Without Prejudice

HMRC Fails Again

Today was the last day for filing your tax return in the UK if you have been asked to file one.  You could  either do a last minute rush to your nearest tax office, or you could do it online. Except, that you couldn't do it online today because the website crashed. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. HMRC appears to be virtually incompetent, to the point of absurdity, for an organistation which such an important role in our society.   I assume it's underresourced and understaffed, and those people who do work there want to be somewhere else.  But these failings are not isolated occurrences.

On a personal level their incompetence has cost me greatly. More in terms of time than money, but it's frustrating nonetheless. In my case, they managed to create a duplicate record for me last year so that I was fined £100 for failing to file a return - when I had filed one. And paid the tax.

I eventually got the fine overturned, but the burden of sorting it out was placed firmly on me.  Logically, it probably wasn't worth the hassle, but I couldn't let it go. In fact, the hassle has continued for the past year as I have received conflicting information from two different tax offices.

I've even been sent a statement telling me that I don't owe any tax at all - nor do I need to file a return.  Except that I do owe tax and I needed to file a return. So what's going on? I assume that I am by no means alone in having to manage my own way round the idiosyncracies of such bureaucracy, but,  is there any reason why millions of people should be inconvenienced?

Dennis reported the problem with the HMRC website earlier today (with a credit to HMRC is Shite) and I see this evening that HMRC is actually granting an extension until tomorrow (Friday 1 February 2008):

HMRC’s Self Assessment Online filing service has experienced technical         difficulties today, which has meant that some tax payers have experienced         difficulties filing online. The system is now rapidly returning to normal         levels of service. A record number of 3.6 million taxpayers have already         successfully filed online.

HMRC takes any disruption of service very seriously and to reflect this         everyone who files electronically or by paper by midnight Friday 1 February         will be treated as having filed on time.

We very much regret any inconvenience this may have caused.

             

A great apology, eh? You'd rather they just did the job they needed to do, wouldn't you?

No panic, here, anyway. I filed mine on Tuesday, although I fully expect to get fined again.

Definition of a "Neek"

Do you know what a "neek" is?  It's a term of abuse, or so I am told.

There's a suggestion it's simply a cross between a "nerd" and a "geek" although it's fairly clear that the definition of a "geek" is a bit of a moving feast.

Either way, I tend to think of it as complimentary - as in the "neeks" will inherit the earth rather than abusive. But then I don't hang out in playgrounds much. If at all, truth be told.

The Urban Dictionary, of which I have never heard until it came up twice today, attempts to provide clarification. Just in case you were wondering.

50 Things Learned

I've been thinking a lot about the politicisation and personalisation of the concept of happiness. I plan to write a bit about it, because it seems to say a lot about the way we direct our lives, certainly in the developed world.

Along the way, I have come across a blog written by Gretchen Rubin called The Happiness Project which I really like.  I suspect I was directed to it by Bob Sutton, whose current work seems to be tangentially about happiness.

Gretchen points to a post by a guy called Erin Zorn, detailing the 50Things he has learned in 50 years.  Whilst I am not 50, I am a damn sight closer to it than I ever imagined possible, and I suspect that may have prompted me to investigate what a middle aged man makes of his half century.

I know some people hate lists, but I don't mind them. I am not sure I agree they "distill life's wisdom" as Gretchen suggests,  but there's certainly something in them.

Erin's list will have you thinking, whether you agree with him or not.  There's a fair bit  I can agree with, some bits I am equivocal about, but this, I just can't accept:

Four things that most people think are lame but really are a lot of fun: barn dancing, charades, volleyball and sing-alongs.

Actually, I don't mind volleyball, but barn dancing, sing-alongs and charades?  Not me! Not me, please.

Tags and Cyclists

No, I am not talking about the tags that get appended to blog posts and drive Technorati and Del.icio.us - although lord knows, I could do with knowing more about those. I am talking about wearing or carrying some sort of emergency card or tag when I'm out riding my bike.

I am not trying to be morbid. Just practical.  If I am in the middle of knowhere, and I have an accident, how are the emergency services- assuming they get to me - going to know anything about me?  How will they know who to contact? Who I am?

Out riding early yesterday morning, I tried to apply my mind to what they might need to know. 

My name?  I'd have thought so.

Partner's name and contact number? Again, pretty useful, to be contacted in the event of an emergency etc.

But what else? Is my age relevant? Do I need to say I am not allergic to any drugs - as far as I know? Would they need to know my blood group? Do I know my blood group? How do I find out what my blood group is.

