The title is a line from Ilse Crawford's Home Is Where the Heart Is. On the opposite page is an open shed door with four spotless brooms hanging on the inside of the door.
It’s one of those lines that I’ve always just nodded along to, consisting of words I understand arranged into a sentence whose meaning I never knew I didn’t know.
Then one day I got it. Daily care means use, cleaning, mending. That’s how, on a very elemental level, we live. Our lives consisting of using things, cleaning and repairing them. The brooms in the photograph are brushed out at the end of the day to remove the bits and pieces that remain in the brooms in my garden shed. Clean tools are the mark of a good tradesman: mine show I’m an amateur.
When I was at secondary school, the bicycles we rode to school were, every week, wiped over, chrome shined and moving parts oiled - cleaning the chain in turps and re-oiling it was considered hardcore. The point of ‘cleaning your room’ is only partly a clean room, mostly it’s that the time spent cleaning that speaks to self-respect. Take it too far, and it’s mere compulsion that gets in the way of life and speaks to mental instability. The balance matters.
The more things we have, the more things we have to care for, to use, clean and repair. Some will get more attention, some less, and some none. I have a food mixer in a corner of my kitchen that gets wiped down from time to time but never used. I keep thinking food mixers are something I should use, and then never do. After a while I take them down to the tip. Most of the other things I have I use, and feel I should dust and clean more often than I do.
The fewer things we have, the more care we could take of them, and the older those things, the more care we need to take care of them.
In the life of a commuter, what gets daily care?
So much of what we use belongs to someone else, and we spend so little time at home, we have too little time to clean and repair. Take a look at people’s shoes: some haven’t been polished for months. And how long does it take to polish shoes? Ten minutes? Sure, clothes washing. Bedsheets. Towels. How about wiping the iron down after using it? Cleaning your mobile with a glasses-spray? Brushing the dust off the remotes around the house? When was the last time you cleaned the TV screen?
Sound silly? Try it.
Monday, 1 October 2018
Thursday, 27 September 2018
Stuck Inside of A50 With The Brexit Blues Again
Are you fed up with the Brexit propaganda in all the media? I am. The only thing I’m more fed up with is yet another article whinging about how it’s a terrible injustice that privileged ambitious white women aren’t being given even more privileges. I don’t read those articles past the W-word in the headline. Anyway…
To recap: the EU cannot and should not give up the demand, that two conditions of super-privileged access, are a) the legal sovereignty, of the European Courts, and b) the Four Freedoms. The UK Government was given strict instructions by 17+ million voters that it was to regain control of its borders and legal system. So no capital-A Agreement is possible. The people whose jobs it was to understand this stuff knew this about thirty seconds after the referendum result was announced. The A50 rules forced them and everyone else into two pointless years of fake negotiation and preposterous posturing. The only real diplomatic problem was wondering how to blame the Irish, and the Border did the trick. (Irish and UK Customs authorities say they don’t need a hard border to make it all work post-Brexit, but hey, where diplomacy needs, the Devil take the Customs man, or something.)
We’ve reached the stage where everyone is talking openly about a hard Brexit, and the most sensible remark I’ve read about that is that, while the British will pay the price of a hard Brexit, it is not so clear that the individual European countries will want to.
Remember your history: the Brits are good at four things (as well as pop music, inventing stuff, banking, flexible legal systems, and a bunch of other things, and on the other hand they did need the EU to tell them to clean up their filthy beaches, but I digress)
First, getting off ships before anyone else has heard the water coming into the bilges. The EU will never be a federal nation state, but it will ruin itself trying. Time to leave. Especially before the Euro falls apart.
Second, being prosaically, anti-climatically, practical. The Brits can reduce the consequences of what looks like an history-shaking event to a handful of petty changes. For instance, the uncertainty about customs arrangements, all that huffing and puffing, and what does it mean? That a firm in Rochdale has to fill in EU/HG/12-35UTF/RE and file it a week in advance, instead of getting by with a UK registration plate on the day. And UK Passport-holders have to line up behind the Ugandans rather than the Poles when they pass through Immigration at Nice Airport. Duh.
So don’t be surprised when whole swathes of the British economy wind up being prepared for 30/4/2019. Some won’t be, but that’s only because they wanted to create a crisis they didn’t want to waste.
