Give me a parachute. No, make it two.

Once upon a time in a land not that far, far away people the world over could produce exciting and innovative work. They could push the boundaries of their imagination and create works of great joy and vision for all to behold. But then a dark, dark figure appeared on the horizon. His shadow cast far and wide and the world cowered in his wake. The Dark Lord of Accountability had arrived and proceeded to use his evil powers to grip the world in fear.

No longer would we need to think beyond the obvious, or be challenged by an idea. No more the sweet nectar of the untried, the surprising or the fantastical. Under the watchful eye of their dark master the tick box tickers would rule the world.

Management teams, focus groups and members of every department would have to agree on every aspect of every idea produced and should just one man, woman or child be less than convinced then the whole sorry idea shall be strangled and choked until every last drop of oxygen has drained from its body and left a quivering wreck of what might have been.

From that day forth we had to ensure that every backside was covered, every reputation left untarnished and every career left unthreatened. If there was the slightest chance of offence, then a safety net must be offered. Any possible chance that an imaginary sub set of society will not understand an idea unless it is spelt out in language so clear a two year old could get it then a back-up plan must be offered. And if, God forbid, there was any sign of the idea being even remotely memorable, engaging or effective then in the name of all that’s holy we should offer an alternative so safe it would make a Volvo look like a motorbike made of axes.

Brief (pending approval)

The world seems to have gone process mad. In keeping with this I have put together a brief to help re-introduce a little sanity. I have distributed it, following the correct procedures, and it has now come back with a few requested amends from the ‘team’.

Why are we communicating?

We are communicating because a large percentage of the working population are sick and tired of process driven, top down, time inefficient, ego massaging nonsense. People would like to get on with their jobs in the most effective manner possible and be treated with the respect they have spent their career earning.

Not right. We are communicating to reinforce the brand message that systems equal success. Remember, ‘Lots of cooks make the broth better.’ Please revise.

What are we trying to communicate?

We are tying to communicate that if we all stop and think things through clearly and without prejudice we can make the working process easier, more efficient and then everyone will feel happier and the end results will be better.

Not right. We would like to communicate that the obvious answer is the best answer. We need to get across that employees shouldn’t question anything, but simply follow procedure to produce average work that is easy to sell.

Who is our target audience?

Our target audience is anybody who has an ounce of common sense.

Not right. This is way to general, be more specific. Try something like this.

Our target audience is Peter. Peter is a Caucasian, dark-skinned male from the south west of England, somewhere near Yorkshire. He guards his age but is somewhere between 21-55. He has forged a successful career in the IT/public sector, working as a higher, intermediate managerial administrative clerical worker with developed manual skills. He is as happy fixing a car as he is seeking spiritual enlightenment at the weekend. He is single but in a long-term relationship. He has no children but lots of nephews and nieces who he dotes on like a parent. He likes beer, wine, spirits, abstinence, sport of any kind, driving, walking, reading all books and likes watching any type of TV programme or film as long as it is entertaining/informative, action-packed, romantic, long or short. He is hard nosed and takes no prisoners, but has a soft spot for the weaker members of society.

This type of specific targeting will help us connect better with the target audience.

What is the best way to communicate this?

Talking to each other.

Not right. Let’s not simply talk to ‘each other’, be more ambitious. Let’s talk to our key demographic who are ABC1CD2 high/low achieving, independently minded but easily led decision makers with personality variables. Consider other media. How about a facebook campaign or a hilarious but corporately relevant and correctly branded viral video?

Requirements.

Some common sense.

No, no, no. We need a series of meetings with various members of the team at different times and to ensure the whole process is as drawn out, unproductive and frustrating as possible. Only by utilising this important corporate tool will we be able to meet the demands of today’s business model.

Timings

ASAP

Unrealistic. Some time before the financial year-end.

Too much information

Just recently I deleted over two and half thousand unread emails from a couple of my accounts. That’s two and a half thousand useless and completely redundant pieces of information that will never be read, never be looked at and never be acted upon. The contents were so pointless, banal, dishonest or self-serving that they didn’t even warrant the physical exertion of a click on the delete button until that point. However, all that has happened is that they have now been replaced by several hundred more messages of digital nothingness. At some point I will have to spend another hour or so of my life deleting them all, only for more to arrive and so the whole sorry cycle will continue until I have a mental or nervous breakdown, throw my computer out the window and start living my life as a hermit underneath a motorway bridge with just cheap cider, cardboard boxes and vermin for company.

