08/01/2010 by Esio Trot.

My current Laptop, bought circa 2004 has been playing up.

Last Summer thanks to a You Tube demonstration stripped it down to re-solder the power input socket back onto the mini circuit board - this is apparently the most vulnerable part of a laptop, having the most stress, and it is surprising (me having looked at other laptops since) how feeble the design of some connectors are.

Anyway, I’ve now lost the wireless aerial so rather then be totally caught out, replacement is the name of  the day.

Having looked around for a few weeks, I realised that although there are loads of laptops around, most are huge. I don’t want to lug around some massive suitcase, so something around a 13″ to 14″ widescreen is fine.  Trouble is, whereas there are loads of these at £500 or below, these tend to have grotty graphics cards. And if I am away at a Premier Inn someplace and not being much of a TV watcher, I do like to while away the evening hours playing Civilisation or something.  Surprisingly many laptops sized at 15″ have significantly better graphics cards.

My first port of call in considering computers is e-buyer. I’ve been using them for years now, and only once have I had a problem bit of kit and they sorted it out quickly and, most importantly, easily. Sadly though, they didn’t have anything suitable when I looked, whereas Dell did.

So on on 18 December 2009 I settled on a Dell Studio XPS 13, with 4mb RAM and a 512MB nVidia GeForce 210M graphics card, priced at £720 delivered. I did have warning bells in my head while ordering, but in my desire to replace my laptop, ignored these - and what a mistake this turns out to be. I really regret placing an order with Dell. Their ordering system stinks - they make so much noise about “Security” and needing to conform to their system, it seems that the customer has become a necessary evil. This is the saga so far:

• Ordered on Friday 18 December. The website gives heinous warnings about not delivering to anything but the address to which the card is registered to, but I thought this would not be a problem as our trading address is registered with our card provider, albeit that we are invoiced to our company registered address. Payment was taken from our account on Monday 21 December.
• Interestingly Dell make it plain that the item is “build to order”. This does not really affect business customers, but it does mean that domestic customers cannot make use of the cancellation rights of the Distance Selling Regulations as the item is “made” and not immediately available from stock.
• e-mail received on 23 December from an address that does not accept replies saying delivery on 30 December, with a big warning that deliveries cannot be altered and that someone should be available from 8am to 8pm to accept delivery. WHAT? a 12 hour slot? Plus, we are closed between Christmas and New Year? There is a big sign on the door saying we re-open on 4 January, so I assumed it would be delivered then.
• 4 January comes and I get a call from the delivery guy from his mobile asking where we are. It’s then that I realise that when making the order I made an error: Although I put the office address on the original order, I put the registered office postcode! The chap says that the address is not his area, but he’ll see what he can do.
• The delivery chap did not do anything. Using the contractors tracking facility, I see that it went from the local depot back to the national depot on Tuesday 5 January, where it has stayed since. There is no contact number on the contractors tracking service.

Despite Dell having my personal office e-mail address as well as our main office telephone number, plus my mobile, nobody from Dell has been in touch.

This whole order is in limbo. I am so annoyed at the lack of personal contact since placing the order. I can’t change the address, so the item won’t be delivered; as the item can’t be delivered, I can’t reject it and get my money back. I e-mailed customer services on 6 January saying that I am not having a good customer experience and asking that the order be cancelled. The e-mail has to be done on their website, and to show their poor customer focus, once sent a copy is not forwarded to the e-mail address that has to be input, nor even an acknowledgement sent. The page says that their aim is to answer queries “normally” within one business day. This is the second business day, and still nothing has been heard.

I will update as the saga continues ………..

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07/01/2010 by Esio Trot.

On Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday a spokesman from Ofsted let something slip that the presenters did not take up, and has not been aired anywhere else as far as I know.

• If a school closes for the day due to inclement weather, this day is excluded from the authorised/unauthorised absence statistics.
• If a school open and, say, only 25% of pupils manage to attend, this means that 75% of 2 x half day attendances will be marked as absences.

What has been bandied about are people like spokesmen from the Association of Head Teachers as well as government ministers and the like harping on about the “difficult judgement call” head teachers have to make.

I don’t think I am being cynical to say that this “difficult judgement call” has more to do with the effect on the league table absence figures than the logistics of opening. Of course, it is nowadays useful to be able to call on the God of Health and Safety as the main reason for closure - as so few people then question what bit of health and safety makes the school site so dangerous.

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16/10/2009 by Esio Trot.

I’ve just done some interesting calculations looking at our near neighbours and their troop contributions to the NATO-led ISAF operation in Afghanistan.

I have only taken those countries that have send 1,000 or more troops, and then compared this with that nation’s total population. I’ve also done an average of these, and put a line in for those above/below the average.

As you can see, even without sending another 500 troops the UK already has the largest force in relation to population. Increasing our force to 9,500 puts our ratio even higher at 156. This will be 50% more than even the current USA commitment.

Politicians, including our Prime Minister, are extremely reluctant to name names. Even this week when annoucing the sending of the extra 500, Our Gordon in nebulous terms, insisted that Nato countries must bear their “fair share” of the mission by sending more troops of their own. He didn’t give any indication though of which countries he thought were not providing their fair share at the moment. If he cares to look at the above chart, it will give him a fair indication!