Third, being able to handle ridiculous amounts of ambiguity, aka It’ll all work out in the end. God, as we know, is an Englishman, and he looks after his own, ever since he took his eye off the job in 1066. So it will work out. How far away that end is, and how much it will cost to get there doesn’t matter to the Brits, which brings us to...
Fourth, the UK Government has never been shy of bankrupting and indebting its taxpayers to win a war. They did it twice in the twentieth century. They only beat Napoleon at Waterloo because they borrowed a ton of money to hire the German Army. Further back, they paid the Danes boatloads of silver to stop looting and raping in the streets of Newcastle. Real historians could doubtless list a dozen much more ordinary examples.
Few other countries are prepared to bankrupt themselves in any cause. That’s why it’s taken the 27 an age to understand that the Brits will bankrupt themselves to keep their precious independence. While a hard Brexit might hurt the British more than any random European country, it’s going to cost that random European country, and not spare change either.
And remember, in a hard Brexit, the EU doesn’t get its money.
So there will be a hard Brexit, because there can’t be a capital-A Agreement. But it won’t be a malicious Brexit. The EU can’t afford the PR. The French will be awkward for a couple of months, but they love that kind of publicity. The Dutch don’t. The Germans don’t. The Iberians and the V4 can’t afford it. Everyone else wants as much business-as-usual as possible. So there will be lots of temporary transitional arrangements (TTAs) to keep things going. That, I’ve always thought, is what the negotiators are really doing now: working out the TTAs. There will be Trade Agreement on the Canadian or Japanese model agreed tout de suite (once special access is publicly acknowledged to be non-negotiable) and the EU will get a chunk of its €50bn.
The final part of the drama will be that those TTA’s will only be introduced at the last moment, when it can be spun as preventing a world-wide economic crisis the like of which mankind would never have seen before or after. TTA’s can’t be introduced sensibly, beforehand, as that would let Parliaments argue about stuff. It has to look like an emergency.
Can’t help feeling this is exactly how Donnie told Terry to play it.
To recap: the EU cannot and should not give up the demand, that two conditions of super-privileged access, are a) the legal sovereignty, of the European Courts, and b) the Four Freedoms. The UK Government was given strict instructions by 17+ million voters that it was to regain control of its borders and legal system. So no capital-A Agreement is possible. The people whose jobs it was to understand this stuff knew this about thirty seconds after the referendum result was announced. The A50 rules forced them and everyone else into two pointless years of fake negotiation and preposterous posturing. The only real diplomatic problem was wondering how to blame the Irish, and the Border did the trick. (Irish and UK Customs authorities say they don’t need a hard border to make it all work post-Brexit, but hey, where diplomacy needs, the Devil take the Customs man, or something.)
We’ve reached the stage where everyone is talking openly about a hard Brexit, and the most sensible remark I’ve read about that is that, while the British will pay the price of a hard Brexit, it is not so clear that the individual European countries will want to.
Remember your history: the Brits are good at four things (as well as pop music, inventing stuff, banking, flexible legal systems, and a bunch of other things, and on the other hand they did need the EU to tell them to clean up their filthy beaches, but I digress)
First, getting off ships before anyone else has heard the water coming into the bilges. The EU will never be a federal nation state, but it will ruin itself trying. Time to leave. Especially before the Euro falls apart.
Second, being prosaically, anti-climatically, practical. The Brits can reduce the consequences of what looks like an history-shaking event to a handful of petty changes. For instance, the uncertainty about customs arrangements, all that huffing and puffing, and what does it mean? That a firm in Rochdale has to fill in EU/HG/12-35UTF/RE and file it a week in advance, instead of getting by with a UK registration plate on the day. And UK Passport-holders have to line up behind the Ugandans rather than the Poles when they pass through Immigration at Nice Airport. Duh.
So don’t be surprised when whole swathes of the British economy wind up being prepared for 30/4/2019. Some won’t be, but that’s only because they wanted to create a crisis they didn’t want to waste.
Third, being able to handle ridiculous amounts of ambiguity, aka It’ll all work out in the end. God, as we know, is an Englishman, and he looks after his own, ever since he took his eye off the job in 1066. So it will work out. How far away that end is, and how much it will cost to get there doesn’t matter to the Brits, which brings us to...
