally Bloomberg got it wrong. It really is abrdn, not Abrdn. I know because they wrote to me today to tell me they have changed their share registrar.

So "abrdn" is pronounced "Aberdeen". Well, that clears that up.Yes, those pointless and frankly rather irritating number of e's in the name made life so complicated. Now we can phone them up and not waste all that time and instead pack in a lot more investing.

I am however bothered that abrdn still employs a Chief Executive Officer. How old-fashioned. That's never going to cut it with today's youth. Something far more dynamic, with greater clarity of focus, is surely demanded. How about Top Dude? Head Honcho? The Boss Groover? And what's with this "Stephen" nonsense? None of the modern young client base will stand for that. Stv. That's all the letters a modern, thrusting and dynamic Groover needs for that all-important engaging with the kids. Stv Brd. Rolls off the tongue, does it not? Pronounced "Dickhead".

 

It's up. No, down. Well, one of them, anyway

I am grateful to Mrs Commuter for drawing my attention to the following news item

Source: BBC website today

Apparently the people who put out their trading statements were unable to distinguish between a fall in sales and an increase in sales.Although sales had fallen by 2% in the period up to Christmas (presumably compared to the same period in 2018 although the BBC cannot be bothered to say so), the announcement claimed an increase before it was hastily corrected.

Dixons blamed our old friend 'clerical error' for the misleading first announcement. This probably does not mean that they had invited a vicar in to do the numbers (cynics might say that the group could do with some divine guidance, but not me). It ought to mean something like the following:

Scene: The busy PR department at Dixons Carphone. Staff in the background are being trained to say "Oh sorry, that's not in stock", "Would you like a £30 warranty with your £5 toaster" and "Yes, we do store your personal data insecurely but we really do care about your privacy and security, honestly". Enter Tarquin and Benedict.
Tarquin "We need to issue this wretched trading thingy, Benners. Damn shame, I was hoping to get off early for squash"
Benedict "God, telling the stock exchange how we are doing, it's positively medieval"
Tarquin "Any chance your boys could take a look at it?"
Benedict "Love to help, old man, but we're all planning the corporate away day. Don't you have any spotty-faced school-leavers around?"
Tarquin "No, they're all out the back kicking holes in the packaging and re-routing urgent orders back to Dumfries for onward processing in the Truro depot. Damn, I think we may have to rope in one the clerks. Actually that's good, if anything goes wrong we can blame it all on them. Ha ha"
Benedict "You are a one, Tarquers"

No Accents Please, We're British

I learn that our overcrowded financial sector is to be stressed with the addition of yet another "digital" bank, only with one of the silliest names yet discovered. Competing with "Monzo" and "Revolut", the clearly bored-with-everything wizzkids at RBS are to launch a business called Bó.

Pic: Guardian 29/11/19

 Bó. How do you pronounce it? It cannot be the same as Bo on its own because in that case there would no point in having the accent. Is it meant to send a bit like Beau? Or the sound you make by slightly pursing your lips and trying to be a little bit French? Perhaps a hint of cockney, a link to Bow Bell, a way to forge a link to young people?

Presumably they first came up with plain and simple Bo. Yes, they thought, just two letters, we'll save a fortune on that expensive signage outside our branches (assuming we ever open any) and certainly on letterheads and business cards. And then an older and wiser banker, sitting at the back of the launch meeting at which all the youngsters were whooping and high-fiving, would have raised his hand tentatively and pointed out that once upon a time B.O. was something you most definitely did not want to be associated with. (Find out why by watching this ancient TV ad  and thanks very much to Mackenzie Rough for posting it).

I suppose someone by this time had registered the webdomains and so on, and they were stuck with those two letters so the only solution was the addition of an accent.

I wonder how many of their customers will ever bother to type that accent? I had to go through the hoops to get it into this column since Blogger does not support accents directly. I found it in the character set in Microsoft Word but a simple cut and paste produced some 200 redundant lines of rubbish html that Word insists on generating in any copy operation, so I copied it into a third programme, a simple text editor, and from there to the column you are now reading. I am not going to go through that palaver again, thank you very much.

Anyway, let me rivet the denizens of Threadneedle Street with a revelation of my own. I am about to launch a digital bank called Peep and if RBS would like to consider a merger in due course, I think I can come up with the perfect name for the new venture.

