Mancunian IDentity Theft

I am sure the good citizens of Manchester are delighted to be “leading the way with the delivery of the National Identity Service” as proclaimed by our illustrious and honorable Home Secretary; Wacky Jacqui Jacq-off Smith, when from this autumn they will be able to voluntarily apply for an ID card, for which privilege they will have to shell-out up to £60.

The German novelist & scientist; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said “There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity.” And our Home Secretary went on to state “With an identity card, people will be able to prove their identity quickly and conveniently while helping to protect themselves against identity fraud.” Only Mindless Persons, Myxozoa Protozoa and MPs could lack the intellect, never mind the common-sense, to realize the dangerously flawed stupidity of such a statement.

I was in the retail outlet of a mobile phone operator today, taking out a new contract, when the lovely young lady asked me for proof of identity; I immediately produced my UK Driving Licence, and she satisfactorily completed her credit check, didn’t need an ID Card to conveniently prove my identity. Last week my mum and dad went to the local branch of their bank, with whom they have been banking uninterrupted with for 45 years, to prove their identity for an address change; they took their UK Driving Licence and a utility bill with them, didn’t need an ID Card to conveniently prove their identity.

And as for identity fraud, just how on earth does possession of an ID Card prevent you from having your identity stolen? If someone can steal your identity when you have a British Passport, even a Biometric Passport, then how does that scenario change if you possess an ID Card? it doesn’t, not in the slightest, there isn’t a single thing that possession of an ID Card can do to prevent you being the victim of identity theft.

And speaking of passports, a Home Office mouthpiece was on the Radio today badly defending the meaningless benefits of ID Cards, stating as a benefit that “in 11/12 [sic 2011/2012] you will be able to choose an ID Card instead of a passport” Well that’s a really well and truly thought out benefit statement, so let me get this straight, as long as I am not planning on leaving the country I can choose an ID Card…? although if I was planning on never leaving the country I wouldn’t need a passport, and consequently wouldn’t need an ID Card either, so that’s a self-defeating benefit, not.

Surprisingly, he wasn’t actually on the radio to defend his Über Führer Smith, nor Brown, but the Government against the pending legal action being brought against it by BALPA, who are seriously aggrieved that their members; commercial airline pilots, are being compelled by law to obtain ID Cards. A law that was only passed by Parliament on the basis that ID Cards would be voluntary. The government rhetoric is some nervously mumbled mumbo-jumbo about national security and terrorism, and not being allowed ‘airside’ without an ID Card for ‘improved security’.

Well, let’s leave aside the whole threat and risk assessment that commercial airline pilots are a very high risk terrorist threat to national and airline security, not, and let’s look just at the process of them being allowed airside. Pilots currently have multiple photo-ids; including driving licence, passport, commercial pilots licence and airline crew identity badge; none of which on their own will allow them airside at a UK airport, for that they need an airside pass, and each airside pass is issued separately by, and specifically for, each specific airport for which they are required to go airside on the routes on which they fly, and possession of an ID Card will not allow them airside, only a valid airside pass will allow them airside. So, regardless of whether or not commercial airline pilots are a very high risk terrorist threat to national and airline security, an ID Card will not allow them airside, only their airside-pass will, and so it is clear to even amoeba why BALPA is threatening to sue the government.

If our Darling Chancellor wanted to, he could immediately wipe £5Bn off the current government’s public expenditure by immediately terminating the monumentally flawed and unbelievably incompetently implemented ID Card scheme. I sincerely trust that BALPA has its day in court, and that the good citizens of Manchester lead the way in demonstrating to the Home Office the incomprehensible stupidity of its plans, confirming Henry Adams’ “There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.” Unless it’s that of a Cabinet Minister it would seem.

Lament for the Binman

I remember when the binman commeth, you could hear the clattering of the metal bins against the side of the lorry long before you heard the distinctive rumble of the bin lorry itself, and you knew you should be out of bed when the binman came up your garden path and collected your bin, took it to the bin lorry, emptied it and left it back inside your garden gate. How different it is today.

