Money -- it's a gas. And vice versa.

Why is the price of gas so high? Where is the money going? And how can it be brought back down, preferably permanently.

What follows is simplistic -- deliberately so. But any and all complexities that I have ignored -- they are artificial constructs which exist mainly to prop up the current system. They can and should be changed.

Follow The Money

The price of gas has risen, apparently, because supply can't match demand. This is because of the difficulties in bringing Russian gas to market. The result is that, globally, more gas is wanted than can be supplied.

So it becomes a bidding war. Those who can pay more will be sold the gas and those who can't will have to go without. Or buy less of it because they can't afford as much as they want.

But where does the money go?

The cost of extraction and distribution of gas has not changed. The wages paid to those drilling and transporting gas have not changed.

Once the gas is available on the 'market', the speculators and traders will attempt to maximise their own profits, and those of the fossil fuel companies, by suggesting that a bidding process is the best way to handle the thorny issue of who gets what.

Which means that the richer customers can afford it.

Which means the price goes up.

Which means that the speculators and traders, and the gas extracting companies make far higher profits than last year, despite the fact that their work has not changed in the slightest. And the real 'raw' cost of obtaining gas has not changed.

Also bear in mind that the (non-Russian) fossil fuel companies are still extracting and selling as much gas as they possibly can. The amount they themselves are selling has not been affected. No wonder their profits are suddenly huge. And unearned. As close to 'ill-gotten gains' as you can get without being illegal.

The whole process is geared towards maximising the profits of the fossil fuel corporations and the market traders. It is sucking huge sums of money out of other companies, nations and the public. And no one is asking why it has to be this way.

The way in which gas is extracted, marketed, traded and sold is not unchangeable, like the law of gravity. It is a man-made system which is now working to rapidly shift vast amounts of wealth from a wide variety of people, companies and nations into the hands of a very small number of people.

Why are we tolerating this?

Just Say No

The UK government is attempting to find intricate ways to help people with the cost of energy. For example:

• Handouts of money to help (i.e. transferring public funds to fossil fuel companies via people's energy bills).
• State-backed loans (i.e. forcing people to take a loan to help with their payments which will lead to the population paying interest charges to banks).

But no one has suggested simply refusing to buy gas at this price.

The retort to that suggestion would be: "But then others will buy it instead of us. Won't they?"

Will they? Why should they?

What is stopping an international consortium calculating a fair price, probably not that far off what gas cost last year, and simply refusing to pay any more than that?

It would be unrealistic to expect a global agreement. But if enough large nations gathered together to stop this rampant profiteering, what would happen?

Would the 'rest of the world' simply buy all the gas at the inflated price? Or would significantly less be sold?

And, unless the fossil fuel companies can store whatever is left, what would they do next? Turn off the taps? Or accept that the profits they made last year weren't actually that bad and maybe there is a deal to be made?

It would be in the interests of nearly everyone on the planet to do this. Even richer countries, who could afford the 'new' prices, would presumably prefer to pay lower prices.

But Free Markets!

As things stand, the gas providers are ensuring that prices are always pegged at the highest rate possible. By operating through a trading system, they are not literally a cartel, but might as well be.

The supply/demand free market theory runs that, at times of shortage, the price will go up in order to encourage more providers to come to the market. How is that working out at the moment? Where are these new providers? Will they be along soon? How long are we supposed to wait?

Some might deride the idea of massive international cooperation as inappropriate, too much state control, too much interference in the rights of corporations to trade freely. But if the fossil fuel companies can gather together behind a system that inflates their profits, how is it wrong for their customers to similarly gather together and state the price they are prepared to pay?

A bit of robust negotiation will be required to determine how the shortage is spread around -- probably not as simple as every customer getting a fixed percentage of their normal requirement, but probably not far off either.

And, with the excess money that will no longer be paid to fossil fuel companies, everyone can buy warmer clothes, insulate their homes, put up wind turbines, cook themselves a hot meal -- the possibilities are endless.

An Aside -- Bruce Springsteen Tickets

Some tickets for Bruce Springsteen's shows are being sold using a very similar supply/demand market-based approach.

Let the fans decide how much they're prepared to pay. Put the price up further, and further. And then further. Hey, if they're still selling then why not keep going and see how high they can go? Five thousand dollars in some cases (per ticket).

The fans are annoyed.

The solution is simple -- if people stop paying these prices, these prices will drop. If people boycott the tour completely, the system would be scrapped. It's only the willingness to roll over and pay that keeps this practice alive.

Customers need to stop thinking of themselves as individuals trying to outsmart (or outbid) each other. Gather together, have strength in numbers and don't accept price gouging. Admittedly it's easier when dealing with entertainment rather than everyday essentials.

Winter Is Coming

So we'd better get on with it.

Don't enter into any long-term contracts. Get down to the United Nations and have some urgent discussions. Preferably before northern-hemisphere countries need to start heating their homes.

None of this pain is necessary.

Wealth-extracting turbo-capitalism is a man-made structure, not an unchangeable law of nature.

It is not working for us any more. Another way is possible.

Institute For Economic Common Sense - Third Lesson

When The Fun Stops, Stop – Helpful advice appended to gambling company advertisements in UK, 2022

Let’s start with an analogy. Everyone likes analogies. Imagine a farmer and family. They run a smallholding. It provides them with food and a little left over which they sell to buy fripperies like horse-shoes and beads and so on. They produce a diverse crop so, if one of their vegetables has a bad year, they’ll probably be okay because another vegetable can pick up the slack. (It’s just an analogy – don’t get too hung up on the details.)

One year, the weather is wrong in some analogy-type non-specific way. Maybe there are floods. Yeah, that’ll do. But our farmer is fine because the smallholding is at the top of the hill so the crops are looking peachy.

But overall there’s a shortage in the county. The rich folk from the city are keen to have their usual amount of potatoes/grain/wheat so they’re offering more money than the locals can afford. Our farmer looks at his crop, looks at the big number that’s on the piece of paper with the order on it and decides he’s going to go for it. He sells the lot. He is an entrepreneur.

Our farmer now has a lot of money. But he has no food. That’s okay though because (a) he’s got loads of money and (b) he has a bit of slightly stale food left over in his larder. That’ll tide him over. And maybe his family too.

Next year it all goes wrong again but this time our farmer’s crops have failed too. (Drought? Yeah, that’ll do.) The price has gone even higher so even with the profit from last year, he can’t afford to buy enough food. He has got plenty of gold pieces to look at though, so it’s not all bad.

In a desperate attempt to avoid starvation, he sells the smallholding to an investor who then employs him (at a very low wage) to work the farm. Good news is that he keeps his home and his job. Bad news is that he doesn’t own any of the food he grows and can only buy it at full market rate like everyone else. He divides the amount of money he has by the estimated annual cost of buying enough food to stay alive and decides that it won’t see him through his working life and retirement. So he turns to crime. The end.

So, yeah, that’s basically what’s happening with electricity in the UK at the moment. We’re all the farmer except that we didn’t decide to sell all our food one year or to sell the farm. No – someone else decided that for us. (We also haven’t decided to turn to crime. Yet.)

Electricity From The Before Times

Once upon a time, the UK produced its own electricity by digging up coal and burning it, or digging up oil and burning it, or digging up gas and burning it. The National Coal Board, British Petroleum and the Central Electricity Generation Board were all state-owned, operating for the good of the country and set up to ensure energy was fuelled, produced, distributed and sold.

