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.

What's Your Mother's Maiden Name?

In 2008 there were 77,600 cases of identity theft reported to CIFAS[1], the United Kingdom's fraud prevention service. By 2012 this figure had risen to 123,600 and although it fell slightly in 2013 (to 108,500), identity theft is the UK's fastest growing method of criminal activity. Whether it is phishing, or vishing, shoulder surfing or card skimming at the ATM, or old fashioned rooting through rubbish for  bank statements and the like, there are so many vulnerable points in our lives that a thief could exploit and with each new piece of technology that comes along, those vulnerabilities increase. Just recently the news has carried stories of the threat to the public posed by thieves intercepting data from contactless payment cards and with Apple Pay just having been launched there will doubtless come tales of security vulnerabilities and fraud through that medium in the not too distant future.

Any vulnerabilities in Apple Pay will come to light, sooner or later.

From the individual's perspective, the fight against fraud and identity theft is similar to the security services' fight against the terrorist; the fraudsters only have to get lucky once while the public have to be ever vigilant, a difficult task when the crooks are perpetually innovating new techniques to part us from our money. The current method of choice appears to be the vishing scam where the fraudsters dupe their victims into withdrawing or transferring large sums of money from their bank accounts or deceive them into handing over their bank cards and revealing their PIN. One might think that with the amount of publicity these scams have received there would be no one left gullible enough to be taken in, but apparently there remain enough people unaware or easily duped for this form of fraud to remain popular and just last November two couples in Tunbridge Wells lost £57,000 between them. Even ex-bank managers can be fooled; a Nat West manager with 40 years' service is among victims of this type of crime.

Got one of these? You are at risk.

Touch wood, I've not had any of these sorts of calls. I have had calls advising me that I've recently been involved in an accident (not surprisingly, when I ask for details the caller is unaware of any) and I've had plenty of calls asking me to take part in surveys. To date I've also not had any calls purporting to be from Windows Support, but I did have a weird call some years ago that illustrates how even the most careful of us can get taken in.

Having working in banking for many years, and in the last couple years of my time in the bank in Risk Management, you would think that I would be quite familiar with the type of phone call that might be suspicious, but the call I had proved how easily one can be taken in, especially if you are off your guard.

It happened one evening. The phone rang and a chap introduced himself as being in BT's sales department. Would I be interested in broadband? he asked, and as it happens I was. We'd been discussing getting broadband as we were becoming increasingly frustrated by the slow speeds and inconvenience of dial-up, so I said yes. Of course had I actually already had broadband or just not been interested, this would have gone no further, but as it was the timing made me vulnerable. The man on the other end of the phone talked me through the process, but first he had to ask some security questions, didn't he? and like a patsy, I answered them, including the ubiquitous mother's maiden name question. He concluded the call by telling me that my new broadband router would be delivered within the week and that if I had any problems, to call 150, the usual BT contact number.

A week or so passed and no sign of the new router, so I called 150 and enquired about its whereabouts. BT had no record of the order. Fortunately I had the name of the guy who had called me, so I asked to speak to him. They had no one of that name in the sales department; they did have a senior executive with that name, but obviously he would not have been making sales calls! As you might imagine, I hung up on that call with a degree of unease and at the earliest opportunity checked my bank and credit card accounts for any suspicious activity; there was none. What I probably ought to have done, and certainly would do now, was check my credit score. In fact, out of interest , because I'm  writing this, and because there are all sorts of nasty things happening out there that we are all blissfully unaware of, I just checked my score, which was interesting. Even more interesting is how much information there is about us all out there in the ether and how easily and quickly this can be aggregated and used both by us and by legitimate enquirers.

Apart from the huge raft of publicity about scam calls, my "BT" experience has made me highly suspicious of any unexpected phone call, suspicious to the extent of treating calls from legitimate sources with some distrust. My bank phoned me a couple of weeks ago and in truth I was half expecting the call, which was about a new Standing Order instruction.  I fully understand why, even though they have phoned me on the number they have in their records, they wanted to ask me a few security questions but even this call was one I was initially very cautious about. A former colleague of mine had a call purporting to be from his bank (and as he worked for the same bank you can understand why he was suspicious when they started asking unexpected "security" questions), which he quickly identified as fraudulent by answering one question incorrectly and not being corrected.  I have found that a tactic that usually deters callers like those who want to undertake surveys or sell you something or help you following your "accident" is to answer every question with a question, or better yet ask lots of questions of your own before they get the chance to ask any themselves. Genuine callers will field your questions, the scammers will lose patient and hang up. I have made it my mission to get the cold callers to hang up first and by and large I've succeeded.

