No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

Everyone knows that there's no such thing as a free lunch, but there are some things advertised as being "free" that one might reasonably expect to come with fewer strings attached than is the case. Take the humble "free" CD given away by newspapers.

A few years ago it seemed that barely a weekend passed without most of the newspapers giving away a free CD, tucked inside the paper itself. There were compilation CDs, Christmas CDs, full length albums by artists like Blondie, Roxy Music, Pet Shop Boys and Spandau Ballet. There were special compilations of artists like Queen and Genesis, Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins, and I collected loads of them. Some weekends I would buy four or five newspapers, just for the CDs. Most of the newspapers went straight into the recycling, unread. Nowadays it is rare to see a CD attached to a newspaper, but the "free" CD offers remain, it is just that to get your "free" CD you have to jump through a number of hoops.

Free CDs from the newspapers: some are really quite good.

Last weekend the Daily Mail, which I justify buying because I like the supplement with the TV guide, offered a "free" CD. Since there was no physical CD with the paper, I looked at how one actually got it. To obtain your CD you have to create an account with the paper, login, enter a code from the paper and order the disc. Apart from the expense of buying the paper, this CD is therefore actually free in the sense that no money has to exchange hands, but there is still a price to be paid because you have to create an account, and with that you are providing the newspaper's publishers with certain information about yourself, and that information has value because it can be used for marketing. I didn't bother. It's slightly different from the "collect ten tokens from different editions of the newspaper to claim your free CD" offers that mean you may pay £5 for newspapers you would not otherwise have bought in order to obtain your "free" CD, but you pay a price of sorts anyway.

Similarly those loyalty cards that clutter your wallet or purse, from Tesco and Sainsbury, Waterstones and Boots. It is nice when the postman delivers some money off vouchers, or you redeem some points in store in exchange for your purchases, but you get nothing for nothing and in exchange for your benefits you pay one way or another, if only by providing information about yourself and your shopping habits that supermarkets and other retailers find invaluable.

That sort of thing is relatively harmless, even if it does have the effect of  sometimes making you spend money in one shop as opposed to another and occasionally to spend more than you intended, but more insidious is the "free" offer that is nothing of the sort, or the prize that you have allegedly won that comes with more strings than a Thunderbirds puppet.

A few years ago we entered a free competition at the Dagenham Town Show to win a holiday. A few weeks later we received a phone call. We had won a free holiday to the Canary Islands and all we had to do to claim our prize was attend a presentation somewhere near Tottenham Court Road where free drinks and nibbles would be available. For presentation read hard sell timeshare sales pitch. We declined. Even if they don't inveigle you into signing up for a timeshare, the "free" holiday turns out to be the accommodation only and require that you pay extortionate prices for flights, transfers and insurance, to the point where you could have got the whole holiday cheaper if you booked it all independently and separately. Strangely, even though it must be five years since we entered the competition, we "won" again last year. Again, we didn't take them up on their offer. If you are interested, the company anxious for us to claim our prize are called CLC World; Google them, adding a few words of your own choosing (I'm sure I don't have to spell them out) to see what the rest of the world thinks of them.

Sometimes you can get something for nothing though. In 2008 we went to Hawaii and stayed at The Hilton on Waikiki Beach and one day were approached by a salesman offering $100 in exchange for us taking a tour of some timeshare apartments that the hotel were developing. The fact that Waikiki is over 7,000 miles and the best part of 24 hours from home meant that we were never seriously going to consider buying a timeshare and in truth, the salesman knew that because his sales pitch was pretty half-hearted. As good as his word though he handed over the $100 (it was in vouchers to spend in the hotel, so not as good as cash, but we did spend them on meals and souvenirs and considered it to be a good enough deal).