Was it perfect? Obviously not – what is? Did it pay vast dividends to shareholders? No. Did it invest in national infrastructure? Yes. Could it have been more efficient? Probably.

Was the price of energy dependent on the whims of the international market or on the cost of fuel, generation and distribution (which were presumably relatively stable)? I’m going to go with the latter.

If the theoretical price of a therm of natural gas spiked on the international market, did it decide to charge itself a much higher rate and then have to pass that cost on to the customer?

Electricity Recently

And this is when the magic of the casino enters proceedings. And what is the one rule that always, always, ALWAYS applies when discussing casinos?

The house always wins. (No, not your house.)

Sure, there’s always a guy over there who’s sitting by the slot machine when it starts pouring out an unending (and, frankly, inconvenient) river of coins. But, overall, the people who run casinos never have to worry about paying to keep the lights on because of all the other suckers, the sad-faced ones, the desperate mugs, the tragically drunk and the heart-rendingly sober. Did their fun start? If not, how will then know when it stops?

After the dismemberment of the electricity system in the UK, the public were left with a bewildering array of options for buying electricity, all priced in subtly different ways, difficult to compare and full of financially punitive little traps. Newly privatised fragments of the companies found accountants and lawyers who could help them squirrel as much money away in hiding places as possible (because that’s always good for running an efficient utilities company) and settled in for some hard graft.

And, as with casinos, there’s always the guy in the spotlight who has found a genuinely good value tariff and is happy with his time in the casino. But he’s the exception and, all around him, are the others who don’t know how to play the game, or don’t realise it’s a game, or don’t think there’s any difference between staying put and entering the hall of mirrors in order to move their custom elsewhere. (Which, of course, means receiving a bill printed in a different colour, with a different logo on the top and a different pricing structure that may, or may not, end up cheaper than before.)

Do we fix our prices in case prices go up? Do we stay on a variable tariff in case prices go down? Do we take a slightly worse rate in order to use a company less likely to get the bill wrong, leading to overcharging and six-to-six hundred months of never-ending phone calls to try to get it corrected?

Roll up, roll up. When the fun stops… Oh? Hasn’t it started yet? But that guy over there is having fun – look, he’s just saved ten pounds per year by spending three hours arguing about standing charges.

Just imagine the national productivity figures! Here we are wasting hours of our time fiddling around with utility bills and the utility companies themselves are wasting millions of pounds paying people to create these fiddly bills, explain these fiddly bills, correct these fiddly bills, deal with angry, sad, confused or desperate people who don’t understand their fiddly bills. And so it goes. Does this help GDP?

Electricity Now

About 40% of the UK’s electricity is generated by burning gas. And gas is bought on the international market at whichever rate has been agreed by your supplier – either a bulk advance purchase at a pre-agreed price (gambling that the price will go up), or on a day-to-day basis based on current market rate (gambling that the price will go down).

But bear in mind that the price has absolutely nothing to do with extraction and distribution cost. Go back to our farmer. It didn’t cost more to grow the crops in years when the price was high – no, the scarcity meant that those with more money could outbid others, hence the sale price was elevated.

This is the world of the casino. Never mind what something costs (which is fairly predictable) – instead you must gamble on whether someone else, for a variety of reasons, might hike the price or even (surely not?) reduce it.

And the theory goes that, when extracting natural gas from our own territory, we must sell it (to ourselves?) at the international market rate because, if we don’t, like the farmer above, we’ll sell it all to a higher bidder and be left with none for ourselves.

Of course this is also complicated by the fact that the people actually extracting the gas are not working on behalf of the UK. They are employees of a few vast multinational enterprises that are most interested in profit and therefore the highest bidder. The fact that they also receive fairly hefty tax breaks from the UK in order to… (er, not sure), counts for nothing. If they can get more elsewhere, they will. So – pay up, Britain! Remind me why we don’t have a state-owned business doing this on behalf of the population?

It Gets Worse

So if the cost of a bit of gas goes up by a factor of three (for example), that should mean the market cost of a unit of electricity goes up by about 1.2 (because gas is only 40% of the fuel used when generating electricity). Right?

Wrong. It goes up by a factor of about three.

And why is that? Because if we don’t pay the maximum rate to the electricity generator who uses, say, nuclear power (whose running costs are, I suspect, more or less unchanged) – then they will simply sell their electricity to someone else who will.

Or at least that’s the theory. Can a nuclear power station in north-west England really sell electricity to a neighbouring country?

(Technically it could but, given that the UK’s electricity is already expensive (compared to nations in the EU) and, given that the UK is not in the EU (which probably just makes the contracts messy and unhelpful), it’s not clear why anyone would. On top of which, the UK imports electricity from France – let’s hope that’s because the price is lower.)

But why doesn’t the free market help the customer here? Why doesn’t this nuclear power station undercut the gas power station with its super-cheap electricity units in order to deliver value to the customer and keep prices down? Could it be because the free market theory is actually bunkum and is only working to keep all prices as high as possible? Could it be that the free market here actually only serves to push the price upwards whenever possible?

It Gets Even Worse

Consider another means of electricity generation – solar (or wind, or tidal). The sun is definitely not any more expensive and the panels (turbines, etc) don’t need to be renewed more than every decade or so.

For (many) years, when solar was an expensive option, it was supported by an extra levy on everyone’s electricity bills. Some people chose to have all of their electricity nominally generated sustainably and, for them, the levy was even higher. This was supposed to be a good thing, to get a young industry on its feet so it could dodge and duck and weave with the big boys.

And, having propped up this sector for (many) years, now that its power is actually cheaper than other options, we get to reap a harvest, right?

Wrong. They’ve hiked their prices up to the maximum (i.e. to match the price of gas-sourced electricity) because, a unit of electricity is a unit of electricity is a unit of electricity (etc) and it wouldn’t be fair if the gas boys got paid more than the sun boys.

Fixing The Problem

Get a state-owned enterprise to run extraction and generation – then the prices will be based on the cost of doing business, not based on the cost of outbidding other nations.

(Imagine if the farmer had resisted selling off all his food at the top of this chapter. Because selling off a vital resource in order to obtain money that may or may not enable you to buy what you needed in the first place is not always the right answer.)

Then set consumer prices based on the actual cost of generation, i.e. let it move dynamically depending on the mix of sources on a day-by-day basis. Given that we currently only pay the highest possible rate, this can only lead to lower bills. On sunny, windy, tidey days, the price will slump and this will be a good thing.

Finally, make the purchase of oil/gas on the international market the option of last resort. And, even then, make them an offer below the so-called market rate. It hasn’t cost them any more to extract – so why are we feeding their greed? Is it because they’d sell it to someone else at the higher price if we don’t? If so, why not set up an alliance with other countries to set a price cap. Not a tightly fitting cap that gives the poor company a migraine – no, a price cap that gives them a fairly thick and tasty profit margin but not an obscenely yawningly wide profit margin that impoverishes all before it.

That international alliance could be given a catchy name. Just spitballing here but if it were, say, a group of European countries that decided to unite around some basic principle, you could call it the European Union.

Interest rate increases are as helpful to the economy as leeches were to Victorian patients

Andrew Bailey, the Governor of the Bank of England, has inflicted an awful attempted cure on the British economy which will cause death, hardship, unemployment and recession while doing nothing to help. Unless you work for a bank, in which case it’s all good.

