December 21, 2009 by bpwilliams72

Chequeing Out

Sometimes something can simply not feel right.

Remember the phasing out of Morse Code? It just didn’t sit comfortably. You can’t argue the case, because the “experts” tell you that it’s been superseded by technology. You feel foolish when it’a pointed out how antiquated it all is. The tech “expert” is the conversational equivalent of the l33t gamer and trying to tell them how to play is going to get you pwnd like a n00b.

Yet, deep inside, the armchair captain in you still knows that when the the computer, the radio and the satellite link-up have failed, you would take more comfort from knowing you could still communicate at a distance with a flash light than from the extremely-expensive-but-now-useless box of WEEE now adorning the bridge. Finally, and long after you’ve been laughed out of the room, a story like that of the MN Rocknes pops up and reminds you that sometimes the old ways of doing things have a flexible benefit all the clever tech in the world can’t beat: Filipinos communicating with Norwegians through the hull of a capsized ship in Morse Code. Now it is the turn of the 350-year-old cheque to be unceremoniously phased out in favour of as yet undeveloped alternatives.

When the Payments Council tried this last year, it found itself facing a less than positive response from small businesses who agreed cheques were inconvenient, but pointed out there wasn’t really a well-developed alternative. It would seem the “experts” in the Payments Council are giving “customer forces” a little nudge in their preferred direction, because, let’s face it, there really isn’t any alternative to a cheque, is there?

Aha, the technorati cry, there are plenty of alternatives! E-mail money transfers! Online payment systems! We can even use our mobiles as alternatives to cheques!

And so this time around, the Forum for Private Business has rolled over.

Nuts. Big fat ones.

Thales is a company that knows a thing or two about electronic communications and financial transactions. They’ve been doing fancy things with MasterCard and something called Advanced Authentication for Chip. Their strategy manager is a chap called Steve Brunswick. It is clear from his blog that even people like Steve haven’t got a clue how they are going to solve this one, really. He makes the brilliantly insightful observation that “Repaying a friend or paying a plumber or gardener for example will be problematic without cheques.”

Whoa! I’d not thought of that! (I’d say your cheque is in the post for Insightful Blog Post Of The Week, but hey, it’s a weak gag.)

What we have here is a familiarly depressing example of how very different groups of people – with very different needs and expectations – participate in the same discussion, but to very different ends. Our “experts” talk in the language of Module Based ID Encryption and “P2P mobile payment solutions” (see Steve’s blog link again for that one). Meanwhile, Mrs Trellis of North Wales doesn’t want to send cash through the post, only has a basic mobile, doesn’t use the internet, but does want to pay that nice chap on the market to frame her pictures and does want to send little Berthog £10 for her birthday. (Berthog is a Welsh name that means “wealthy”. And it is a “her”.)

What does she choose? A cheque.

In the meantime, the Payments Council forces the pace of the getting-rid of a method of payment that is a better leveller of the means of financial exchange than anything other than cash.

I had hoped to point out the finer distinctions between Mrs Trellis and the characters that make up the Board of the Payment Council. Easy enough, I thought.

Mrs Trellis is a single female pensioner and therefore more likely than any other pensioner to be on a low income. Department for Work and Pensions research shows that in 2007-08, the average single female pensioner has just £185 a week left after housing costs. As Mrs Trellis must be almost 80, she will be the wrong side of that average.

By contrast, the Board of the Payments Council is a very different kettle of fish. Curiously, for an organisation which is concerned with all things paymenty, they are very coy about what they are paid.

It is probably a voluntary organisation.

It currently has no Chairman.

So next on the list, by unhappy alphabetical accident, is Michael Alexander, one of the Payment Council’s independent directors. Michael is also Chairman of the Association of Train Operating Companies, Chairman of TGE Marine AG, Non-Executive Director of Costain Plc, and a member of the European Advisory Board for Landis and Gyr. After several hours of looking, I’ve pretty much given up trying to establish Michael’s weekly take-home pay. Like the Payment Council, there is a general coyness around the sums of money involved. Perhaps they are all voluntary positions. However, deep inside (!) I can’t help feeling that it is probably a little more than £185. Something tells me, too, that it’ll probably be equally hard to obtain the figures for the rest of his colleagues. (My apologies to Michael Alexander – I am just attempting to make a point about the different worlds in which this same conversation is taking place.)

None of this rambling post is meant as an attack on business or somehow a criticism of companies that I am sure will all play a key role in the UK’s recovery from recession. It is, however, trying to point out that the needs of a commercial world that trades in bits and bytes is very different from that of an impoverished pensioner in a part of the country where she may still be struggling to get Channel 5.

The cheque, physical, simple and technologically challenged, is trusted almost as much as cash by those who live simpler, ordinary lives.

