So first the politics, followed by a bit of economic opinion. The tyrants, terrorists, or whatever you want to call those people who we have deemed to cause atrocities to humanity either at home or abroad, have in some part been removed. I do question what right we had to go in and hunt down Gaddafi. Equally, did we need to spend 11 years hunting down a man by wrecking the country in which we believed him to be along with a bunch of others in its vicinity? Or could we have actually used the technology we’ve developed, and the skill that we have in our “allied” armed forces (I use the term “ally” loosely – allies in my opinion are like the best of friends; you share everything that you know). Overseas, the fall of Gaddafi will have a profound impact on North Africa, especially since it has happened whilst the region as a whole has been engaged in rebellion. It will be seen as the start of a new era, but it will take some years for the effects to ripple down to the poorest and most affected by the outgoing regime. It will become a democracy, because we in the West dictate (ironically) that it should do so. Most importantly, things will improve for people in the region, as things have reportedly started to improve in both Afghanistan and Iraq – I don’t speak from experience as I’ve not been, and can only rely on what I read across a breadth of media outlets. If you’re reading from the region and you think differently, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Next comes our relationship with the Euro. And why does it affect us? It doesn’t, directly. We’re not a Euro zone member, though we are part of the greater European Community. The reason the UK is affected is through existing money plied in to the effort to stem the tide of inflation, and to increase flow of money from banks to business – we have a large amount invested in the Irish recovery, and the Irish are part of the Euro zone. That means that we now have a vested interest in keeping the Euro afloat. It certainly won’t be easy. Greece lied about it’s financial stability when it joined the Euro. Italy is (or was, but the aftermath is a long and winding road) corrupt to the point its economic status was completely falsified. Supposedly as strong as Germany, we have recently found that to be somewhat less realistic than even the worst case scenario we’d previously envisaged. So what happens if the Euro doesn’t collapse, and what happens if it does, and what does that actually mean for us?

We’ve historically seen individual economies collapse under the strain of their own currency. Italy itself, with the old Lira, Germany and Turkey in the past, as well as the Yugoslav Dinar have all seen hyperinflation and subsequent collapse. That’s just in Europe, and Chile, Zimbabwe, Argentina amongst others have seen similar collapse outside. In my opinion, a single currency across such a diverse set of economies was never going to work without somehow first bringing incoming economies to similar levels of stability. Currency only works when there is something to compare it to, or we’re back to bartering (which might be a better option). It’ll be years before the likes of you or I see the ripple effect of the eventual demise of the Euro. Governments will first feel the strain as each one tries to minimise the effect on its populace, and each will in some way fail. Greece and Italy are unfortunate, but they’re almost collateral in the bid to resolve the problem. They’ll found new economies and will either become strong or not. Germany is one of the strongest economies in Europe, and has previously seen two world wars demolish it along with a complete failure of its currency.

The media often portray a picture that few of us understand in a way that makes us think that the world is about to end. It isn’t. We’ll bounce back. We have before, we will again, and the fallout will undoubtedly serve to teach lessons the world over. In trying to emulate the USA and the Dollar, Europe has failed, but it has failed because it started from a complex economic structure in the first place. America founded the dollar very early in its constitutional history and has become a force to be reckoned with. Britain has been shot across its bows, and while mildly burnt, people here won’t feel the pain anywhere near as much as those within the zone. Likewise with the political side – it won’t affect any one of us directly. The greater good has supposedly been achieved, but we’ll see what that really means in time to come.

First the lead-up; In making a cup of tea, one of the teabags splits. I don’t know if it was split before or after pouring water over it, but I noticed it when tea leaves started floating around the cup. I just thought I’d post a message to the Yorkshire Tea Facebook page and see what happened. I wasn’t really expecting anything, much less a whole swathe of other fans commenting on my message with words of wisdom. What I really wasn’t expecting though was a reply from Yorkshire Tea themselves within 45 minutes of me posting the message up, saying they were going to contact me directly through Facebook to try and resolve the issue.

Five minutes later, a message popped up in my inbox asking for an email address or phone number on which I could be contacted, so I replied and another ten minutes later I had an email from Taylor’s of Harrogate (the company who own the Yorkshire Tea brand) saying they’d like to replace the box of tea, and if I might have the details of the batch (I didn’t, but that didn’t seem to really be an issue). A couple of replies later and I am about to receive a new box of tea.