The Bank of England makes money out of thin air – that is its most impressive conjuring trick. It then deposits that money in accounts in the names of banks. It then pays credit interest on that money to those banks.

So the first beneficiaries of interest rate rises are those banks who are receiving unearned money on cash balances they did nothing to produce. Where is this money going to go? Why is it being paid? And why is it helpful to pay more than was paid last week?

The government could state that interest will no longer be paid on these balances – and yet it hasn’t. So it has effectively chosen to pass huge amounts of money to banks for them to do with as they wish. How is this helpful to anyone other than the recipients of this year’s bonuses?

Another effect of interest rate rises is to provide cover for mortgage lenders to hike their interest rates, which will generate more revenue for banks in return for literally no extra effort or productivity on their part. It is simply a money transfer from borrowers to banks.

So far what do we have? The Bank of England is paying banks extra money for no obvious reason. And it is giving banks an excuse to charge their customers more money, similarly in return for those banks doing absolutely nothing.

The knock-on effect of this is that people will be poorer. They will simply have less money. And we haven’t even considered rising prices for energy and food yet. Why are food and energy more expensive? It’s certainly not because people have had massive pay increases because they haven’t. So it’s insulting even to suggest that wage increases are necessary for inflation – we have the inflation and we haven’t had the pay rises.

Inflation is caused by price rises, not pay rises. And price rises are, predominantly, caused by profiteering, price gouging, greed – call it what you like.

Most energy in the UK is not generated from burning Russian gas and oil. Quite a substantial proportion is generated by solar, wind, tidal and nuclear means. None of those have become more expensive. However, the price of electricity and gas is pegged to the international price of gas which has the sole purpose of inflating the price for customers while giving vast unearned profits to the energy wholesalers.

This is a regulatory choice. There is no need for solar energy to be sold at the same rate as gas. However, there is a background whinge from energy company apologists (sorry, lobbyists) who are very keen to collect this money while the going is good. Perhaps the going should stop being good.

And food prices are going up because transportation costs are going up (see energy prices) and because a handful of large multinationals produce a huge proportion of the food in this country and they have discovered that people are tolerating their inflation busting/causing price increases. Look at the profits these companies are making and then tell me that they are simply passing on their increased costs. Because, if they were, their profits would be the same as last year’s. Are they?

The overall effect will be a transfer of money from some of the poorest in society into shareholder dividends, together with some free money from the government going into that pot too. Interest rate rises suck the lifeblood out of the economy, just as leeches used to suck the blood out of afflicted patients. Painful, weakening, pointless and ugly to watch. But it is a choice. And Mr Bailey should stop choosing it.

***

An obvious rejoinder would be to ask me what I would do.

Firstly, I do not need to offer a better idea to suggest not using a bad idea. Literally doing nothing would be better than causing harm.

Secondly, how about no longer paying interest to banks for holding onto money that the Bank of England gave them?

Thirdly, how about pegging energy prices to the actual price of generating the energy rather than the theoretical price that energy could be sold at on the open market? If a household has barely enough food to eat, it would be foolhardy to sell it to the neighbours just because they could get a good price. Similarly, the UK should not be selling its energy on the international market instead of using it domestically at cost, or pricing it as though it could/would/should sell it internationally. This might disadvantage the shareholders of the energy companies but, then again, given the desperately low level of investment they are making, I’m not convinced that would damage the nation.

Fourthly, an investigation into food price fixing might stir up the so-called free-market a little. Not everything that is going up in price is doing so because of raised costs.

Fifthly, the government could invest in environmentally useful enterprises, e.g. windfarms, solar farms, home insulation, etc, etc. As a nation we’re going to have to do this sooner or later so why not start it now? It will bring down energy prices and usage and will support skilled employment in growth areas that won’t destroy the planet. Where will the government get the money? They could start by using the money that the Bank of England will no longer be paying other banks for holding onto money.

Institute For Economic Common Sense - Second Lesson

Proportional Representation

Clearly an absolute necesssity. Consider the following analogy:

10 friends are going out for dinner. They decide to pick the restaurant democratically. Here's how they vote:

• 4 want restaurant A (and hate B)
• 3 want restaurant B (and hate A)
• 2 want restaurant C (and hate A and B)
• 1 wants restaurant D (and hates A and B)

Under the awful British system of first-past-the-post, the friend group ends up going to restaurant A. The majority of diners hate that restaurant.

Under proportional representation, the largest of the minorities does not get to impose its will. They get together, rule out A and B as most unpopular and probably end up eating at C or D (or even find there's a restaurant E which everyone is more or less happy with). The point being that no one ends up somewhere they hate and everyone gets something they can tolerate.

Politically, it has been argued that proportional representation leads to governmental paralysis as coalitions find it difficult to agree long enough to build a programme for stuff like govering the country.

But why govern the country in a direction that most people don't want, simply because you're the largest minority? Wouldn't it be better to wait until you can find something that the majority of people can get behind, or at least don't have a strong objection to?

And what's wrong with paralysis anyway? Are there problems so desperately urgent that you need to fix them RIGHT NOW? And even if that is the case, why should that be an opportunity for you to make changes that most people don't want? If there's something bad going on, using the opportunity to get up to shady stuff doesn't say good things about you.

At time of crisis, a government of national unity is the best solution anyway, i.e. get as many differing voices as possible in the room and try to hammer out something that works for everyone. And at times not of crisis, what's the hurry to ram through legislation that most people find objectionable?

Consider the current (14 September 2020) British government.

Off they go, full of vim and bluster, ignoring conventions, threatening to break the law, ignoring dissenting voices, because they can. The majority of the population did not vote for them but they are the largest majority and they will go a-hunting wheresoever they please.

Under proportional representation, they would have been forced to find common ground if they wanted to get anything done. Yes, get all the voices in the room and try to bring the country along with them, as a whole.

With all due respect, that's not happening right now. Watch this space to find out how it ends...

Institute For Economic Common Sense - First Lesson

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that every single nation that wishes to be respected by economists, must be in want of continuous growth.

The dreaded GDP, gross demonic domestic product, must always be on the up because otherwise, ooh, there be dragons or something.

How does this work? Apparently, an ideal GDP annual growth rate is 2-3%. At 2%, over twenty years, that means the economy must become half as large again (i.e. every £1 in GDP becomes £1.49 to be exact). And over fifty years, we're looking at becoming two-and-a-half times bigger (every £1 becomes £2.69). If you think that's crazy, we need to be at £7.24 after a century.

One of the (many) problems with GDP is its horrific statistics cherry picking. Essentially, anything that is difficult to measure is ignored. Health, happiness, environment, waste - no thank you, we won't worry about any of that. And so we end up with these scenarios:

Scenario 1 (good for GDP):

• Boy visits grandmother.
• Grandmother gives him toy which she bought for him, made in a factory by badly paid people in uncomfortable conditions.
• Boy is polite and thanks grandmother effusively.
• Boy's mother collects boy, gives grandmother box of biscuits in thanks for childcare. Biscuits use cheap ingredients bad for environment (e.g. palm oil).
• Grandmother is polite and thanks daughter (boy's mother - keep up) effusively.
• Boy and daughter leave. Grandmother throws biscuits in the bin because she doesn't like them.
• Boy arrives home. Boy throws toy in the bin because it's not very nice.
• Next visit - grandmother has bought two toys because boy likes them so much.
• Next collection - daughter buys grandmother two boxes of biscuits because she likes them so much.
• Result - GROWTH! GDP is happy. More unwanted garbage in landfill, more pointless work done by workers in unpleasant conditions. More use of limited world resources - from ground to factory to shop to house to buried in the ground again - in a pointless cycle of waste.