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01/07/2009 by Esio Trot.

I see on the news this morning that Lord Adonis said,

“The government is not prepared to renegotiate rail franchises, because I’m simply not prepared to bail out companies that are unable to meet their commitments.

“It is simply unacceptable to reap the benefits of contracts when times are good, only to walk away from them when times become more challenging.”

But isn’t this what they did with the banks - the biggest and most costly bailout ever?

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05/05/2009 by Esio Trot.

Well, actually, the arrival happened a few years ago, but it still makes the mouth drop at some of the decisions.

We all know of some incident that shouts idiocy: the villager who has tended the flowers in a bed in the middle of the road for 60 years is told that she must either stop or have a lookout, warning signs and HV wear; the childens organisation that had to obtain an event permit, conduct a risk assessment, obtain police clearance and liability insurance before they could continue their annual pensioners Christmas lunch. The list could go on.

When some bod issues an edict, like the examples above, they normally quote ‘health and safety’. Trouble is, there is no room left for any discussion. The very mention of health and safety normally requires all who hear it to nod appreciatively, to give a deep sucking-in of breath and a resigned look of “well, that’s that then.”.

Who is the giver of all these edicts? Where can we go to obtain a more commonsense approach? Is this nation so litigious that unless we adhere to the minutei of each dot and tick of multitudinous forms we are likely to suffer hell and damnation?

Take this case in Preston, Lancashire. Police Community Support Officers are being supplied with mountain bikes to assist in increasing their mobility, yet staying visible in the community.  For the first two bikes some publicity was thought to be useful so a photocall was arranged, and all was well until PC Tony Cobban was asked to sit on a stationary bike. He declined, insisting that doing something as risky as sitting on a bicycle was not to be undertaken without proper training - and he has the support of senior officers. Most reasonable people will make him an object of ridicule.

At least in the above case, unlike this one involving PCSO’s,  a human life was not involved - or even worse the life of a child even if ‘probably dead’ when they arrived. Rather than ‘possibly dead’, I would have read the scene as possibly alive and acted accordingly. And as David Blunkett, former Home Secretary said in the Today programme when hearing that the water visibility was poor, “I would like to think that you or I, when we arrived on the bank as just normal human beings . . . we would have a go.”

Health and Safety does have a place, but not above - and really well below - that of common sense.

May Jordon Lyon, aged 10 when he drowned, rest in peace.

Posted in Politics, Legal | No Comments »

05/05/2009 by Esio Trot.

In one of my reference dictionaries, it states that a debacle is “Something that ends in a disastrous failure, esp. because it has not been properly planned.”

The liberalisation of the Royal Mail monopoly in 2006 is certainly that: motivated by political dogma, rather than planned with the long-term future of Royal Mail in mind.

It allowed private operators to do the all of the processes involved in the collection, sorting and delivery of mail - with the option of still using Royal Mail to do the final walk-up-the-path delivery (for a fee).

Sounds great, but in practice has meant that all the mass mailings from businesses (and more and more government departments) where Royal Mail used to derive a significant element of their profits, have been taken over by the likes of TNT, Business Post etc. YET, Royal Mail is still required to maintain the universal postal service.

In addition, I understand that the bean counters who worked out the commission earned by Royal Mail for providing the last walk-up-the-path bit was flawed - Royal Mail just about breaks even for providing this bit.

So, we have private companies processing profitable bulk mail and using Royal Mail when it suites them for the last bit.  And what has been the result for us, the general public:

• Royal Mail having to increase the cost of first and second class postage that you and I have to pay at a rate well beyond the rate of inflation (In only two years there has been a 30% increase: second class has risen from 23p to 30p; second, from 30p to 39p).
• Government Ministers harangue us nearly every week that Royal Mail is insolvent, that its operations hardly covers its running costs.
• A huge pension deficit exists that needs private money to make it solvent.

Seems to me that the simplest solution to Royal Mail’s predicament will be to re-impose the monopoly it had - thus it’s turnover will increase significantly, thus contributing greatly to its profits (as most of its fixed costs are already met) and it will then be able to make decent inroads into the pension deficit by making contributions out of the extra revenue generated.

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29/04/2009 by Esio Trot.

With the housing market still in freefall, what does this tell us about the integrity of Gordon Brown, our current Prime Minister (also titled of First Lord of the Treasury), who before his appointment to this position was for ten years Chancellor of the Exchequer?

Cast your mind back to 1997, back in the days when a tax concession known as Miras (Mortgage Interest Relief At Source) was still available. Our Gordon, being “prudent”, decided to reduce this concession from 15% to 10%, continuing the stepped reduction started by the previous Conservative government. Nothing much here then - that is until you read what he said, reported in this BBC Budget Summary

What he said was: “I am determined that as a country we never return to the instability, speculation, and negative equity that characterised the housing market in the 1980s and 1990s … I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the recovery.”

What? Did he really say this?

And what happened since

In the 10 years through to 2007 average house prices rose by 200%, whereas average earnings rose by just 52%.  This was the era of cheap credit, lowish interest rates, lenders taking much higher risks when considering loans, with even mortgage lenders allowing a loan to value of 125% .