This all within the hour of posting a message on their Facebook wall. Now, for any company providing any level of customer service, that which I received from these guys has been exceptional. It also proves that if you put the whole infrastructure in place instead of trying to scrimp and save here and there on bits of the chain, it can really work wonders for you. I’ve told everyone about this episode, and they’re all as amazed as I am. But the word is spreading, and that makes Yorkshire Tea an ever stronger brand in the face of competition. I see that, because its the industry I work in, but I feel it’s fair play – they make a great product, and on top of that have astounding customer service when things do (and they do sometimes, for everyone) go wrong. It is far too easy, as can be seen by my previous posts, to think social media can be controlled without making sure that the rest of the company is aware of the consequences in this digital age of getting it wrong. It doesn’t work though so kudos has to be given to Taylor’s.

Update 09/02/2011: I’ve just had a package and an envelope through the post. The envelope had this in it:

On top of that, a box with a hand written note from the person who I dealt with at Taylors of Harrogate by email:

And of course a big box of Yorkshire Tea and the marmalade cake too:

I can’t explain how impressed I am with their customer service levels!

Turns out they’ve made a fail of epic proportions. Yesterday I had to get my card cancelled as I’d noticed a rogue payment go out from it. LloydsTSB duly did this, and have agreed to refund the fraudulent amount. This, as I’ve mentioned before is my business account. One day without being able to access it is dangerous in any business. So that’s what they’ve done. Because my card has been cancelled, I now can’t log in to my online banking service, which needs me to use my card and my PIN number to get in, even though I have a completely separate online banking user ID.

Is it just me or does this seem a touch on the ridiculous side now? I mean, do you expect that if someone has cloned my card they have also got hold of my mothers maiden name, my secret passphrase AND my online banking ID? Somehow I think that’s a little on the ridiculous side. If they did, then they’d probably also have me, and in which case… well I won’t go there.

To not be able to use a service because one piece of kit is the single point of failure strikes me as a bit of a problem, especially when it’s something you rely on to do your work.

Hopefully this is the last I write about this particular bank. I’ll definitely let you know what my new bank is like. I’m about to arrange an appointment now with the bank manager of HSBC.

It didn’t last. I had a bank manager I could call, on his mobile if needed, and ask questions of. All great, until he left and I was sent a letter saying I now didn’t have a bank manager, but a relationship manger who was based 200 miles away in Leeds, and who I couldn’t just meet with and discuss the business as and when needed. That seemed just about OK to me, until just before Christmas last year when it all got a bit too much to deal with.

I’m sure any of you with Lloyds, and some of you with other banks, have seen these Chip and Pin card readers that are being sent out to customers on the premise of increased security. You put your card in and enter your PIN along with various other pieces of information to put in theoretically unique codes, which, depending on the bank, let you perform various tasks – logging in, paying people, and so on. Well I got sent one just before Christmas, and when I did, I dutifully put the details into the online banking platform provided to me by Lloyds TSB. It promptly locked me out. The code which I entered was somehow invalid, despite being the same as what was on my little card reader device. First bad experience. I build web applications. That’s just shoddy.

A short, but what should be unnecessary, call to telephone banking sorted that and I was on my way. Or so I thought. I have staff to pay, and I have freelancers too. So whenever I want to pay one, each and every time, I have to enter my PIN number to sign in, then enter my PIN again, the account number and amount of the payment in order to get a code to enter on the site to make a payment. I’m told this is to enable Faster Payments. I personally bank with First Direct and Faster Payments works just fine without this ridiculous mechanism that just makes my life a chore. It’s security by obscurity, and doesn’t prevent fraud because people can still swipe my card if I’m in an unscrupulous shop or restaurant for instance.

So I tweeted. And to my surprise Lloyds TSB responded! I sent a private message and a few minutes later I was talking to someone on the Lloyds TSB Twitter team over the phone. The only part of the entire business it seems that wants to try and help. I’ve been informed that by applying for Bulk Payments, which requires me to apply for a credit limit, I can avoid all this fuss. Shame I can’t avoid the fuss caused by not being able to get anyone to actually make Bulk Payments available on my account. It is apparently supposed to take a couple of days, and I gave a bit of leeway over Christmas and New Year. 3 weeks in though I’d expect to have either got it on my account, or to have heard something. So I tweeted again saying nothing had been done, and I was duly informed that my relationship manager would contact me asap. Well he’s supposed to have contacted me three times now, and I’ve not heard a word from him. So I now have a bank that doesn’t care about what its users have to say, or even about servicing them in any kind of way.