The Hilton, Waikiki

Anyone who has any type of social media account will have seen the posts claiming to offer free Tesco or Asda or Primark vouchers, I'm sure you've seen the sort of thing I mean. These subtle, but dangerous posts claim that if you share them and comment, "Thanks!" you will get a voucher; amounts of up to £500 are bandied about. Of course they have nothing to do with the stores they purport to be associated with, as Tesco especially are at pains to point out. Following the instructions just drives traffic to dubious online surveys, the key purpose of which is to gather information from you. Information that will result in you being bombarded with spam emails and texts, the latter which can result in your mobile phone being signed up to premium rate services. Oh, and there are no vouchers either. These schemes continue to be successful however because enough people believe in them, for whatever reason people still believe that something that seems to be too good to be true actually is true; after all how likely is it that Tesco are giving away £500? Have you ever heard of anyone actually getting any sort of voucher? No, of course you haven't.

Yes, this IS too good to be true.

Free is defined as "without cost or payment" and while some of the "free" offers may not require payment of cold, hard cash, they are not necessarily without cost. Even if it purports to be free, the old maxim caveat emptor  still applies.

Come On, Make Some Noise!

Remember Christmases when you were a child? The anticipation and excitement of Christmas Eve when you hoped and wondered if Christmas morning would see the presents you wished for at the end of your bed or under the tree? That, pretty much, was how I felt last Sunday when I was on my way to Kings Place for the Big Big Train concert. Would they play my favourite songs?  Having been looking forward to the show for months, would they be as good as I hoped? Answers later, meantime I was sitting on a train into Liverpool Street, stuck at Manor Park with only two lines open due to engineering work and delayed by a signal failure at Bow. As I abhor being late and can only just tolerate being on time (I have to be early for everything), I had fortunately allowed plenty of contingency. Just as well as the minutes ticked by and my twenty minute journey stretched to forty.

Happily, having changed to the Central Line at Stratford, I was at Kings Cross at one o'clock for the 2 pm start, a time unusual in itself. I've never been to a matinee concert before and I'm only here because the Friday and Saturday night shows sold out before I even knew tickets were on sale. Kings Place is not your typical rock concert venue; it's more the sort of place you expect to go to see an exhibition and have a meal in the Rotunda restaurant looking out onto the Regents Canal. It's none the worse for that, it's a light, bright, airy building that at first I fear may be a bit antiseptic for a concert; as it turns out my apprehension is unwarranted.  

Like most concert venues, however the price of refreshments is eye watering, but with typical British diffidence I don't demur when a small beer and a packet of crisps costs an arm and a leg. The concert hall is smaller than I expected, and I'm in Row D, nearer  than I anticipated to the stage, which barely looks large enough to accommodate the eight musicians that comprise the band, live. And I can't recall ever seeing so many guitars on stage (I lose count at about 15), not even at a Steven Wilson gig; where I wonder, are the brass section going to go? On the balcony it turns out.

The chap on my left is down from Wigan for the show. We exchange notes on bands we like and concerts we've seen recently. It says a lot for the resurgence in prog [1] in recent years that we each name some bands and albums that the other isn't familiar with. Then the band are on stage and we kick off with Make Some Noise which to me is by no means a typical BBT track, but boy does it get you into the mood and the show off to a flying start. Next comes The First Rebreather and for the first, but no means last time in the afternoon, the hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end. In fact they do so again during the next song, the title track from the album that got me into the band in the first place, The Underfall Yard. Moving on, and the jaunty Uncle Jack is followed by Victorian Brickwork and...an interval (another first for me at a rock concert).

After the break, Kingmaker is followed by Wassail, nominated in the "Anthem" category for the 2015 Progressive Music Awards and taken from the EP of the same name which is listed in Amazon's Folk Music chart. It's a tub-thumping piece of prog that demands audience participation, with vocalist David Longdon playing and waving flute and donning a mask, elements of the show that would have the anti-prog brigade recoiling in horror: the audience love it.  Replaying the show in my mind later, I conclude that this is the highlight of the afternoon. The more serene Summoned By Bells is next and then Nick D'Virgilio launches into a drum solo, another thing that is anathema to those who don't like prog. Personally I love a drum solo (or, indeed a duet) and this is a particularly fine example that segues into the next song, Judas Unrepentant, which my neighbour and I had remarked we were particularly keen to hear the band play. After Curator of Butterflies David Longdon announces that we've reached the end of the set, which concludes with East Coast Racer (I'm listening to this as I write, with goosebumps, and a lump in my throat). An encore of Hedgerow and suddenly I'm outside, and in daylight after a gig; it's a day of many firsts.