Is it possible that either Gordon Brown or Tony Blair didn’t know this? I can assure you they did.

There is a chap called Fred Harrison who wrote to Gordon in 1997, saying “By 2007 Britain … will be in the throes of frenzied activity in the land market. Land prices will be near their 18 year peak … on the verge of collapse [which will precede] the global recession of 2010.” and later in the same paragraph, “[The land price peak and the global recession] will not be coincidental: the peak in land prices … being the primary cause of [the recession]”

Correspondence continued between Fred Harrison and the government, and culminated in a letter dated 5 February 2003 from Alistair Campbell, Director of Communications and Strategy at 10 Downing Street: “… I’m a little bemused why you believe this country’s economic policy is ‘a shambles’. Pretty well every independent expert believes this country is in better shape to weather … storms than our competitors”

Well, the storm is here, and seems to me that when you have the government needing to borrow hundreds of billions of pounds to balance the books, we don’t seem to be weathering it that well.

Gordon has been a key player in government for 15 years. Some say with his experience he is the most qualified person to be in charge in a crisis like this. I say that he is the one that got us into this mess, so I don’t see why he should be be the one to get us out of it.

Reminds me of a story I heard of a newly appointed MD of a company, being shown round the factory. He was introduced to Jim and was told that he was the most valuable asset in the company - whenever there was a crisis, and these were quite frequent, he was always on hand and really good at sorting out the problem. Later that day the MD saw the Personnel Director and told him, “Your first task is to fire Jim as soon as possible.” The director looked astonished, and asked why. The MD said, “Well, he might be good in a crisis but we shouldn’t have any crisis in the first place. Get rid, and that way our people will be more careful and avoid allowing a crisis to develop in the first place.”

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »

28/04/2009 by Esio Trot.

The economy is in the doldrums, and in my opinion us in Great Britain are suffering more than most other nations due to a decade or more of governmental short-sightedness.

So what does the government do? Introduce plans to try and further curb one of the few areas of independence left to the ordinary citizen, no doubt hoping to deflect attention away from the thunderclouds overhead.

What a waste of time.

Schools

Firstly, the idea of introducing a 20 mph limit around schools is laughable. In my town many parents will drive their precious offspring in their Mitsubishi L200’s the few dozen yards to the school gate - and if they can’t park within an inch of the gate because other inconsiderate parents have taken their place, they go ape. For me, to be able to drive at even 5 mph past a school would be pleasant, instead of trying to manoeuvre past an obliquely parked 4×4 (because the parent can’t reverse-park so has to go in front first leaving their tail end to obstruct all and sundry).

Rural

Secondly, in many rural roads it is not possible to drive at the national speed limit of 60 mph. To try and drive at even 50 mph is often nigh impossible, and often 40 mph is pushing it due to bends and the nature of the road.

Revenue Generation?

Some time ago I was driving down a bypass near Newark on my way to Lincoln and used this stretch of road. It’s the A46 and you have a single carriageway, then pass two roundabouts, continuing north-east on a lovely safe relatively straight dual carriageway, with crash barriers to keep the traffic separate. The single carriageway has the national speed limit, where I think I averaged 45 mph - a reasonable speed for that particular road. The lovely safe dual carriageway has imposed on it a 50 mph limit and I was in no hurry as I was early for my business meeting, so poodled along at 45-50 mph.

Fortunate for me that I did, for within a mile of driving on this road, over the brow of a hill I spotted a traffic constable with his LTi 20/20 Laser gun, popping drivers as they came into vision. In the next layby were four motorcycle outriders parked waiting for the radio call pointing out their next victim.

The moral of the above is that speed limits set often have bear no relationship to safety. To have driven at 60 mph on the single carriageway would have been suicidal; at 70 mph on the latter would have been a safe and reasonable speed - albeit unlawful.  To do so would have invited penalty points, increased insurance premiums plus a small fine. An outcome that seems decidedly unfair to me.

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23/04/2009 by Esio Trot.

So now we have it - the ultimate tribute to an ‘ordinary girl’ - according to Danny Hayward who as reported in this article has decided to create a musical based on Jade Goody

Hayward says “It’s still in its infant stages, but it’s definitely going to happen.”

I can’t help thinking that this project will remain such and not reach fruition, and wondering if Hayward has more interest in the self-publicity that this announcement brings than the project itself.

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16/04/2009 by Esio Trot.

I see that the OFT have won their latest appeal in the ongoing Foxtons Renewal Fees case.

They start their press release:

 “The OFT has today welcomed a Court of Appeal Judgment confirming its views on the application of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999 (UTCCRs) ahead of a substantive hearing against Foxtons Limited at the end of this month.”

I have highlighted the word consumer above as this is a real puzzle to me: generally a landlord rents out property not out of altruism or to be charitable, but to make a profit. He therefore runs a business. If a landlord is running a business and appoints an agent, surely it is a business to business contract, and not that of a supplier/consumer.

Everything I have read so far seems not to address this basic anomaly.

Posted in Lettings | 2 Comments »