About to...

A text arrives from a building society:

Your mortgage offer is about to expire. Please take urgent action to confirm how you wish to proceed, or the offer will expire and all fees will be lost.

In fact, the mortgage offer does not expire for another month. The offer in question actually lasts for three months in total. So the offer is "about to expire" after 2/3 of its time. If your lifespan is three score years and ten, that is like saying that you are "about to expire" when you are 46. (I thought this would make the message sound absurd but, in a morbid frame of mind, it makes it seem entirely reasonable.)

It is not the most useful message to send. Particularly as no contact details are given in the text, and they used some clever number-cloaking system so that it is not possible to reply, phone, or indeed do anything about it.

Chasing your shadow

And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 

Still, at least the sun's shining

Just in time

The Wickes website has a promotion on for the Bank Holiday weekend. Maybe they were a bit quick in publishing that graphic, though.

Ah, Thurday, when we're all starting to look forward to the weekend - Aturday and Unday.

Cover his face, mine eyes dazzle

Difficult decisions down at the Gardeners' World magazine office this month:

"Where are we going to put the subscribers' promotional postcard for this issue?"
"How about over Alan Titchmarsh's face?"
"That's a great idea."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."

The only problem I can see is that no one would want to remove it. (Just kidding, Alan, love you really. Although maybe stop wearing jeans with a shirt tucked in - I don't think that look works for you.)

You're going home in a Crispy Ambulance

So my friend on the Gardeners' World website is back. After the last outing, sneaking Bournemouth Runner by The Fall into a multiple choice question, this time the stakes have been raised.

The competition is to win a day out at the Malvern Spring Show, one of the first gardening shows of the year. The question to win the prize is as follows:

I have no idea what this has to do with gardening. My suspicion is that these questions are sneaked in when the regular question setter is on holiday. The first was over Christmas, and this one appeared over Easter. Whatever the reason, I am mightily impressed, and am now looking forward to the summer holidays with great anticipation.

Costa Event Horizon

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books is the theory of the Shoe Event Horizon. According to this theory, when depressed, people look at their shoes and think that, in order to cheer themselves up, they should buy some more shoes. This creates a demand for shoe shops, but unfortunately the production of good quality shoes cannot keep up with this demand and so cheap, shoddy shoes are produced instead. People buy the cheap, shoddy shoes, but they are uncomfortable and fall apart, and they have to replace them. This leads to even more demand for shoes, more shoe shops, more cheap shoes, etc. Eventually the economy is only capable of producing shoes and shoe shops, and collapses as a result.

I was reminded of this by a trip to Donington Park Services,  just off the M1. It is a medium-sized service station, and yet within are four Costa outlets*:

• A normal-looking Costa cafe with tables and chairs;
• Next door to this, an Eat and Drink Company outlet, which appears to be different but, on closer examination, sells only Costa branded drinks;
• A smaller Costa market-style stall, where you can queue up and get a take away coffee; and
• A Costa Express machine within WH Smith.

As far as I could tell, there was no alternative for buying hot drinks. Indeed, at the Burger King they had signs up saying that they were unable to sell hot drinks, and you had to go to Costa. I can appreciate that Costa might have some sort of arrangement with the services whereby they are the only company allowed to sell hot drinks, but why would you then need four different outlets? It is creating an illusion of choice, a sort of communist capitalism.

I am not quite sure how a Costa Event Horizon would work. Service stations and high streets would be filled only with Costa coffee shops. In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, people evolve into birds to escape the ill-fitting shoes of the Shoe Event Horizon. I suppose that, to escape the Costa Event Horizon you would go home and have a nice cup of tea instead - “At the centre of an uncertain and possibly illusionary universe there would always be tea.”

Incidentally, as you drive away from Donington Park Services, you may realise that you need fuel, and decide to call in at the petrol station. You will be delighted to know that this also contains a Costa.

* In no way do I wish to imply that Costa supplies cheap, shoddy, or even ill-fitting coffee. I have had a coffee there on two recent visits, and, although I did feel slightly ill afterwards, I am sure that this was either a coincidence, or entirely my fault.