Scenario 2 (bad for GDP):

• Boy visits grandmother.
• Boy climbs tree in grandmother's garden to pick tasty fruit that she can't reach.
• Grandmother teaches boy how to make a tasty pie from the tasty fruit.
• Daughter arrives to collect boy. They all enjoy some pie.
• No need for gifts - boy has obtained fruit for grandmother, grandmother has made pie for boy and daughter.
• Result - NO GROWTH! GDP has not increased, therefore this transaction has no merit and must be stopped. Also, no garbage in landfill, no pointless work done in unpleasant conditions. Instead - happiness and sharing has raised moods, but this cannot be measured so is worthless.

GDP was a tool to get a rough idea of how economies are getting on. It has mutated horrifically into a be-all-and-end-all (which can be abbreviated to bell-end, if you prefer) and has become a driver of what should happen instead of an approximation of what has happened. The ignored factors severely restrict its application to the real world.

And infinite growth is clearly ridiculous.

Discuss.

Sacrifices to the deities

Prehistory

A long, long time ago (or way way back, many centuries ago, depending on which songwriter you prefer), people used to kill - but not to eat the prey, nor to conquer their land, nor to exact vengeance.

This would be a sacrifice. Something has gone wrong and something needs to be killed to appease a deity. Or something hasn't gone wrong but might go wrong unless something is killed to appease a deity. (I realise I'm oversimplifying.)

Now, looking back on it, these quaint if uncomfortable practices seem ludicrous to us. Killing a sheep (or goat or great-uncle) isn't going to make a lot of difference to whether there's enough rainfall for the crops. We see that now. And we feel that we wouldn't get tangled up in that sort of practice again.

Nowadays

During these days of global financial slowdown due to global pandemic affecting, er, the globe, the British government has instigated a scheme for people to take a holiday from mortgage and loan repayments.

But holiday is a bit of a strange word. Imagine a holiday where, for every week off, you had to make up the five days over three weekends after you came back. Not really a holiday, is it? More a work-shift, except that it's grown a bit - those five days have become six and you're going to be seriously knackered when you stagger to the end of the fourth Friday since the first Monday with no weekends to break up the load.

Because the interest on the loan will continue to accrue over the payment holiday so, when you restart payments, they will be bigger. Over the lifetime of the loan, you will end up paying more interest.

Barbers have had three months of no income. Restaurants have had three months of no income. Gyms have had three months of no income. Airlines have had three months of... You get the idea.

But banks? They've just given you a bit more of a loan, at the usual rate, and they'll be wanting their money back, with interest (and interest on the interest). Why?

Short answer - because they can.

To continue my tendancy to oversimplify - when you or I successfully apply for a loan from a bank, the bank makes the money out of thin air (because the nation's central bank says they can), squirts it into your bank account and charges you interest for borrowing this newly created money, which they then get back over the loan period.

The bank has to 'borrow' this money from the nation's central bank, which it does at the so-called base-rate (in the UK today it is currently 0.1% - by contrast, the Nationwide's standard mortgage rate currently stands at 4.24%). So for every £100,000 which the Nationwide lends to a standard mortgage rate customer, every year they pay the Bank of England £100 in interest but gain £4,240. A profit of £4,140 per year.

I know they have to do so much admin to run the account, but I think they can probably use economy of scale to make sure the costs don't wipe out the profits.

Instead of a payment holiday/loan/postponement (call it what you like), there could have been a real payment holiday. The sort where your payment doesn't send you emails while you're on the beach and expect you to answer them immediately. The sort where everything just stops for three months. Nothing needs to be paid, no extra interest is charged, the end date of the loan skips three months down the road. It's as if, financially, those three months don't happen.

And if mortgages don't need to be paid, rents can be reduced accordingly. Because the barber, the restaurant owner, the gym company - they have no money coming in the door but the landlord needs to be paid. Why? Because the landlord has a mortgage/loan to worry about.

And where does it all end up? Why, the banks, of course. So how about they take a similar hit to everyone else? No repayments for three months with no interest added for them to gobble up later.

(In the same way that I'll have a haircut when the barber reopens, but I won't expect him to charge me for three haircuts to make up for the two I didn't have while he was shut.)

But the banks! How will they cope?!

Just like everyone else, I suspect. They could have furloughed some of their staff, shut down unneeded offices and, guess what, their rent bill can be cut too. Because their landlord won't owe any money to the bank for that period.

Instead, we make our sacrifice to the deity, just as we've always done. Something bad has happened but we must commit a painful act to the benefit of the god, or it won't get better. Or the god will get angry and things will get worse.

Future

Will a human of the future look back on this time with the same puzzled shrug as we look back on sacrifices in days of yore? Will they wonder why we inflicted these punishments on ourselves to placate an entity that doesn't really exist and wouldn't help us even if it did?

If you don't think Barnard Castle is a beautiful place to visit, you need your eyes tested

Welcome back, by the way. It's been two years and I've missed you. Three thought-ettes for you to consider and, if the mood takes you, to comment on.

Clap clap

People have been comparing NHS workers to superheroes. Even Banksy has got in on this game, drawing a child playing with a masked and caped nurse-doll, having thrown Batman and Spiderman in the bin.

But in what way are they comparable? And which superheroes?

Let's rule out Batman first. He's fabulously wealthy and has all the equipment he could possibly want or need, complete with a mask, albeit one that doesn't cover his nose or mouth. Iron Man is basically the same thing with a sense of humour - and a mask that does cover his nose and mouth. Superman is more or less indestructible and certainly wouldn't end up killed by a virus.

But the comparison to Ghostbusters is a much better fit. Ordinary people warning about a terrible threat, being ignored and undermined, building their own equipment to fight the threat, then facing the danger alone with no help from anyone else, other than a cheering crowd. (Were the crowd clapping? It's set in New York so probably more whooping and cheering than clapping.)


The twist being that the start of Ghostbusters 2 reveals that our heroes were sued by the city for not doing a better job (i.e. one involving less destruction) and had all the blame heaped on them for the considerable damage. Will that happen to health workers after the pandemic? Who can say...

Hedge

When there's a global pandemic, someone who runs a hedge fund will make a lot of money. And they appear on the news, looking just the way people expect hedge fund managers to look. And the opinion pieces imply (or state, or howl) that it's a disgrace that people are getting rich during the suffering.

But... if one fund goes up, it's only because another one went down. So who lost?

If it's another hedge fund, do you still care? I'm guessing probably not as much as you did. One hedge fund goes up by a billion, another goes down by a billion, that's just part of the game, right?

How about if it's your pension fund? (Or mine?) Bit more interesting now. And isn't the real story the one about the loser? About how that pension fund manager has managed to lose unspeakable sums. Why on earth was the pension fund on the duff side of the bet? For that matter, why were they even selling anything at a loss (or buying something at an inflated price)?

And how much management fee was collected by this hypothetical pension fund manager who has misjudged his gambling of your money (and mine?) and thereby handed part of your retirement to that smug bloke from the start of this story?

Nah - just concentrate on the guy who looks like he either just opened a bottle of champagne or is just about to.

