Costs Benefits and Verisimilitudes

Because of the atmosphere in which I work I have developed a back complaint, fortunately I have caught it early and am undergoing physio-terrorism to get it back to how it should be, it's a painful process and it's reminded me of the cost of employment.

When you come to think about it being employed costs you a lot of money, all of the following would not be required if it wasn't for work and I'm sure you can think of a few others

• Work Clothes
• Commuting Costs (season ticket car purchase fuel road tax parking etc.)
• Work Hair Cuts
• Appalling Coffee from the vending machine
• Canteen Lunches
• Assorted Presents (leaving birthday baby etc.)
• Work Related Outings (drinks meals bowling etc.)
• Work Contracted Illnesses (beechams powders night nurse strepsils etc.)

Not to mention intangible costs such as.

• Work time
• Commuting time
• Time shopping for work related goods
• Lost sleep worrying about work
• Relationship issues around work
• Stressful relationships at work
• Injuries directly attributable to work (RSI Slips Trips and Falls Silicosis etc.)
  

Ok ok, I'm not suggesting we all give up work tomorrow, heaven forbid, but it does us good to remember that there are hidden costs to what we do for a living as well as the rewards.

A friend of mine was recently offered a job by one of his clients and he was agonizing over whether to take it or not, when he sat down and tried to work out how much he should ask for he was surprised to realise just how valuable his current employment benefits were.

Once he'd taken into account the difference in holiday entitlement, pension benefits, flexi-time, charity-leave, car allowance etc. he realised that the job offer of beating his current salary by a couple of thousand a year wasn't quite as good as he'd first thought.

And this goes as counter argument to my first point, in that we may not be overjoyed to go into work every day and the hidden costs may be extortionate but the hidden benefits could be making our whole package much greater than we imagine.

This week I complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about the broadband ads currently doing the rounds that claim unlimited downloads, subject to a fair use policy.

www.asa.org.uk/asa

I hate it when people misuse the language so blatantly and pointed out to them that unlimited meant without limits and that making something unlimited and subject to a limit was a direct contradiction in terms.

Surprisingly I received a reply, only two days later, explaining that I was one of many to complain and that the ruling had been made that as long as the amount of people affected by the restriction was limited then companies were allowed to use the term unlimited.

As you know dear reader I have a love of the English language and this blatant disregard for accuracy really sets me into, to coin a phrase, dander erectus mode.

How many more inaccuracies are we going to allow; safe streets, honest politicians, accurate reporting, unbiased press, fair taxation...?

Oh I see your point :(

On a personal note I'm happy to report the diet is working and I've now lost 6lbs in a little over 4 weeks, to be honest I don't feel like I'm depriving myself and I cheat a lot ! I'm now playing badminton twice a week which is helping and the physio-terrorism is stopping the chest pains that were worrying me so much.

Take care till next time.

John Anslow

FFriar.com

Giving the finger to cash and forming a spam posse

Soon you could be giving the finger to supermarket queues and identity theft if new ideas go ahead.

I can see a lot of good coming out of the current drive to eliminate cash using biometric data to identify purchasers, it’s a lot harder to mug an old granny of her fingerprints than her purse for instance and there’s an interesting development in Biometrics that is raising eyebrows, expectations and hands in the air in almost equal proportions.

In a recent article by the BBC it was claimed:

"Pay By Touch" allows customers to settle their supermarket bill with a fingerprint rather than a credit card. With three million customers in the United States, this payment system is now being tested in the UK, in three Co-op supermarkets in Oxfordshire.

Once a customer registers, and has their finger scanned, they can use a fingerpad for payment, with the money directly debited from their bank account.

Of course there are very real fears about identity theft and rightly so but if it’s handled properly then I can see it being a boon to consumers and retailers alike, mind you there is a list of people who make their living out of handling cash who won’t be too happy, Securicor, Securitas, foreign exchanges, bank tellers etc. and that completely ignores the black economy who will be even more opposed, bank robbers, muggers, drug dealers, illegal workers, cash in hand employers, illicit minicabs etc.

So let’s address peoples’ fears of identity theft, if someone steals your identity and commits crimes you are not liable, it's simply a case of proving where you were when the said crime was committed, if you used your fingerprint to purchase goods in the co-op in Leicester at the same time as some thief used it to buy a car in Wales then it's fairly obvious to your local Leicestershire copper that you couldn't have been in two places simultaneously isn't it?