Now we are 5

As each development in technology, over Man's long history, has moved from the conceptual to the implementation so, one can easily imagine, there would always be the same bemusement and scepticism. For example, consider the day that someone, perhaps lying on their back after a hard day's gathering in the late stone age and contemplating the smooth boulders in the stream nearby, thought "Hmm, I bet those would roll nicely, wonder if we could improve on them". And then, later that day, having to persuade his jeering friends that, yes, there was some real practical advantage to moving a dead mammoth on some little round stones rather than the traditional way of shoving it on to a sledge and letting the women pull it.

So it must be with the tech wizards of today. They pore over circuit designs and blueprints, millions of lines of computer code and tiny electronic components and think "Hmm, if we connected this bit to that bit and put a few micro-volts through it, it would be really cool, right?". And then they look out of the window of their glass towers over the teeming masses below and think "But how the hell are we going to convince those dumbos to buy it?"

Today we are at one of those fascinating moments. Today it is possible to buy a smartphone with 5G capability and to connect to a network (in a few cities, for now) that offers it.  Today, as I learn in The Guardian, you can at last achieve the undoubted Holy Grail of technology, download a movie in seconds using 5G.

The "download a movie in seconds" test has been one of these memes that haunt the smartphone age. Every time there is an improvement in network and processor speeds then the only thing that anyone can think about as to why it matters is how fast a movie can be sent from server to phone. You still have to watch it in real time, of course, but that small point is clearly irrelevant. Like a child screaming "I want it now" as it passes a sweet shop, the movie-consumer is, it seems, motivated only by the transfer time.

There are those of us, and, I suspect, perhaps a very large number, who actually don't care about either watching movies on our phones or, if we do like to watch, are not that bothered if it takes a few minutes or seconds to acquire them, or even if you have to set it up to download overnight (just like we did back in the dark ages of the internet for almost everything, all those centuries decades a few years back). We don't admire and use this technology to watch bloody movies. We use our phones to keep in touch, to check on transport and the weather, to look things up or just follow the news. Yes, once we all have 5G no doubt we will become used to it and start taking it for granted. But it is hard right now to summon up any excitement. And as to paying £60 a month plus for the right to download a film, that I will never have the patience to watch, a bit faster than I can do now ... well, let us return to our chums squatting over their roast mammoth and idly rolling roundish stones up and down the banks of the river.
"This, what do you want to call it, wheel thingie? I mean, it rolls around sure but what it's actually for?" ponders Og.
"What's it for?" replies Ug, sucking out the last of the marrow-bone and tossing it for the kids to fight over "Dunno. But tell you what, my old son - we could paint a totemic design on the side, sort of black and white pattern, be pleasing to the gods that will".
The light of inspiration reaches Og's shaggy-browed eyes. "You mean - a go faster sticker?"
"Yeah. And we could have races, you know, see which one hits the water first."
"With valuable prizes for the winner"
"Got it in one. And as this is my very first formulation of this vitally important idea, I'm going to call it - formulation one racing. Which I now own, by the way,"

I am now eagerly awaiting the arrival of 6G. A system so fast, so clever, so well-attuned to our needs that it will stream the movies straight into our brains for us to watch at our leisure later.  The fact that 99.99% of them will be worthless American dross need not concern us. It certainly doesn't seem to bother anyone wandering London right now marvelling at how fast they can download them.

Joined-up Banking

I bank with Barclays (they gave me a clipboard when I signed as a student half a century ago and I'm still grateful). Today their normally reliable mobile banking service has failed and social media is full of angry comments from my fellow customers. Barclays has not got a lot to say about it on Twitter but did amend the front page of their main personal banking website to provide an update. It looks like this:

As you can see (if you bother to click on the image to see it full size), it acknowledges a problem and invites a visit to the service status page to find out more. I don't know if they were hoping that nobody would take them up on this but here at Ramblings we take nothing for granted and, full of trepidation but determined to plumb this matter to its murky depths, we did indeed visit the aforementioned page. And this is what we found:

Hey. Whoa there. Nothing to see here, right. Just move along. Everything is just fine. We haven't bothered to update this page for four days but that's totally acceptable in an industry where the simple clearance of a cheque takes about as long.

You might think that the person who wrote the message for the main web page would have updated the service status page as well. Maybe the pressure of penning those few lines was too much for the poor chap. Perhaps he couldn't go on with it any more and even now is standing on a ledge high above Canary Wharf contemplating a bleak future whilst his colleagues, the wind whipping at their ties, edge carefully out with arms linked.

"Don't do it Johnson" shouts the Personnel Manager "Think of the firm's outing. There's some fresh blotting paper just arrived in Stationery. Come back and we'll all chip in to update that dreadful status page."