So, did they play the songs I hoped for? By and large yes; if they'd played everything I wanted to hear we'd still be there (not that any of the audience would have complained). There's a guy (from Holland, I think) at the back who wants the band to do A Boy in Darkness: "Maybe next time," replies David Longdon. Let's hope so. Were they as good as I had hoped? Unequivocally yes, it was a brilliant show. My wife, who doesn't share my musical tastes, asked me what sort of music BBT played. "It's prog, but very pastoral, English prog, with a bit of folk, strings and a brass section," I told her. I don't think that does them justice if I'm honest, BBT are so multi-faceted that no single definition will really suffice.

It's turning out to be a vintage year for prog gigs. I don't go to many, but I've seen two crackers so far, Steven Wilson's Hand. Cannot. Erase show at The Troxy back in March, BBT this weekend, and then there's Lonely Robot and Fish's Farewell To Childhood tour to come.

While most bands engender loyalty among their fans, it seems that BBT fans are more devoted than most. It's clear that a lot of the audience have already seen one or even both of the weekend's shows and the rapport between the band and their devotees at the end is plain for all to see. This is not just a gig, this is more a celebration and with a bit of luck, it won't be too long before the next one.

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[1] See my previous blog, "You Want Noodles With That?"

The Thin Blue Line Gets Thinner

There's an old joke about a man who phones the police when he sees two men breaking into his shed. The police say they are unable to attend due to "a lack of resources." The man rings off, but calls back shortly afterwards to say there's no need to worry as he has shot the intruders dead. Almost immediately his house is surrounded by police cars and armed response units, while a police helicopter hovers overhead. The police are surprised to find the burglars very much alive and arrest them. "I thought you said you had shot them," says one of the policemen. "And I thought you said you had no resources," responds the householder.

This joke came to mind more than once recently after the pronouncements by Sara Thornton, the chair of the National Police Chiefs Council, and by Leicestershire police as to how they will respond to reports of burglaries, or rather how they won't.

Sara Thornton

Leicestershire police have been trialling a scheme to investigate burglaries only at even numbered properties as a money saving scheme, describing the policy as having "no noticeable impact on victim satisfaction" and not affecting the number of suspects identified, and then we have Sara Thornton's statement that victims of burglaries should not expect any sort of visit from a police office and may be expected to upload details of a break in, including photographs, via the internet. Thornton goes  on to say, "Does it make sense to send a uniformed officer to the scene of a burglary to take a statement and look for forensic evidence, then a scenes-of-crime officer to gather the forensic evidence and finally a detective to investigate the crime?" Well, actually yes it does given that the raison d'être of the police is to investigate crimes. Thornton's statement that there are now a lot less burglaries is actually even more of a reason for police to attend as that suggests they have greater resources to deal with them (I know it doesn't, but it is no more specious an argument than Thornton's).

In fairness, what Sara Thornton is arguing is that if the intruders have fled, then the matter is best dealt with by a visit from a scenes of crime officer who can gather DNA and fingerprint evidence and that some evidence in the form of photographs could be emailed by the householder to the police. That would be neither possible nor appropriate in some cases, since for many older people, who may not have access to the internet, a visit from an officer may be the assurance they need.

Sara Thornton's assertion that police need to be focussing on sexual offenses, terrorism, cybercrime and protecting children comes at the cost of, as she says a "move from reacting to those traditional crimes to thinking about focusing on threat and harm and risk and really protecting the public" which would be all fine and dandy were it not for the abject failure of the police to protect child victims of sexual abuse in Rotherham and Rochdale. And is there a danger of policing being based on what crimes are currently "trendy" or fashionable at the expense of "traditional" crimes that are nonetheless still crimes and still the cause of distress and loss among victims? I doubt anyone would disagree with the notion that the police should protect the public, but that is equally well served by investigating "tradional" crimes and putting away the perpetrators.   