And I bet you've had one of these.

The fact that I am aware of a lot of the scams that are out there doesn't make me 100% safe of course. Anyone can be a victim because the fraudsters are coming up with new schemes all of the time. A high level of scepticism and a finely tuned bullshit detector are essential in this day and age.

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[1] https://www.cifas.org.uk/

A Midland Odyssey Part Four - No Moustaches Please!

I've lost count of the number of courses I went on during my working life, but one thing that stands out about them is the way in which they changed over the years. By the time I left work the majority of courses focussed on soft skills like communication, managing people and being a leader, but in the early days of my time in Midland Bank the courses were about the nuts and bolts of specific roles in the organisation.

Before I had even set foot in a branch I went on an Induction Course, which taught the uninitiated what banks did and what sort of roles we would be performing.  After starting work at Gants Hill I was sent on a Remittances Course, a Control Course and a Cashiering Course[1]. Later there were Basic and Advanced Foreign Courses and sundry others. Midland Bank had a Training Branch at Buchanan House in Holborn, just by Chancery Lane tube and what was striking about the place was how strict the rules were. It was a lot more formal than working in a branch, and believe me in the mid 1970's it was pretty rigid in branches.

Buchanan House. Picture: Google Maps.

One of the first things that was mentioned on courses at Holborn was the management rule about moustaches and beards or facial hair in general. Men were told that if they arrived at Training Branch on day one of their course clean shaven, then they were expected to remain so for the duration of it. Bizarrely, Training Branch management thought that away from the their normal office environment, men would immediately take the opportunity to grow beards or moustaches and that this would not project a neat image, that the public would somehow be affronted by Midland Bank staff growing facial hair; therefore it was forbidden. Graciously, management allowed that men already in possession of beards or moustaches would not be obliged to shave them off.

There being an actual branch of Midland Bank on the ground floor of Training Branch, one might have expected that being customers of the Bank as well as Staff members, attendees on courses could take advantage of these facilities to cash cheques or pay money into their accounts. This was most definitely not allowed. It was feared that lunchtimes would see the Branch so gummed up with people from the various courses queuing to cash cheques that the whole place would grind to a halt. In fact there always seemed to be a perception among the course tutors that, freed from the strictures of working in their normal Branch or Department, course attendees would run amok. In actual fact boredom was a more common occupational hazard on these courses, driven by the fact that many people were on whichever course it was at the wrong time. Some people were sent on courses too early, sometimes even before they had done the job it related to at all. The course therefore would go right over their heads. Others would have been doing the job for so long that the course added no value. These people often knew more about the job that the tutors and were usually a valuable source of knowledge for the small band of people who were, in the manner of Goldilocks, on the course at about the right time, having done the job for sufficient time to have an understanding but not too long that they knew it all. Of course there would occasionally be something that everyone wanted to learn about, normally something that was rarely encountered in Branches. Such a thing was Automatic Transfers. I can't recall anyone in Branches understanding them, so when I was sent on a Control Course I was particularly keen to find out about them, and so it seemed was everyone else on the course. Naturally therefore, Automatic Transfers were glossed over and not dealt with at all, leading me to believe that either the tutors knew nothing about them (very probable) or that they did not in fact work properly (equally likely). On reflection, it is more than likely that both were true.

Some people were sent on courses simply to get them out of the Branch. At times when there was no one on holiday and there were more people than jobs, sending someone on a course, no matter how inappropriate, was a good way of getting them out of the way. Hence there would be Cashiers on Foreign Courses being taught about Documentary Credits when the sum total of the foreign work in their branches was the sale of currency and travellers cheques. And there were many people who went on courses and then went back to their branches only to find that it would be months before they had the opportunity to do the job the course related to, which rather diminished the benefit of attending the thing in the first place.