Today was bin-day, or Refuse Kerbside Collection Service Day as our local authority; Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, call’s it, service? that’s curious, our local authority believes it is providing a service? not sure many of our neighbours would agree, nor us for that matter. I happened to pass our next door neighbours today as they were putting their bins out, yes plural as today was also the bi-weekly Dry Recycling Resident Kerbside Collection Service Day when we put out the green bin in addition to the black bin. Our neighbours are both retired, and they were bemoaning having to lug heavy wheelie bins across their gravel drive out onto the grass verge, ensuring that the handles of the wheelie bins are less than 18 inches from the road.

A far cry from the last century when the binman collected their bin. And yes, it would appear size does matter, well at least length anyway. On bin-day last week I happened to pass our neighbour across the road just as he was clearly having a serious display of raw anger, and as I approached I saw why, his bin hadn’t been emptied, and as I listened attentively and empathetically whilst he vented his spleen, we were able to emperically determine the presenting problem; and that was that even though he had hauled his bin across his gravel drive and onto the grass verge he hadn’t quite made it, no, the handles of the wheelie bin were more than 18 inches from the road. They had only moved in 2 months ago.

In our second month in the house we suffered the same experience, in my case it was slightly different, in that although I had wheeled my wheelie bin across our gravel drive I had forgotten to turn the bin around so that the handle faced out onto the road, I had left it facing to the side, and this would have required the Waste Collection Operative to have turned the bin through 90 degrees before wheeling it about 4 feet to the back of the very expensive vehicle which now does all the work. I had learned my lesson, and I noticed today that my neighbour across the road had learned his, the handles of both bins were sticking out over the edge of the verge over the road. Even the smallest operative with the shortest arms would be able to reach the handle.

Service? our neighbours were bemoaning having to pay over two-thousand pounds a year for a bin collection service where they have to sort-out their own waste into different bins, and then take their own bins out to the roadside, and even then the local authority is still fussy about what it collects. We have witnessed the Waste Collection Operatives, and the Recycling Collection Operatives, open our bins and remove items from the bin, leaving them on the verge. Of course residents are also homo sapiens, and learn to adapt, as we have, we just now put the wrong waste at the bottom of the rubbish bin and hey presto we no longer have rubbish removed from our rubbish bin. And what is this improper rubbish, well, so far it would appear to be building material and electrical goods. Even the green bin has its restrictions, the local authority where we are now doesn’t collect glass for recycling, apparently for Elf’n'Saefti to prevent risk of injury to its Recycling Operatives, strangely this wasn’t an issue for our previous local authority?

And our authority is looking to improve the service, and is considering moving it from a weekly waste collection to a bi-weekly waste collection. From the consultation paper abstract it would appear that ‘Alternate weekly collection was modelled to reduce vehicle mileage by around 8% and time taken by 14%, when compared with a typical scenario of weekly collection of residual and fortnightly collection of recyclable waste.’ is a major benefit.

From where me and my neighbours sit it would appear that local authorities have seriously lost the plot, who actually serves who? and what does service actually mean? The gap between those in authority and those whom they are supposed to serve is now a gulf, and it is widening rapidly. And next month they want us to vote for them again, and yet they are so isolated in their own little worlds they are completely failing to realize how alienated their actions have driven them from their communities and residents, us, the people who pay exhorbitant rates and taxes for shoddier and shoddier services.

There is a growing undercurrent of discontent which local authorities must listen to and act upon. The world renowned management author and guru, the late Peter Drucker wrote “Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.”

What we receive today from our local authorities constitutes incompetence, and we can no longer afford incompetence on this scale, or on any scale for that matter, and neither should we accept or tolerate it. Ah, as we hark back to the good old days, when the binman collected the bins, and received a Christmas box in appreciation for a good service provided through the year, a far cry from today’s operatives, and their masters, none of whom deserve a Christmas box.

Big Red Dawn

And no, not any impending remake of the 1984 WW III movie set in Soviet occupied Colorado, but the creation of Big Red from the mind-melding of Big O with Big S. Easily a decade since muted conversations began over water coolers, pre-Javan coffee cups and root-beer, it has finally happened, Sun has at last been bought, and I will admit that Oracle weren’t top of my list, so yes, it was rather a surprise when Ellison and McNealy announced the good news to the world yesterday.