Teams in red-and-white stripes

Yesterday's match report in The Sun of the game between Newcastle and Sunderland got a bit confused. If Newcastle are playing a team that usually plays in red-and-white stripes, and starts with an S, it is easy to assume that it is this one.

Shop'n Drive

There has been a Shop'n Drive on the outskirts of York for a while - the garage shop next to a Total garage. Some work was being done on our local garage - the fascias had been removed - and I thought briefly at the time "Oh no, not a Shop'n Drive". Sure enough, that is what emerged.

Given that there are at least two Shop'n Drive stores, it seems fair enough to conclude that this is something of a chain, and not a single shop. I do not feel it is fair to poke too much fun at individual shops, since they might have had a sign produced - "Robs Rolls", for example - and only afterwards realised the mistake. There might have been an argument with the signwriter over who should have checked the grammar. Money might have been mentioned, and at that time the shop owner decided not to bother, and just live with it.

But Shop'n Drive, really. It should say Shop 'n' Drive, of course, unless they are going for some obscure pun based on Chopin Drive that I have completely missed.

I found out more about the design of the shops from this article in The Grocer magazine, which helpfully confuses things further by calling the shops Shop N'Drive. Presumably they thought it was some sort of pun involving Sunderland footballer Alfred N'Diaye.

The shops are owned by Gerald Ronson, who was one of the "Guinness Four" in the 1980s. I thought for one delicious moment it was Gerald Ratner, but sadly not.

The identity was designed by an agency called Pyott, which describes Ronson as a "forecourt retail legend". "Who single-handedly has been responsible for all of the developments in retail on our petrol forecourts for over the past 45 years." That is a complete sentence, so grammar is clearly not their strong point. They say the identity will "create a memorable and distinctive brand that will change people’s perceptions and present a modern, slick retail environment". I agree with most of that - it is memorable and distinctive and it has changed my perceptions of our local garage shop.

On the design itself, I know that these things are subjective, but it does remind me of something from the sixties, or possibly seventies. I think it just looks tacky, actually.

#weirddreams Crumble rumble

A "crumble rumble" means the civil disorder that takes place when a regime breaks down. In the midst of a dream I saw this on someone's Twitter feed. To be honest, it seems rather too friendly a term for something that could result in death and destruction, but who am I to argue with the power of dreams?

The Fall and Alan Titchmarsh bend sinister

Chalk this one up to bizarre. The Gardeners' World website has a weekly competition for assorted garden-related goodies. It is usually a multiple choice question that does not tackle either the brain or Google. For example, which of these is found in the soil - branches, leaves or roots? That's maybe a bit easier than the usual standard, but you get the idea. This week's competition is a bit more interesting, though. It is a competition to win an Alan Titchmarsh Wild Bird Collection (a collection of food for wild birds, rather than the birds themselves). Here is the question:

Which of the following is not the name of a bird commonly seen in the UK:

• Blackbird
• Bournemouth runner
• Song thrush 

OK, the answer is the second one, but what is a Bournemouth runner? The only place I know it from is the title of a track by The Fall on their Bend Sinister album. According to this site it was the story of someone who stole the band's backdrop and then did a runner. I gave it three pages of Google and could not find another meaning of Bournemouth Runner suggested. Clearly there is a sub somewhere in the Gardeners' World empire with a more than passing interest in the cheeky vocal stylings of Mark E Smith. Good work, sir, we salute you. Next week, try and sneak in The Birmingham School of Business School.

Below is a screenshot, for when the page fades into the dust:

Oh dear...

was it something I said? 

Are some children more equal than others?

The home page of the Department for Education's website prominently displays the department's vision:

Our vision is for a highly educated society in which opportunity is more equal for children and young people no matter what their background or family circumstances.

I was surprised by the "more equal". Surely things are either equal or they are not. The vision is presumably supposed to mean that the department would like opportunity to be nearer to equal than it is now, but why not go all the way? Perhaps they think it cannot be achieved, which would be a shame. The Department for Education has not shied away from ambition recently, which is one of the reasons why it surprised me that its vision was qualified in such an odd way. I would have thought it would be better expressed as:

Our vision is for a highly educated society in which all children and young people have the same opportunities, no matter what their background or family circumstances.