Will he do it? I'll have another look at the service status page sometime and maybe let you all know.

Jubilations

Those wonderful people at PayPal have sent me an email. It begins with the heading "Congratulations!" and, as if that were not enough, continues "You've been selected to apply for PayPal credit" and then it spoils it all by adding "subject to approval".

I was pretty damn excited when I saw "Congratulations". Even more so with that cheeky little exclamation mark stuck on the back. This is it, I thought, this is the big one. I've won the Nigerian Lottery. I've been asked to handle Britain's negotiations in leaving the EU. I've finally been awarded the OBE for services to literature. Maybe all three.

It was disappointing to find that I was merely being congratulated on being selected to apply for something that I have not the slightest intention of applying for. I mean, if they had said "We're going to give you loads of cash, no questions asked, all right my son?" then I think that would have warranted a wry smile of satisfaction and perhaps a phone call to my wine merchant for a half-bottle of something fizzy. But no. The humiliation. Not only have I not have been granted credit, I have merely been "selected" to apply for it. Can anyone apply for it? Yes. Do you need to be selected to make this application? No, of course not. If you want it, you apply for it.

And now we turn to the sting in the tail, the giveaway that betrays the whole communication as a mockery and a sham. "Subject to approval", indeed. I am expected to make some sort of pleading application and then wait for some machine in an air-conditioned room at the other end to whirr and flash some lights and spit out some punched cards which a white-coated boffin will scrutinise before making a tick on a list on his clipboard. [This imagery may be a little bit dated, you know: Ed]

 No, PayPal. If you want me to be excited about your offer then make it something exciting. There is no shortage of institutions wishing to lend me money. Offer to deliver the money to me in a limo driven by one of your vice-presidents before whisking me (and wife) off to a sun-drenched holiday in a luxury resort with all expenses paid, and then just maybe, I can consider making an application. Until then, let me answer your email with one of my own.

To: PayPal
From: Ramblings
Subject. Felicitations! You have been specially selected to receive vituperative and insulting mentions in my popular column and you don't even have to apply for them.

A Bit of a Laugh

Last year I watched with some bemusement as the price of bitcoin, the world's largest digital currency, rocketed upward. On December 8th, when it seemed to have hit a new and irresistible high, I warned that the way it was being sold was identical to many other great investment bubbles of the past and there was a very good chance of misery for latecomers to the market.

Just two weeks later and the price had fallen by 40%, and as usual the "experts" were talking about "corrections" and "relieving the pressure" and drawing their silly little graphs to prove that if you extend a line in one direction long enough then it goes over the edge of the paper. "Don't panic", they proclaimed "This is still the future and now that prices have come down it's a wonderful time to buy".

I lost interest in following the fortunes of the currency soon after (apart from writing this little fable to make the point that value is only what someone else will pay for something) only to take a fresh look when this story made it to the news. Oh dear, the price of a bitcoin, that was some $20,000 when I wrote my first bit piece is now about $4,500 and going down. Just think of all those people who cheerfully bought in when it was, say $12000 eighteen months ago, or when it had begun to decline from last December's peak, confident that things could only get better and reassured by the massed ranks of analysts. Hard not to smile broadly, isn't it?

The even funnier aspect is that history is not only repeating itself but those who should know most about it display the greatest ignorance. When the Wall Street crash began in November 1929 the "experts" of the day made all sorts of reassuring comments about "shaking out the lunatic fringe" and "the fundamentals are sound".  I am indebted to Bitcoinist.com for the following gem from John McAfee (a name famous in the IT world for his anti-virus and PC utility software many years ago).

“People have panicked. But there’s no **** need. We’re in a bear market. They suck, yes, and not like a hooker with no teeth,” he urged.“But I’m 73 and have seen this dozens of times in many markets. Bear markets are like Winter. It’s always followed by a glorious Spring.”

I am sure John has more experience with toothless hookers than I do (not difficult really, as I must confess to absolutely none at all in this department, there isn't much call for dentally-deficient ladies of easy virtue here in beautiful Ruislip) but leaving aside his thought-provoking metaphor and the fact that the only reason he is upset is that he now runs a trading business that makes money if digital currencies are doing well and so anything he says is suspect, let us focus on his "I have seen this dozens of times" theme. So what? The Depression of the 1930s lasted until the boom of wartime despite the sage remarks of those who, in 1929, assured the public that share prices could only go higher. There is no magic markets fairy who guarantees that what goes down must come up. If the world's central banks create a digital currency for general commercial use, another story being reported today, and make a micro-payments system widely and cheaply available to the public then Bitcoin and the like will be obsolete at once. No glorious Spring. Not even a few chilly days with blustery showers. Just oblivion, going the way of videotape, the telegram and the flintlock musket.