I expect surprise wasn’t the adjective many Sun employees were using yesterday, even though it is some 14 years since Ellison and McNealy first held hands over the ill-fated birth of their much beloved Network PC in their crusade against billg and the evil empire. Mind you, the meeting agendas in the boardrooms in Armonk and Palo Alto, as well as Seattle, must have seen some interesting side conversations this week.

Although the Big Blue shadow of the old-school East Coast grey suits has hung over the sun-drenched Santa Clara campus for many a year, it may be that the coming together of two West Coast fraternities may be better for Sun, well, at least for some of Sun, as the free-lovin’ Santa-Clarans discover that the Redwood-Shoreians kinda missed-out on that whole San Francisco Easy Rider gig.

And speaking of free-spirits, RPV Theory tells us that whilst Resources are flexible, Processes and Values are inflexible, and Oracle has only ever been an enterprise software company, albeit extremely successful, and Sun is a hardware company whose sun has set on its never-ending software story, and although historically never the twain shall meet, this instance is at least unique in that software is the dominant arm.

Oracle is still building its Fusion reactor from the ashes of BAAN, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Siebel and Oracle Applications, and now has at least three each of JVMs, Application Servers, Portals, EAI hubs, BPM and SOA platforms and a plethora of other assorted middleware and tools, along with MySQL and Open Office and the open source / open systems acolytes to sunset. At least with Solaris, Schwartz’s vision of the ideal enterprise IT stack is now complete, if you exclude Cisco that is, and Big Red now has the capability to build a 21st century AS/400, now that would give Big Blue and HP mutual kittens…

I remember the last of the Seven Dwarfs, Unisys that is, not Dopey, had a great slogan back in ‘97 “While You Slept The World Changed” and indeed yesterday, whilst we slept, the IT world changed, and for IBM and HP life just got interesting, and if a phoenix does arise from these ashes, then they may find themselves living in interesting times, cool.

April Fool Integrity

Dwight D. Eisenhower said “the supreme quality for a leader is unquestionably integrity.” and unquestionably on this April Fool’s Day, it is integrity that is the victim of the sad joke of a Home Secretary, so much so that even the IT press carry ‘Jacq Off’ articles, referring to the niche marketing of one by a certain adult film channel. I am still not sure who’s plight is sadder, Jacqui’s or Richard’s? Gordon’s or Parliament?

Jacqui abdicated her responsibility as a manager when she excused approving her husband’s porno expense claim on the basis that the expenses had been prepared by her assistant, and all she did was approve them. Firstly, no manager worth their salt would dare use that inexcusable excuse with their own management, as it demonstrates to their peers, and superiors, that not only have they been derelict in their duty, even more importantly, by using such an excuse they are in effect saying they are potentially unfit for the job. Alas in Jacqui’s case it is worse, much, much worse, as her assistant is also her husband, whose generous salary is paid entirely by you, the taxpayer, an assistant who when their manager is out of the country on business, clearly gets up to monkey business.

My only surprise is that the Rt Hon Richard & Jacqui, not to be confused with the truly honourable Richard & Judy, didn’t fabricate an under the covers story, that as Assistant to the Home Secretary, Richard was undertaking painstaking & thorough research blah blah, as part of the Home Secretary’s personal campaign that she has been waging against the sex industry since assuming office. Or, could it be that the zeal with which she attacks the sexploitation of women is driven by her revulsion for her husband’s predelictions? or is it his revulsion for… who knows, for as Gordon states ‘it’s a personal matter’, or is it?

Unfortunately Gordon is no Eisenhower, and no leader either, and neither is the Home Secretary. When Gordon chastised the New York bankers last week for their avarice, he said that the people are now looking to government to set standards, and yes, leaders, all leaders, in business and government, absolutely must set standards. And yet back at the office, and not just the Home Office, there is a chronic disease that has spread throughout parliament, and is so deeply rooted in personal greed and avarice that it is beyond systemic in nature, as MPs so ably demonstrated last year, when they voted to keep the system following the previous expenses scandal.

