Author Archives: Ben

9/11 thoughts and memories

Posted on by

I suppose it was my generation’s defining “Where were you when …” moment, like Kennedy for an earlier generation, trumping even when Thatcher resigned and Diana was killed. (Funny how all but one of those spawned conspiracy theories.) I was waiting at the Frilford traffic lights en route to work in Witney when the Classic FM news announced preliminary reports that a plane had hit one of the WTC towers. Like everyone from George W. Bush down, I assumed it was a small propeller plane that had got off course.

Over the afternoon, further reports began to come in, but I was working in an office with very restricted bandwidth and no radio and so we couldn’t really keep up. I only got the full brunt of it on the drive back home, listening to the car radio.
I had set the video at home to record Channel 4’s showing of That Hamilton Womanstarring Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. During one ad break, Peter Sissons popped up to break the news; at the next ad break, the film was put on hold and it became non-stop New York footage. I had to wait for Channel 4 to repeat it months later to learn how it ended (though I had a shrewd suspicion).
The next day, Classic FM had suspended its usual programme and was just playing appropriate requests. Someone requested “Lacrimosa” from Priesner’s Requiem for a Friend, and that was the point my eyes filled with tears and I almost had to pull over.
This wasn’t how we wanted 2001 to be, was it? We wanted a thriving moonbase and orbital colony and all the petty affairs of mankind put behind us. Instead, apparently, exactly one American was off-world at the time, up in the ISS and all this was going on below. In the unlikely event of an alien intelligence monitoring us from the Moon, I think the gist of the report home would have been, “avoid.” But to be quite honest, that describes most days before and since.
Personally I think 9/11 was also a Titanic moment – a foreseeable, avoidable tragedy that nonetheless saved thousands more lives than were lost. After the Titanic, ships carried enough lifeboats. Before 9/11 you could have got an elephant through US customs but not after; 9/11 may well have prevented the Great Al Qaeda Nuclear Strike of 2015. As part of the package we also got less than fond memories of George W. Bush, an extremely dodgy war in Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security … but to be quite frank, if we hadn’t had those then we would have had something else. We’ve never lived in a paradise and, this side of the end of time and space, we never will.
Sometime after 9/11 we heard in the office that Sarah Ferguson had apparently had a meeting scheduled in the WTC for later that day. There was a moment’s thoughtful silence among all of us, and then the boss exclaimed, “Shame on you for what you were just thinking!”

Accountancy for bankers 101

Posted on by

That last mini-rant about the Jobcentre seems to have opened up a seam of unarticulated resentment, but that’s what blogs are for, eh?

So here’s a story about the time I took a pile of coins into NatWest in the hope they could change them for something of equal value but more portable. Like, a banknote. First question: are you a customer? Well, no, but I don’t want to do anything involving bank accounts, just change some cash for some more cash …

We can’t do that unless you’re a customer.

We could have passed my pile of coin of the realm, legal tender in any part of the UK, back and forth about five times in the time it took to explain. I expect the explanation alone cost them a lot more than the effort of changing coins for a note. But here’s the gist of it. These guardians of the nation’s currency are convinced it costs them money to open a drawer, take some money out and put some back in.

They are of course incorrect, so for the benefit of any bankers reading, let me make it simple.

Janet has five one pound coins. See Janet’s coins:

£1 £1 £1 £1 £1
= £5 total

John has a five pound note. See John’s note:

£5
= £5 total

Janet gives her coins to John. John gives his note to Janet. Now see John’s coins:

£1 £1 £1 £1 £1
= £5 total

Now see Janet’s note:

£5
= £5 total

Can you see that neither of them has lost or gained anything by this transaction?

Janet can.

John can.

Can you?

Your call is important to us

Posted on by

This is sheer spite on my part but there’s a certain thrill in hearing the shortcomings of Jobcentre Plus being exposed on national news this morning. In this case it’s their computerised calling centre. In my case it was the rules concerning the self-employed. In both cases it’s skilled, helpful people doing a job that many saints would turn down as too stressful, being let down by the crap they are expected to work with.

My company went under, I was reduced to 15 freelance hours per week at £13/hour. Not really enough for any more than scraping by, especially when you have a mortgage and loan to pay off. But said mortgage and loan were insured, so that if I hit hard times, payments could continue. All I needed was to get a monthly certificate signed for each by the Jobcentre, to say that I was claiming …

I already knew that because I had at least 10p in my pocket there was no earthly way I was actually going to get any money out of HMG in return for my diligently paid taxes and national insurance. Absurd idea! But at least I could claim, and the Jobcentre could say I was claiming, and they would sign my bits of paper and that would be the mortgage and loan taken care of for another month. Right?

First obstacle was that I was due to go abroad on a scheduled, paid-for trip while my initial claim was being processed. If I did that, I was warned, the claim would be cancelled and I would have to reclaim once I got back. This is apparently a measure taken in light of all those people who fleece the state for thousands of pounds and go off to live the high life in Benidorm. God knows how they do it. So I’ll let you into a little secret. I didn’t tell them I had gone abroad. They are welcome to sue me for every penny they didn’t pay.

For the first couple of months (while the claim was being processed) it worked — I signed on, got my bits of paper signed, and in the meantime (I really should add) was genuinely looking for work. Then my claim got processed and came back as refused, because I worked more than 15 hours a week, so was ineligible to claim anything.

3 hours a day, 5 days a week somehow worked out at more than 15 hours. “Maybe it averages out at more than 15 …” someone said vaguely, using an obscure form of calculus in which the average is able to be more than the total. And oh, the fun and joy I had from that, trying to get a real live human being to explain it to me. To do that, they had to squeeze an answer out of the computer themselves, which is easier said than done. But eventually someone managed and explained it in words of one syllable, which is what was needed. You see, this freelance work meant I was self-em-ploy-ed. And if you’re self-em-ploy-ed then the time you take tra-vell-ing to and from work is ad-ded to the time you spend work-ing. In my case this was an hour’s travel every day. So, 20 hours per week! How dared I even show my face at the Jobcentre door?

I could go on — like, the way their most useful suggestion, visit Connexions which was just down the street (and isn’t just for teenagers, though I had always assumed it was) — came after six months, when it should have been suggested on Day 1. But I won’t. That was the personal failing of one individual; my larger problems stemmed from the fact that they have to work with one of the sillier laws on the UK statute books, designed purely to keep the claims figures down and not actually help anyone. It’s not their fault.

Connexions, by the way, were marvellous and their service included an in-depth critique of how my CV was all wrong. So I redesigned it and within a month I had my present job. Which I got by filling out the standard company application form. No CV needed. Poo.