[Are there going to be any more articles making a pun of the word "Bit" in the title? Should we make this a series? Your readers will want to know: Ed]

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

The case of the passenger (Mr Prosser) who is suing British Airways for allowing a very large man to sit next to him during a long flight is being widely reported. Being hemmed in for some 12 hours has allegedly caused damage to his back. The story is symptomatic of the casual contempt with which transport organisations treat most of their customers. It is one of the reasons I choose not to fly when going abroad.

A BA spokesman reinforced my prejudice with a remark that will probably have his PR department in meltdown. The "customer service manager" (my quotes) is reported as saying:

I regularly walked down the aisle and Mr Prosser was not sat in an unnatural position for an economy seat.

I wonder what, in the opinion of a member of the aircrew, the range of natural positions for an economy seat might comprise? Hunched up miserably with one's knees under one's chin? Half standing, half crouching to relieve the numbing ache in the lower back? Arms high above one's head to allow some blessed circulation of blood to the upper body?

And what might an unnatural position be? Could it be sitting comfortably, with plenty of shoulder room and able to stretch one's legs out in front without kicking the seat in front, and without similar interference from the seat behind? It certainly would be in my book because it is not something I have ever experienced.

Will They Never Learn?

I've written once or twice in these august columns about the blatant gap between the claims made for Artificial Intelligence and the reality, particularly when it comes to communications from web-based businesses to people like me. Or, in fact to me (I don't know what they send to people like me but it is probably similar). Prompted by no less than three dull emails received this morning I am prepared to return to this topic.

PayPal are keen for me to fill in a survey. The purpose is

to help us better understand your business and payment needs

I don't have any business needs that are any of their concern. I do not trade. They know this. Nothing I say can better their understanding because, to relapse into database terminology for a moment, if you add any number to null it is still null.

They are not offering payment for their estimated ten minutes of my valuable time, only the chance to receive a £5 Visa Virtual Reward. I have no idea what this is and the amount is hardly tempting so I am inclined to fill in a Virtual Survey rather than the real thing. Here we go.

Virtual Survey Question #1: May we ask you questions about your business and payment needs?
Answer: No.

My old friends TripAdvisor are terribly impressed with my ranking vis-a-vis the other researchers based in beautiful Ruislip (Yes, I managed to convince them I was not a resident of Crymych). I am, it seems, placed at number 34 in the list. I think this is jolly good and worthy of a glass of champagne but they are not offering to supply one, the miserable sods, Instead they want me to write another review and if I do - and my knees are still knocking at the prospect in offer - they will advance me to the glittering and hitherto unheard-of heights of number 33!  I will do my best but they will have to excuse my shaky handwriting.

And finally an electronic missive from Sainsbury's, a supermarket that Mrs C. and I patronise on a fairly regular basis.  With the strapline "Be the first to see our Xmas ad" it goes on thus:

To say thanks for shopping with us as much as you do, we've picked you out to see our new Christmas ad before tomorrow's big reveal on ITV at 7.45pm. So let us set the scene, then get watching - there's some behind the scenes footage for you to enjoy too.

If they want to thank me for being a regular customer they've got a bloody funny way of showing it. I dislike ads in general (as even casual readers of this blog might gather). As Sainsbury's know perfectly well from their records, there is a very high probability that I will do my Xmas shopping there. Only an adman could think that a Xmas ad could be a source of excitement. Only a stupid adman could think there was any point in advertising something to someone who is a regular customer anyway. I lack the words to describe someone who appears to think that giving me the opportunity to watch an ad before it is screened on TV is a reward for my long-term custom. Perhaps I might borrow the phrase used by one of the candidates in the current series of The Apprentice to describe the business acumen of one of the others - "Less than a frozen pea".

Hold Everything, This One Is Hot!

I'm still a little a-tremble with excitement. One of the emails sent to me today was from Skoda UK, with whom I recently transacted a little business. It tells me - are you sitting down and have you carefully put down any hot cups of tea or coffee that you might have been holding? These little precautions are important, you know - it tells me that  - do you know, even now, some moments later, it makes me catch my breath just a little - it tells me that - No, I cannot contain myself any longer ...