If you think resisting Biometric recognition systems will improve your civil liberties then you'd better cancel your bank accounts, send back your credit cards, not drive, not pay any bills, not attend any social services, not send your kids to school, not join a library or indeed any council run club or association and if you do all that and a host of things that didn't pop into my head while writing this, then you may just be able to avoid having any personal information stored about you and used at the collector's discretion, oh yes I forgot, better not go out either as the CC Cameras may see you.

Of course there will be cases where it’s hard to prove and mistakes will be made, and you can bet my body weight in yesterday’s unsold copies of the daily mail that the press will make the most of them to whip up some more paper selling hysteria but will it be any more prevalent than current cases of mistaken identity?

I'm more concerned about companies selling my data to marketers than I am about identity theft and I'm afraid that goes on all the time.

I currently receive over 400 pieces of spam email a day, harvesters of email addresses will account for most of that and no doubt writing on here has increased my visibility to these “people”, but there is the odd piece of snail-mail (actual physical mail that comes through the letterbox) that turns up unsolicited but bristling with my personal details that can only have come from someone who's bought my details.

Sadly there is no easy solution to this problem, most spammers (name given to people who send you stuff you don't want and didn't ask for) are based offshore, in countries where there is little to no control or possibility of redress, I know I’ve tried and hosts in countries like Latvia are extremely unlikely to even reply to a complaint let alone do anything about it.

By its very nature the internet is a very difficult place to police effectively, just look at how few convictions there are for that most vile crime, child pornography, international co-operation is required and huge amounts of money are spent to track down just a few individuals a year.

Having been involved in ecommerce I can tell you that even when I had proof of fraudulent behaviour, someone trying to use someone else’s credit card to purchase goods from me, the police couldn’t do anything as the funding wasn’t available, how much less are they going to prioritise spam?

So is there anything we can do I hear you ask, well maybe not but it’s a rhetorical question anyway so there!

And the answer is, funnily enough, about the same as the Americans came up with in the Wild West during the 1800's, look at their problems a huge country, no police, no money to pay for police, no effective central organisation to ensure that local governments instigated police departments etc. sound familiar?

Towns set up their own police and eventually central government took a hand and legislated them into existence everywhere whilst also creating central agencies to oversee and handle cross border issues.

Ok ok I'm not claiming the American way is neccessarily the only or right way but it does bear striking similarities to the current situation on the net.

We can protect ourselves from viruses with mail checking programs and we can set complex spam identification rules on servers to filter it out somewhat, we can continue reporting spammers to various organisations, Spamcops, pinkertons, the local sherrif etc. but in the end they will keep sending it and we will have to keep dealing with it until there is an internet wide police force.

Now if someone could invent a way of doing away with spam automatically, that would be news, I might have to mail everyone I know and tell them about it ;)

Take care,

John
ffriar.com

BBC Article:
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6129084.stm )

Driving elsewhere…

This week I was lucky enough to be able to pop down to Herne Bay and see an old friend of mine Katy, she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl only two weeks ago and my wife and I went down to say hello and welcome her to the world.

It was a beautiful sunny day and the drive down was pleasant if a tad long so we arrived in good spirits, ok I had to ring for directions once or twice but at least we got there.

Baby Abigail is lovely and her mum Katy looks like she hasn’t even had a baby, M was quite jealous of her figure, we sat and had tea and as it was lunchtime we went to eat at a small restaurant in the town.

Greensteds Family Restaurant in William St served us all a very pleasant luncheon and the service was excellent, owned by a Turkish Cypriot family they were attentive without being overbearing and I could tell from the state of business that this was not unusual, isn’t it funny that businesses that give good customer service always seem to be busy?

Businesses that give good customer service always seem to be busy.

We chatted over lunch and then decided to go for a walk down to the beach, as we passed the car I noticed a ticket on the windscreen, now you can imagine I was a little surprised, when I had parked I looked hard for any restrictions and having received a ticket you can bet I looked even harder.

I’m here to tell you that there were no warning signs or restrictions posted anywhere in the road, eventually I found a sign at a crossroads 50 yards away!

The 5 other cars parked in the bay, oh yes I parked in a bay, had no tickets on their windscreens and I have no idea why I was singled out.

Now I could write to the council and complain about it but I’m not going to bother for two very good reasons.

1. It wouldn’t do any good
2. It wouldn’t do any good

I’ll pay the £30 fine and never go there again.

