Life, the Universe and Everything

It's near Cheltenham - nowhere near Nottingham and famous for a very large hill fort View NW to Bredon Hill I liked the pattern of the tracks View NE to Alderton Hill In the background is “Showlands”, a “Winter Quarters” for travelling show people. After a fight lasting around 15 years, they finally got planning permission. Foreground is Gotherington Autumn colour starting in Gotherington

I recently took a government department through all four of its complaints levels and on to the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman - where I won! So I'm now an expert complainer? Not really but I learned some things on the way that don't appear in some guides. Complaint procedures are something most organisations have to have. This doesn't mean that many staff believe in them or see them a source of valuable feedback. There are some exceptions where a complaint receives rapid and fair attention from senior staff. It is more common for the process to be one of "attrition". The complaint will be dealt with slowly, by people who lack the time, inclination or ability to be efficient. The process is then so frustrating  for complainants that nearly all of them give up. Recognise that the real agenda of some organisations has customer satisfaction very low down. Don't expect that to be admitted. To take a topical and extreme example, the Greek bank...

Went to a dance recently held at a school. In the corridor there were A-boards with a curious sign: A further sign explained that that the corridor wasn't to be used as a social area. Now, I could understand the need for a prohibition like this in a narrow corridor that was getting blocked but this one was about 20 feet wide and hardly anyone was there. I even wondered if the signs were intended for use elsewhere and were misplaced but this wasn't so - this second very poor photo (I only had a very basic camera phone with me) shows a sign that includes an image of the relevant corridor:   It does seem to me to be a bit over the top on social control. Turning to Google, I found an Australian school that has a similar idea in its canteen

At the office we recently sent out a load of emails inviting people to a promotional event for a newish charity service. There was a brightly coloured PDF attached with a clickable link leading to an Eventbrite signup page. About 10% of the successful sign ups came via people emailing me to say they couldn't get the system to work and could I sort if out for them? I just went to Eventbrite and put in their details. The "audience" for this was people in Local Government, charities and businesses of all sizes. They could all receive and reply to email but for a significant proportion going one step further was a problem. I'm still not sure where the failure was. Were their systems set up wrong? Or was clicking on an invitation in the place where it said to click too much? This Internet thing really doesn't work for everyone.

It's quite easy to find information about the "Glass Ceiling" - the idea that high-paying jobs have very few women in them. Much less well known is the "Glass Cellar" - where men are disproportionately represented amongst prisoners, unemployed, dangerous jobs, low paid jobs and other undesirable situations. While I was looking for something else, I stumbled on some data about the "cellar" This shows GDP and earnings for men and women during the recent UK recession and that male earnings declined more and recovered less well than women's. A possible cause both of the ceiling and the cellar could be that men are on a riskier playing field than women. This still leaves open the question of why men are on the risky (and possibly rewarding) playing field. Does the way they act put them on the "risky" field - or does "society" push them there?