The Scandal Of 084x And 087x Numbers
The BBC is reporting today about expensive calls to financial companies and other institutions like the Inland Revenue and the NHS. It’s here on their web site.
For the first time, since I moved to BT in 2010, to save myself some money compared to Virgin, I decided to check my bills.
I have a tariff that allows me to call any landline at any time, for a flat fee of seven pounds a month. As I have some long landline calls, I suspect, I’m quids in on this.
But what surprised me was a fairly long call to the Netherlands cost me just twenty-eight pence. Most of the call charges were calls to mobile numbers.
As to my bank, Nationwide and my two credit/charge cards, all are on 0845 numbers, which under my calling plan are free. Not that I ever call them, as most seem to respond well to queries sent on-line.
In fact the only higher rate number I have rung in the last few months was a short call to my doctor, to book an appointment, as it’s an 0844 number. But whether, I’m charged for it, I don’t know. You shouldn’t be charged for calls to your doctor. Booking an appointment, is something, that should be done on-line.
There is an interesting point here. How many of us have calling plans, on which some or all of our landline calls free. So as we realise what we get, if companies published their actual numbers, they might get a few less customers, angry at hanging on at high cost. After all, if you do call direct, you probably get in the same queue. So you will probably wait as long, but at no expense.
The real problem is calling these numbers on a mobile phone, as I’ve found several instances of people like benefit claimants being fleeced.
More Hot Air For Bunhill
During Open House in September, I visited the Bunhill Energy Centre, which provides heat and power for homes in Islington.
There are now reports like this one on ITV, that they will be taking in the waste heat from the Underground and an electricity sub-station. I would assume the latter is the massive one between the Regent’s Canal and City Road, that provides power to the City of London.
Perhaps they should build a centre like Bunhill close to the Houses of Parliament to heat homes n Westminster!
IKEA Gives More To The Philippines Than China
Hard to believe, but it’s true, and is fully reported in the Guardian.
China has given $2m, whilst IKEA has given $2.7m.
Japan, the United States and Australia have given a lot more.
Let Them Eat Horse
Princess Anne has stirred everybody up, with her statement on why we should eat horsemeat. It’s reported in her mother’s Daily Telegraph. Here’s the first paragraph.
The Princess Royal, who is President of World Horse Welfare, says that Britain should consider eating horsemeat because it would improve standards of care for the animals.
As someone, who has been around horses for a lot of his life, I totally agree with what she said.
One point is that in France, their heavy horses are in much better state than ours! Ours, include the Suffolk horse, which is becoming one of the rarest animals on the planet. The reason the French horses are in better state, is that they are kept for the production of meat.
Is Mark Carney A Lucky Governor?
Napoleon is reputed to have said.
I know he’s a good general, but is he lucky?
Mark Carney may or may not be a good central banker, but he certainly seems to have arrived in his new job, just as the recovery in the economy seems to be starting. It’s reported here in the Independent.
So it would seem that Cameron and Osborne, might have been influenced by Napoleon’s words, as Mark Carney does appear to have the luck to inherit good figures. Perhaps tough, Mervyn King should be given more credit, as it would seem that things got going under his stewardship of the Bank!
But we’ve seen this economy inheritance before. Tony Blair inherited a good economy and then proceeded to waste it all, so that his successor left us in the mess we are today.
It’s not that we have boom and bust, we have had a succession of governments in this country of generally a pretty good one followed by one that isn’t that good at all. I’m not going to play party politics here, as you can find bad governments of both left and right. And good and bad periods of governments that were in power for a long time. Find me a man or woman, who says that everything Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair did was good, and I’ll show you a liar.
Perhaps we need to have more of the country run by independent organisations like the Bank of England and the BBC. Why for instance, isn’t the NHS, totally removed from the meddling of politicians? After all, how many politicians could successfully run a whelk stall?
To return to the economy, Mark Carney has said that interest rates could possibly rise next year.
They already are!
My Zopa figures are showing that their five ear loans, which were about 4.5% earlier in the year, have been rising slightly in recent weeks and now sit at 4.8%. I haven’t had a major bad debt for six months and the only blot is that my true returns are still stuck between 4 and 4.5% before tax, and are marginally down on last year.
As I believe Zopa is a stable system, where the sensible, savvy lenders, provide loans for canny borrowers of good credit, it could be a good marker as to the way the market is going.