That’s where we are to date. I’ll keep you posted on anything else that happens, but I think I’m off to HSBC with my business banking. If you have a business, you’ll at some point ask your bank for something or other, however small it may be. I’d strongly urge you to avoid Lloyds TSB like the plague. They just don’t care. About anything or anyone.

Update 19/01/2011: Well I heard from my relationship manager today. Finally. Apparently my application hasn’t even been processed in any way shape or form. I’m now being asked to send previous two years of accounts to them, despite them being MY BANK and having full access to all of my finances for this entire period. By Fax. Which I don’t have. Because I’m not 90 years old.

And apparently, Bulk Payments doesn’t actually alleviate the need for the card reader. It just means you only need to enter it once per set of transactions made through it. And the application is processed like a business loan. And lets me go over my predefined overdraft limit. This feels like more of a problem than it sets out to resolve. So here’s to some more waiting once I’ve sent my details over and here’s to HSBC who are about to become my new business bank.

I’d like to hear about anyone else’s experiences with these kinds of things. I’m sure I can’t be the only one!

Update 01/02/2011: Turns out if you report your card due to fraudulent activity, Lloyds stop you using their online banking service.

This morning I arrived at Clapham Junction station expecting to get on the 09:39 to Willesden Junction from Platform 17, and get off some minutes later at Shepherds Bush. I did not expect to leave, and arrive back at Clapham Junction on the same train nearly 3 hours later without having first reached my destination and alighted said train. What transpired is what I can only describe as a comedy of errors. What I would like from you is an explanation detailing why your team was so incapable of providing communication to the several hundred stranded customers aboard the “service”.

So what happened to make me so irate as to write this open letter? I’ll start at the top:

About 5 minutes into our journey, the train came to a halt. It was at approximately 09:55 that we had our first intercom announcement, 6 minutes after should have been at Imperial Wharf, and around the same time as we should have been leaving West Brompton: “I apologise for the delay to your journey. The train has a power failure and we’re trying to fix it.” OK, but you’ve already been sat here a while knowing you had a power failure, and we now know there is a problem, but not what you’re doing to resolve it, and if you can’t, what you have to do to get someone else to resolve it.

In the next few minutes we heard how you still had a power failure, but your guard and driver knew how to fix it and we should be on the way shortly. After which we moved about 10 metres forward, and then about 15 back. Wonderful. We were on the way, but in the wrong direction. You can see the funny side to all of this, can’t you?

Some significant period of radio silence later and we were duly informed that the on-board staff had indeed not been able to resolve the power issue and that we were now waiting for an assistance train to arrive. It would turn up in about 15 minutes. So, when it turned up 35 minutes later, we were ecstatic. We were told “the assistance train is here now, so we should be on the way soon”. “Soon”, it seems, is relative according to TfL.

“This is your guard. The assistance train has broken down behind us.” That was another half an hour after it first turned up. This is now getting beyond the initial laugh and joke that it once was. An hour and a half into a 20 minute journey and we’d had 4 pieces of communication. You can imagine my indignation when, on passing through the train, the guard duly informed us that the driver had left with the other train which was now fixed. “So we don’t have a driver on this train, and we’re stuck somewhere between Clapham Junction and Imperial Wharf?”. “No.”. Great. Now what?

Well, now what is that it gets worse. We’re now about 2 hours in, and in 40 minutes we’ll be back in Clapham Junction, to start our respective journeys again. And so far we’ve had 6 official communications and one unofficial one that just upset us more than anything. One of which was “there is too much snow on the line”. Really? Sheffield has invisible tracks due to the volume of snow and still has an operational tram and train service. We have this. When we did get back to Clapham Junction, we were told not that there was excess snow on the line, but that the live rail had iced over. Oh, so what you tell your customers is a bunch of fibs too then? Amusing, I think not.

I did eventually get to my target destination 3 and a half hours later. Given that you charge me to use your service, I have a right mind to charge you for my time: £700 + VAT.