In those far off days when flared trousers and kipper ties were de rigueur but not everyone in the country had a bank account, Midland Bank Staff Accounts were constantly under scrutiny. Management appeared to be terrified that staff would misuse their accounts. Overdrafts were not allowed, money going into a staff account (other than the Bank's salary) was treated with suspicion and required managerial approval, grudgingly granted only after an interrogation in which all that was missing was a bright light shone in the eyes of account holder. Applying for a credit card or personal loan required much more hoop jumping than would have been the case for a regular customer. Stories circulating at the time included one about the member of Staff refused a Personal Loan to buy a car on the grounds that the car he wanted to buy was superior to that owned by his Manager, who would therefore not permit this since he (the Manager) could not be seen driving a car inferior to one of his subordinates.

 If these restrictions were driven by a terror of fraud or theft on the part of a member of Staff then it was perhaps ironic that two of a very small number of cases of dishonesty that I heard about during my years in the Bank were attributed to people who worked at Training Branch. One case, which went to court and was reported in the national press, involved a tutor who misappropriated expenses. Course attendees were paid travelling expenses, in cash in my early days in the Bank, and one tutor was in the habit of inflating claims and creaming off the difference, which ran to thousands of pounds, albeit over a fair number of years. Another tale, which may or may not have been true, involved the cafeteria at Buchanan House. This served a desultory selection of rolls and sandwiches, crisps and chocolate bars and apparently turned a regular, if modest profit. Then the chap who ran the cafeteria was taken ill and spent some time on sick leave. Profits soared under his replacement's control, only to be restored to their more modest levels upon the original chap's return. If the rumours were true, the only thing being cooked in the cafeteria were the books.

Much of what I learned at Training Branch had to be treated with a liberal pinch of salt because as everyone who has worked anywhere knows, there is a correct way of doing things and practical way of doing them. Mind you, I can still remember the definition of conversion.[2]

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[1] For the non-bank types, Remittance, often called Waste, consisted of (among other things) batching up cheques and credits paid in over the counter and processing them for input or despatch to Head Office. Control was a job that included checking entries input on the computer (dumb terminal), dealing with unpaid cheques  and balancing the books at the end of the day. Cashiering is self evident.

[2] "By our actions, we deprive the true owner of their rightful property."

Feeling Weird

One of the reasons that I started writing this blog was because I felt that it would be cathartic, and this week I feel more in need of some form of release for my feelings than I have for some time, because last Friday I sold my late Mother's house and it has affected me a great deal more than I expected that it would.

My Mother died at the start of the year. I wouldn't say that it was either expected nor that it came as a total shock. Ever since about this time last year I had felt that Mum was not quite her normal self; "slightly off her game" was the way I described it. Largely I put it down simply to the fact that she was getting older, but she seemed to have lost a lot of her enthusiasm for life; in short she had lost interest in things, in life itself.

Mum came to us for Christmas dinner and although she was fairly subdued, she seemed to be a little more like her old self, telling us some things she intended doing in the New Year. She ate fairly well but went home quite early as she was feeling tired. A few days passed after Christmas and we had had no contact, which was not uncommon; we didn't live in each other's pockets and Mum was often out at the shops or at the church, so when I phoned and got no answer I wasn't unduly concerned. That was until we got a call asking if Mum was Ok as some of her friends had not seen her for a few days and she hadn't been answering the phone. We went to Mum's house and I admit to having an uneasy feeling as I opened the front door.

Mum was lying in the hall and clearly she was dead, from a heart attack it later proved and blessedly her passing must have been swift; the evidence suggested that she didn't suffer, for which I am grateful. Of course a sudden death like this, in the home and when not under specific treatment, adds to the bureaucracy that surrounds someone's passing, and the first few weeks of the New Year were spent dealing with administration.  From getting the Death Certificate to arranging the funeral; from notifying the utility companies to making sure the house was secure, anyone who has had to deal with a death in the family will tell you that there is often little time to grieve as you are too busy with practical issues.

Funerals are something of a watershed. Although it was a day when, on one level, I felt that I was saying goodbye to my Mother, I knew it was still nearer the start of the grieving process than the end. Research by the Sue Ryder charity has been published that suggests that people grieve on average for two years, one month and four days after losing a loved one, or, for those without any support, an additional eight months, three weeks and five days on average. The danger with this sort of research is that people can take it too literally and feel that once these deadlines have been reached they will be better. In my experience, and I am certain I am not alone, the grieving process itself is not linear, we progress and then we go back. We may take two steps forward then one step back because although many people say time is a healer, it only heals if we help it to.