Fourth, the UK Government has never been shy of bankrupting and indebting its taxpayers to win a war. They did it twice in the twentieth century. They only beat Napoleon at Waterloo because they borrowed a ton of money to hire the German Army. Further back, they paid the Danes boatloads of silver to stop looting and raping in the streets of Newcastle. Real historians could doubtless list a dozen much more ordinary examples.
Few other countries are prepared to bankrupt themselves in any cause. That’s why it’s taken the 27 an age to understand that the Brits will bankrupt themselves to keep their precious independence. While a hard Brexit might hurt the British more than any random European country, it’s going to cost that random European country, and not spare change either.
And remember, in a hard Brexit, the EU doesn’t get its money.
So there will be a hard Brexit, because there can’t be a capital-A Agreement. But it won’t be a malicious Brexit. The EU can’t afford the PR. The French will be awkward for a couple of months, but they love that kind of publicity. The Dutch don’t. The Germans don’t. The Iberians and the V4 can’t afford it. Everyone else wants as much business-as-usual as possible. So there will be lots of temporary transitional arrangements (TTAs) to keep things going. That, I’ve always thought, is what the negotiators are really doing now: working out the TTAs. There will be Trade Agreement on the Canadian or Japanese model agreed tout de suite (once special access is publicly acknowledged to be non-negotiable) and the EU will get a chunk of its €50bn.
The final part of the drama will be that those TTA’s will only be introduced at the last moment, when it can be spun as preventing a world-wide economic crisis the like of which mankind would never have seen before or after. TTA’s can’t be introduced sensibly, beforehand, as that would let Parliaments argue about stuff. It has to look like an emergency.
Can’t help feeling this is exactly how Donnie told Terry to play it.
Monday, 24 September 2018
Why Were The Good Old Days?
Sis asked recently why The Good Old Days were simpler or better and I had a hard time answering.
The Good Old Days was the period between the end of WW2 and September 1972 (when the school leaving age was raised to sixteen). In European countries during this time, a large proportion of the workforce were working for the Government through the Health Service, the railways and associated haulage companies, the regional Electricity, Gas and Water Boards, the Civil Service and Local Government, and the General Post Office and its attached telephone company. Many other industries were subsidised - such as British Leyland, whose Austin / Morris Mini lost money on every single vehicle.
The Good Old Days were marked by three things:
1) Morally, politically, legally and in the tax codes, the (Western) world supported the Normie Life: marriage, mortgage, children and employment. There was a clear idea of what it was to be a Normie: heterosexual, with children, mediocre of talent and energy, leading lives of compromise and frustration with occasional moments of satisfaction and peace, and wanting to spend time with other people like them. In return for leading these lives, they were granted steady employment and would not experience any real economic hardship, which brings us to point 2)...
2) The majority of employers accepted that jobs had two functions: to produce goods and services, and to support the Normie life, which is in an employer’s interest, as it means they get a steady workforce with non-transferable skills of value to the employer. There was a strong link between school and employment. Five O-levels including-English-and-Maths was enough for a young person to start a career in a bank, insurance company and with many other employers. There were apprenticeships for practically-minded young people, and the teenagers who could not keep still could leave school at fifteen so that others could study for O-levels in (relative) peace. Which brings us to point 3)...
3) Domestically, the Crazies were locked away in Asylums and Special Schools, the Rainbows were in the closet, the Diversities were still in their home country, extremists were merely Communists or wanted hanging, and moral posturers were obvious prigs and cranks. The Good Old Days had awful food, poor health, headaches, way too much smoking and drinking, sexism, racism, class prejudice, teenage pregnancy, killer smogs, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It was not perfect. But the imperfections and deviancies were hidden. Each imperfection was known perhaps by a few, none by everyone. People whispered secrets, but none of it appeared in the media and Parliament.
Now, if we could keep the good bits and get rid of the awful food, poor health, headaches, way too much smoking and drinking, sexism, racism, class prejudice, teenage pregnancy, killer smogs, and a whole bunch of other stuff, we would have a Pretty Perfect Society. In the 1970’s that’s what it looked like Western Governments were trying to do, The Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976, and the Divorce Reform Act 1969 (in force 1971). There were a lot of other changes, far too many to recite here.
The Good Old Days had an illusion of consensus. That illusion disappeared with all that legislation and the behaviours that went with it. It turned out that the good food, decent health, cutting back on smoking and drinking, removing the most overt sexism, racism and class prejudice, reducing teenage pregnancy and a whole bunch of the other stuff, seemed to require that all the social and economic support of the Normie life be dismantled. Which no-one saw coming. Now...
