Life, the Universe and Everything

There wasn't a dance I wanted to go to tonight so I decided to go to "the pictures" and see the (fairly) new Star Wars film. Google told me of several places showing  it including the Sherborne Cinema. This turned out to be a small art-Deco establishment in the back streets of Gloucester charging £5 to get in and for an extra pound, Mark made me nice mug of Earl Grey tea. There was even a small car park for "patrons" but they don't take cards or on-line bookings.  Cash works though. The Foyer   The end of cinema had long been predicted but it refuses to die. Television didn't see it off and despite on-line video on demand ventures like this still get off the ground. It's less than a year old although the building is over 100. Link

Well, probably not but I've found a very useful document for some of those arguments down the pub (or more often these days, on Facebook). It works like this: Person A wants the government to spend more money on something Person B says we can't afford it Person C says of course we can - tax the rich/cut benefits/etc. Trouble is, even if Person A knows exactly how much money s/he wants spending, no one knows whether the bill will in fact be covered by what Person C proposes. Well, I found an answer. It's a government document and I'd be the first to agree that "Direct effects of illustrative tax changes" is not the snappiest title - but stay with me! The short version is just two pages long and shows just how much money you could raise by adding 1p to the major tax rates - around £4 billion for a penny on standard rate income tax for example. You want to spend around £800 million? Easy - raise Corporation Tax by 1%. Even better, that will yield tw...

Recently I was in "Savers" and although I don't even look like a bloke who'd be interested in a special offer on lipstick they just had to ask. Today I was in Boots and in a hurry. There was a substantial queue. Them: Do you have Boots card? Me: No Them (brightly): Would you like a Boots card? Me: I'm a pay and go customer! I should have deployed it earlier really.

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.