I’ll leave it to you to dig yourself out of the mess you have invariably got yourselves into through profit-mongering cost cutting measures, and thank you in advance for your prompt reply. Oh, one last thing: You’re running a train on “production ready” software with a version of 0.3.5. I’ll ask you to think that one through again.

Kind Regards,

Tom Simnett

Something tells me we’re doing something wrong. Something also tells me we should scrap the results from this election and have another vote next week, allowing all those people who couldn’t vote the chance to have their say. After all, how democratic is it to disallow a large segment of the voting public from their right to vote?

Regarding doing something wrong: in this digital age, where we have all kinds of technology available to confirm the identity of an individual, and the Internet being prevalent everywhere we go, why are we still using paper ballots? Why are we not using a computerised system that can give us the vote as soon as everyone has voted?

You have a staff problem – not enough of them and they don’t really want to be there. You have a logistics problem – what happens if you get a deluge of people flooding in as happened last night. What if they all decide to do it after work? It happened 30 years ago, and our servants (yes, that’s what you are – nothing but, and damned well remember it!) have become complacent with the low voting turnouts that Labour seems to have encouraged since.

Frankly, I’m a bit fed up of all of this. Quite apart from the fact that the voting system is entirely rigged to a two party system, and the Tories and Labour are entirely happy with this arrangement, it feels like we’re just on a downward spiral. Do politicians really care about what we’re asking for – do they even listen when we speak? Or do they, as I believe, just have their own agenda to satisfy (Gordon Brown and “being Prime Minister” anyone?) and more fool anyone who gets in their way.

At some time, we as the general public have to take stock of the situation, and then act on it. If we don’t do something now, we’ll end up with a complete mess of a government for the next [pick a number between 1 and 100] terms. The people who are there to serve our best interests have done nothing but serve their own for far too long and it’s time for it to stop. Who’s with me?

Update: I’ve been thinking a bit more about how we could make some change happen. Rather than just call another election, which could turn out to be a bit pointless, we need to reform the voting process to use proportional representation and then call another election later this year based on this.

The world and dog is going on about “Unlimited Internet”. ISP’s are advertising the fact, and now the mobile operators have jumped on the bandwagon, now that people want high speed internet on their phones. There is a problem. It isn’t really unlimited at all. A large proportion of the ISPs will tell you that there is a fair usage policy that applies (it’s usually in the small print), but they will rarely tell you what that fair usage amounts to.

Orange and O2 are even cheekier. Unlimited Internet on the iPhone with O2 means a top limit of 500MB per month, after which they can charge you at normal rates if they so wish. Orange is 750MB. So… since when has the term “unlimited” meant “with limits” in any dictionary? Worse still, O2, whilst providing unlimited Internet to your iPhone, won’t let you tether that to use it as a modem on your laptop unless you pay them a minimum £15 per month for a paltry 3GB of usage. Again, how is that unlimited? Orange take you to the 750MB limit for free, and then bill you per MB at an extortionate rate.

Next question. Why not complain to the Advertising Standards Authority? Well that’s easy. People already have. Lots of them. And the ASA turned round and said the ISPs are within their rights to advertise their services as unlimited as they are providing more than your average Internet user is likely to consume. Except they aren’t. I’m your average Internet consumer. I watch the odd YouTube video. I read some blogs. I download some stuff to install, and I generally go about my Internet life much like many other people do. Facebook, Twitter. The usual. And I can quite happily consume far more than “unlimited” according to these ISPs.

My gripe is that the Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines “unlimited” as:

adjective not limited or restricted; infinite.

That spells it out really. When an ISP says it’s unlimited and they put a fair use policy on it which limits your usage, or just as bad gives you an out and out limit after which usage is chargeable, they’re lying. When will the ASA stand up to this and rectify the situation?! It’ll carry on as long as it isn’t publicised and the ASA aren’t forced to eat their words and chastise the ISPs about it.

I’m a cyclist, a motorcyclist and a car driver, though I have so far refrained from doing all three simultaneously. I’ve been cycling on public roads since the age of 10, following a cycling proficiency test, and cars and motorbikes from the age of 17. I’m now 26. You might disagree, but I think that gives me a somewhat unique perspective, and therefore opinion, on the way the roads work. Not entirely unique, I admit, but the group of people who drive a car, ride a motorbike (both for pleasure and on the daily commute) and ride a push bike (road racing, mountain biking and commuting) is a small one.

