from Plus Public Activity Feed for Rob Fisher https://plus.google.com/115288849695545002165/posts/guVBJWtcMhE

from Plus Public Activity Feed for Rob Fisher https://plus.google.com/115288849695545002165/posts/Ai8uZQyQm9u

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.

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.

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.

Amish: World's Squarest Teenagers: Season 1 Episode 2

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?

My average is likely to go down rapidly from here, now that I’ve been put off the demon drink for a while…

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.

Their Engineering and Technology magazine has the odd good article but is increasingly full of statism and greenery. There’s an article about how much governments of the world are going to spend “in your industry”. This is seen as “investment” and only fair, what with the banks getting all that money.

The star letter on the letters page is all about how carbon sequestration doesn’t work and includes an earnest quote from a book called “The Vanishing Face of Gaia”.

The section on “Power” has one article about government cash for going green and another about the costs of green energy containing sentences that start with things like “However, governments must not ignore…” The section on management contains a positive book review of “Fools Gold”, subtitle: “How unrestrained greed corrupted a dream, shattered global markets and unleashed a catastrophe.” Unrestrained. Unrestrained.

Even the funny article at the end, which is about the pros and cons of living in various tax havens, lists being allowed to drive at 16, breath tests being illegal and a lack of seat belt laws and speed limits as reasons not to move to the Isle of Man.

I am beginning to suspect that the IET may not be aligned with my interests.

Big Brother [played by a woman]: During a discussion with Sree about the shopping list, you said the words “thirteen thirteens” in an imitation of Sree’s accent. This, along with the aggressive tone used when saying this, is what brought it to Big Brother’s attention.
Marcus: Yeah, you need to step right back from that right now. If he can say to me all the things that he copies from me [...] he goes to me “oh come on hurry up mate hurry up mate” in exactly the same was as I said it to him — don’t even start all of that because when you start all of that then it becomes something.

If I had an argument with Naureen and I said it in an Irish accent, or if I said it in a Geordie accent or I said it in any other accent in the house apart from Sree’s, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and that’s a fact. That’s an absolute fact. So, no-one else in the house would get offended by it. [...]

BB: Marcus, using words regarding a housemate’s cultural background along with an aggressive tone, is what could be deemed offensive.
M: No, it’s not. Seriously. Everyone else in the house argues with Freddy and [...] do his [posh] voice and do it back to him. How many times have you called them in? No times at all, and there’s been plenty more aggressive arguments with Freddy, and you haven’t called any of them in. So all of that stuff with Sree didn’t bother me but now I’m bothered, now that you’ve started all of this absolute claptrap.

You need to have a good think about things you say, you know, you’re too PC sometimes. And I realise that there’s millions of people watching but at the end of the day everyone knows right from wrong and they know what happened like that. So you need to stick up for people in the right as well with this, and your programme. And not just give in to a few stupid bloody people who’ll just moan about the colour of the sky or something like that. Because it’s just absolute popycock that just spoils everything in society.

It struck me as a fairly robust, almost heroic defence against the PC case. In other cases like this people have lamely accepted the accusation of un-PC behaviour and apologised. Marcus came close to making the point that people are offended by what they choose to be offended by, and the PC movement is all to happy to pander to them by, for example, defining offensive behaviour as anything that someone says offends them.

It also struck me how Big Brother the TV show often reflects the state.

Bangkok street clutter

Human labour seems cheap. There appears to be a surplus of it. For example, on street corners it is not unusual to see two or three street vendors with about 12 other people just hanging out. A family convenience store or restaurant employs an entire large family.

This makes labour intensive business models viable. Service in hotels and restaurants is excellent because there are plenty of staff and they are all keen to keep their jobs. But I found more noticable the people who wanted to serve me whether I wanted it or not.

For example, it seems to be a viable business model to spend your days chatting up tourists on street corners (“the weather is very hot” “where are you from?” “I would love to go to England, it is very beautiful there”) and attempting to get them to go to wherever you can get comission for delivering them (“where are you going?” “oh, that is closed” “I know some good shopping places, I’ll take you there!”). Other people tried to get us to go to see the “big Buddha” or the Grand Palace. Right outside the Grand Palace there were people trying to sell tickets to the Grand Palace, even though you can walk inside and buy a ticket. I’m still not sure what the trick is, there.

Taxis

Taxis. There are taxis everywhere. They yell “taxi!” at you instead of you yelling “taxi!” at them. If you walk along a street, they slow down, wind their window down and ask, “where are you going?” Tuk tuks are motorised rickshaws and they do the same thing, but even more aggressively. I hear that they will offer you a tour for next to no money and then take you to a jewellry store to collect comission. We never hired a tuk tuk*, but we did take taxis. They have a sign on the top saying “TAXI-METER” but they rarely use the meter. We got meter rides on three occasions: twice when the hotel arranged the taxi for us and therefore probably insisted on our behalf, and once at Bangkok bus station where we got off the bus, fought through the crowd of men offering taxis (“where are you going?”) and went to the official taxi rank which is probably run by the government. Normally I would say that if taxi drivers don’t like the meter it indicates that the meters are calibrated wrongly by the taxi authorities. In Bangkok I think if you are a tourist the drivers know you can afford to pay more.

Some would say that taxi drivers rip off tourists. I think it’s quite fair and sensible to attempt to charge more if you know your customer is ten times richer than anyone else. I never felt particularly ripped off paying £4 instead of £2 for a twenty minute taxi ride.

A bigger problem is getting taxis to go where you want. In London you get in and state your destination. In Bangkok you get in and have a conversation about how bad the traffic is, whether or not your destination is open, and whether or not the driver knows how to get there. Once, needing to cool off, we decided to visit a shopping mall. “No, no, big traffic jam! You want go shopping? I take you shopping!”

Transport-wise, the commuter boats are the best. Men will try to sell you boat tours but 13 Baht will get you to any pier by commuter boat, and many places you’ll want to visit will be near a pier. If you go to pier 0 you can catch the Skytrain, which is modern and comfortable and has good views. As well as commuter boats, the river is well used for transporting stuff around: there are many huge barge trains. Each barge seems to have a family living on it permanently.

River transport

Bangkok has lots of contrasts. One night we spent £2.80 on dinner in Chinatown. I pointed at the dumplings and the street vendor said “you want noodles? Soup? Sit down!” There were lots of vendors at the end of a street and each one had a couple of seats. While our meal was prepared a little girl came over from another stand and offered us drinks, which turned out to be very tasty smoothies. The £2.80 included the drinks. The next night we spent £160 at a restaurant called Sirrocco at the top of a hotel called Lebua at State Tower. Considering the view and the service, it was a bargain.

* It was Thai New Year. This is an excuse for the people to spend three days throwing water over each other and tourists. Tuk tuks are particularly vulnerable from bucket and water assault rifle toting gangs riding in the back of pick-up trucks.

Songkran gang