And when the cheque goes?

Perhaps it is time to reinvigorate the Postal Order for the 21st Century. For those who are prepared to make the leap to the web, the Postal Order could provide a secure vehicle for non-cash transactions, requiring the sharing of bank/card details with a single provider: the Post Office. Those not comfortable dealing electronically could purchase them from the Post Office, perhaps through little dispensers (like parking ticket machines only rather more pleasant). Properly coded it could place little strain on the banks, provide an approximate solution for those who fear the increasingly virtual nature of our money, and reinvigorate a failing Post Office network at a time when rural and urban communities alike are looking for a stable community focus.

Finally, late as it is, and prone to conspiracy theories as I am, I will simply remark on the curiosity of discovering what a small world it is. I began this piece knowing nothing about Thales or ATOC. It was only in the writing that I noticed that the former – specialists in cashless, virtual transactions – and the latter, which shares its Chairman of the Board with the Payments Council, have already done a deal of business together. National Rail Enquiries, which is run by ATOC, awarded Thale the contract to design, build and operate DARWIN, the National Real Time Database (NRTD).

I am still learning about how the world of business works.

P.S. Some interesting stuff about cheques:

The world’s largest cheque was probably this one from Zimbabwe.
What is probably the world’s oldest surviving cheque is dated February 16th, 1659 and is made out to a Mr Delboe for £400.
What is probably the world’s smallest cheque at 1.1mm by 1.8mm was presented by Queensland State Minister John Mickell to Griffith University in Brisbane in 2007 – value $6,000,000.

P.P.S. In a further vindication of older technologies, you might recall the story about the Australian museum that staged a run off between an old-school Morse Code telegraph operator and a mobile-phone-using teenage texter?

Go on… You know who won!

December 20, 2009 by bpwilliams72

“Right to Buy” and the strange death of the New Town concept

Tim Montgomerie has tweeted that today is the 30th anniversary of the Right to Buy Scheme introduced by Margaret Thatcher. There is no doubt in my mind that it is a policy that has fundamentally altered the shape and original purpose of the New Town concept, creating something of an identity crisis for these sprawling conurbations which local politicians of all parties are struggling to overcome. As suppliers of social housing on enormous scales, the New Towns, like Basildon, were inspired by the concept of Garden Cities, in a time when big government still believed it could socially engineer society. The New Towns Act was passed in 1946 and, between then and 1970, 21 New Towns were built. In a glorious piece of propaganda, the Central Office of Information attempted to explain the concept of these sustainable living areas in an informative cartoon about an ordinary bloke called Charley:

Many of the concepts are eerily prescient in an era when we are concerned with carbon footprints and quality leaving spaces. It’s important to remember, however, that the New Towns are entirely artificial. Unlike other villages, towns and cities, the New Towns had no historic focal point to draw people together. Indeed, in most cases, a huge amount of effort was put into destroying the character and history of the original area, instead of building in sympathy with it. This parliamentary exchange from 1954, between Mr Bernard Braine (as he was then) and Sir Thomas Dugdale reveals how pressure for development land was paramount. In Basildon, this has led to local people asking serious questions about the origins of the place they live in and fighting hard to save what little remains of the pre-New Town identity (e.g. the efforts of the Chalvedon Hall Community Group).

When places are shiny and new, they are usually attractive places to live. However, a home, in its broadest understanding, is not just the fabric of the building – it is the infrastructure that supports a community: roads, utilities and recreational facilities amongst others. The prospect of a new home and services beyond the imagining must have seemed incredible to those leaving the bomb-shattered ruins of the East End. However, with the provision of social housing on unprecedented scales as the foundation of the New Town, it seems obvious with hindsight that “Right to Buy” would have an enormous effect on their purpose and future expansion.

Don’t get me wrong: “Right to Buy” and its promotion of home ownership encapsulates a fundamentally liberal aspiration. I wouldn’t suggest turning back the clock. However, by encouraging the social housing stock to be sold off, without permitting local authorities to use the proceeds of sale to provide new social housing, Thatcher effectively destroyed this visionary concept of confident, sustainable communities. On a social level, the gap between those who could afford to buy and those who could not became immediately visible in the heart of local communities. On a planning level, physical expansion was required to attempt to meet the needs of those who had been promised a home but for whom there were few council properties available.

Skip forward thirty years and look at the situation of the New Towns now.