Jacqui, without the able assistance of her husband, is already deeply mired in her own expenses scandal, along with several other government ministers, all of whom shamelessly say they are doing nothing wrong, their scandalous defence being that they are keeping within the rules, and not doing anything illegal, the defence of despots and tyrants. Assuming they sleep well at night, then their moral compasses are well and truly out of line, because if they possessed any moral and ethical decency, they would know that what they are doing when they milk the double-cream off the double-standards of the severely flawed MPs expenses system, they not only show themselves individually as grossly unworthy of office, they also bring that office itself into grave disrepute.

Which brings us back to Gordon and Dwight. If Gordon really and truly was a leader, and if Gordon really and truly was a man of integrity, then he would have replaced his Home Secretary month’s ago, along with all his other minister’s who have their snouts deep in the trough of greed, for they are not fit to lead and hold office. If Gordon had done so he would have been able to welcome President Obama to the pre-G20 press conference, answering questions about the Global New Deal, instead of what he is not doing about his ministers fiddling their expenses while the world burns.

When Gordon points his avarice finger at bankers he should remember that there are three fingers pointing back at himself, and even if he has personal integrity, he fails to demonstrate it professionally by not acting as a leader and ensuring his own house is in order. In spite of Gordon’s public show of support for Jacqui et al, I expect we will see a reshuffling of the cabinet in June, and a new Home Secretary, alas that is not leadership, but cowardice.

In The German Mind: A Philosophical Diagnosis, George Santayana said “Our character…is an omen of our destiny, and the more integrity we have and keep, the simpler and nobler that destiny is likely to be.” Gordon should take leaf from history, and Obama’s book. Obama acted swiftly and decisively each time there was a question about the integrity of one of his appointee’s, and Obama is a man of character, and a leader, unlike Gordon. Still, there’s always the G20 to distract us from realpolitik.

Happy New Year Avarice

Well, at least in the England of 1751 we would have all wished each other a happy New Year, and a happy Lady Day, on this the 25th March, and we would have duly paid our taxes, although not the London bankers of 1752, and today it isn’t just London bankers in the news, it is also the New York bankers, being chided by Gordon for their avarice, what’s that about pots and kettles?

In the 12th century, religious extremists forced the change of the New Year from Christmas Day to the Feast of Annunciation, precisely 9 months before the incorrectly presumed birthdate of Christ, assuming Mary’s term was by the book, her conception, with or without Gabriel as a cover story, apparently made a more logical and sensible day to celebrate the coming of a new year.

If we wanted logic we could use the Vernal Equinox as the start of a new year, as the pre-Julian Romans did, albeit without a lunar calendar, and if we wanted common sense we wouldn’t have a tax year that commences on the 6th April, we could have it on New Years Day, as it used to be, and for this we have a weak English Treasury and powerful London Bankers to thank, plus avarice, again.

If Queen Elizabeth’s protestant England had adopted Gregory’s strident Counter-Reformation led Papal Bull of 1582, we would have celebrated January 1st 1583 as New Years Day, and with a strong monarchy and no London bankers our tax year would make sense, although maybe not the tax system itself.

Yesterday, Queen Elizabeth II had tea with the Governor of the Bank of England, apparently her first time for a reigning banker, whose forbears in 1752 refused to pay her predecessor their taxes on time, withholding them until the 5th April, a situation accepted by a weak government and treasury. Interestingly those same bankers were more than happy to receive their rents for the new year on the 25th March, whilst withholding their taxes, happy to take on the one hand and not give with the other, something for which you and I would get a penalty notice, and be fined, with interest charged, even prosecuted for so doing. I guess a bit like losing billions in business and still being paid bonuses, and a pension.

And isn’t it curious how the very day Gordon chastises the New York bankers for their avarice, and about how governments should set standards, four of his own ministers have been exposed for their scandalous abuse of the exceedingly privileged parliamentary perk of being able to claim for a second home, something even bankers, like all other workers and business owners are prohibited from claiming by the taxman, and whilst government ministers blatantly, and shamelessly, milk the system for more than most people even earn, their leader has the gall to accuse bankers of avarice.