However it’s not just emails telling me that a network problem in Budapest has been resolved, Voyage holidays have a fantastic sale on, I am entitled to claim back thousands of pounds on an accident I don’t remember having, lots of single women are just waiting to meet me or that I can extend the length of my penis. No, life is just one long succession of pointless messages being fired at me like some kind of scattergun shit spreader. Do I really need to know that MFI still have a sale on (when don’t they?), or that my Chicken Tikka Masala needs to be served hot? Do I need to know that my local councillor has fixed a pot hole in the road, an X Factor contestant has had a hard life, Katie Price has never been happier, Katie Price has never been sadder, objects in the rear view mirror may be closer than they appear, my cup of tea ‘may contain traces of nuts’. Do I really need to be told to look left? Look right. Buy now. Pay later. I really don’t want to be poked by a friend of a friend of a friend. Who cares that M & Ms melt in your mouth not in your hand, Friday night is music night, a duck’s quack doesn’t echo, cats like Felix like Felix or that Christina Aguilera doesn’t know where the Cannes film festival is being held.

Add to this the ever-increasing mediums for all this information. Once upon a time there were three TV stations. Now there are thousands that are either repeating what was once shown on the three channels that used to be enough, or trying to entice us into an inevitable downward spiral of despair that is the world of TV poker/bingo or online shopping. As for the printed word, we are now drowning under a tidal wave of paper covered in more shit than an alcoholic’s boxer shorts. Just to add to the data diarrhoea, you are now nobody unless you have your own celebrity magazine. Oprah Winfrey and the likes of Gordon Ramsey, Rio Ferdinand and Jamie ‘I’m so sincere and good, really I am’ bloody Oliver all have their own magazines. Who the hell reads a Jamie Oliver magazine? Contents: Jamie’s recipes. Jamie’s gossip. Jamie’s advice page for sad fat people who like Pizza and chicken nuggets. Jamie’s driving tips and Jamie’s spot the odd one out between Jamie, Jamie, Jamie and Gordon.

Being a Dickhead's cool.

Strongbow offers some financial advice.

Notes to an advertiser

A few comments from somebody who works in advertising, but also remembers they are a member of the public.

1) Tomorrow’s technology today, is by its very essence, today’s technology today.
2) Innovation does not have a human face. And if it did, I’m sure it would be a very smug one that deserves a slap.
3) You are not freedom. You are not strength. You are not technology. You are not such stuff as dreams are made of. You are an overpaid actor talking nonsense from a script and selling your soul for the Yankee dollar. Bank balance 1 – Integrity 0
4) Social networking is just what it says. ‘Social’. It is not corporate. If a product says it has 56,382 facebook friends then it is probably because that product and their advertising agency have 56,382 employees between them.
5) A flash mob began as an anti establishment fun activity. By the people for the people. Not by a corporation for its customers. If you try to do a branded version you stand a very real danger of looking monumentally stupid. (Yes I’m looking at you here Dr Pepper)
6) Brand advertising that doesn’t include a product had better include at least a product truth. Otherwise it is nothing more than a bunch of egos tugging each other off.
7) Your product is not New and Improved. It is either New or Improved, it can’t be both.
8) If your product is now suddenly twice as good as it was, then it must have been really shit before. You know, when you told us it was great.
9) If I am buying a shampoo I neither know nor care what Pentipepsides are. You know I don’t know what they are, and I know you know I don’t know what they are. I also know you don’t know what Pentipepsides are either, so let’s stop kidding ourselves.
10) Fun size means small, which means I, as a consumer, get less. What’s fun about that?

This post is bought to you by Toilet Duck. Please join us at Toiletduckisyour bestfriend/facebook/twitter/myspace/snailmail

Gr8t post innit?

As me get older an’ everytin’ me want to stay feelin’ young, yeah. So me got ta tinkin’ dat it be time me got down wid da young uns, Yo! Age is just a state a mind, yeah. And me got da mind of da yoof, innit. So me gone and got me some well good jeans yeah, dat hang round me thighs so me can hardly walk and dat, widout lookin’ like some kinda constipated duck, ya get me?