The police are, like many other public services, being expected to do more with less following cuts estimated to be in the region of 20% in the last five years, resulting in the loss of 17,000 officers and a similar number of civilian staff. The fact that the service could lose 34,000 jobs in five years and still function suggests an element of over manning in the first place; the truth is that, like most organisations a certain number of cuts were tenable, but they have probably gone too far. Add to the cuts the overwhelming need for the police to report on the work they are doing (anyone who has worked in any large organisation will know that reporting on what you are doing is in many organisations more important than the job itself) and the other equally inevitable imbalance that large organisations suffer where the people directing strategy outnumber those implementing it and bingo, the number of officers at the sharp end soon becomes insufficient to deal with the organisation's primary function. And remember, the primary function of the police service remains what it was in Sir Robert Peel's day, to prevent crime and disorder; is it within their remit to decide that this crime is more worthy of investigation than another? I rather think that if a police officer of Sara Thornton's rank were burgled they would be visited by an officer (or several) regardless of whether they lived at a property with an odd or even number and I rather doubt that they would be expected to upload their own scene of crime photos on the internet.

It must be distressing to be burgled under any circumstances. To return from a holiday to find your house ransacked and your treasured possessions stolen must be even more distressing, but at least, even if the police are uninterested you won't be out of pocket if you are insured. Except that, in the fine traditions of insurance companies everywhere, any possible reason not to pay out will be sought out and pounced upon. The latest is that insurers will trawl social media accounts of burglary victims and any announcement of an upcoming holiday or happy snaps posted from an exotic destination may be used as a reason not to pay out on a claim. To add insult to injury then, our burglary victim will not only to a large degree be ignored by the police but they will be dismissed by their insurers.

And is burglary the thin end of the wedge? There is a whole, separate debate about whether or not certain drugs should be legalised and part of that debate is driven by the notion that the war against the production, distribution and use of these drugs has been lost. The idea that because some crimes are proving difficult to solve or that certain laws are difficult to uphold, we should simply give up on them would be abhorrent to most people, including, I imagine, many policemen, both rank and file and senior. On the other hand, and this is where my initial antipathy towards the views of Leicestershire police and Sara Thornton begins to waver and turn to understanding, if not agreement, cut-backs and reduced resources mean that increasingly police forces must cut their coats according to their cloth. As is true in most organisations, the troops on the ground have the difficult task of implementing directives from above that are based on imperatives with which the they, and certainly the public, do not agree or find hard to justify.

"Evening all"

Increasingly, the police are being expected to do more with less; the thin blue line gets ever thinner.

The Fear Of Missing Something

It is difficult now to remember what it was like in the days before we had the technology to record TV programmes, but in the days when it was watch it live or not at all (or wait for the repeat) we all missed programmes because we had unbreakable commitments or simply because we had a better alternative. In 1964, Labour leader Harold Wilson actually arranged for the BBC to reschedule an episode of hit sit-com Steptoe and Son to avoid a clash with the general election lest the 14 million odd Steptoe fans failed to make it to the polling booths and potentially cost Labour up to a dozen marginal seats. Nowadays people are more likely not to vote for more everyday reasons such as their disillusionment with politics and politicians rather than because Dave are repeating an episode of Top Gear for the umpteenth time.

Photo: BBC

While in the 1970's and 1980's we had to choose between going to a football match, a concert, down the pub with our mates, or stay at home and see who shot JR instead, we now routinely record TV programmes to watch later. We don't have to miss out, unlike forty years ago when we had to miss out on something sometimes, and we had to decide which something.

Today many people seem to be constantly in fear of missing out on something, and it most likely isn't a TV programme, in fact they probably have absolutely no idea what they are missing, but just have a vague notion that they might be missing something. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is the fear that everyone else is having more fun, doing more exciting things than you are, that something is happening somewhere that will provide the ultimate experience. More prosaically, there is the dread that without a constant connection to the rest of the world via social media sites, life will pass you by because  it is critical that you keep abreast of the minutiae of other people's lives.