And in an overt schism, King, Mervyn that is, whilst supping tea with the Queen, has urged a profligate Gordon to stop spending money that our weak treasury doesn’t have, whilst retailers across the country are getting their old new year annual rent bills today, which in the current climate is being forecast to drive even more of them out of business as they have insufficient cash in the business to pay the rent.

Back in ‘92 I heard a multi-millionaire US businessman state “If your outgoings exceeds your incomings, your upkeep will be your downfall” or in other words if you continue to spend more than you earn you will eventually end up in the brown stuff, and I don’t mean Gordon, although as someone who claims to be prudent he should take head.

So, the more everything changes, the more it stays the same. Today we still have religious extremists, weak governments, with poor fiscal policy, ministers lining their own pockets, and powerful bankers looking after their own interests, regardless of cost, and as in all of history, it’s the people who pay, and pay dearly, for their avarice, especially of those charged with serving the people. Happy New Year one and all.

Intra-Bank Communication via Snail Mail

So how does intra-bank communication work in the 21st Century? well, not very well it would seem. For starters, my bank communicates with itself via snail mail, not that I have anything against letter writing. When I was young, and in love, I would write letters to my fiancee, then wife, when I worked for extended periods overseas, although I have now stopped that practice, as we now use email instead. Less romantic I know, although very efficient and still effective, and we are still in love, which is more than I can say about my bank, or at least about two parts of my bank’s multiple personalities that have been trying to write to each other for three months.

At Christmas I finally got around to sorting out some old paperwork that I have been meaning to clear since we last moved house almost two years ago, and that included stopping some policies we took out on mortgages decades ago, especially as we have been mortgage free these past two years. And yes, I even wrote a letter to my bank’s life company requesting to stop these two policies. Within a fortnight they wrote back, confirming they had stopped one of the policies, but not the other, as they still had it assigned to the mortgagor, themselves, as it happens, and they needed me to contact them, and ask them to write a letter, to themselves, confirming they no longer have any further interest, in themselves.

This particular mortgage had been repaid some 15 years ago, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t keep 15 year old repaid mortgage details, so I went to my bank, the bank I have been banking with for over 30 years, and explained my dilemma. The very pleasant young lady checked me out, and having confirmed that I was indeed mortgage free, spoke directly with her life company, who refused to accept her report on me, insisting that their mortgage business write them a letter. The lady smiled nicely explaining she would have to speak with her manager. A couple of days later I met with her manager and re-explained my quandary, which is that her life company wants her mortgage company to write to them confirming that they no longer have an interest in the mortgage that was repaid 15 years ago, and that I don’t have the mortgage account number, and her life company won’t accept the information from their own bank.

In the 15 years since the mortgage was repaid, my bank bought one of those old-fashioned building societies that went public, and had now transfered all of it’s former mortgage business to that organization, and no longer handled mortgages in-branch. Even so, she would see what she could do, and amazingly, a week later she had tracked down my mortgage account number, and someone in the mortgage department had agreed to write the letter to their life department confirming that they no longer had an interest in themselves, and copying me. The only snag is that it would take two weeks to write the letter. Now, I couldn’t imagine that excluding topping & tailing that the letter wouldn’t be more than a single paragraph, with probably two sentences, two weeks to write a letter?

Well, two weeks came and went, and a third, and a fourth, finally I spoke with her again. She got back to me a couple of days later, apologized, and confirmed that her mortgage division would write the letter to her life division, copying me, and yes, it would still take two weeks to write that single-paragraph letter. Well two weeks passed, then a third, and one week earlier this time we spoke again. This time it wouldn’t take them two weeks, it would take them two days, and sure enough the following week I received a copy letter from the bank’s mortgage company to the bank’s life company, and yes it was a single paragraph in length, and yes that single paragraph only contained two sentences, hooray for the Royal Mail.

I was happy that after more than two months my bank had finally managed to write a letter to itself, at least that was until a week later when she phoned me. She had followed up with a call to her life company, and they still hadn’t received the letter. We then discovered that they had only written the copy letter to me, she asked me if I wanted them to still write the letter to themselves, by now I was losing the will to live, and I declined her kind offer, and sent the life company my copy letter myself, something I completed that same day.