Me also gonna’ stop pluggin’ me headphones into me phone, so all dem oldies can hear what me listen to as me walk down da street listenin’ to me Ragga, innit. After that yeah, me gonna’ buy me one of them hoodies and start lookin’ menacin’ an that.

Me bought a sk8board, but me did a move that was well wrong and now me got a slightly disloc8ted shoulder, so me give it up and me spend me spare time wid a good book, or a well wicked documentary on BBC4.

Me an me bloods is meetin l8ter to hang out round the shoppin’ centre an drink Stella and sneer at people an that. But first me has to mow me lawn, as it is getting well out of hand innit? Yesterday me went to get me ear pierced with a well-wicked jewel ting, but it didn’t really go wid me ear hair. Which was well shit.

Me homie buzzed on da phone earlier to arrange a meet at Maccy D’s for a burger kindathing. But me had to give him the big whatever cos I already had a nice antipasti of mozzarella, chilli and lemon crostini so me was well stuffed.

He said “No worries bro, that’s life.”

I said “Yo, Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be. Innit?”

He said “Bollocks!” which me thought was well sick.

Anyway, me gotta’ go now, me has a mash-up to put up on youtube an’ shit, but first me gonna treat myself to a facial scrub before having a light nap.

Friday Fun

I have Ranters block again, so here are some people looking silly.

Just pass on by

For no particular reason, I thought I would do this post as an homage to this rather lovely McDonalds commercial.

To the gaggling teen

Snarling and mean

In his sagging jeans

Worn round their thighs, so obscene

Just pass on by

And the delinquent types

And ‘awight bruv’ types

And listen to their music without headphones tikes

Just pass on by

Those rabbiting on their phone

As if they’re alone

Talking about their boyfriends

Loudly having a moan

Just pass on by

To the knuckle-draggers

And over-confident braggers

And intelligence flaggers

Just pass on by

The arrogant shop assistant

So annoyingly persistent

So much fury I’d like to vent

And their noses to dent

Just pass on by

And the cold callers

Those far away jawlers

Whose scripts are flawless

But whose pitch appal us

Just pass on by

And the thieving bank

Who would rather you sank

And give you a spank

And make you walk the plank

Just pass on by

And the colleagues who shout

And preen and pout

And prance about

And perception of nought

Whose ideas they tout and ignorance they flout

Please, just pass on by

There’s a rant for everyone

The estate of Rant Lee Yieung

Dear Reader, let me introduce myself. I am Yew R. A. Liu Ser, Principal Assurance manager for the China Trust Commercial Bank in China. I have asked an honest friend coming to the UK to write this post on my behalf. I am getting in touch with you as an honest and noble man, regarding the estate of  Rant Lee Yieung and his investment placed under our banks management 10 years ago.

I would respectfully request that you keep the contents of this post confidential and respect the integrity of the information you come by as a result of this post, although it is completely honest. In the year 2000 Mr Rant Lee Yieung came into our very honest and distinguished bank. He said he had a portfolio of some £12 he wished us to invest on his behalf. We invested this money in honest and very profitable opportunities like squirrel breeding and alchemy. The profits and interest on this account now mean we have a sum of £125,000,000 in our very honest bank.

It is my sad duty to tell you that Mr. Rant Lee Yieung died recently in a bizarre and sexually ambitious pineapple incident. He had no immediate next of kin, and you dear reader, have a one in four chance of being the closest thing he had to family. In fact he even mentioned you once in a moment of Saki induced introspection.

To check if you qualify for the figure of £125,000,000 (minus legal fees) from our very honest bank, simply send us your full name, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, account number and sort code as proof of identity.

To ensure that the money gets to you as soon as possible, we must act quickly. Please send me your details by return, and please keep this correspondence confidential and not tell anyone like the police. This is for tax reasons.

Just think what you can buy with £125,000,000. A new future for your family, a big house, lots of cars, maybe as many rabbits as you want. Perhaps some drugs, immoral but adventurous members of the opposite sex, illegal immigrants, the list goes on and on.

I await your response. Best and honest regards, Yew R. A. Liu Ser

An angel touched me and then my dog died.