Time passed and dealing with the practical aspects of settling Mum's affairs I had neither the opportunity, nor to some extent, the cause, to feel too upset.  Although it was odd in the extreme to go to Mum's house, to clean, tidy, dispose of furniture, sort through effects, get rid of her clothes, empty the shed, keep the lawn mown and generally keep the place in order while the estate agents were marketing it, it helped to be busy. Practical matters take the mind off the emotions.

Almost immediately that the house was put on the market, we had an offer; two in fact. A first time buyer (with mortgage) and a cash buyer. We plumped for the latter, which promptly fell through when local searches revealed that the council would not permit the conversion of the property for multiple occupancy. On reflection I was actually quite glad about that. Mum's neighbours had always been really good to her, and were supportive after her death; I didn't think it would be very nice for them to have a HMO (Home in Multiple Occupancy) next door.

A couple of other false starts and then we seemed to be proceeding quite nicely with a sale, again to a first time buyer, so no chain. This suggested that once things got to a certain point, there would be no need for a month between exchange and completion; I expected a week but because I've never been in this situation before, the call I had from the agents asking if we could exchange and complete the very next day threw me into a state of panic. On one hand I was reluctant to agree as there was still some residual tidying and cleaning to do, but equally disinclined to refuse in case something happened to cause the deal to fall through. In the end I agreed and spent a few hours finishing off and leaving the house in a fit state for its new owners. A few items that I couldn't work out what to do with now reside in my garage pending a decision.

And that was when I began to feel distinctly weird. While the house was unsold, a part of my Mum was still with me. Once it had gone, the final cord had been cut, the final link with Mum had gone. On a rational, logical level she has been gone since the turn of the year, but now the house had gone I felt that I missed her more than ever.  The sale of the house seems much more strange, more unsettling, than any other I've been involved with. Possibly because I didn't live there, didn't have to move out, I'm finding it difficult to come to terms with the fact that the house is now nothing to do with me, that I don't have to go round and do something tomorrow, or the day after. And now there's no one to go and talk to about things that the family are up to. Mum's not there to talk to on the phone, or to listen to about what's going on in her life, or at church.

I'm by no means unique in having to face up to a death in the family, by no means unusual in having to deal with the death of a parent, and it isn't as though I haven't had to deal with a sudden death of someone very close to me before, it's just that this time I am finding it harder to deal with than I expected. I've been looking through some old photos, and there's a strange thing, the photo albums I remember from my childhood were nowhere to be found when we cleared Mum's house. Some old pictures remain, found stuffed in envelopes, but some I distinctly remember, particularly Mum in a polka dot dress on her honeymoon to Jersey in 1955, have vanished. I miss them and I miss her. 

The End Of The Pier Show

There are many pleasure piers along the British coastline; sadly they all seem to be particularly prone to catching fire or suffering some other calamity. Weston-Super-Mare, Great Yarmouth, Eastbourne, Brighton and Colwyn Bay have all been stricken by fire and Southend's famous pier, the longest pleasure pier in the world at 1.34 miles, has suffered several fires including the dramatic blaze in 1959 when three hundred people had to be rescued after being cut off.  Among others, Southend pier was struck by the MV Kingsabbey in 1986, creating a 70 foot gap and in 1947 Penarth pier was hit by the Canadian merchant ship, Port Royal Park, a vessel of over 7,000 tons.

Fortunately, each time Southend pier has suffered a blaze it has been restored, although it has to be said that there is now less of a reason to walk to the end than there was, apart from the pleasure of the walk itself, as there is now little at the end of the pier apart from a cafe and the lifeboat station. Still, I'm glad that it has been consistently rebuilt as Val and I visit Southend several times a year and frequently walk to the end of the pier, sometimes returning to the shore by train if the weather is not too good. On more than one occasion we've walked to the end in a howling gale and been glad of the train, although one New Year's Day we walked the length of the pier and the weather was more clement than it can be in summer. Walking the pier is something I've been doing on and off since I was a child. When I was very young and my parents could not afford a holiday away somewhere, we would go out for days during the school summer holidays, sometimes to the museums in London but frequently to Southend and I have many happy memories of the train ride to the coast and walking along the seafront.