It has now been over three months since this sorry saga began, and I believed my bank’s mortgage company had finally managed to write a letter to my bank’s life company, albeit using me as an intermediary, and as that was three weeks ago, I am starting to get that deja vu sensation all over again, possibly unjustifiably so, and yet why? may you ask? Well, today the mortgage side of the house today sent me the exact same copy letter, again, only dated nearly two weeks later… Having started this process at Christmas maybe it could even be finished by Easter, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? Couldn’t it…?

In my 30 odd years in business I have strived for the 3E’s of process, that is Effective, Efficient & Economic, and in that order. Amazingly, considering the above, my bank; Barclays Bank, isn’t one of those banks into which Gordon Brown has poured billions upon billions of taxpayers money into. I rather innocently used to think this was because it must have been financially prudent, unlike Gordon, and the bankers into whose coffers he has been so imprudent with our money, now I think maybe my bank wasn’t exposed to the sub-prime mortgage market because it is so ineffective and inefficient in it’s ability to communicate that they were probably still in the letter writing process, being unable to spell CDO, and had just missed the toxic assets boat because they were too slow and incompetent.

The lovely Joanna Lumley said on TV today that she transfered her accounts from a high street bank to a small private bank when they refused to give her the phone number of her branch. When we were moving house we had the same experience, it was impossible for me to ring my branch, I had to use the call centre, which was a complete and utter waste of my time, and was when I let the topic of closing those old policies slip. I would love to change my bank, who wouldn’t? unfortunately I don’t have Joanna’s assets, and so I am not sure her private bank would welcome me with such open arms.

As we are now a decade into the 21st Century, and this year is the 40th anniversary of the ARPANET (the Internet for you youngsters), and it is also the 20th anniversary of Sir Tim’s revolutionary paper, I would like to recommend to my bank a novel idea. Why not install email, create a single-view of the customer, undertake business process management, and communicate with each other internally in near real time, rather than months, and you never know, the next time there is a financial bubble, or wave, you might actually catch it.

Oh, and communication is a nominalization of the verb to communicate, and verbs are about doing, they are the action, at least they were when I was at school, so maybe you should learn to understand how to communicate, after all, it actually doesn’t matter whether it is via letter or via email, they are both just mediums over which the process of communication takes place, and to communicate effectively is all about the results you get, sorry bankers, but you’re not getting the results, in so many ways.

The ID superstition

‘Security is mostly a superstition’ said Helen Keller in The Open Door (1957), going on to say: ‘Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.’ And this week, another grand Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5 from 1992 to 1996, again poured scorn on the falatious notion that ID Cards prevent terrorism, organised crime and the “near slave labour” caused by illegal people trafficking, as stated by three successive Home Secretaries.

When the former head of Britain’s domestic security services states that ID cards will be of no use in the fight against terror we should pay attention. Interestingly no government minister, never mind Clarke, Blunkett and Smith, have been able to explain how ID cards prevent terrorism, or crime, or even the slave trade. Not even McNulty, who promptly rose to the defence of the government’s ID Card plans, attacking Rimington for her ‘loose words’, but then he is tipped to be Smith’s successor, so I wonder where his rice bowl is.

If we already had ID Cards the July 7th bombings would still have happened, indeed if the USA had ID cards the 9/11 attacks would still have occurred. France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Spain amongst others, all have ID Cards, and all have experienced major terrorist atrocities, 20 out of the 22 major powers that have ID cards have suffered terrorism.

If ID Cards are not about preventing terrorism and crime, then what are they about? It’s all about control, the control the state can exercise over its citizens. We should be debating the underlying premise and viability of ID Cards, not because of the stupendous waste of billions of public money, the government wastes many billions more already, and certainly not because of the 21st century bogey man of popular superstition, the terrorist, as the only winner in that scenario are the terrorists, as they achieve their aims by proxy, through our own government’s who terrorize us with populist superstitions. No, we should debate ID Cards as they are yet another step in the central government plan of exercising control over you.