Perusing the bookshelves of WH Smiths or Waterstones recently is like being bombarded with a shower of saccharine sorrow. There are rows of tragic true-life stories with titles like ‘Don’t tell Mummy.’ ‘The little prisoner.’ And ‘Ewww, Daddy. What’s THAT?’

I don’t mean to trivialise the true stories in question, or the therapeutic effect of writing these books, but what I do find distasteful is the way they are now being turned into a brand. They all look the same and someone; somewhere is making tearfuls of money from them. Abused children the world over won’t know who to talk to first, a social worker or a book agent. Sad, blonde-haired, cherubic children against white backgrounds with a wispy typeface stare out, imploring you to spend £7.99 of your money to share in their pain.

I don’t profess to have ever read one of these books, but as they seem to be quite popular at the moment I thought I would write a post in a similar vein.

What follows is a true story.

‘It was a cold Monday morning and it hit me. Bang. I had left my cup of tea to stew too long. It would now be ruined, cold and there was no going back. The cup would be stained, much like my soul and try as I might the tea could never be saved. The damage would be irreconcilable and I would never know the pleasure that simple cup of tea would offer. I sunk to my knees, with my head in my hands and wept. Wept like I’d never wept before, the truth dawning on me in waves of sadness as the tears flowed from my eyes like a torrent of rain on the coldest, wettest, bleakest day.

Slowly, unsteadily at first, I stood. My knees buckled a little, but I was determined to stand, and stand I did. This was just another hurdle in a life of sorrow and I would be strong. I would beat it. One day. I had to, there was simply no other option. The week before I had put on some toast and again forgotten about it, only realising when it was cold and brittle and I had gotten over that. I would get over this. Wouldn’t I?

What hurt more than the defiled cup of PG Tips was the fact my family knew about it. They had known all along and done nothing. Choosing to ignore the tragedy befalling my cup. They had seen the stewing tea and carried on with their lives as if nothing was wrong. All this had happened behind closed curtains. A house of horror in a sleepy suburban town, the neighbours blissfully unaware of what was going on under their noses. Had just one of them noticed anything suspicious, made a call to the authorities, it could all have turned out so very differently. But no, I was alone. Just me and that soiled cup of tea, staring at me, teasing me hurting me in every sinew of my body.

But then, all at once, I turned a corner. I heard a click and was suddenly bathed in a warm light and then it happened. I was touched by an angel; it sounds incredible I know, but I was touched by an angel. And then she spoke. “Get out of the way.” She said, and suddenly all became clear. Get out of the way of the negativity and hurt. Let the sunshine back into your life and stop worrying about the tea. I could wash the cup, perhaps even add a little bleach and leave it to soak. I could boil the kettle and make another cup of tea.

Hallelujah and rejoice I was saved.

Those days are behind me now, and although I will never forget the hurt, I will move on. I will be strong. I will survive. I will have another cup of tea.’

S is for Soccer. S is for Socialism. S is for Stupid.

Quite possibly the stupidest man on the planet explains why Soccer equals Socialism.

La-Di-Da London

The in-crowd. The beautiful set. London at it’s preening, pouting best. This is what I was greeted with last night in a rather (s)wanky restaurant in Regent Street. There they were in all their ‘Look at me, look at me. I’m so gorgeous and better than those wretched poor people outside’ glory.

The terrace overlooking the London skyline was filled with ex public school boys, with their Eton hair and smarmy-pants expressions, and beautiful women resplendent in their compulsory over-sized, bug-eyed sunglasses. Mingling amongst them were a swarm of fifty plus men with sandy hair, mahogany tans, Rolex watches and cat that got the cream expressions, as they regaled hilarious stories to the young beautiful women. The young, beautiful women laughed uproariously, clearly only interested in the wealthy, walking tanned wallets for their personalities.

What a repulsive sight it was.

Eventually a waiter who seemed like the love child of Adrian Chiles and Larry Grayson wandered over to take our order. One by one he caught our eye as we deigned to request some liquid refreshment. Every order was greeted with a ‘well if that’s what you really want, fine.’ expression. The same waiter later impressed me in equal measures when my meal arrived. I had ordered a Beef dish, with vegetables and fat chips. When I finished counting my two beans I enquired where my fat chips might be.