So when our somewhat vocal TV chef James Martin decided to slate cyclists into the ground, I was pretty pleased that Olympic winner Brad Wiggins stepped in to spearhead his demise. However, and this is a big one, there are some cyclists who really annoy me. There are some motorcyclists and car drivers that do too. And as ever, I have a solution. Of course, it’s never going to actually happen because our cushy Government are far too up their own arses to notice anything is awry.

OK, I’m going to start with cyclists; DON’T JUMP RED LIGHTS. It’s as simple as that. Traffic lights are there for a reason, and you’ll be far more likely to be involved in an RTA, let alone be killed doing it. It annoys the hell out of me, especially given that on my pushbike I’ll catch up to you with minimal effort within 30 seconds of the lights going green. So I’ve lost nothing. I’ve obeyed the highway code, and the law, and I’ve still arrived before you. You lose. For you, I prescribe a compulsory eye test, followed by a requirement to have a cycling proficiency certificate – a licence of sorts – before you get on the road as a bare minimum. Riders who aren’t confident on the bike are also a bit of a nuisance, but you can ride round them and everyone will be OK. You’ll find that after a few sessions doing cycling proficiency, those riders will be much more confident and ride in a straight line anyway.

Now that the cyclists aren’t annoying anyone, what about the car and other more-than-two-wheel-vehicle drivers? Oh now I really have something to rant about. I’ve been in a couple of accidents involving people claiming they didn’t see me coming down the road, and one overtaking me and turning left with less than 10 feet to spare (I was doing 27mph on a pushbike at the time). Why are these people even on the road if they can’t see me? Are they blind? Or just stupid? Maybe a bit of both to be perfectly frank. My view on the matter is that they shouldn’t.

The way to kill the problem in one go is to force all drivers of all vehicles that use the public roads to retake their test and regain their licence every 10 years. That includes any theory and practical tests needed to get a licence for whatever vehicle you happen to be driving. Some vehicle licences require that anyway. Let’s bring it in for all of them. “No way” you say? Would that, per chance, be because you’d fail? I thought so. Get back in your box. Additionally to this are the drivers who have taken multiple attempts to pass, and fail until one day someone lets them off with a licence. Three strikes and you’re out. If you fail three times, that’s it. You are clearly not supposed to be on the road, so I’m not prepared to give you a licence. One final thing for this lot of people driving cars, vans and so on: you also need to do a minimum of a CBT, the minimum requirement to getting a scooter or a motorbike. No more of this 50cc on your car licence crap either. The CBT for car drivers is to make them painfully aware of everything around them. Those metal boxes on wheels hurt other people, you know. Don’t forget there is a world outside the windows of your box. I think that if we all had to do a CBT in order to pass a car test, we’d be more likely to indicate when turning and look for other road users before doing U-turns in the middle of the road, killing the oncoming motorcyclist who you didn’t see and had no inclination that you were about to do what you just did.

Motorcyclists and scooter riders: don’t think I’m letting you get off lightly either. Tests every 10 years, 3 strike system, it all applies to you too. Additionally, when you do your CBT and your instructor tells you about lane discipline, please for the sake of all things that are good in the world, LISTEN! Don’t ride where the car in front can’t see you, or weave all over the place so he never knows where you’re going to be next. Overtake on the outside, not down the cycle lane. And to the pizza delivery boy who rode down the inside of me whilst sitting in my blind spot for half a mile, you’ll get yourself killed and you’re an idiot.

The beauty of this whole plan is that it sorts out a whole bunch of issues all in one go. Britain has a requirement to reduce emissions over the coming years by an amount that isn’t in the slightest achievable. Without this, at least. We know that a ton of people won’t pass their tests under the 3 strike rule, so that immediately reduces the number of idiots on the road, as well as the emission count. Oh, and congestion. We also know that people will fail their 10-yearly tests in their droves (just because you have an old licence, that doesn’t mean you’re exempt). That removes people that can’t see because of old age, idiots, and people who just have no idea how big their cars are. Less congestion, less emissions, and less idiots. We all win! It also, as a side effect, gives public transport an opportunity to actually get where it’s going on time because there is no traffic on the roads.