No Wonder The Co-Op Is In Trouble
The Co-op is reportedly in trouble financially, so today they are in the news, not about curing their problems, but because of their new office block. Here’s the first paragraph.
The Co-operative Group’s £100m new office has been declared the most environmentally friendly building in the world – ahead of its official opening by the Queen today.
One Angel Square achieved the highest ever eco rating for a building by BREEAM, the industry environmental assessment experts.
“Does the Queen get a divi?” was asked on BBC Breakfast this morning. I suppose to the BBC in Manchester, this is a low-cost story, as their crew, can just get on the tram.
I occassionally go into the Co-op at Dalston Junction station, but rarely buy anything except a paper and the odd grocery item. It does sell Genius bread, but the last time, I tried to buy one at the store, there was only one very sorry example on sale.
I can see this morning, why they are in trouble. Flagship projects and forgetting about customers.
Spain Is Becoming No Place To Hide For Criminals
The BBC is reporting this morning about Operation Captura, which is leading to the arrest of British criminals hiding in Spain and other places.
There is also this report on Sky.
We are obviously getting success in finding and locking up some of the worst of the worst.
But also this story appears on the BBC. Here’s the first paragraph.
A man wanted in connection with the murder of his 21-year-old wife in Bradford is believed to have left the country, police have said.
It is reported that he’s probably hiding in Pakistan. I suppose that means, there is no chance he’ll be brought to justice.
We really must sort our relationship with that troubled state and especially, a minority of its citizens, who feel they can carry on, as they might in certain areas of their homeland.
John Major Talks Sense
I have always liked John Major and I have liked him even more, since I saw his talk to the Cambridge Chief Executives Group. Then, in the depth of his troubles, he talked sense in bucketfuls and explained how the economy was coming round. He was so right in everything he said and it made me think, that what a lot of stupid idiots most of our politicians are.
Now in a speech in Norfolk, he has detailed his views. It’s reported here in the Guardian.
The first paragraph, criticises the lack of social mobility.
Sir John Major has criticised the “truly shocking” dominance of the upper echelons of power in Britain by the privately educated and affluent middle class, it was reported.
Both myself and especially my late wife, climbed from fairly ordinary families to somewhere near the top. C, who was a barrister, was one of the few of her profession, I ever met, who had come from a working class family and clawed her way up the hard way. But then we both had the sort of education, that John Major had enjoyed.
This dominance of power and especially in the Civil Service, by the privately educated middle class, is one of the things that I deplore. Last Thursday I was on a New Bus for London and sitting in one of the set of four seats in the middle. These tend to be where the chatty congregate, so as I moved over to let a guy about fifty sit down, I made a comment, as you often do. We chatted and he said that he worked in the Home Office and when I talked about the bus, I got the impression, he’d never used a NB4L before. I said I was living in Hackney after my stroke and he said he had worked with my MP. ~This could have been on the Identity Card Scheme. He pitied me in that I had to live in such a crime-ridden borough. He then asked if I thought that the country was going to the dogs. I said it wasn’t and said I was hopeful things would get better. If this idiot, is one of the Civil Service’s finest, then heaven help us. But I suppose, he went to a good independent school and probably a decent college at Oxford or Cambridge. Just like my labour MP! Not like my late wife and myself, who went to good grammar schools and a good redbrick University.
John Major went on to talk about education and is reported to have said this.
Major said: “Our education system should help children out of the circumstances in which they were born, not lock them into the circumstances in which they were born.
“We need them to fly as high as their luck, their ability and their sheer hard graft can actually take them. And it isn’t going to happen magically.”
If John Major, my late wife and myself had been born in the last couple of decades, would we have risen to the surface? The sixties was a time, when those that wanted to did and many of us, square pegs, managed to rise from the round holes where society pigeon-holed us.
I also remember that when I was at meetings of the educated in Cambridge, I was one of the shortest around, as my family hasn’t always had the good food of the middle and upper classes. But then they often didn’t have some of my better characteristics. Or my worse!
John Major also put forward his views on gay marriage.
On one issue that has caused Conservative grass-roots dissent – gay marriage – he urged people to accept times had changed. “We may be unsettled by them, but David Cameron and his colleagues have no choice but to deal with this new world. They cannot, Canute-like order it to go away because it won’t,” he said.
He is totally right. We don’t define the way the world chooses to go, but we have to live in it and accomodate it.
The report finishes by giving his views on Ukip.
And on another major area of concern, he recommended a less-confrontational approach to the threat of the UK Independence Party.