“Fat chiiiiiips. You not get fat chiiiiips with this, only with the beef.”
“But I ordered the beef.” I said. “What’s this then?”
“It’s peeeek.”
“What?”
“Peeeek.”
“What?”
“Peeeek.”
“What’s peeeek?" I enquired, considering this to be a fair question.
“Peeek. Peek, you know peeeeek.”
“Do you mean pig? Pork? Are you saying this is pork?”
“Yes pork. Peeek. You want it changed?”

So changed it was, and as everyone else finished their meal my cooooooooooooow arrived. As tasteless a piece of meat as I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating. Still, never mind I’ll enjoy my fat chiiiiips. But where were they? I looked under the two new beans. Not there. I looked either side of the leathery main course, and then it struck me. That solitary rectangular yellow mystery object residing on the left hand side of my plate was my fat chips. One. One fucking chip. One fat fucking chip. I went through all that for one feckless, fat fucking chip.

Anyway, it was a nice evening, with good company and plenty of wine. But it was a reminder of what a pretentious, shallow and pompous city London can be. It’s a good job that London has so much else going for it. For all the general buzz, great bars, parks, shops, museums etc I can forgive a few la-di-da, big-haired, loud-mouthed ponces and the equally vacuous clothes dummies.

But I can’t forgive being given only one fucking chip.

Situation Vacant

An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Spherical Object Progression Executive.
Short-term contract based in South Africa.

The successful candidate will have a passion for fast cars, orange girlfriends, nightclubs, oversized watches and ‘roasting’ teenage girls.

The role requires you to work up to 6 hours a week including occasional weekend shifts. We offer a competitive seven-figure salary with bonus scheme.

The team has a diverse opposition base and a growing reputation for being as useful as a whore’s chastity belt. As Spherical Object Progression Executive you will be responsible for delivering goal-optimised ball passes, producing a little bit of effort and hitting the back of the fucking net occasionally.

Responsibilities include
• Kicking
• Running
• Standing with hands on hips
• Shouting
• Swearing
• Falling over
• Spitting
• Excuse making

We actively promote equal opportunity employment and will consider current Spherical Object Progression Executives with learning disabilities or delusions of adequacy. Experienced footballers are expected to be able to feed and dress themselves, read without moving their lips and walk upright. The ability to kick a ball in a straight line is desirable.

Applications are to be submitted by email or crayon. Grunting or faecal smearings will not be accepted.

Please note that due to exceptionally high levels of response, we are only able to get back to those applicants who can read.

What happens when BP spills a cup of coffee?

A charity appeal on behalf of MAHWAB

I hope I can take a few minutes of your precious time to make an urgent appeal on behalf of a charity that is particularly close to my heart. MAHWAB is a new organisation, and one that I hope can bring some relief to the suffering of many poor souls across the country.

For those of you who have not heard of it before, let me introduce you to MAHWAB. It stands for Middle Aged, Hard Working And Broke. Yes there are thousands of sufferers across the land who spend their days juggling the demands and expense of a career, family and life in general. But yet to add to their woes we are living in phenomenally expensive times. Tax, National Insurance, food, drink, mortgage payments, childcare, petrol, utility bills, insurance policies, the list goes on and on and on.

What can we do to help these unfortunates you may ask? Where can we find the funds? Goddammit how can we help? Fear not, the people at MAHWAB have had a great idea of where to find the cash. The welfare state, that’s where. It’s time for a fairer redistribution of wealth. They are not for one minute suggesting we take anything away from the people who honestly need the help of the government. The ones who really can’t work for genuine medical reasons or who want to work, and are doing their best to find a job, but can’t. No, clearly these people need help and it’s right they get it. The people MAHWAB are talking about are the work-shy, lazy, ignorant, scum sucking leeches who sit in their state funded houses, in front of their state funded 50” Plasma screens, watching state funded Sky television, drinking state funded cider and complaining that life is hard. The ones who can’t be bothered to look for work because they get everything handed to them on a plate. The ones who contribute nothing, yet say they are only claiming what they are entitled to? The ones who realise the more children they have the more money they get, so set about breeding faster than a couple of bored rabbits.

