from Plus Public Activity Feed for Rob Fisher https://plus.google.com/115288849695545002165/posts/Ai8uZQyQm9u
Last night I attended a talk by Michael Jennings entitled Why there is not and will not be an energy shortage.
This is a “pencast” I made with my Livescribe pen. You can see my written notes, hear the audio, and click on the notes to jump to that point in the audio (though you may have to rewind a bit if there is a long gap between Michael talking about something and me writing it down).
It’s an interesting medium — I’m not sure if it is as good as a video of the presentation. For example, you can’t see the original slides. But you can download them.
Also, the pen seems to have trouble detecting when I am writing if I do not write firmly. So towards the end, when my hand is tired, some of the writing turns to scribble. But it is still possible to follow it. I am quite pleased with the audio quality given the conditions.
Patrick Crozier makes a good point regarding mobile phone companies merging and the effect of this on competition:
I am quite happy to believe that in a pure free market all sorts of industries will be virtual monopolies. The point is that competition will still exist. Maybe not within the industry but between it and other industries.
And I seem to remember Mr Micklethwait, somewhere uttering the very words, “everything competes with everything.” Indeed it must: we only have limited money, and we must decide where to spend it. If I buy an ice cream, that’s less money I have to spend on train fares. So trains compete with ice cream. We don’t *need* dozens of train companies to have healthy competition. If trains are too expensive, people will find some other way to travel, or they will stay at home and eat ice cream. Either way, the train company loses.
The same with mobile phones: if there is one company and it charges too much or fails to innovate, people will find some other way of communicating.
As for the fuss about AT&T and T-Mobile, Michael Jennings explains all and suggests that everything is as it should be.
Update: Brian has found his original article about everything competing with everything.
The Direct Debit Guarantee is unequivocal:
If an error is made in the payment of your Direct Debit, by the organisation or your bank or building society, you are entitled to a full and immediate refund of the amount paid from your bank or building society.
But words are cheap. Mrs Rob was given the right run-around by Barclays, and did not get a full and immediate refund. Instead she got excuses and hand waving.
Since we moved we’ve been kind of busy, and poring over bank statements has not been at the top of our list of things to do. So recently we discovered that two organisations have been taking money related to the property we moved out of.
We lived in a shared ownership flat. The housing association has been taking rent (hundreds of pounds) for two months after we moved out. And some insurance that was sold along with the mortgage is still being charged even though the mortgage was redeemed.
The housing association says that one department forgot to give papers to another department so the other department thinks we still live there. If it’s not sorted out by Wednesday we should call back. It’s an outrage these people aren’t killing themselves to pay us back as soon as possible, given the amounts involved.
Santander’s insurance department wants us to post them a letter from Santander’s mortgage department proving that the mortgage has been redeemed. Except Santander’s mortgage department “doesn’t send those letters as a matter of course any more”. But since we asked, they will dispatch this letter in 5 to 7 working days. Oh, you want us to post it to your new address? Then you will have notify us in writing of your new address!
I’m sure when the insurance was sold along with the mortgage it was implied that it would all be wonderful and convenient to buy the two together. But as soon as you have paid the money it’s like dealing with two companies on different planets, incapable of communicating with one another.
It’s exactly the same with the housing association. Customers should not be aware of the internal organisational structure of your organisation. It’s irrelevant to them. Admit your mistake and fix it. I do not want to be passed around between departments and I will not have a higher opinion of you because you blame another department.
So what about that Direct Debit Guarantee? We should have our money back by now and it should be up to the bank to sort it out. But no: “it doesn’t apply in this case because you did not contact the company directly and ask them to cancel the direct debit”.
Funny, I see no such equivocation here.
Update: The housing association tried to take money again today, but failed because now the direct debit is cancelled. I called the bank and this time they agreed to refund the previous two payments. I don’t know why I had an easier time than Mrs Rob. Either I used the correct magic words (I said the company had made an error, that I wanted a refund, and when they asked if I had spoken to the company, I said yes and that they were not very helpful), or I was lucky enough to talk to staff with clue. It shouldn’t really be up to the customers to work out the correct incantations and know more than the staff, though. It will still take two working days to get the money, which is not what I would call “immediate”, but still. I have more faith in the bank than the housing association.
There’s a programme on Channel 4 right now called Amish: The World’s Squarest Teenagers:
This episode opens with a conversation between Amish and British teenagers about drinking. The Amish girl is interested to hear that the British teenagers, who play music not in honour of god in a band, then get drunk after their gig. In fact they’ve been drinking to get drunk since they were 14, which is normal for teenagers in Britain.
“Have you ever thought of starting a band that doesn’t get drunk, and delivering the message that it’s not cool to get drunk and abuse the healthy body that God gave you?” she asks.
Replied the British teenager: “No. Because getting drunk regularly is fun. It makes socialising easier and helps us relax. It’s a good laugh and there are nearly no bad consequences. I mean, you can feel quite ill the next day, but you soon get over it. And if you only do it for a few years while you’re young and enjoy yourself there are almost no long term bad effects. I drink regularly and I am still healthy and I feel fine. The chances of becoming addicted to alcohol are small and problems like these can be overcome. Almost certainly the benefits of drinking outweigh the costs.”
Except, no, of course he didn’t. What he actually said was, “that’s a pretty cool idea.”
So here we have a teenager who is holding two conflicting ideas in his head. He knows from personal experience that drinking is fun and mostly harmless. And yet when asked he will parrot the government and BBC line that drinking is unequivocally bad.
We are creating a nation of pathetic, guilt-ridden sheep who are unable to experience unadulterated the wonders of western capitalist decadence because they think they are being naughty and should apologise for it. Instead, these teenagers should be proudly proclaiming that their way is better.
Do you *want* to see them in HD?
By popular demand, an update to my official government drink calendar, after a stag weekend:
My average is likely to go down rapidly from here, now that I’ve been put off the demon drink for a while…
Oh dear, I’m not doing too well on my government approved drink calendar this week.
Winning champagne at the pub quiz doesn’t help. I wonder how long I can keep this up? Stag do this weekend too. Oh dear…
In Waterstones, in the corner of a display of mostly leftist political books “chosen by the booksellers of this store”, is Christopher Booker’s The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the obsession with ‘climate change’ turning out toi be the most costly scientific blunder in history?
What could it all mean?
Really I’m just testing Flickr’s “blog this” feature. But here is a photo of a radio controlled helicopter flying inverted very close to the gound. It takes years of practice to be able to do this. Google Alan Szabo for more of this type of thing.