Just as they were built at a similar time, their infrastructure is coming to the end of its life at the same time. What would have been an incredible headache for local and national government in any event has been exacerbated by the pressure placed on New Town roads, services and utilities. Doctors surgeries overflow, roads and footpaths crumble, drains and pipes block and burst as capacity is exceeded – and new development encroaches more and more onto the green belts that were designated to provide recreational relief from the urban environment, preserve the distinct identity of urban communities and retain a much-needed connection to our environment. There is a danger in the South East, with regional initiatives such as the Thames Gateway redevelopment, that towns and villages may simply disappear into an anonymous morass of urban sprawl. Government risks failing again to grasp that communities are self-determining and not engineered, spending vast quantities of taxpayers’ money on enormous and totemic projects instead of stimulating the local economy by assuring the basic fabric of the places in which we already live.

“Right to Buy” is not to blame for the ills of the New Town. However, just as we can appreciate the liberation of the individual and the creation of opportunities to satisfy aspiration that it represented, so we should recognise that the fundamental mistakes of its implementation, driven by Thatcher’s peculiarly ideological politics, have contributed significantly to the difficulties faced by local government in sustaining these enormous and artificial conurbations. More importantly, and regardless of government (local and national), the fact that local communities are determined to preserve their past is a reassuring demonstration of the hunger of local people to know and own the identity of the wider space in which they live.

If you are interested in the campaign to save Great Chalvedon Hall, please contact Gary on greatchalvedonhall@hotmail.co.uk who will be able to let you know how you can help.

December 20, 2009 by bpwilliams72

UPDATE: Of snow, roads and hopeless Tory County Council incompetence

They’ve gritted. After two days. And 6″.

On Twitter this would be tagged #toryfail.

December 20, 2009 by bpwilliams72

Of snow, roads and hopeless Tory County Council incompetence

I woke yesterday morning to the stunning sight of snow lying on the fields of the Lincolnshire Wolds. It had been barely more than a dusting when I had looked out of the window on the previous evening. The snow was thick on the road, too. The A16 snakes viciously past the village of Swaby, racing past the small row of houses where Em’s family live and on towards Louth. 4″ of snow is quite a sight:

Snow on the A16, Dec 19 2009

But hang on a minute. The A16 is the main road between Boston and Grimsby. It is the sort of rural A-road that wannabe Colin McRaes careen around in lunatic fashion, dodging the articulated lorries that stream steadily from end to end. It is the sort of rural A-road that Lincolnshire County Council have quite sensibly designated as a “Red Route”. What is a Red Route? It’s a road where there is a higher than average chance that you might get to answer some of life’s more profound questions should you be behind the wheel of a car. Particularly if your latest X-Box 360° or iPhone fix is Need for Speed™ SHIFT.

You can read more about Red Routes here on a page of the Lincolnshire County Council’s website reassuringly subtitled “A survival guide to Lincolnshire’s roads”. Apparently, car users represent a far higher proportion of those casualties recorded as KSI (Killed and Seriously Injured) in Lincolnshire – a frightening 64%, compared to the national average of 46%. If you are interested, you can read more about it here.

So. Red Routes. Dangerous. Particularly at speed.

Here – for the benefit of Lincolnshire’s Tory County Councillors – are some elementary facts about snow and its effects. It is usually forecast by the Met Office. It makes roads slippery. Slippery roads are dangerous roads. Red Route roads are dangerous roads that get a whole lot more dangerous.

So why is it that the cretins at County Hall (Lincolnshire) have yet to chuck a single piece of grit on sections of the A16 marked out as accident hot spots?

After last year and “The Great Grit Crisis” of 2008, you might expect a County Council that is looking out for the welfare of local residents, and which has access to the BBC Weather like the rest of us, to be a little quicker off the mark with the gritters than never. However, it was only after frustrated police demanded a snow plough be sent out that the A16 became vaguely usable.

As I am writing, with temperatures well below freezing, I hear the occasional rumble of wary drivers trundling past on the snow-covered unlit A16. I have yet to hear the reassuring rattle of a gritter. The prospect of the complacent uselessness of Lincolnshire County Council writ large if Cameron’s Tories win power at Westminster is truly frightening.

December 19, 2009 by bpwilliams72

Hello world!

So often on the evening commute home I am struck by the conceit that my opinions and reflections are somehow worth sharing. I might be walking on a Cornish cliff top, sitting in a meeting or wading through the crowds in town and something will occur to me that I want to capture in words. Sometimes I manage to do so. More often I don’t.

For years I have promised myself that I would find the right moment to start inflicting those words on the world by blogging. As with most things in life, however, it takes a coincidence of inspiration, motivation and environment to get me started. Sat here with Em, in front of a roaring fire, snow falling outside on the Lincolnshire Wolds, surrounded by friends, coffee and satsumas, and with more than five minutes to think, that moment seems to have arrived.

I sincerely apologise now to anyone I offend in the days, weeks, months and years ahead. I certainly hope I manage to offend someone…

Ben