Would You Let Arthur Daley Manage Your Pension?
This week the much-loved actor, George Cole passed away at the age of 90.
Most of us loved his most famous character of Arthur Daley, who went from one disaster to another as not only was he accident prone, but totally incapable of organising his affairs, so he avoided trouble with people like the Revenue and small-time low-life.
It struck me that if Arthur ran a Financial Advice company, that was as well-managed as everything else he did, would you put a brass farthing of your money with his company to look after and grow.
Certainly not!
So why does anybody seriously think about voting for Labour candidates in an election, when they can’t come up with a foolproof and sound method for electing their next leader? The system is so full of holes, that allow interest groups to hi-jack the process, that the final result could be far from what real Labout members want!
To return to my pension example, when you are voting, you are voting to create a good future for yourself, your children and your grandchildren.
So can you be sure that the political party you favour has the capability to manage the economy, if they can’t manage something relatively simple, like electing a leader?
If you go back a few years, the Labour Party of Michael Foot and the Tory Party of Ian Duncan Smith were a shambles, as they drifted too far from the centre.
Only when both parties elected leaders with a bit of sense; Kinnock and Howard respectively, did the parties reorganise themselves sufficiently, so that they were able to regain power a few years later!
Manchester’s Ticketing In Disarray
According to this article on Global Rail News, Manchester’s plans for smart ticketing have gone down the pan.
Could the failure of this system be caused, by not using the same successful system as London?
After all the minimum requirements of any smart electronic ticketing must include :-
- A Smart card like Oyster
- The ability to use contactless bank cards from all over the world.
- The ability to use ApplePay and the future AndroidPay.
London isn’t quite there yet, but when AndroidPay arrives and they can accept any contactless bank card, they will have set the global standard, to which all transport ticketing systems must aspire.
Any city or region, that doesn’t have a system that matches London, will lose out on the independent visitors.
The biggest benefits of contactless ticketing on buses, trams and trains are.
- Cash money and its associated costs and problems are taken out of the system.
- Attacks on staff are reduced.
- Boarding is quicker, so services are faster.
- Ridership increases.
- I have a feeling that by analysing the enormous amounts of joirney data generated, prediction of where new and improved services should go is very much better.
- The book is open on fare evasion, but I think it has dropped.
So come on Manchester, join the twenty-first century!
The Anonymous Widower 