Caps

The British government very kindly increased the benefits paid to some of the poorest in society to help them cope with the uncertainty of the global pandemic thingy.

Unfortunately, they have also instigated a 'benefit cap' - a maximum amount of money that anyone can receive. Which means some people don't, as it were, benefit from the increase because their income hits the cap. And, even worse, some of them then hypothetically go over a threshold with this money they're not receiving which means they have to start paying back a loan they got from (guess who?) the government so the increase makes them worse off.

Yes, really. The increase makes them worse off. These are some of the poorest in society.

The reporting of this state of affairs makes it sound like some terrible mistake but there appears to be no attempt to put it right. So presumably it was intentional. I mean, if it wasn't intentional, the government would fix it, right?

Maybe journalists are asking the wrong questions. Perhaps the real question is why does the government want to leave some people utterly destitute. Because they could fix it if they wanted to.

I don't have an answer to this one - except to repeat that if they didn't intend it, they would fix it.

First rule of change management is to realise that no matter how much modelling and testing you've carried out, reality will throw you a curveball that you didn't see coming. So you need a quick, simple and safe way to undo the change you just made. I don't see anyone undoing this one. Therefore it's not a mistake. Therefore it's intentional.

So why are they doing it? Answers on a postcard to Barnard Castle.

On being free and the benefits of fresh air

(For the avoidance of doubt... Nothing that follows is true. None of the characters refer to real people, e.g. 'Dad' does not represent my father, I have no 'Uncle Nigel', etc.)

Kitchen table

It had been rumbling on for ages. Uncle Nigel wouldn't stop banging on about it. So finally Dad organised a round-the-kitchen-table chat. By a show of hands, and the slenderest of majorities (six to five), we're going to go for it and get a new roof.

Of course, there were plenty of arguments against the expenditure. Dad said he quite liked the roof, that it had always done right by us and we should respect its inherent structural integrity - and maybe replace a tile or two if there was a problem.

Uncle Nigel kept saying that it was a useless roof because the rain that gets in, even though he's said for decades that he'll keep a watch on it and would definitely let us know if it ever needed fixing.

He was talking over Mum, who was trying to explain to him that this will happen sometimes because she likes to keep the window open up there - and maybe if we could just arrange a system for closing the window when it rains, we could solve the problem.

Sadly though, Mum had given the window management responsibility to some company called Idiota and they'd gone round making sure that all the other windows are securely locked shut. So we still have occasional leaks and the rest of the house is very stuffy.

No one was really paying enough attention at our kitchen-table meeting. Despite the fact that we were definitely talking about replacing the roof, it turns out that we all only voted to have the roof removed.

Of course we were also talking about getting a new roof, but we didn't actually vote for one. No need, apparently. What sort of fool would remove a perfectly good, if slightly leaky, roof without replacing it?


Demolition

Well, it's now really kicking off. Dad was so upset to lose the vote that he's gone to hide in the shed at the bottom of the garden.

So Mum has taken over and it's like she's become a new person. Instead of sticking to her guns, and saying we just need to sort out the window situation, she's told us that she has to respect our wishes to have the roof taken off. She's booked the demolition company, paid in full (non-refundable) and has made a list of a few local roofers but not bothered to call any of them.

Just a few more weeks, then apparently we'll be free of the horrific constraints of the old roof. We will get a new roof, says Mum. But if she can't find one she likes, she'll have no roof. Because better no roof than a bad roof.


Any umbrella

Cousin Liam turned up yesterday in a clapped-out old van stuffed full of parasols, garden umbrellas and awnings. It was great news that the roof was finally going, he said, as it meant we could have different rain/sun/cold protection for each room, tailored to its individual needs.

He tried to demonstrate by dragging a huge umbrella to Mum's bedroom but she told him he absolutely couldn't put it up in there as it was bad luck. He'd have to wait until the roof had gone. Step-brother George looked up from furiously scribbling in his journal to point out that it would be a bit late to test it then, especially if it was pouring with rain, but Mum put her fingers in her ears and both pretended she couldn't hear him and also said something about him not being her son and perhaps he'd like to join his father in the shed.

Speaking of Dad - no word from the shed for a long time. I saw Dad briefly last week when he stepped out and paced around grandly (head back, chest puffed out) but went back inside when no one seemed interested enough to go and talk to him. Or even lean out of the window and wave. (Actually, that was because the windows were locked shut. It's getting really stuffy in here now. The hamsters are pining.)


Clouds gathering

I was slightly nervous about the pressure washer that our neighbour has been using, in case it's strong enough to fire a wet salvo over our walls and into our rooms. But that's nothing: the people in the nearby villages are fed up with having a wash-out at their weekend farmers' markets so they're investing in cloud seeding. I think we might have picked a very bad time to be roof-less.


Everybody needs good neighbours

In all the excitement, we've forgotten something very important indeed. We live in a semi-detached house and no one's thought what will happen to the neighbours' roof when we take our roof away. It's not even really a separate roof, obviously. I can't believe no one noticed.

They're very miffed that we've booked the demolition company before even talking to them about it and they're not even slightly convinced that putting a few struts in place will work.

Mum has told them not to worry and that they will continue to enjoy all the benefits of their roof once ours has gone. Only, she hasn't told them how on earth that will work and they clearly realise that she's making it all up as she goes along.


Hopes cruelly dashed

The demolition company rang up. They asked if we're absolutely certain that we want the roof removed as they've heard we don't have a new one booked in. They're being really kind. They said that they've got plenty of work on at the moment - so they'll even give us a refund (on our non-refundable booking).

Mum was furious with them. Really!

She didn't even want to replace the roof, let alone remove it, originally. And now she's definite that it has to go, because apparently that's what we all wanted (even though nearly half of us didn't - and none of us asked to go roof-less). She started accusing the demolition people of interfering with something that was none of their business.

If she carries on like this, I don't have a good feeling that they'll leave the edges smooth when they take the roof away.

Meanwhile, Uncle Nigel has gone back to his house across the street. He hasn't been over since the kitchen-table incident and has a very nice roof on his house. But he likes to shout at us across the street to ask why it's taking so long to get that roof off the house which he loves so much that he only pops in occasionally for dinner (whether he's invited or not). He never brings a bottle.


To be continued...

On allegations, innocence and entertainment

The world's greatest broadcaster (see video on the right, or wherever it ends up on your screen) is partway through showing a new adaptation of a novel by Agatha Christie called, deliciously enough, 'Ordeal By Innocence'.

It was meant to be shown over Christmas (because who doesn't love murder over Christmas?) but was hastily pulled from the schedule because one member of the ensemble cast had been accused of criminal acts.

Yes, I'm being vague. I could put names here but to what end?

The point I am making is that I (and you and you and pretty much everyone else) know nothing at all about whether the allegations are true. That doesn't mean I think they're false. But it also doesn't mean I think they're true. I simply don't know. How could I know? And what has any of it to do with me? (The answer you're looking for is 'nothing'.)

The allegations are just that. They're not criminal charges. They're not criminal convictions. As far as I have read, there have not even been any arrests. Someone has accused someone else of a crime. Yes, they should be taken seriously and the allegations should be investigated by someone who knows what they're doing. (For the avoidance of doubt, I'm referring to police, not journalists.) Trial by media is not part of the process.