In 1759 Benjamin Franklin wrote ‘Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ Sadly some 250 years later the two lighthouse democracies, the UK and the US, are leading the stampede to erode liberty, and if we allow that to happen then we shall experience the consequences of our actions, and that will be the loss of liberty, without safety, just the illusion, as ministers and the media spread the modern superstition, and in the process making us even less safe, and less free.

Previous generations were variously told to carry crosses, garlic, silver bullets or stakes, with which to fend off the superstitious fiend and protect themselves from evil, and my supposition is that waving an ID Card around will be as effective as waving a cross at Spike.

The failure of blame

In 1997 the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Meg Greenfield, stated ‘ninety percent of politics is deciding whom to blame’, and in the midst of the credit-crunch it would appear little or nothing has changed. This week British politicians climbed onto their ceremonious high horses, and pilloried four UK bankers for their part in the collapse of the global banking system, feverishly egged on by a frenzied media, with a disgruntled public shaking impoverished heads over beer and tea.

And to what avail? The four, former chairmen & chief executives of two british banks, could not possibly have caused the global financial crisis on their own? nor even by themselves have brought about the humiliating government buy-out of their former banks, something definitely not unique to them, nor to British banks, a trend started by the previous US government, the bastion of non-interventionist government, at least until now.

Sadly we appear more interested in playing the blame game than in root-cause analysis. Blaming involves finding some person or group to label as the “bad guy”, and Meg wasn’t alone in her opinion, none other than a former US Vice President, Hubert H. Humphrey stated ‘To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.” Presumably politicians prefer the blame game to root-cause analysis as it provides them with sacrificial lambs for the baying public, taking the heat off themselves and their own actions, which brings us neatly back to the US government.

One of the central pillars of President Roosevelt’s New Deal was the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, enacted during the first 100 days of the Roosevelt administration to rescue a banking system that had collapsed, wiping out the life savings of millions of people, and bringing the US financial system to a complete standstill, indeed the Great Wall Street Crash. The separation of banking and the stock exchange was ordered in response to revelations of the gross corruption and manipulation of the market by the bosses of the giant banking houses, in connivance with elected government officials, Deja Vu anyone?

The four sorry bankers in the stocks were part of a system, and the underlying issues are systemic. If those chairman and chief executives hadn’t delivered their numbers, they would have been relieved of their positions by their shareholders and replaced, and stakeholders and customers alike would have taken their monies to the competing financial institutions that were delivering the requisite returns on investment. No one controls, or even “is responsible” for the system, and you certainly don’t fix the system by punishing or changing the people, you fix the system by changing the processes within the system.

If politicians dared venture into root-cause analysis they would end up back with themselves, and in particular back again with the collective US administrations since the mid 1970s onward. Reagan and Clinton et al, Democrats and Republicans alike, systematically removed all the constraints on the banking system imposed by Roosevelt. I am not advocating that all the restrictions of the 1930s should still be in operation in the 21st century, indeed the regulations certainly required modernizing in order to take into account the current global worldview. And in the review process, government regulators should have asked, and clearly understood, what the original rationale was for the legislation, ensuring that in any new legislation that the lessons of history had been learned.

In 1997 and 1998 alone, the US banking, insurance & brokerage industries combined, mounted one the best-financed campaigns of influence-buying ever seen, spending more than $300 million on lobbying Washington. No wonder successive US administrations have failed to learn from history, and today these same politicians have the temerity to call bankers greedy.

It was almost 30 years before the Great Depression that George Santayana famously wrote ”Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it”, and now over a 100 years later we are repeating it yet again, Deja Vu all over again, again.

Not doomed to succeed?

‘Not doomed to succeed’ is an unusual turn of phrase, especially when uttered by a former British Ambassador to Washington when discussing President-elect Barack Obama’s impending term of office on the eve of his inauguration. The speaker’s premise centers on expectation and risk. The risk being that Obama will not meet the expectations of the US electorate in his term of office.

The risk of failure should not deter anyone from striving ahead, western society is already too risk averse, and as this is a risk of any elected official, what’s different? The difference is in the level of expectation. The fear is that Obama has been put on such a high pedestal, and with the US facing some of the most difficult challenges in its history, that Obama’s promised ‘change has come to America’ will not meet popular expectations.