1) All that's left of the support for the Normie lifestyle are some minor administrative privileges for husbands and wives, as against ‘partners’. There is no viable idea of a ‘normal life’ that receives State and public support.
2) Employment no longer supports social roles, indeed, companies no longer see themselves as under any obligation to employ the citizens of the country in which they make their profits. Employers don’t train anybody, and new hires are expected to have the skills and knowledge they need for the new job already. Employers lost expertise and knowledge with rationalisations and downsizing in the 1980 / 1999, which is why they didn’t lay people off in the same way after 2008. Jobs are more secure than in the Dumbsizing Era, but still can’t be counted on.
But most of all...
3) Crazies, rainbows, and diversities are everywhere, and all the secrets are shouted from the rooftops. Extremists now blow themselves and everyone around them to pieces, and moral posturing and virtue-signalling is entitled and aggressive. Normies don’t feel as if the public spaces belong to them, but instead to drug dealers, beggars, rough sleepers, and the drunks who pissed against the wall at 4 A.M. Normies don’t feel like the society and economy supports them, but that they are mere tax fodder to support subsidies, and legal and employment privileges, for ‘minorities’ who don’t make any contribution to the economy or society.
Nothing now supports the Normie life. Which is why they yearn for the Good Old Days.
Sure, they have iPhones and decent coffee and Netflix, and cars that don’t rust, and heart transplants and hip transplants, and cheap air travel to faraway beaches, and all that stuff.
They also have uncertain employment, ridiculous house prices, static real income for the majority of workers, forty per cent of marriages end in divorce and under-performing children, the queues for heart and hip transplants are years long, the drugs used to work but the germs are becoming immune, there’s nowhere to park your rust-free car if you do drive it, and the real difference is not between the Haves and the Have-Nots - which is the historical condition of the human race - but between the Normies and the self-improvement and self-management people, with their Continuous Professional Development, three-times-a-week gym sessions and half-marathons, and their low-carb, low-fat, low-taste diets.
The Normies have the distinct feeling they got screwed. They didn’t. They just got their noses rubbed in the truth that, for a lot of people, the Good Old Days were the Bad Old Days. The Normie life required huge amounts of denial and a metric tonne of complacency, which was possible only because the rest of the world was shut up behind the Iron Curtain and had the economic development of the mid-nineteenth century.
The Good Old Days was the period between the end of WW2 and September 1972 (when the school leaving age was raised to sixteen). In European countries during this time, a large proportion of the workforce were working for the Government through the Health Service, the railways and associated haulage companies, the regional Electricity, Gas and Water Boards, the Civil Service and Local Government, and the General Post Office and its attached telephone company. Many other industries were subsidised - such as British Leyland, whose Austin / Morris Mini lost money on every single vehicle.
The Good Old Days were marked by three things:
1) Morally, politically, legally and in the tax codes, the (Western) world supported the Normie Life: marriage, mortgage, children and employment. There was a clear idea of what it was to be a Normie: heterosexual, with children, mediocre of talent and energy, leading lives of compromise and frustration with occasional moments of satisfaction and peace, and wanting to spend time with other people like them. In return for leading these lives, they were granted steady employment and would not experience any real economic hardship, which brings us to point 2)...
2) The majority of employers accepted that jobs had two functions: to produce goods and services, and to support the Normie life, which is in an employer’s interest, as it means they get a steady workforce with non-transferable skills of value to the employer. There was a strong link between school and employment. Five O-levels including-English-and-Maths was enough for a young person to start a career in a bank, insurance company and with many other employers. There were apprenticeships for practically-minded young people, and the teenagers who could not keep still could leave school at fifteen so that others could study for O-levels in (relative) peace. Which brings us to point 3)...
3) Domestically, the Crazies were locked away in Asylums and Special Schools, the Rainbows were in the closet, the Diversities were still in their home country, extremists were merely Communists or wanted hanging, and moral posturers were obvious prigs and cranks. The Good Old Days had awful food, poor health, headaches, way too much smoking and drinking, sexism, racism, class prejudice, teenage pregnancy, killer smogs, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It was not perfect. But the imperfections and deviancies were hidden. Each imperfection was known perhaps by a few, none by everyone. People whispered secrets, but none of it appeared in the media and Parliament.