But the world's greatest broadcaster has decided to spend a few millions of pennies reshooting as much of the programme as necessary in order to excise this actor fully from the production. An actor charged with nothing, convicted of nothing -- but accused of crimes.

A career in tatters over allegations. Yes, if it is proven in court then punishment (according to the judicial system) should follow. But if he's acquitted in court? What then? Put his scenes back in and rebroadcast?

Given this cautious (of what?) approach, will we no longer have a chance to watch any of the films of a certain runaway film director? I'm sure a good few of those have been shown on television over the last forty years or so. How about people variously accused of assault, armed robbery, shoplifting, drunk driving, embezzlement? While not equating any of these offences, surely a conviction for even a minor offence is more worthy of leading to a ban than an allegation of a hideous crime which leads to no charge?

Or alternatively, we could argue that these people are actors. They stand in front of a camera and read other peoples' words in a convincing way. What on earth has their behaviour in the real world got to do with it? Fair enough if others no longer want to work with them - but removing them after the fact - what purpose does that actually serve?

Elephant

One film maker has been accused, on and off, for about twenty years. He has been thoroughly investigated by the police and never charged. Not just no criminal record - no charge at all.

And yet, some people talk and write about him as though he were guilty and had been found guilty in a court of law. Do they have such contempt for the police that they think he would have been let off a heinous crime? Isn't it more likely that the police think he didn't do anything wrong?

One actor, who worked with him many, many years after the original flare-up and investigations has recently decided to state that he certainly wouldn't work with him again. Why not? What new information has come to light? Are you really saying that you were unaware of the situation at the time and have only recently bothered to read a twenty-year-old story? Or are you privy to information that everyone else has missed? (If so, what is that information? Where did you find it?)

Smoke

Ah, but there's no smoke without fire, some might say.

Be careful with that one. It's very close to contempt of court because it implies a firm belief that anyone accused of a crime must have committed it. Which suggests utter disrespect for the legal process, the meaning of an acquittal and, it could be argued, the entire judicial system. (I wouldn't be comfortable with that approach - would you?)

Anyone can accuse anyone else of anything. You! Yes, you there! I saw you do that thing what you shouldn't have done. Yes I did.

And just like that, the accusation is out there. What do you want to happen next? Lose your job and become unemployable? Find your friends drifting away? Getting funny looks from people you pass in the street? See your face on the front of the tabloids?

Or have the facts weighed sensibly and a thoughtful judgement to be handed down?

Don't get me wrong - if you did it, you deserve the full force of the law. But if you didn't, then shame on the accuser. (What do you mean, that was me? There's no proof.)

In conclusion

I didn't much like the programme anyway. Gave it up after twenty minutes of the first episode, thereby saving two hours and forty minutes. It was probably the butler what did it.

On frisking guests for spoons and other faux-pas

I don't frisk my guests for spoons when they leave. Do you? Does anyone? Maybe we move in rarefied circles in which such practice is unnecessary. Maybe we should check our privilege.

But that doesn't mean it's open season on my spoons: even though I don't put up a sign telling people not to steal my spoons (or to not look for cash in drawers in my bureaux; or to not pocket small paperbacks from my bookshelves that they like the look of). I also don't put up signs telling people not to end sentences with prepositions.

Apart from anything else (and this is not meant to be the best reason not to steal your friends' spoons), think of the message it sends to your children. Or the message it sends to the children in the family with fewer spoons.

"Oh, that must have been Great-Uncle Bob again! What a card he is! Always at the spoons. He jangles on the way out - but we just tolerate it. Ha ha ha. Just stir it with your finger, dear - we're out of spoons."

At a car park at a certain school, there are signs that say 'Strictly No Parking'. Sometimes they're hard to see because of cars parked in front of them. Sometimes they're hard to see when there isn't a car parked in front of them because they've been knocked over by cars and are lying in a ditch.

The reason for their presence is obvious. There are two lanes at the exit. If people park in the left-turning lane, the traffic that could easily and quickly get out by turning left into the empty part of the road is stuck behind a very long line of cars that are waiting to turn right but can't get out because turning right involves joining a slow moving congestion of vehicles.

(That slow moving congestion is caused by the inability of traffic to turn into the same car park at the entrance slightly further up the road. The reason they can't turn in is because the car park is full because traffic can't get out because... you get the idea.)

And what signal does it send to the children? "Yes, mummy doesn't have to obey these signs - they're for other people, isn't it convenient for us to park here?" "Yes, daddy's only going to be here for a few minutes so that's okay." "Don't worry about the honking, they're just annoyed that I got the space first."

We're going to get children brought up believing that they should just do what suits them and damn the consequences. We're going to get children who won't technically be ignoring the signs because they won't register them in the first place. Lock your cutlery drawer.

Holding on to the title

Holding on to the title...

Could it be about Thameslink Railway trying to retain the crown of least appreciated rail franchise in Britain? With their rickety-rackety old trains with hilariously non-closing doors - and other circus clown techniques... (This morning, they managed to turn a 19 minute journey into a 65 minute adventure.)

No.

Maybe it's about a company called Parking Nose (or something like that - I forget the exact facial feature they compare themselves to) and their dastardly approach of sending out parking charge notices just in case motorists might have overstayed. I think they're going for the Amalric award. Given that there is little cost to them in throwing out spurious charges - and much to be gained from scaring the innocent into paying up - this is a cunning business plan.

But no, not them either.

Could I be referring to something about sport? That's got titles in it. World number one, European champion. Grandmaster. No shortage of titles for people to hold on to. Am I about to launch into something about that?

No. (I almost never refer to anything about sport. I think that's an overcrowded area and there are enough people pontificating about it without the impediment of knowledge, experience or common sense. There's no need for me to add to their number.)

How about Trump? (He's not going to like that. I've put him in fourth place on my list.) He's holding on to the title of President-Elect, as well as the title of least presidential approach to Twitter. He's also going for the title of proposing an argument so tortuous that Pina Conti might have trouble with it - the suggestion that the election was definitely rigged and that he definitely won. And that there's no need to have any recount or investigation.

No. As with sport, there's no need for me to add to the word-count. But for different reasons.

How about longest personal delay between blog posts on this blog? Technically, I have just awarded myself that title. But it couldn't be that because I would have written this sooner, thereby making it easier for me to break my own record. I'd have had the record several times by now if I'd been taking that approach.

So no, it's not that.

(Incidentally, there has been a minor lag, an interruption in service if you will, due to the other stuff I've been doing. Yes, I've been taking on paid writing assignments. And while it's lovely to write for you, dear reader, it's less to my pecuniary advantage. Maybe once a few billion of you have read this and clicked on some of the adverts, I might be paid enough for a cup of tea or something. But I'm not even close yet.)

The answer, as I'm sure you're already aware is...

Actually, I'll tell you tomorrow. Feel free to place your guess in the comment box. A prize for the best attempt, where 'best' could mean closest, most entertaining, closest to libellous or featuring the best use of a neologism. Or something else.

On proportionality and being all about bass

Somewhat late to the party, I'm writing about a song no longer in the charts, and a news article written about it last week.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34344619/all-about-that-bass-writer-says-he-got-5679-from-178m-streams

To sum up - Kevin Kadish co-wrote 'All About That Bass', which was streamed 178-million times, for which he received a songwriter royalty of $5,679.

Is that fair?

There are two questions here (in addition to the one just above this sentence).

1) How much money did the streaming services receive for sending that song out across the internet that many times?