Photo: Creatista/Shuttestock

The internet has a lot to answer for and I blame it for many things. On the one hand it frees us from the mundane, it's good for communication, it's good for the economy, it's good for learning and we've reached a stage where life without it is unimaginable. On the other hand it's as addictive as any narcotic, especially since it is now more readily available than ever in the form of the ubiquitous smartphone. Mobile internet access is now virtually omnipresent and I know I'm stating what is pretty obvious, but we now have a society in which a huge proportion spend the majority of their day connected and experience real anxiety if they are deprived of that connection. An apparent need for constant connection has developed in order to address the Fear of Missing Out. And not just FOMO.  There is the equally persistent variant Fear of Better Options (FOBO), a fear or belief that in doing whatever one is doing, one is missing out on something better. An obvious example of FOBO happens when you arrive somewhere new and want to stop for a bite to eat. You rule out McDonalds and Burger King because you don't want fast food. You pass the local Harvester because you don't want to go in a pub and rule out Wetherspoons for the same reason and because you can go to one any time. You rule out a few ordinary looking restaurants because you're sure you can find somewhere nicer and before you know it you are sitting down in a Little Chef wishing you had gone to that nice little Italian place you ruled out twenty minutes ago. Thus your fear of missing out on a better option leads you to an eatery of the lowest common denominator.

Photo: Daily Mirror

FOMO and FOBO can eventually lead to the Fear of Doing Anything (FODA)[1], although they aren't the only routes to FODA.  Fear of failure, past experiences and anxiety can lead there, but FOMO and FOBO can, singly or in association,  get people there. Because people with a Fear of Missing Out can find it difficult to say no they may accept multiple, often conflicting invitations to functions, parties or other social events and have to somehow juggle these or let people down at the last minute. And of course, whichever one they choose, they will invariably believe that whatever they declined would have been more rewarding, because FOBO can, as with the restaurant example, mean passing up perfectly acceptable offers and invitations in favour of some impossible dream of an incredible experience which is ultimately dissatisfying. Sufferers find themselves wracked by indecision, unable to accept offers and invitations "in case something better comes along," and eventually doing nothing. This may also lead to procrastination and in severe cases, complete paralysis. Both FOMO and FOBO can lead to sufferers putting off more important or less enjoyable tasks in pursuit or in the expectation of more pleasurable ones, although at least these procrastinators will eventually perform those important tasks, even if it is often in a half-arsed fashion. The more extreme sufferers will, through a form of paralysis, either put things off until it is too late or simply not attempt them at all.

Sometimes FODA is an effect of being swamped and finding it impossible to do the little things because too much else is on your mind and getting in the way. You know the sort of thing, the boiler has packed up, the dog looks like you should take it to the vet, the TV has gone wrong and you've run out of milk, so you take your tea black because  popping down to the shops to buy a pint of milk is too much, too overwhelming. Or you go out, buy several litres of creosote and treat the fences and garden shed because that takes your mind off the fact that there's no hot water in the house and where can you get a reliable plumber who isn't going to rip you off and God alone knows how much the vet's bill will be. If that sounds a little jokey, it isn't. I have known people with FODA, and I occasionally succumb to it myself.

Photo: freeimages.co.uk

The Fear of Missing Out, the Fear of Better Options and the Fear of Doing Anything are not exclusively phenomena of the internet age, although the technology exacerbates the problem. A potential cure, dropping off the grid and avoiding social media, may only cause another FOBO, namely the Fear of Being Offline. Frankly, we're doomed.

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[1] FOMO and FOBO are well documented syndromes or conditions. FOMO was first documented by Dr Dan Herman in 1996, (see http://fomofearofmissingout.com/fomo) while FOBO is a more recent discovery.  FODA appears to be a figment of my imagination, although procrastination is not.