The Sir John Betjemen, the train on Southend Pier. Betjemen said 

"the Pier is Southend, Southend is the Pier"

Other piers have been less fortunate than Southend; many are now derelict, including Brighton's West Pier. Those that have been rebuilt or restored owe much to the efforts of local people raising funds for their renovation, and even now many rely on the admission charged to those who promenade along them, one reason why I think it important to visit seaside piers, to maintain this important part of our heritage. It is sad to visit Herne Bay for example and see the stump of the pier that is all that remains usable, with the pier head stranded hundreds of yards out to sea. Many of the piers that remain have lost a little of their glitz and glory, the music hall shows that were once a common attraction are now much fewer.

Southend Pier, from the PS Waverley.

Apart from the walk on the pier, those childhood visits to Southend normally featured a few similar activities. You can't visit the seaside without occasionally partaking of fish and chips and we would normally go to The Royal Fish Bar, which I'm pleased to say is still there, although I haven't eaten there for years...maybe next time. A visit to Southend with my parents would also usually mean a visit to the cockle sheds at Leigh where my Dad would indulge in some seafood, although this, accompanied by a pint or two of beer, an ice cream and the aforementioned fish and chips would often result in him feeling a bit queasy by the time we returned home. And I can still remember, on those walks as a child, looking down through the gaps between the boards, seeing the water and fearing, irrationally, that I might fall through a rotten board into the sea.

Leigh, famed for its cockle sheds.

We went to other seaside resorts when I was young. Folkestone once when I was very small; I don't remember it at all, although there are some photographic memories, and Eastbourne springs to mind as being one of the last seaside holidays I took with my parents, I must have been about sixteen. Nowadays I'm more likely to visit the coast just for a day, in fact one of the last seaside holidays I took in this country was to Bournemouth with Val, just for a few days back in 1997, although we had been to Bexhill for our honeymoon two years previously. 

Me with my parents on some long ago beach holidays...

...and Val, at Bexhill. Note the warm clothes, gloves and ice cream!

There is nothing quite like a day at the coast, be it Southend or one of our other favourites, Whitstable, which is quite a contrast from the Essex town. Where Southend has a pier and amusements, Whitstable is a working fishing port with quaint back streets and unusual shops. Both have their charms, both have their appeal but in both places we like nothing better than a walk beside the sea.

Southend Pier opened in 1830 and became popular with visitors from the East End of London, so much so that the Victorians dubbed the town "Whitechapel-on-Sea" because of the number of visitors from that part of the capital. It might not attract the same numbers today, it went into decline during the 1960's when holidays abroad became more affordable, but 6.4 million people still visit the town each year and a great many of the will tread the wooden boards out to sea. I can't imagine a summer without a visit or two and the memories it evokes.

It's Only Words

Somewhat more than 25 years ago I went on a course from work, during which all of the participants were required to deliver a short presentation. This did not need to be work related, although mine was (it was about Foreign Bills for Collection in case you are interested; a more memorable talk was on the correct way to wash a car, as I recall). These presentations were videoed and then we had the excruciating task of watching ourselves and critiquing our performance. The thing that struck me about my talk was that I had not realised it was possible to say "OK" so often during such a short time. Since then I have been conscious of the various verbal tics that I have and of the number of times I repeat certain phrases. It has made me keen to vary my speech, to search for synonyms and not to resort to clichés. For example I am at present trying to wean myself off starting sentences with "In my honest opinion," or "If I'm honest," because they annoy the life out of me so goodness knows how my listeners feel.

It is either because of the experience I had on that course or because I am something of a pedant, that I have accumulated a number of words, phrases and expressions that have gained common currency which infuriate me and I crave your indulgence while I share them with you.

1.       Bad Boys

I happen to be a fan of Jamie Oliver's cooking. I have one of his recipe books and I admire his efforts to get people eating wholesome, home cooked food, but every time he picks up a chilli, or a piece of fish, or whatever, and says, "Look at this bad boy," I cringe. I've noticed that in the latest Sky TV ads, Idris Elba is describing smartphones and tablets as "bad boys" and again, I just want to go "aaaargh!" A bad boy is a poorly behaved, male child, not a vegetable or a piece of technology: can we all desist from describing inanimate objects as "bad boys" please?