Did you know there is a family in Hull for instance, who live in a council provided seven-bedroom house with their ten children? The father has been out of work for 15 years and his wife has never had a job. Yet thanks to the generosity of the welfare state and the tax you and I pay on our hard earned wages, they receive about £33,000 a year. £628 a week in income support, disability allowance, carer's allowance, child tax credit, plus £120 a week rent on their home. You or I would have to earn £46,500 a year before we even matched their income.

So the MAHWAB plan is to take some of our money back. Cut payments to the lazy and dishonest. Have a huge car boot sale of their flat screen televisions, cars and designer clothes and sell off their houses as affordable homes to those more worthy.

Please pledge your support at www.takethemoneybackfromthelazybastardsandgiveittothehardworkingandmoredeserving.com

The automated post.

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The conference call.

The first light bulb was invented by Humphry Davy in 1809. The invention of the first motorcar is generally attributed to Karl Benz, the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell, television by Philo Farnsworth and the PC by IBM.

Any one of these names is open to debate and opinions vary, but that is not my point. My point is, what bloody idiot invented the conference call? Surely this is one of the most annoying, soul destroying and humiliating inventions ever. Why did they do it? What possessed them? There are few things in life worse than shouting into a small plastic object whilst gathered around a table. People talk over you, you talk over people. You react to things you disagree with by rolling your eyes and making obscene gestures to the little hateful plastic box in front of you, and in another room, miles away someone else returns the favour.

Almost worse than these conference call traits though is the silence. That terrible, interminable, yawning chasm of time when you’ve finished screaming across the boardroom table into the little box of misery and nothing happens. Everyone on your side of the call looks at each other awkwardly until some brave soul breaks the silence. Of course what’s happening is that a thousand miles away a group of faceless people are whispering to each other while you uncomfortably wheel your chair back and forth and look longingly at the plate of biscuits in the middle of the table. Eventually someone has to crack and it’s usually you who pipes up ‘Um, uh, comments?’ Then, a voice from afar squawks back with the question they’ve collectively constructed in their quiet time. Now you leave your own silence whilst you consider who is best qualified to answer, who knows the answer, who hasn’t spoken yet and who doesn’t have their mouth full of Jaffa cakes. Somewhere far away a room full of people are wheeling their chairs back and forth uncomfortably whilst looking longingly at the plate of M&Ms in the middle of their own table.

There will be those that argue that it saves time and money. You no longer have to leave the office, or travel to a meeting. All in all it has been hugely successful in further de-humanising business. I can’t argue with the fact that thousands of air miles, man-hours and carbon emissions are saved by steering clear of aeroplanes, motorways and overcrowded train carriages. And by confining ourselves to our desks or meeting rooms we are helping save our time, money and the planet. But the fact remains that the conference call is one of the most unpleasant tasks known to man. Right up there with hair waxing and attending children’s birthday parties.

Perhaps the only way to get through them in future is to introduce a little entertainment into proceedings. Maybe a game of musical chairs mid call? Whoever is without a chair when the music stops has to shout something controversial into the box. Can you introduce a surreptitious swearword into the call? “Let’s schedule a face-to-face and meet for coffee. Bob, you up for coffeee? I said Fuck offy. How about you Pam, you up fuck offy?” There’s always the old favourite ‘Bullshit bingo’. Anyone who can get more than six pointless buzzwords into the conversation gets first choice at the chocolate nut cluster.

If all else fails there’s always the fire alarm.

The root of all evil

It’s not, as commonly thought, money. No, the root of all evil, in my humble opinion is the business management tool SAP. Has there ever been a more time stealing, soul destroying, life-erasing entity of rancid, bowels of hell stinking pointlessness? Answers on a post card please, although I suspect not. There are almost limitless ways this foul, pernicious company can make the average workers life more difficult and stop them getting any work done.

I recently attended a training course on how to use their expenses program. It took about an hour of my time and a quarter of my soul to realise that never in a million years would any one of us present in that room be able to use this tool in an efficient and time productive way.