They can use that, for a small fee.

#weirddreams The privileges of being an ex-prime minister

In 1993, between the end of the Relax ban and the Spice Girls first LP, I was briefly the UK's prime minister. It was only for about three weeks. However, one of the benefits of being an ex-prime minister is that you get invited to official functions. And so, last night I had to turn up at 10 Downing Street. I didn't really see much of it, just a spacious entrance hall. There were also relatively few ex-prime ministers, just Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher, and Gordon Brown. I shook hands with Gordon and Harold, but didn't get the opportunity to meet Margaret. She was a little way away from us, and, in the advanced stages of dementia, wasn't very responsive anyway.

My spin doctor and I (yes, I had my own spin doctor) wandered about for a bit. We didn't see anything really interesting, although there was a small whiteboard that detailed the agenda for the week, and what was going to be the focus of the following day. I can't remember what the focus was going to be, but we changed it to cheese and biscuits.

We were then all gathered together, and walked out of the front door towards an enormous limousine. For some reason three women in traditional African dress were waiting to cheer us out. Into the limousine we piled, together with David Cameron and his wife. Samantha Cameron didn't say anything (I'm not sure she ever does) but David was discussing with an adviser who should be appointed to have responsibility for early years education. He didn't appear to be taking it too seriously, but I was surprised that he was getting involved with this level of detail.

Ofsted - Getting to good: how headteachers achieve success

A word cloud

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/getting-good-how-headteachers-achieve-success

A raptor used to be a bird of prey, but now...

RAPTOR aims to build a digital ecosystem of SMEs developing real-time smart urban applications on a secure brokerage platform creating new value chains from government, industry and Start-Up's to citizens.

I have no idea what this means. I'm getting old.

The home of badly written socialism

A while ago, I wrote about the badly written website of Conservative MP Nigel Adams. Now, for political balance, here is a piece about the Labour think-tank "Labour Left - the home of ethical socialism". I happened upon an article by Dr Shibley Rahman about ATOS, the disabled, and Frankie Boyle.

If the revolution is not going to be televised, then I think it should at least be clearly written. The first paragraph of the piece is slightly odd. As the author admits at the end - "This article is nothing to do with that..." so it is a bit of a false start. There are a couple typos - "you would have to worry about their ethics of their business plan", "a compulsory part of all MBAs courses" ... but, as it's nothing to do with the rest of the article, we'll let them pass.

In the next paragraph, the first sentence is a link to an article from Tech Week Europe, and the sentence is taken directly from the article. The next sentence could be clearer - I'm not sure what "impacting on them massive misery as widely reported" means - "making their lives a misery, as widely reported" perhaps - and it would be good to have some evidence of the "widely reported". There seems to be a tendency to use jargon - "unique strategic positioning", "the only corporate" - and as usual this gets in the way of clarity

The rest of the paragraph

It has interestingly been reported that the controversial disability benefits contract between Paralympics sponsor Atos and the Government is too weak to ensure value for money for taxpayers, the spending watchdog has found. The National Audit Office criticised Iain Duncan Smith’s Department of Work and Pensions for setting performance targets too low, failing to adequately fine ATOS for poor performance and not properly checking the accuracy of performance data that ATOS submitted.

is strikingly similar to the first two paragraphs of the linked Independent article

The controversial disability benefits contract between Paralympics sponsor Atos and the Government is too weak to ensure value for money for taxpayers, the spending watchdog has found.
The National Audit Office criticised Iain Duncan Smith’s Department of Work and Pensions (DwP) for setting performance targets too low, failing to adequately fine Atos for poor performance and not properly checking the accuracy of performance data that Atos submitted.

Although, again, it's not put in quotes.