2.       Calls out

Just this week The Huffington Post stated that Secretary of State for Education, Nicky Morgan had been "Called out for hypocrisy" over remarks deemed to be homophobic. Apparently, to be "called out" means to be challenged, to which I would say to those using the expression, I challenge you to use proper English and not some lazy substitute. A call out is a publishing term; it is not synonymous with confront.

3.       Like a boss

This one annoys me immensely, perhaps irrationally, but this is my blog, my opinion, so get over it. "Like a boss" is commonly used to describe a person completing an action with authority and finesse, so why not just say so instead of employing an annoying surrogate?

4.       Cheeky

Everything these days seems to be "cheeky." Be it a "cheeky Nandos" or a "cheeky pint" after work or popping out of the office for a "cheeky cigarette." The word has become an inane adjective that ought to be consigned to the dustbin. A drink after work may properly be described as "a swift half" even if several pints are involved; a visit to Nandos may be described as "going to Nandos" and a fag break may be exactly that or "popping out for a fag" but, please, please spare me the "cheeky" whatever. A child can be cheeky; even an adult can be cheeky, but as with "bad boy", inanimate objects and activities remain steadfastly un-cheeky.

5.       Owns

I own a motor car, I own a house, I own a computer but if I beat you at a video game (unlikely I know) or at Scrabble, I do not "own" you. I detest the internet pages I see with headlines like, "Ronaldo owns Messi in El Clásico" after Real Madrid have beaten Barcelona. It's lazy, it's stupid and it demeans our language. If Real beat Barça then it may be legitimate to say "Ronaldo outguns Messi" or the like, but "owns"? Sorry, no, no and thrice no!

6.       Stylee

I can accept the use of the word style slightly out of context, by which I mean not as describing a procedure or design or description but as a means of emphasis, for example "United won in fine style" but "stylee"? Commonly used (overused) by music critics who think it is hip, it's a word that just grates on me (shudder).

7.       Paradigm

Now paradigm is a noble word. It means a typical example of something or a distinct set of concepts, but it has been hijacked by the trendy to grant importance to the bland. The fact that Russell Brand once used it in a Newsnight interview is enough for me to wince when I hear it. What he said was that voting is "a pre-existing paradigm which is quite narrow and only serves a few people" when concept or idea or model would do just as nicely, thank you. Paradigm is used generally by people who are trying to make themselves out to be cleverer than they actually are. You may think that this is a fitting description of Mr Brand: I could not possibly comment. Oh, and "pre-existing" is just superfluous.

8.       Team or Crew

Football clubs and cricket clubs have teams; ships and aeroplanes have crews. Your local McDonalds or Tesco have staff or employees, or at a pinch, servers. It really irks me to see the waiting staff in a restaurant described as "the crew" or the shop floor staff in a supermarket described as "the team" or "colleagues." I accept that alternatives may be difficult to ascribe but a little imagination would not go amiss, or perhaps just a little more formality. The same goes for many groups described as "squad" or "gang" unless they are soldiers or safecrackers respectively.

9.       Curate

A curate is a member of the clergy;  a curator is historically the keeper of a museum, or gallery, or library. In recent years the act of curating something has been debased to simply mean someone who uploads some pictures on flickr. On that basis anyone with any type of social media account to which they occasionally upload a photo is a curator.

10.   Broke the internet

I strongly doubt that this blog will break the internet. I also doubt that anything apart from nuclear war, North Korean superhackers or a catastrophic solar flare will break the internet. Pictures of Kim Kardashian's oversized rear end did not and will not break the internet. This term has become a hackneyed expression that simply means that a few internet sites have received a few more visits than  normal.

I imagine that some of you are probably wondering why I am getting worked up over this. "It's only words" you may say, and so they are; just a few misused, excessively employed, stale, tired out words for which the language has so many richer, more descriptive, fresher alternatives, amirite?