So why won’t the government put into place a 3 strike system, let alone a retest every 10 years? Taxes. It’s that simple. The amount of money that the Government rakes in from sales of vehicles, road tax, insurance, road tax, speeding fines, MOTs, other fixed penalties… the list goes on… is incredulous. They’ll never put this into place, however sensible it might be, because they stand to lose billions. So instead they’ve decided along with the EU to implement a rule where every car will have to have a GPS and a phone built into every car that calls the emergency services with a location if the car has an accident. Apparently, this will cost €40bn and will save 2500 lives across Europe each year. If you consider that within 10 years GPS will no longer be active because too many of its satellites will have fallen into the atmosphere and burnt up, and that the US can’t afford to replace them, it will have cost the taxpayer £1,600,000 per person saved over 10 years. Because that makes sense, doesn’t it?! It’s OK though, because the governments of Europe aren’t paying for this. WE ARE! They have nothing to lose with this plan. I reckon it would cost next to nothing in comparison to the €40bn to implement my solution, and will save thousands more lives, if not even greater numbers, in this country alone. Roll that out across Europe and you can officially put in the record books that more people were saved through common sense than ever before…

There are some additional benefits to the casual member of the public to all this: cleaner air, less likelihood of being run over, greater levels of fitness (because those people too lazy to walk now have to, at least to the bus stop), and so on and so forth.

Good idea? I think so. Now your turn.

Update (09 Oct 2009): by sheer coincidence the BBC have just published an article in their magazine on nervous cyclists. Have a read. It goes into detail on some of the points I’ve highlighted in this article.

We seem to think that because Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, John Major and all who came before him, right back to Winston Churchill in 1946, have bleated on about it, that it actually means anything at all.

Lets face it. China and Israel both have a “special relationship” with the US in the same vein as ours, but for different public reasons. In actual fact, America and France have a special relationship but they don’t go on about it. France is America’s very first ally, when England was the enemy during the War of Independence. Germany has a special relationship for other reasons.

Essentially, America forges what it calls a special relationship with just about any country that can make it look bigger and better than it is without doing the hard work itself. Britain is known for its intelligence service, economic prowess and innovation. America wants in on the action because quite frankly, and as we’ve seen recently, they’re downright poor on all of these fronts.

OK, they invented the Internet – well, the ARPANet actually, the precursor to what the Internet is today. But it was a Brit, Sir Tim Berners-Lee who came up with the concept of the World Wide Web. That’s not to say some real innovation hasn’t come out of our good friends across the pond, but the big things have either been British and recognised, or from elsewhere and stolen. Yes, stolen. Alexander Graham Bell did not invent the telephone. He was the first to patent the idea, true, but there was plenty of prior art. Something the US Patent Office still hasn’t quite understood even to this day. The eletric lightbulb? A Brit named Humphrey Davy, not Thomas Edison… and so the list goes on.

On this basis, why is our Government so proud of having a Special Relationship with the USA? What benefit does it really bring to the table for us Brits? Not much really. Some dead soldiers, a war based on zero credible evidence, and McDonalds, which makes everyone fat.

So a request please of the media, and the Government of the UK: Please can you stop going on about this stupid Special Relationship. It is only harmful to us Brits, and only favours our chums a few thousand miles away. Oh, and if they ask you to go to war, it’s because they need a scape goat, not because they really want to give us credit for anything.

The people I’m going to have a right go at in this post are all you brits who just don’t care! Why not? It’s not that hard to get right. The rules here are pretty simple, and you should have had them learnt by 6 years old! What are the main culprits then?

• You’re and your
• Wear, where and were
• Who’s and whose

And to top it off, people are confusing you’re and you’ll, thanks in no small part to the “text speak” abbreviation ur. It really gets my goat. It should get yours too, but clearly we’ve grown into a society of people who just don’t give a crap about what they put down on paper.

I discovered yesterday that in some (maybe all?) universities, students are no longer penalised on poor spelling and grammar, but on their arguments. I used to be warned in my university days that poor spelling could mean the difference between a very good grade and an abysmal one. A first class piece of work being marked down to a third class grade was not unheard of amongst my peers, although a rare sight.

We need to care more. How can you possibly confuse you’re (you are) and you’ll (you will), and then say “Ur be doing X or Y today”, and just as bad “Your be doing this tomorrow”.

Come on people. We’re British. We’re supposed to be good at what we do. Certainly not lacklustre and downright rubbish. I’m going to leave the learning as an exercise for the reader. I’m ashamed of everyone who doesn’t know these simple rules.