I don't know. I think we can safely assume that most of the people listening to the song weren't paying anything so it's a question of how much advertising revenue they draw in.

For all we know, the combined revenue for streaming the song that many times was $10,000. In which case that's not such a bad split. If it was $1bn then I agree that Mr Kadish has a compelling case.

Without that figure, his complaint utterly lacks context. He might be right. Or he might want to consider not making his songs available for streaming in order to get a bigger slice of the pie from other sales. (This might lead to a Pyrrhic victory.)

2) How long did it take him to co-write this song?

More contentious.

There was even a famous court-case about this line of reasoning. In 1878, in London, the artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler sued the art critic John Ruskin for libel. Ruskin had written that Whistler asking for 200 guineas for his painting "Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket" was "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face".

Make your own mind up - it's on the right:

The most famous exchange in the trial went as follows (according to Wikipedia):

Holker: "Did it take you much time to paint the Nocturne in Black and Gold? How soon did you knock it off?"
Whistler: "Oh, I 'knock one off' possibly in a couple of days – one day to do the work and another to finish it..." [the painting measures 24 3/4 x 18 3/8 inches]
Holker: "The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?"
Whistler: "No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime."

If it took Mr Kadish a day to write the song, and he earned $5,679 then, assuming he might work two hundred days per year, that's still an annual salary of around a million dollars. Which isn't bad.

On the other hand, if his combined life experience allowed him to write this song and it is the peak of his career then he should be compensated for all the years he has spent learning to write songs. I'm not sure how we quantify that. Maybe $6,000 to bring his expected annual salary up to $1.2m?

Should anyone be able to expect to write one song and retire, buy a house, etc?

I've written six books (about a year each, since you asked) and haven't got to that stage yet. Why not buy one? I'm not asking for anything like 200 guineas.

3) The third question which wasn't trailed and frankly has no place here (and isn't even a question)

How much was made by Swede Mason for his masterwork 'Masterchef Synesthesia'? It's another that examines aspects of bass.

Admittedly, it's only been streamed 8,782,994 times (as at 9.36am on 1 October 2015). But if Swede Mason hasn't earned more or less precisely $280.22 then someone is being horribly ripped off.

When advertising becomes vanity

I've already written about the vanity exercise in which SSE generates so much profit from its customers that it can afford to waste money putting its name onto a sporting arena.

Has anyone, ever, in the history of advertising, seen the name of an energy supplier over the door of an arena and thought, "That's the supplier for me! I won't bother comparing prices, I'll just sign up with them now!"?

Did we all get the answer 'no' to that question?

So I think we can agree to drop that exercise into the 'vanity' box.

I'm not saying all advertising is vanity, clearly not. Sometimes a company has started to sell a new thing and they want to tell people about it. You know, by telling them about the product. Not just by putting its name in big letters over a large building.

But what on earth is going on in the new Lloyds Bank advertisement?

It's a potted history of the horse over the past 250 years with the name of a bank inserted at the end. And this celebrates the fact that Lloyds Bank has existed for 250 years and has used a black horse in its corporate material for some or all of that time. (As far as I'm aware, they've never sold horses.)

I shudder to think how much it cost to shoot that film. And will it generate any new business? Or is it vanity?

Here's what I would do

Assuming that the shareholders would rather generate more business (and retain existing business) than produce some self-congratulatory horse film, why not use my film instead? The total cost to the bank would have been the same...

I think they're much more likely to see a return on the advertising cost using my approach. And it's shorter so wouldn't annoy audiences as much.

I am available for freelance advertising consultancy - and that sample video is my portfolio. Concept available to purchase, price negotiable, form an orderly queue, sealed bids at the ready...

digging holes and filling them in

Full employment - it sounds great as a two-word aspiration.

But what if it resembles that moment at primary school where the two captains pick their teams? What do you do with the last few people who nobody wants? At school, they're grudgingly added to the teams alternately. In the real world, the private sector would say they were full.

Which leaves the state. Which could simply employ half of them to dig holes and the other half to fill them in. Is that the left-wing paradise? Or is it the right-wing paradise? Does it matter?

Maybe an economist could run the numbers. We'd have people getting exercise (yay!), learning a skill, earning an income, paying taxes, holding their heads high, etc, etc. Is this better, overall, than paying them unemployment benefit to stay out of the way?

But let's hope there's never an imbalance between diggers and fillers in taking time off sick.

More concrete

I'm not insulting hole diggers. Goodness knows it's a tiring job and there are plenty of holes that need to be dug and I'm happy that people will do it so I don't have to. But digging a hole to only have it filled in again (or filling in a hole provided someone has already dug it) stands in very nicely for a completely useless job.

Because I'm assuming that it doesn't actually make sense economically, even when considered across the whole country. Even if you don't restrict it to hole digging - maybe include going to libraries and moving books slightly to the left:

Or maybe if you include companies that sell electricity and gas to domestic users in Great Britain.

Once upon a time

A long time ago, British people used gas and electricity in their homes. The amount they used was measured on a meter and a bill would be sent occasionally to charge them for what they had used.

It was run by the public sector. (At this point, feel free to tell me that I don't remember how awful it was and how appalling and other words to describe powerless frustration.)

Whereas now we have a range of companies from whom we can buy gas and electricity.

The modern way

Bear in mind that we buy electricity and gas from retail organisations. They don't generate the stuff, excavate it, refine it, store it, pump it or maintain the infrastructure.

They measure what we use. And they take our money for it. They invent mind-bogglingly complicated charging structures in order to give us a choice of how much we end up paying and what colours are used on the bills.

Except we can't compare these tariffs because they're mind-bogglingly complicated. So instead we have a whole raft of other companies which compare tariffs for us. And they get a kick-back from whichever company we pick. And sometimes they don't tell us about all the tariffs because sometimes the kick-backs aren't big enough.

Microeconomically

...and I use that term as an amateur. Each household, through its energy bills, is paying for vast armies of hole diggers and fillers.

• staff to invent tariffs
• staff to handle customers joining their company
• staff to handle customers leaving their company
• staff to advertise their company
• staff to regulate the competition between the companies
• staff to run comparison websites
• staff to cold-call potential customers to ask them if they want to switch companies
• staff to handle complaints from people who keep being asked if they want to switch companies
• staff to handle complaints from people who were switched to another company even though they didn't want to be
• and so on and so on
• and so on.

Speaking of advertising (fourth bullet point above), I recently noticed that Wembley Arena is now 'The SSE Arena, Wembley'. Because, of course, obviously, a sporting/entertainment venue in north-west London should carry the name of a Scottish power company.

How much did SSE pay to get their name above the door? And how many customers have they got? Divide one by the other to find out how much extra these lucky customers are paying so that SSE can run that little vanity project.

(Although let's also remember that SSE's advertising once showed a giant lurking ape-ghost so getting their name on an arena is certainly not a lot stranger.)

Macroeconomically

I'm looking forward to someone telling that I'm not seeing the big picture.

But surely the biggest picture is that, if the retail sector were state-run, a public servant could very effectively estimate the amount of kWh needed by the whole nation and then bulk buy on the energy markets?

Wouldn't we then all get a better price than piecemeal purchase across a bunch of smaller companies? And less wastage too, since I'm guessing all those companies over-estimate because no one wants to be known as the company that let the lights go out.

And no one would be paying the wages of so many ancillary staff, or for branding sports halls or for running pointless advertising.