Now, if we could keep the good bits and get rid of the awful food, poor health, headaches, way too much smoking and drinking, sexism, racism, class prejudice, teenage pregnancy, killer smogs, and a whole bunch of other stuff, we would have a Pretty Perfect Society. In the 1970’s that’s what it looked like Western Governments were trying to do, The Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976, and the Divorce Reform Act 1969 (in force 1971). There were a lot of other changes, far too many to recite here.
The Good Old Days had an illusion of consensus. That illusion disappeared with all that legislation and the behaviours that went with it. It turned out that the good food, decent health, cutting back on smoking and drinking, removing the most overt sexism, racism and class prejudice, reducing teenage pregnancy and a whole bunch of the other stuff, seemed to require that all the social and economic support of the Normie life be dismantled. Which no-one saw coming. Now...
1) All that's left of the support for the Normie lifestyle are some minor administrative privileges for husbands and wives, as against ‘partners’. There is no viable idea of a ‘normal life’ that receives State and public support.
2) Employment no longer supports social roles, indeed, companies no longer see themselves as under any obligation to employ the citizens of the country in which they make their profits. Employers don’t train anybody, and new hires are expected to have the skills and knowledge they need for the new job already. Employers lost expertise and knowledge with rationalisations and downsizing in the 1980 / 1999, which is why they didn’t lay people off in the same way after 2008. Jobs are more secure than in the Dumbsizing Era, but still can’t be counted on.
But most of all...
3) Crazies, rainbows, and diversities are everywhere, and all the secrets are shouted from the rooftops. Extremists now blow themselves and everyone around them to pieces, and moral posturing and virtue-signalling is entitled and aggressive. Normies don’t feel as if the public spaces belong to them, but instead to drug dealers, beggars, rough sleepers, and the drunks who pissed against the wall at 4 A.M. Normies don’t feel like the society and economy supports them, but that they are mere tax fodder to support subsidies, and legal and employment privileges, for ‘minorities’ who don’t make any contribution to the economy or society.
Nothing now supports the Normie life. Which is why they yearn for the Good Old Days.
Sure, they have iPhones and decent coffee and Netflix, and cars that don’t rust, and heart transplants and hip transplants, and cheap air travel to faraway beaches, and all that stuff.
They also have uncertain employment, ridiculous house prices, static real income for the majority of workers, forty per cent of marriages end in divorce and under-performing children, the queues for heart and hip transplants are years long, the drugs used to work but the germs are becoming immune, there’s nowhere to park your rust-free car if you do drive it, and the real difference is not between the Haves and the Have-Nots - which is the historical condition of the human race - but between the Normies and the self-improvement and self-management people, with their Continuous Professional Development, three-times-a-week gym sessions and half-marathons, and their low-carb, low-fat, low-taste diets.
The Normies have the distinct feeling they got screwed. They didn’t. They just got their noses rubbed in the truth that, for a lot of people, the Good Old Days were the Bad Old Days. The Normie life required huge amounts of denial and a metric tonne of complacency, which was possible only because the rest of the world was shut up behind the Iron Curtain and had the economic development of the mid-nineteenth century.
Monday, 17 September 2018
August 2018 Diary
The heat really did take it out of me. I took a week off after the weather cooled down, and in the few days up to the break, I could feel the gears in my head grinding. I was making mistakes at work that I would never normally make. I could not think straight. It was so bad I woke up at 08:00 for three days during the week off.
I read Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler; John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start-Up; The Secret Barrister; The Panama Papers by Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier; G K Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday; Alan Furst’s A Hero In France; and John Lange (aka Micheal Crichton) The Venom Business and Drug of Choice; and Olga Sviblova's book on Rodchenko
I saw no films and finished S7 of House. I watched Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City, and both the Jack Reacher films on DVD.
Sis and I dined at Delamina, off Wigmore Street. I lunched at The Botanist on Sloane Square because the District Line was up the creek and it was a way to sit it out. I had supper at Blanchette in Soho as well.
I decided it was time to knock working from home on the head. I lost a day of walking - I do 10,000+ steps a day with the commute and other walking - and I was not making the best use of the time. ‘Working from home’ is good when, instead ofchatting with others in the office networking with my colleagues, I can do some light housework. With the hot weather, I hadn’t been doing that.