And what would this "tag" look like? I imagine some plastic covered business card affair, but where would I keep it?  Where do emergency services  look for this stuff?  I had about six pockets yesterday - inside and outside. If I am on my back, you are not going to get into any of them.

I also remembered that Steve Cram started up some tagging idea after his brother had an accident and died while he was out running.  Of course, like most runners, he wasn't carrying any identity and nobody was able to identify him and tell his family.  A quick Google and you can find his Cramtags on the Coco website.

The thing is, they won't really work for a cyclist because cyclists don't have laces and then you are back to the pocket problem.

Maybe I should ask Tom Reynolds over on Random Acts of Reality.  It was reading his blog that prompted this line of thought.  It's the sort of thing that would be useful, I reckon. Not that I am advocating everyone should carry one, or anything like that. No, all I want to do is make sure that time isn't wasted and the right people get to know if anything ever happens.   Certainly worth looking into. And if anyone has any ideas about what to do, then please let me know.

From newspaper to blog

Andrew Collins has got a comment piece about the dark side of Hollywood in today's  Observer.  I found out about it after reading a really funny piece on Andrew's own blog, Where Did It All Go Right.  He tells the story of how the piece was put together and provided to the paper. Made me laugh out loud. 

Jackass Lane

Jackass Lane is a narrow country lane which connects West Wickham, which is on the outskirts of London and Croydon to Biggin Hill. It's regularly used by cyclists, horseriders and loads of cars using it as a cut through to avoid a main road.

It's dusk as I roll down the lane back towards West Wickham after a pleasant 90 minute ride. I am taking it steadily as there are cars about. One pulls over and lets me  go through. And I wave in passing. I really appreciate it when people do that. The road isn't quite wide enough for a car and a bike to pass easily, and there's nothing between me and the road, or me and the metal.

The next car doesn't pull over. It doesn't even slow down. It races towards me, determined, I assume that I will get out of the way. I just manage to hold my line as the car passes me and I shout: "Slow down".

I hear the car screech to a halt and as I look behind me,  I see its reversing lights come on. "Nutter" I think to myself. "He turning round". And wonder whether to hide. Except there's nowhere to hide.

I know I can ride away fast,  and posibly get away in the time it'll take the "nutter" to do a three point turn in a narrow lane and catch me up. But what's he going to do?  Will he try and knock me off or will it just be verbals.  I realise that we are about half a mile from civilisation and if he knocks me off, the chances are no one will see him do it.

I decide that I am not going to worry. I've done nothing wrong.  If we wants to waste his time chasing me down, I will deal with it, when the moment arrives. I ride on.

A minute later I hear the screech of tyres and look over my shoulder to see a brand new BMW racing towards me. I hold my line and keep going. He pulls up alongside me shouting. I look and see a middle aged man in the car, with a young boy in the back. Six or seven years old. And I know that it's going to be ok. He wouldn't hurt me if front of his son. Would be?

"Did you shout at me?" the man screams through his open window. "Did you shout?".

"Yes, I did" I say in as placatory way as I can manage. Let's face it, the man has turned his car round in a ridiculously narrow country lane to chase me, so placatory is the least I can do. "You were going too fast" I add cautoously, calmly even, aware that might be inflammatory.

"Then say 'sorry' " he screamed.  "And don't you start swearing or nuffing because I got my son in my car".  He nodded towards the back seat where this lad, sat looking bemused, if not completely disinterested.

"I'm sorry" I said.

The driver looked at me, and nodded. Then he pulled over to do yet another three point turn to take him back the way he really wanted to go.

I cycled home wondering if the boy would remember his Dad's behaviour, the day he turned around angrily in a narrow country lane to chase a cyclist to make him say 'sorry'. I hope he doesn't, but you never know do you? You just never know.

I am not retiring yet

We've been having some work done in our house. It's 100 years old and we've lived here for 5 years.  The builders ripped out some wood partitioning and out dropped what we assume was a hidden stash of £100 in fairly pristine, but very old £10 notes. If you look at them you can see how young the Queen looks. She's 81 years old now, so they could easily be 50 years old. Unfortunately it's impossible to tell precisely how old they are.

My immediate assumption was they would be out of date and no longer legal tender, but the Bank of England website suggests this isn't the case:

"Genuine Bank of England notes that have been withdrawn from                   circulation retain their face value for all time and can be                   exchanged at the Bank of England in London."