Much of the next paragraph

In March 2012, the Home Office estimated that 65,000 disability hate crimes occur each year. And disability charities say it could be as high as 100,000. They have little doubt that the deteriorating situation is being driven by “benefit scrounger” abuse. The Department for Work and Pensions has been thus far accused of irresponsible rhetoric, in particular for its suggestion that three in four people claiming incapacity benefit are faking disabilities. It now estimates that only 0.3% of the incapacity benefit budget is overspent due to fraud. A DWP spokesman says it is “absolutely committed to supporting disabled people”, but he acknowledges that “we need to work together and do more to change negative attitudes”. Katharine Quarmby, author of Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People, warns: “Unless the government decouples reducing benefits from hinting strongly that most disabled people are scroungers, then we’re going to see more attacks.”

is similar to the linked Guardian article

In March, the Home Office estimated that 65,000 disability hate crimes occur each year. And disability charities say it could be as high as 100,000. They have little doubt that the deteriorating situation is being driven by "benefit scrounger" abuse.
The Department for Work and Pensions has been accused of irresponsible rhetoric, in particular for its suggestion that three in four people claiming incapacity benefit are faking disabilities. It now estimates that only 0.3% of the incapacity benefit budget is overspent due to fraud. A DWP spokesman says it is "absolutely committed to supporting disabled people", but he acknowledges that "we need to work together and do more to change negative attitudes".
Yet Katharine Quarmby, author of Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People, warns: "Unless the government decouples reducing benefits from hinting strongly that most disabled people are scroungers, then we're going to see more attacks."

I think this extensive use of material from other articles results in a confusing style. This is not surprising, since the author is effectively trying to combine the styles of a number of different authors. 

This confused style is what I first noticed when I started to read the article - only later did I unpick the reasons. There is probably an interesting article in here trying to make its way out. It is a shame, because there is a need for politicians and think tanks to put forward their ideas and arguments clearly. 

Account Manager for what?

Here's the full description of a vacancy for an Account Manager:

Global brand based in the city of York requires an Account Manager to be the key point of contact for their client. You will be working closely with key senior client decision makers on a day-to-day basis and you will have a team of x3 direct reports to direct and manage. Your role will involve ensuring all campaigns are delivered within SLA agreements, on brand, on strategy, on budget and on time - giving regular updates and & service feedbacks to client contacts. Developing relationships and identifying opportunities for growth is an essential part of this role, as is having a comprehensive understanding of the commercial model and P&Ls. A thorough knowledge of all aspects of the marketing mix (print & web) is required and having an awareness of emerging techologies and industry trends is key.

I have no idea what this job is about. What would you actually do? Perhaps, in marketing, it doesn't matter... which is good, I suppose. Well done.

Oddly specific

This Daily Mail article about a young child abandoned by her drunken parents states that "Police found her parents 109 yards away...".

That is a very specific distance, and makes me wonder if the Portuguese police got out a measuring tape to make sure that their facts were absolutely correct. Of course, it could be that they just estimated the distance, and being European, used the metric system. So, they reckoned it was about 100 metres, which is, of course, 109.36133 yards. The Daily Mail took this conversion literally, although to be fair, they did round it down. (109 yards and one foot would have been even better, though.)

Acupuncture sports

Here is another misleading headline

Acupuncture Sports Cost Savings for Pain Relief

I think the field of acupuncture sports is pretty limited - javelin, darts... I assume they "cost savings for pain relief" because it is pretty hard to perform acupuncture correctly from a distance.

Rita, I saw the sunshine

Ridiculous angels rest their heads
Upon a pinstripe cotton bed
Abandoned sentiments they seek
From kempt leviathans smooth and sleek
Embracing every actor's wish
Of dancing with the Platonist.
I laughed among the theatre gods
As fire rained down in straining rods
Pretending not to notice shame
Or spoil the votive of the game.
I heard a song; I saw the singer
He asked how long my thoughts had been there.
Scathingly he mocked my face
And sneered about my sense of grace;
My vanity, the axe I ground
The weedy mouse soprano sound
That slipped my lips in desperate plea
To rise above the symphony.
Why struggle on, the singer cried
The undertaker's here, you died.
I stumbled on the fractured stone
The brick that's loose, the house o'ergrown,
But somewhere in the garden grows
An ancient, lustrous, antick rose
Uneasy sleep amongst the weeds
Where the path I follow ever leads
While silently, above my face
I watch the angels dance on space.