We've updated our Privacy Statement

Of course I rushed to open the brand new, updated, Privacy Statement and printed it out for comparison, line by line,  with the previous one (and what a thundering good privacy statement it was, one of the best I have read in many a long year) . I underlined in red ink all the changes, made appropriate markings for the spelling mistakes and errors in grammar and finally translated the whole lot into Latin so that it can be transcribed upon a granite monolith to be erected at the edge of my estate for all to admire.  I do hope this is the reaction that the PR people at Skoda were expecting.


[Some of the above is not strictly true. For further information about the slight exaggerations in the piece, and for a complete word by word exegesis of our Privacy Statement do contact us at the usual address. Terms and Conditions undoubtedly apply and these are available in our Terms and Conditions Statement which has not been updated for a while and that is why we have not bothered to send you an email informing you of such changes but rest assured, we will; provided that, by so doing, we are not in breach of our Privacy Statement in which case we will update it first and send you a lovely long chatty email telling you all about it: Ed]

Extremely Urgent - Our Privacy Statement

I (and probably you as well) have been receiving a stream of emails and letters from businesses about their privacy rules and procedures. This has been prompted by tough new legislation from the EU. Obviously this column does not want to fall foul of the dreaded Euro-Commissars breaking down the door at 4 am and shouting "Your papers are not in order; for you, Britischer schwein, ze blog is over" and so here is our privacy statement. Like all the other notices I have seen it is, of course, incredibly important and urgent and essential even though, like all the others, it does not actually require anyone reading it to do anything.

Your privacy is important to us:- We promise not to disclose any of your personal information. Since we do not actually hold any personal information on anyone this is a pretty easy commitment to keep and we already intend to set up the Annual Ramblings Awards for Jolly Well Keeping to our promise, with a guaranteed prize of a nice cup of tea to the wonderful people responsible.

How we store your personal information:- we don't actually have any (see above) but if we did then it would go into the back of the filing cabinet under R (for "Rather important").

How we gather your personal information:- If you are daft enough to write to us including personal information then we will gather it. By "gathering" we mean putting it into the filing cabinet (see above).

Who is responsible for storing your personal information safely:- All information (not that we hold any, I hasten to add) is under the control of the Editor and, if any criminal prosecutions were to be brought for misuse, then he is the person to be fingered to the rozzers. Nobody else. OK? [I think we need to discuss this: Ed]

How to find out what personal information we may hold on you:-  Write to the usual address and make it worth our while to go digging into the filing cabinet. We promise to reply just as soon as we can be bothered.

How to find out more:- Don't bother, that's all there is.

Reach out, I'll Be There

The sheer misery and frustration caused to many of its customers by TSB's total screw-up of an IT upgrade has been filling the news for the past two weeks. A shotgun marriage with Lloyds back in the days of the great financial panic of '08, then a hasty divorce and reckless project management by new Spanish owners resulted in systems that failed.

For those of us lucky enough not be banking with this wretched outfit, there is the perennial fascination of picking over the lies, misstatements, corporate PR flannel and horrific jargon that inevitably emanate from businesses in such predicaments.  I could not resist picking up on this little morsel courtesy of the BBC. A couple, Mr & Mrs Jones, making a long arranged house move found their account frozen and were nearly stranded, having moved out from their old house and unable to move in to the new one.  As Mrs Jones makes clear, the bank staff were as powerless as she was:

The TSB staff were being as helpful as possible, but they were hampered by the terrible IT mess. It was a ridiculous situation to be in. We were in limbo," she said.

The money came through eventually. It was the bank's attempt to smooth it all over that deserves our contumely. This is what a "spokesperson" had to spoke say

"We're really sorry for the experience Mr and Mrs Jones have had whilst moving home and the inconvenience this has caused them.
"This isn't the level of service that we pride ourselves on providing, and isn't what our customers have come to expect from TSB. We have reached out to Mr and Mrs Jones, and we will ensure that they are not left out of pocket."

It is fairly clear from the most cursory reading of the news recently that this is exactly the sort of service TSB customers have come to expect, but the bit that really intrigues is the phrase that only a faceless PR person could utter and not sink through the floor in embarrassment - "Reached out to". What does this suggest to you? A mother opening her arms to scoop up a wailing infant? A celebrity embracing victims of some ghastly disease? Or perhaps, in the words used to title this piece, the sentiments of a popular beat combo conveying a degree of affection to a young lady? Do any of these sit comfortably with the idea of a banker who waits for a serious complaint to be filed before issuing a press release? What is wrong with saying "we have apologised?", or perhaps just "we talked to". What on earth does "reach" mean in this context? They didn't act proactively. They created a problem then tried to make it look as they were doing something praiseworthy as their big corporate arms extended to offer comfort to those in distress.