So it looks as if I'll be able to exchange them for "real money". I'll be dropping in next week to see if they'll sort it out for me. The Bank of England is one of those buildings I have been past hundreds of times, but I've never been in.  It'll be an interesting experience and hopefully I'll learn a little bit more about them. Incidentally, the builders handed them over without question. My only concern now is that the little Without Prejudices claim they are entitled to a share of what they clearly think is their own personal treasure trove. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Links for 24 January 2008

• Matt Cornell interviews Mark Hurst (author of "Bit Literacy")  I really like the way Matt has tried to get under the hood of personal productivity methods and the experts who promote them in a series of interviews.
• Writing a Book in Google Docs I hadn't realised it was possible, but I guess it makes sense. Been thinking about setting up Google Apps for the family so that everyone can see what everyone else is up to.
• Dennis Howlett on Fresh Faces, Fresh Ideas, the Future  "I have to ask - when are professionals going to wake up?" Dennis is great at rattling cages. Couldn't agree with him more, by the way.
• Jeff Jarvis on the Google Environment session at the World Economic Forum. Echoes of  this week's Start the Week on BBC Radio 4 (a mouthful I know) in as much as there was a suggestion that advocates for action on climate change now fall neatly into camps. On the one hand, there are those who want to take us all back to the Middle Ages through changes in the way we live, and on the other, those who believe that the answer is technology. You can guess which side Larry Page, Sergey Brin are on.
• Fascinating debate in the comments on Hugh Macleod's  latest post - all about Seth Godin's new book  Meatball Sundae. I assume Hugh and Seth Finkelstein are great mates, although that entirely irrelevant. A classic example how to respond to comments , by the way. Definitely a new art form.

Economics on the Fly

Economics is a bit of a mystery to me. I can do "pop" economics, like reading Freakonomics, but I don't really have much a clue about the detail.  I suspect I am not alone in that, which is slightly odd given its relative importance in our day to day lives. 

Markets plummeting (that's your pension if your lucky enough to have one), increasing gas and electricity costs, and petrol now well over £1 a litre and rising, are all factors which have affected most people in the UK in 2008.

Now, it seems, it's  the turn of the  pound to go the same way as the dollar. Down.

Reading a recent  Martin Wolf column in the FT "Why Sterling is the Next Dollar"  provides  a clearer idea about what could  happen to sterling in the next 12 months.  We can expect a summer of tabloid horror at the cost of holidaying in Europe, as the Euro strengthens against the pound.

That is unless the great and the good gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos can sort it out in the next few days.  There's plenty of talk at least and it's easy to find out most - if not all - of what's going on.

In addition to the FT journos who are blogging, there's plenty more.   Jeff Jarvis is providing a full and detailed feed of events putting the journalists to shame plus there's the ubiquitous Loic Le Meur (and his fantastic video-blogging ) along with  Robert Scoble "live from Davos".  It's interesting, and probably the subect of another post,  to see how much access bloggers are getting these days - to certain events, at least.

Sadly, I suspect there probably aren't too many people attending Davos who can do anything about the slightly unsettling feeling that globilisation leaves in its wake,  but it's one we need to get used to. I think I could well be learning a lot more about economics in the months to come.

The Suits vs. the Creatives or the Money vs. The Talent

I've been following the latest developments in the EMI saga ("fruits and flowers" et al) and wondering what it's really all about.  Certainly, money is a large part of it, but there's something else going on here.

Maybe it is just a continuation of the age-old  divide between the money and the talent, except now some of the talent (by which I mean the likes of Robbie Williams , Radiohead and the Rolling Stones) have substantial amounts of cash,  which inevitably gives them the freedom to complain and do precisely what they want.  The same, presumably, cannot be said for the bulk  of the 14,000 acts reportedly on EMI's roster.

But it's also about  business - and in particular the way in which creative businesses should be run.  For an interesting view of working with "creatives"  I was somewhat taken by Lucy Kellaway's latest column in the FT entitled: "No Way To Manage a Bleating Luvvie". I don't always agree with her, but I suspect she's fairly close to the mark on this one.

When it comes to managing creatives no one seems to have any idea how to go about it. The first big mistake is to think there is something called an artistic temperament that dreary suits need to tiptoe around. In fact creative people are born just like everyone else.

It's worth reading the whole column for a forthright view on motivation, discipline and management.

For more background information on the whole EMI/Terra Firma saga, there's a good piece in the Telegraph. According to the Coolfer: Music and Industry blog which pointed me in the direction of the Telegraph article:

If you're following Terra Firma's transformation of EMI, this Telegraph article on Guy Hands makes for good reading. The Telegraph actually spoke with Hands for the article. While it's not a tell-all in the vein of a Barbara Walters interview, it is a nice break from the usual ways we hear about EMI: prepared statements and anonymous sources.