“We don’t need to make personal attacks on Ukip,” he said. “Many of the Ukip supporters are patriotic Britons who fear their country is changing.
“It is far more productive to expose the follies in their policies.”
I always wonder what would have happened to the world, if John Major had won the 1997 General Election.
The Tripe Talked About Building Warships In The UK
I have been listening and watching the debate about BAE ‘s decision to end warship building at Portsmouth and move this all to Glasgow.
Much of the argument has been based on emotional facts like Portsmouth has been building warships since the Mary Rose and political considerations of keeping Scotland happy. Little has got anything to do with having a Royal Navy that is fit for purpose.
This article on the BBC, gives a pretty good assessment of the political story. This section is the heart of the article.
So was this a sweetener to Scotland, to stave off a Yes vote? The Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was asked repeatedly in the Commons to say whether the Scottish poll had influenced his choice.
He made, broadly, three replies to the variety of ways in which he was posed that question. Firstly, he stressed that the decision to locate warship building solely in Glasgow was taken by BAE, with endorsement from the Ministry of Defence. It was, thereby, primarily an industrial rather than a political choice.
Secondly, he stressed the importance of cost. His entire statement was predicated upon the drive to contain rising costs in the aircraft carrier contract. The identification of a sole location was also, he suggested, driven by cost efficiency.
But, thirdly, he made a point with regard to the forthcoming orders for Type 26 ships. Mr Hammond’s core point in respect of the carriers was that a blunder had been made (by the predecessor government) in placing the contracts for these vessels before design was completed.
He would not repeat that error, he said, with the Type 26 contract. It would not be placed before design was “mature”. That would be at the end of 2014. He noted, twice, that would be after the Scottish referendum in September of that year.
So BAE, had to make a decision, before they know what orders are coming. They are a supposedly commercial organisation, so they will do what they see is best for the company. Given that costs are higher in Portsmouth than Glasgow for most things, I suspect that there was only two solutions; persuade the Government to buy lots of warships that we don’t need or close Portsmouth.
In the arguments I heard, no-one seemed to bring up the Falkland Islands. When Argentina invaded, as regards warships we were ill-prepared and had to scramble hard to get a task force together. But the rest as they say is history!
The one thing we can say with certainty, is that if we need to use the Navy in anger again, we’ll have the wrong ships, and they’ll be in the wrong place.
It was always thus!
I would suspect that the Navy goes through some of the most bizarre scenarios, and works out how they will handle them and that there will be a lot of improvisation in there.
Look at the operational history of HMS Ocean and you’ll find a lot of it, is in response to events. If you read the Wikipedia entry for HMS Ocean, you’ll find this gem.
While Swan Hunter viewed the ships as entirely military, “VSEL thought the design was basically a merchant ship with military hardware bolted on.” VSEL’s decision to sub-contract the build phase took advantage of lower overheads at a civilian yard as well as efficiency drives by its parent, Kværner. The cut-price build to commercial standards means that Ocean has a projected operational life of just 20 years, significantly less than that of other warships.
VSEL and Swan Hunter were completing for the work. But there was some serious innovation in the construction of this, in my view, successful warship. It’s certainly got us out of trouble a few times.
Innovation has been lacking over the years in the design of warships, which partly explains, why we and probably every other Navy has the wrong ships for a serious crisis.
One thing that should be thrown in, is if warship building is so important and BAE are so good at it, why aren’t we exporting ships to other friendly nations?
So are we subsidising warship building and BAE to an unsustainable high level?
Tesco Decide To Give Customers A Laugh
Unfortunately, this story about Tesco bombarding customers with adverts, won’t apply to me, as I don’t drive, but to have a laugh, I’d willingly buy someone some petrol to see what inappropriate adverts I got. After all, you’ve got shaving products, Downton Abbey boxed sets, holidays outside of the EU, gluten-rich fast food joints like Burger King and Subway, cars and car insurance for a start.
Some could be a lot worse than just inappropriate. Imagine showing a Jew or a Muslim, an advert for some of the finest pork sausages, a woman, who has trouble conceiving, an advert for children’s’ toys. I would laugh loudly, if I got shown an advert for a romantic all-in holiday for two, but others wouldn’t find it so funny!
In fact, this is one of those ideas that could create a whole lot of work for some smart lawyers, who know every niche of the law.
It may catch on, but not in the way Tesco feel it should!
The Anonymous Widower 