I took my Bose cans into work - I use the in-ear QC20’s for the commute - and that experiment worked: the cans are more comfortable and provide a bit more physical sound exclusion. And I went back to sitting on all sorts of seats around the office, because I’d let myself slip into sitting into a tolerable chair that is still distracting enough that I can’t work fluently in it. Hey, given a choice between reducing property costs per employee and decreasing productivity per employee, there’s really no choice, right?
The white tee-shirts under the blue work shirt came back as well. I’d let the previous lot get too old and scratchy, and of course they shrank in the wash *cough* and became uncomfortable, so as an experiment I stopped wearing them. Finding: wear tee-shirts under the work shirt, and renew the tee-shirts every year or so.
The Great iTunes Album Art project got completed, and only those who have done it will appreciate what that means.
I took some photographs. I know everyone does that all the time, but I had stopped. The Rodchenko book made me think about what taking photographs is about. I don’t have any profound answers, but it shifted how I saw some of the things around me. Made me want to take photographs again.
I read Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler; John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start-Up; The Secret Barrister; The Panama Papers by Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier; G K Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday; Alan Furst’s A Hero In France; and John Lange (aka Micheal Crichton) The Venom Business and Drug of Choice; and Olga Sviblova's book on Rodchenko
I saw no films and finished S7 of House. I watched Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City, and both the Jack Reacher films on DVD.
Sis and I dined at Delamina, off Wigmore Street. I lunched at The Botanist on Sloane Square because the District Line was up the creek and it was a way to sit it out. I had supper at Blanchette in Soho as well.
I decided it was time to knock working from home on the head. I lost a day of walking - I do 10,000+ steps a day with the commute and other walking - and I was not making the best use of the time. ‘Working from home’ is good when, instead of
I took my Bose cans into work - I use the in-ear QC20’s for the commute - and that experiment worked: the cans are more comfortable and provide a bit more physical sound exclusion. And I went back to sitting on all sorts of seats around the office, because I’d let myself slip into sitting into a tolerable chair that is still distracting enough that I can’t work fluently in it. Hey, given a choice between reducing property costs per employee and decreasing productivity per employee, there’s really no choice, right?
The white tee-shirts under the blue work shirt came back as well. I’d let the previous lot get too old and scratchy, and of course they shrank in the wash *cough* and became uncomfortable, so as an experiment I stopped wearing them. Finding: wear tee-shirts under the work shirt, and renew the tee-shirts every year or so.
The Great iTunes Album Art project got completed, and only those who have done it will appreciate what that means.
I took some photographs. I know everyone does that all the time, but I had stopped. The Rodchenko book made me think about what taking photographs is about. I don’t have any profound answers, but it shifted how I saw some of the things around me. Made me want to take photographs again.
Thursday, 13 September 2018
Policed Speech is Dishonest Speech and Other Thoughts on Call Centres
Taping phone calls at call centres is a good thing, right? Keeps everyone honest, yes?
Not so much. Get the popcorn and read this tale.
The other day I got one of those just-calling-to-see-if-you’re-on-the-best-account-for-you calls from Vodafone. We chatted about the cost of the Samsung Note 9 and the iPhoneX, and then I asked if it was possible to move to a SIM-only contract on my phone. I didn’t think I could, as the contract runs out at the end of January, but hey, no harm in asking.
To my surprise the salesman (it always is a man) said that, yes I could, indeed to a 12-month contract offering 20GB of data per month. Sounds good to me. (I have an iPhone SE, it’s not very expensive, but this was still a saving, and much more data.) He said he would send me a SIM out that evening, which would reach me Friday, and I should call 191 to get everything set up.
The SIM arrived Saturday. We will pass over the call to Vodafone 191. It was long, it was full of people in Chennai popping off tomake a cup of tea consult with a colleague while I was on hold, and none of them seemed to be able to grasp the problem, or of they did, they didn’t prove it by describing the problem and the remedy to me in their own words. In the end I think I hit the wrong button with my ear and dropped the call. Or they did. I can get upset after forty-five minutes going nowhere on a call.
It was during this call I learned that I had two lines. I explained that I didn’t want two lines, only one, and I wanted the SIM-ony tariff transferred to my existing number, not on the new number.