If there's any reaching going on, it's going to be many TSB customers reaching for application forms to transfer their accounts.

You Must Remember This

I couldn't let this news story pass without comment. There is a startup business claiming that it will be able to store the entire memories within a human brain with a view to making them available after the death of the owner. This is the stuff of cutting edge science fiction. For example, Iain M Banks' Culture series envisages super-smart Artificial Intelligences of the future scanning the brains not only of humans but any other intelligent species to be found in the Galaxy and able to copy the data into new bodies, effectively producing eternal life. To have a company claiming to be on the verge of doing this today is thrilling.

Oh, hold on. There are a couple of catches. The first is that this is no more than an conjectural technique at the moment. They haven't actually recorded any memories at all. All they appear to be doing is making a map of the structure of the brain. But a scan using today's technology, such as MRI scans, is useless for recording memory - they would need the state of every molecule and the exact state of all the electrons moving between those molecules, something probably ruled out by the laws of quantum mechanics.

The second catch is a little more disturbing. Every reader of horror fiction, be they fans of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley or H. P. Lovecraft (and his many disciples) knows that any form of reanimation requires an undamaged brain. How gratifying to find that Nectome (for thus they style themselves) are reported in these words:

However, its current process requires a fresh brain.
The product is "100% fatal", the team behind it told MIT Technology Review.

Let us repair to the very top of the castle. Let us bolt the doors and mask the windows. There is a mighty storm brewing. The current is leaping from electrode to electrode. The bodies are strapped down and the scalpels are gleaming. It is surely time for that classic shout to echo across the rooftops

The Customer is King (snigger, snigger)

The latest business that is unable to tell the truth to its customers and chooses instead to dress up something unpalatable in lies and PR speak is E.ON. They have abolished the discount of £30 a year given to all customers who buy both gas and electricity without having a paper bill. They could have explained that, due to the rising costs of wholesale energy and that in order to keep their CEO and his cronies in the style to which they are accustomed, these increases are to be passed on. Unpleasant but truthful. Naturally they chose to wheel in their spin-doctors and the following emerged:

[the changes] ... make it simpler and easier for customers to understand our tariffs and compare them with other suppliers in the market.

Now, as far as I know all, ¹ of their competitors continue to offer a dual fuel/paperless discount (although this may cease to be the case as everyone gleefully follows E.ON's lead). In any case, it is one thing to make changes to simplify tariffs that leave customers paying roughly the same as before - if you hike the prices and try to disguise it by saying what a wonderful job we are doing to make things easier for you, then this is mendacity. What is more, they are the ones who chose to make the tariffs complicated and hard to understand in the first place, not their customers. How about apologising for that, at least?


1. [Has this been checked at all? Researcher, see me later: Ed]

This Will Last A Lifetime! Snigger, Snigger

I've remarked before about how businesses feel they can twist ordinary words to make them mean whatever they want them to mean. There's another example today, with the news that top-selling SatNav company TomTom has decided to stop supporting certain models with its "lifetime guarantee" even though they are still widely on sale.

When you buy a SatNav you may (or may not) get continued support in the form of updates to the mapping software. Typically you are told you will continue to receive these updates for the life of the product. You may feel that this means for as long as the product remains usable. And of course this perfectly fair day-to-day meaning is not what the supplier means - he means that support will go on for precisely the length of time that he wishes to provide it and not a second later. And there is nothing you can do about it.

For a wonderful example of circular reasoning, here is the full explanation from TomTom's website about what they mean by "lifetime" of a commercial product:

"lifetime" means the "useful life" of a device: "ie: the period of time TomTom supports your device with updates, services, content or accessories. A device will have reached the end of its life when none of these are available any more."

So the lifetime is as long as they do updates and as soon as they cease then, miraculously, just at that moment, the lifetime of the product expires. The one defines the other. Or to put it another way:

Q: How long will you provide updates?
A: For the life of the product
Q: When does the life terminate?
A: When we stop providing updates
Q: And when will that be?
A: When the lifetime of the product expires  etc etc

I own a SatNav, not made by TomTom, and which did not come with any warranty about updates. I don't care. It's still accurate for all main roads and it's probably cheaper to replace it in a year or so than to buy a more expensive model that does have the "guarantee" which will then be deemed obsolete by the supplier a few months later. What I will not do is buy one that does have a "guarantee" unless they tell me how long that is going to be. In years and months, not whenever someone in their Tech Dept flips a coin and pulls the plug.