Every week in the Croydon Guardian you see examples of Croydon Council’s obsession with parking fines and I can’t help feeling that the short term gains are not offsetting the long term damage done, you see, like me, anyone who has had an unfair parking ticket will take their business elsewhere.

I will not be spending any of my hard earned money in Herne Bay again, the next time I go to see Katy we’ll drive elsewhere for lunch, and I have to ask myself how many potential Croydon customers are driving elsewhere?

On a brighter note I popped into ASDAs on Friday for my weekly shop, I had some pictures of Abigail to print off so I popped over to their camera shop to sample the service.

I stuck my memory card in the reader and selected the images I wanted printing off, the machine printed out a receipt and I wandered over to the till to pay the bill.

I duly paid and was handed a standard picture type receipt and went off to do my shopping.

M and I got everything we wanted and popped into McDonalds for a coffee, I remembered my pictures and went next door to pick them up, well all I can say is wow, the quality was outstanding, delivered in the usual wallet they were larger than I expected and looked as good as any I’ve ever got back from developing.

Ok so it’s not earth shattering but it is a good example of the icing on the cake principal I talked about in an earlier blog, I got more than I expected and of a better quality, am I going to use their services again?

Well what do you think?

Take care till next time,

John
ffriar.com

Pull the other one...

Are you sitting comfortably, I hope so because by the time I've finished telling you about my leg you won't be lol

Actually surprise surprise it wasn't half as bad as I was expecting, a tad sore and I look like I've been beaten with a stick for a couple of hours but apart from that ok.

As you can imagine the last week has been interesting for me I've been hobbling around like a cripple with my old walking stick trying to get the required 1000 steps a day in, with such a sore leg it was a case of loose clothing and frequent rests.

I've taken the opportunity to visit my favourite Cafe a couple of times (Tres Gourmet 227 Lower Addiscombe Rd) and as you would expect they were very solicitous, they've taken to outside catering now and next time I have a party I'll be giving it a go, of course I'll let you know.

As part of my pre op I was instructed to lose weight, no surprise there for those of you who know me, and as usual I asked how I was supposed to achieve that, I've been overweight for 40 years ! My consultant shrugged and recommended the GI diet and I'm here to tell you that it's not bad.

Ok so most of you won't need to lose weight, you can skip on to the next bit, but those of you who do listen up, the GI diet works and it's easy to follow and doesn't leave you feeling hungry, in fact I struggle to eat all the food I'm supposed to on this diet !

In 12 days, including a trip to hospital and recovering ever since I've lost 4 lbs, ok not earth shattering I know but considering I couldn't do any exercise for 5 days and have been sitting around quite a bit I don't think that's bad.

I can heartily recommend the diet and I'll keep you posted.

Ok so what was the service like at the hospital I hear you ask, well you knew I'd be talking about it.

Despite it being a BUPA establishment I was disappointed in the customer care on the day, I arrived at 6:25am having been instructed to be there by 6:30am and was asked to wait by a polite young night porter.

Other patients started arriving and by 6:30am there were 4 of us waiting to be admitted, the staff nurse arrived at 6:35am and told us that they were short handed because one nurse was off sick and asked us to wait till we were called.

At 6:45am we were collected and taken to the ward by the staff nurse who pointed us into our rooms and told us to make ourselves comfortable.

Eventually she came back and took my details, filled in some forms and dumped a gown and plastic pants on the side for me.

We waited and waited and at last it was time for my operation, I got changed and hopped onto the trolley when it came, taken up to the operating theatre I was duly knocked up, sorry out, and woke up some time later in the room.

Very groggy after the general anaesthetic I asked for a drink and something to eat, I expected something nice but what I got was something bland, I'd ordered a tuna fish sandwich and a yoghurt, the sandwich was dry and the yoghurt was warm.

The tea was warm and wet so at least I could wet my now very dry mouth.

I was in some pain so the staff nurse gave me two pills which knocked me out for a few hours but eventually I was well enough to go home.

I rang my good friend Neil who came and picked me up and took me home.

I can't say that anyone there was actually rude but it was all a bit brusque, I felt like a cash cow being milked rather than a patient being treated, now maybe they were stressed because they had a nurse off sick but it's in times of adversity that we are given the opportunity to really shine.

It's in times of adversity that we are given the opportunity to really shine.

I haven't named the hospital concerned because otherwise I've received excellent customer service there and this experience may have been an anomaly.

Have a great time and I’ll catch you next week when I’m back at work.

John
www.ffriar.com