Oh, and if there were any profits they would stay in Britain.

Where do the profits go now? Some of them go to the state-owned energy companies of other countries who currently run some of our energy retail sector and laugh all the way to the bank. Yes, we are subsidising French and German households because their energy sector runs ours and repatriates the profits.

Have I got this fundamentally wrong?

Because if I haven't, the amount of money siphoned out of Britain for no reason is breathtaking. I really hope it was due to incompetence because the only other explanation is corruption on a massive scale.

More ludicrous nonsense

On BBC Radio 4's You and Yours this week, the story of a man who was transferred to another energy supplier even though he didn't want to be, told the salesman that he didn't want to be and then had a tough time sorting it out because the new company (which he didn't want) kept calling him Mr Armstrong (which wasn't his name).

Not sure how long the BBC will keep this link active, but here's the five minute piece.

I challenge you

If anyone can explain how and why the current system makes sense and/or is cheaper than going back to a single, state-run provider, please get in touch. Maybe put a comment below the line.

A prize for the best response.

Targeting failure

Not getting off the ground

Sitting in an airport, waiting for a delayed flight is annoying. When that delay reaches six hours, you'll probably be finding it harder to pass the time.

But our airline pulled a masterstroke on this occasion. All five subsequent, hourly flights to the same destination departed on time.

Rather than shifting the passengers and relabelling the planes - giving each a one hour delay - they had decided to hand out the full delay to one group. Their maths had shown that one plane-load delayed by six hours was better than six plane-loads delayed by one.

Thank you, American Airlines.

Presumably they have targets, under which 16% delayed (for a long time, but who cares about that detail?) is better than 100% delayed (a little).

Targets in business can be useful, helpful and appropriate. But, in the hands of idiots, can lead to unwanted outcomes. If the targets are daft but the incentives high, managers will act against what should be their better judgement in order to score a higher mark - and secure their bonus.

(Personally, I'll avoid flying with American Airlines again. Sure, they gave me some loyalty-card points by way of an apology. The points expired unused.)

No longer an emergency

Not so long ago, accident and emergency departments at British hospitals were given a target of 'dealing with' (my words) people within four hours of their arrival.

This sounds eminently sensible, until you consider what happens once the target has been missed. When the punter reaches four hours and one minute, the target has been missed. The statistics won't look as healthy.

But now there's no hurry. That person's deadline (as it were) has been missed. It's either hit or missed and it's been missed. On the charts, graphs, executive summaries and board member's appraisals it makes no difference whatsoever if that guy is seen in the next five minutes or not for the next five years.

It may be better to forget about them for a while and clear the room of the other guys who haven't hit the magic four hours yet. With any luck, his problem will clear up of its own accord and he'll just leave. (Or maybe call for an ambulance so he can try his luck somewhere else.)

Fortunately, medical staff are not that stupid, callous and/or evil. Maybe better hope no airline executives move over to the healthcare sector.

Being smart

There is a management trope that targets should be 'SMART' which, as I'm sure you're delighted to hear, is an acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.

It all sounds good until you notice that it's assumed that the target will be sensible and will lead to the whole enterprise improving, advancing, making more money, etc, etc.

This is so obvious that the management gurus haven't even felt the need to mention it. No, not even in passing.

That might need a rethink. Set yourself a target to have it done urgently.

your work read like it was second draft, not polish

It's both very easy and spectacularly pointless to mock, ridicule or otherwise reject well-intentioned feedback.

Take the title of this blog post. I could attempt a weak joke by saying that I wasn't writing in Polish and they'd forgotten the capital letter. Or I could accept it's a linguistic shorthand and move on.

However, the detail this person provided showed that their bugbear was entirely to do with my style of punctuation. And specifically the fact that I punctuate like I'm English while they prefer it American-style. And that's not an error, any more than if I criticised them for spelling 'colour' wrongly.

And I pointed that out and we agreed to disagree and moved on. It was friendly and well-intentioned and I appreciate that this person clearly had enough interest in what I was writing to try to help.

But...

I admit it. I have a chip on my shoulder. The chip is something along the lines of... "people think self-published books will be full of spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, punctuation mistakes, hideous sentences, woeful paragraphs, lumpy stories, implausible characters and predictable plots - all lurking behind garish amateurish covers". Not that anyone would judge a book by its cover, of course.

That's not why I look for errors in 'conventionally' published books. But it's good to have some ammunition to show that everyone makes mistakes. And, unless you're an obsessive, the mistakes don't matter. Great books can transcend a printer's mistake but fabulous typography can't rescue a clanger.

Dave Gorman

I like Dave Gorman. (Not personally, you understand - but I like to think that's only because I haven't met him so I have no opinion about whether or not I'd like him in person.)

I like his performance-persona and I like his writing style. I like the subjects that he covers (except America Unchained, but that still gives a very high hit rate).

I'm reading 'Too Much Information' and I've found two errors. One glaring, one slightly less glaring. Page 47 - "greatest gits album". Page 51 - "three that didn't chart at all" (it's actually two).

I wonder how that happened. I can think of three scenarios.

1. Dave typed the manuscript, made a slight slip and no one spotted or corrected it (despite the best efforts of professional publishing industry blah blah blah)
2. Dave typed the manuscript correctly but, during the editing process or the pre-publish formatting process, someone else introduced the howlers which were then not spotted as above
3. Dave bangs out some stream of consciousness stuff which then has to be thrashed into book-shape by a team of minions who introduced the errors (as above)

I don't think it's number 3.

(There is the fourth possibility that they are both intended as jokes. I don't think "greatest gits album" is a joke of Dave's normal high standard. And using the number three instead of two isn't normally going to be funny and certainly isn't in this case.)

Either way, nobody's perfect and it is excruciatingly difficult to get every error out of a book once it has more than a few hundred words in it.

And that's whether you write, edit, format and publish it yourself (like what I do) or use the mighty forces of the Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing - A Random House Group company.

Danny Wallace

Danny Wallace used to write with Dave Gorman. (And I like him too - as above.)

His book "Hamish and the Worldstoppers" has just been published. I haven't read it but, judging from the blurb, it includes the premise that the world can freeze, time can stop and then things can happen which most people won't be aware of, except the special character, who I'm guessing is called Hamish.

Sounds great. No, really. I wish him well - because I like him (see above). But I wrote Timestand five years ago which features a character who can freeze the world by stopping time so he can do things that most people won't be aware of.

Clearly I didn't copy him. And, equally obviously, he didn't copy me. But it's an interesting coincidence. Maybe if Danny shows that there's a market for these sorts of stories, I might get a few sales off the back of it. I'm not proud. I'll ride on coat-tails...


P.S. In keeping with the general theme of this post, there might be a prize awarded to the first person to spot a typo anywhere in this article.

It's all vanity

Three tweets from today:

• Other than a handful of notable exceptions, will self-published authors ever earn as much as those selling advice to self-published authors?
• The sheer number of courses, memberships, editorial and technical services on offer - do any guarantee earning back their fees?
• Cos if they don't, it means they operate no selection and have no faith in their clients. That's called vanity publishing.

But, just to be clear and really ram the point home... I have nothing against book publicists in principle - as long as they take their fee from sales increases.

If they want a fee up front then they are not selective. And they aren't showing confidence in their own abilities. Which, as I've already said, is vanity publishing in my book. If you'll pardon the pun.