In the bad old days before technology optimized our skill set and we realised we needed an enterprise wide initiative to realign our personal fiscal state of operations (or claim back the £2.50 we spent on a coffee whilst heading to a client meeting) life was much simpler. You simply filled in a pink sheet of paper, stapled your receipts to the back, got a signature and took it to an old lady who sat down the bottom of the corridor and smelled of lavender and cats. And then, as if by magic, three weeks later the £2.50 would appear back in your bank balance. But with the dawn of a bright new technological era we have streamlined the process and made the whole thing so complicated that even Professor Stephen Hawkins would shrug his shoulders and say in his inimitable mechanical way ‘I’ll be fucked if I know.’ Now you have to fill in endless ‘fields’ in endless pages requiring endless numbers and authentification codes to be sent to endless people who will ignore it before you chase them up and then check endless different pages in the hope that somebody somewhere will give you back your own money you have spent on the company’s behalf.

Obviously you will not get your money back immediately because you will, without question fill the form in wrongly. Then a little man who sits in a darkened room with a bad haircut, comfortable shoes, Primark suit and delusions of adequacy will reject it. This will then become a never-ending task to rectify. Hours of your billable time that you should be spending producing work for your company or their clients will be spent in front of the computer screen dying slowly inside.

I simply do not understand how anybody can justify changing a system that is straightforward and effective to one that requires hundreds of people and untold thousands of pounds to set up and results in an entire workforce grinding to a halt for large chunks of their day. A more cynical man than I might think they were making the whole process this difficult so that nobody would bother claiming their own money back, saving the company the expense of repaying them. But I am clearly not cynical by nature so can only presume that they know best. Perhaps it is a government scheme to create employment for would be accountants. There are probably thousands of people across the country with no social skills and greasy hair who like sitting in stale smelling rooms with ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps’ posters on the walls who need a purpose. For this reason we have no choice but to welcome this pointless program into our lives in the knowledge that it is creating employment for a whole swathe of people who would otherwise be watching Jeremy Kyle and experimenting with biscuits.

The unwritten letter

I’m sure we all have at least one if not hundreds of latent unwritten letters inside us. I mean those letters that you want to write, plan to write, mentally write but never quite get round to writing. Often this is a good thing, as the best letters are the ones that you would probably write in the heat of the moment and result in instant dismissal or a lawsuit.

The one where your 23 year old bank manager patronises you, makes an idiotic comment or generally annoys you to the level where you would like to take your fingers to the keyboard and write ‘Dear XXXXX, you seem to have the mental stability of a lactating gypsy woman on steroids who has just found out her husband has been fornicating with Geraldine the one eyed goat. Please could you explain how, in your current mental state, you consider yourself fit to pass judgement on a decision that is far too complicated for your shrunken brain to understand?’

Of course there’s the letter to the shop manager about their rude sales assistant where you might be tempted to ask ‘…where this cretinous individual was found? When he came for the interview was there no concern about his lack of eye contact, speech or any form of reasonable thought pattern? If he were to develop into a half-wit he would be twice as intelligent as he is now, yet you saw fit to put him in a position where he can talk to your customers like they are shit on his shoe.’

You might be tempted to write to the local municipal office and inform them of a worrying experience you had at the local tip. ‘Dear XXXX, it was whilst trying to throw the cardboard box of my son’s new Battlestar Galactica toy space ship into container number twelve that I was approached by a strange, unknown being, the like of which cannot possibly be human. It’s spiky, bleached blonde fur, strange misspelt markings on its forearms and aggressive behaviour are surely that of a previously undiscovered species. I was somewhat taken aback when it uttered a terrible groaning sound that sounded something like ‘oi, wha tha? Ah it ot any olystyrene innit? Eh? Ah it? Tak it art.’ I think you might like to consider informing the army and try and capture it for medical science.’

How about the letter to the local train company asking where exactly the money goes that they reap from their preposterous train fares? ‘…as the money clearly doesn’t get spent on improving the trains, tracks, service or personnel training am I to consider that the money is possibly being used for the benefit of the board and stakeholders? Is it possible that rather than putting more trains on the tracks, there are people somewhere putting money in their back pocket, white powder up their nose and their tiny peckers in small Indonesian boys whilst on a ‘fact-finding mission?’

Then there’s the letter to the owner of the call centre that rings you of an evening with the unmissable offer of a state of the art conservatory, bank loan or double-glazing. ‘Dear Sir/madam. Die. Yours sincerely Mr XXXX’

Let me know if you have any you’d love to write?