People don’t get upset because we don’t deliver, people get upset when we fail to meet their expectations of us.

I remember this same week in 2000. I was in Dallas on business that week, and George W. Bush was the President-elect. The first thing that stood out that week was upon checking into the hotel, we discovered that the hotel was located in a dry county, rather a shock for some thirsty travellers. I have happily worked in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other dry states, the difference being expectation, as before even agreeing to the trip you know there is no alcohol, so we were very disappointed. A Texan colleague of ours came to the rescue, she had organized an election party on the Tuesday, in a venue in a different county, so even though we had no affiliation to the Bush campaign, we agreed to attend as we would at least get a drink.

I was surprised, and fascinated, at how delighted, excited and enthusiastic our Texan host was about Bush, she had incredibly high expectations about America’s future, seemingly only on the grounds that Bush was the star in the Lone Star State. The reactions of the non-US attendees were equally fascinating, the concerns and emotions ranged from disbelief and bewilderment that the US electorate had actually elected Bush, to in-trepidation and fear as to what Bush would do once he was in office, the consensus being that he would likely start a war. Little did we know he would start two.

From the international viewpoint, the expectations shouldered upon Obama are very different to those we had of his predecessor, and even though they are great expectations, both in scope and degree, they are at least all positive, and it is in that light that I believe it is good that Obama has such expectations heaped upon his shoulders, and we must hope he will rise to the challenges ahead, fulfilling his own aspirations and those of the world as well, as without vision and hope the people will perish.

I understand the former Ambassador’s concerns, although I am curious as to how easily such a figurehead descended into defeatist language. I believe he should have led by example, and expressed himself positively, our words do have power. I wish President-elect Barack Obama every success in office, and even though I have great expectations of him, I trust that he will make decisions, and make them right, even the toughest decisions in the darkest hours, as we all hope for a better America, a changed America, and I for one will understand if he doesn’t get to walk on water.

The Golden Rule

Do you live by the Golden Rule? The Golden Rule can be stated as ‘treat others as you would like to be treated’, and in western cultures is most often quoted from both New and Old Testament texts, and as a result many perceive the Golden Rule to be Judeo-Christian, which sadly may be one reason why so many people reject it, try and replace it or just plain don’t practice it.

In reality, the Golden Rule was known in Ancient Greece, indeed in virtually all of the world’s cultures and religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, amongst others, as well as the nonreligious worldviews, such as Confucianism and Taoism. The Golden Rule is in fact a Consistency Principle, it doesn’t replace ethical or moral norms; it merely prescribes ethical and moral consistency. When your words and actions are incongruent, people will assume that your intentions are more closely aligned with what you do rather than what you say, sound familiar?

The Golden Rule can be expanded to: “Treat others only in ways that you’re willing to be treated in the same situation.” Think about that: and imagine yourself in the place of the other person, on the receiving end of your actions and/or words. If you act in a given way toward another, and yet are unwilling to be treated that same way, in the same circumstances, then you are violating the Golden Rule, and you are breaking the Law of Consistency. Try reflecting upon that whenever you interact with other people.

An imagination technique you may wish to practice to help you develop the habit of living by the Golden Rule is MMFI – ‘Make Me Feel Important’. To do this, imagine that the person you are interacting with has the letters MMFI stamped across their forehead, and think about what it is you can do to fulfill their need to feel self-worth when engaging with you, as you make them feel important, and treat them with respect.

To truly apply the golden rule, we need knowledge and imagination; knowledge of what effect our actions may have on others, and the ability to imagine ourselves in the other person’s place. With knowledge, imagination, and the Golden Rule, we can enjoy successful, productive and happy lives.

The Golden Rule, with its roots in the full range of religious and nonreligious worldviews, is very well suited to be the standard by which individuals treat each other, by which you, and I, treat each other. How much better a place the world would be if we all lived by the Golden Rule? Indeed in 1993, The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions included the Golden Rule in it’s Declaration Towards a Global Ethic, declaring ‘We must treat others as we wish others to treat us’. And finally, imagine how your life will be when you live your life by the Golden Rule.