What had happened was this: the salesman created a second line for the new SIM card which would be billed alongside my existing monthly contract for the next five months. I am going to pass on speculating whether that was intentionally setting me up for double-billing. The usual way of changing is a tariff doesn’t involve changing a SIM card, but hey, who knows how these things work?
I went into that oasis of sanity, a Vodafone shop, and explained what had happened, showing them the SIM and the letter that came with it. The assistant looked at at his screen and in reply to my comment “I think the guy on the phone messed things up” said that, indeed, the guy on the phone had done bad.
Here’s the thing. In the shop, they can say that. On the phone, they can’t, because everything is taped, and so they have to go through a dozen contortions to avoid saying “Yeah, he pulled a fast one on you, let me straighten that out”.
Turned out the new card was cancelled on Saturday evening, when I made the 191 call, so something came out of that, but they could not tell me they had done that, because that would have been tantamount to admitting that the salesman had tried to con me. Or had misunderstood what I wanted and caused me a bunch of nuisance and potential double-billing problems. Neither of which make ‘Vodafone-the-corporation’ look good.
That’s what tapes do to any attempt to be honest.
In the shops, nobody is taping, so the staff can be honest with the customers. They can also deny they ever suggested that the salesman was pulling a fast one. Sometimes deniability leads to greater honesty for the customer.
Want it in five words? Policed speech is dishonest speech.
Not so much. Get the popcorn and read this tale.
The other day I got one of those just-calling-to-see-if-you’re-on-the-best-account-for-you calls from Vodafone. We chatted about the cost of the Samsung Note 9 and the iPhoneX, and then I asked if it was possible to move to a SIM-only contract on my phone. I didn’t think I could, as the contract runs out at the end of January, but hey, no harm in asking.
To my surprise the salesman (it always is a man) said that, yes I could, indeed to a 12-month contract offering 20GB of data per month. Sounds good to me. (I have an iPhone SE, it’s not very expensive, but this was still a saving, and much more data.) He said he would send me a SIM out that evening, which would reach me Friday, and I should call 191 to get everything set up.
The SIM arrived Saturday. We will pass over the call to Vodafone 191. It was long, it was full of people in Chennai popping off to
It was during this call I learned that I had two lines. I explained that I didn’t want two lines, only one, and I wanted the SIM-ony tariff transferred to my existing number, not on the new number.
What had happened was this: the salesman created a second line for the new SIM card which would be billed alongside my existing monthly contract for the next five months. I am going to pass on speculating whether that was intentionally setting me up for double-billing. The usual way of changing is a tariff doesn’t involve changing a SIM card, but hey, who knows how these things work?
I went into that oasis of sanity, a Vodafone shop, and explained what had happened, showing them the SIM and the letter that came with it. The assistant looked at at his screen and in reply to my comment “I think the guy on the phone messed things up” said that, indeed, the guy on the phone had done bad.
Here’s the thing. In the shop, they can say that. On the phone, they can’t, because everything is taped, and so they have to go through a dozen contortions to avoid saying “Yeah, he pulled a fast one on you, let me straighten that out”.
Turned out the new card was cancelled on Saturday evening, when I made the 191 call, so something came out of that, but they could not tell me they had done that, because that would have been tantamount to admitting that the salesman had tried to con me. Or had misunderstood what I wanted and caused me a bunch of nuisance and potential double-billing problems. Neither of which make ‘Vodafone-the-corporation’ look good.
That’s what tapes do to any attempt to be honest.
In the shops, nobody is taping, so the staff can be honest with the customers. They can also deny they ever suggested that the salesman was pulling a fast one. Sometimes deniability leads to greater honesty for the customer.
Want it in five words? Policed speech is dishonest speech.
Monday, 10 September 2018
A brisk 10 minute walk twice a day cannot improve your health
No. A ten-minute walk twice a day won’t make the slightest difference to your health. Except in some very rare circumstances, none of which will bring you to the platform at St. James’s Station. In fact, if you are reading this poster there, chances are very high you are already walking ten minutes twice a day - just for the commute.
But these ads are not for the benefit of the audience.
These ads are there so the Government can say “We have a health awareness programme. You saw our ads on your way to work.”
Thursday, 6 September 2018
Nice Red Shed
Every year I re-paint the garden shed. Having a garden shed is an important part of being a Normal Person. If I have a garden shed, I must be Normal. And if I paint it Cederwood Red every year, I must be a good Normal. So here's my nice red shed.
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