Thoughts From A Small Island

I have noticed that there was an error in last week's blog, The Holiday Planner ,  when I inadvertently relocated Paphos, which is in Cyprus, to Crete. No doubt many of you noticed this but were too polite to point it out! As I mentioned last week, holidays can be stressful and our trip to Paphos was quite stressful in the booking but fortunately pretty much stress free in the implementation. Pretty much but not entirely, because as anyone who has ever flown knows, the bit between arriving at the airport and actually boarding the plane seems designed to be awkward and stress inducing, although in fairness it could have been worse.

Inside Stansted.  Picture: telegraph.co.uk 

We arrived at Stansted in good time, our car was taken away to be parked and we entered the terminal, where a few things have changed since I was last there. Firstly entry to the security screening area requires scanning your boarding pass, which two out of the three of did at the first attempt; Val had to have three goes before the machine deigned to open the gates. Something always happens to one of us at when we pass through airport security: at Los Angeles a few years ago, Val was taken off to a side room after the fingerprint recognition machine decided that she actually had no fingerprints whatever. After the boarding pass scan, the line for the security checks, which is where Stansted always appears to be particularly chaotic, and this time was no exception. First up, the ritual that would have made a great task on The Krypton Factor[1], of fitting your 100ml bottles of toiletries into a clear plastic bag, which it is advertised measures 20cm x 20cm, but is actually 19x19 (yes, I did measure it).

Having fallen foul of Stansted's security a few years ago when flying to Majorca when our toiletries were deemed not to meet the necessary standards and which resulted in us being delayed and having to run to the gate, where we were the last two passengers and only just got on the flight, we were certain to make sure that we were OK this time and passed through without incident, unlike the elderly lady and the toddler in a buggy who had to pass their shoes through the scanner. If a lot of these checks seem a bit arbitrary, then I'm sure it because they are to a large degree. These sorts of restrictions, which aren't uniform across Europe, let alone the world as a whole, were introduced more as a means of suggesting that something was being done in the fight against possible terror attacks on airlines rather than as a means of defeating a specific threat. After all, when we flew back from Majorca  after that incident I mentioned, there was no requirement to transfer our toiletries into a clear plastic bag. This year at Paphos on the way back I actually asked if they had any plastic bags at security as there was a sign saying they were needed; none were available so our toiletries went through the scanner in our normal luggage.

That was just one of a few contrasts between the airports at Stansted and Paphos. At Stansted a great deal of remodelling is going on, hence the area after the Duty Free shops and around the restaurants is a bit frenzied. Having plenty of time to spare on this occasion, we treated ourselves to a meal in Giraffe (and very good it was too). At Paphos the departure area is an oasis of calm. Fewer shops, fewer places to eat and crucially, fewer passengers. Stansted serves 19.98 million passengers per year; after an upgrade, Paphos will be able to handle 2.7 million per year. While planes were taking off every minute or so from Stansted, there was only one departure from Paphos in the two hours we spent waiting for our flight home.

We were sorry to leave Cyprus; none of us had been to the island before but hopefully it won't be too long before we return as almost everything about our trip was right. The hotel we stayed at, The Annabelle, is quite large (218 rooms) but never impersonal. We ran out of superlatives in describing it. We had a well appointed suite with a sea view from our balcony and the service is attentive without being intrusive. 

Nice waking up to this view each morning.

We had booked half-board as it was the same price as bed and breakfast; we figured that we could eat out if the restaurant wasn't to our taste, but we never did. The restaurant is a buffet, something which can sometimes mean that meals are a bit of a bun fight, but this was really very good and had the bonus of allowing the more fastidious of us to tailor our meals exactly to our tastes and permitting the more enthusiastic of us to go round a few times to sample the widest range of dishes.

I had some company to go with my coffee.

Only being there for five days we stayed pretty close to the hotel, but managed to sample some culture (the Kato Paphos Archaeological Park), indulge in some retail therapy (The Kings Avenue Mall), go on a glass bottom boat trip and generally chill out. In the afternoons, while Val and Sarah took a dip in the pool, I would find a shady spot to read a book, and would often be joined by one of the cats that frequent the hotel. We took some walks, although it was a bit hot at times and one walk along the coast had to be cut short when it got dark.  Every day we took a stroll down to the marina and enjoyed a  coffee at The Poseidonas Cafe. Generally it was quite a laid back few days and we were sorry to come home.

Medieval Castle of Paphos

Kato Paphos Archaeological Park, including yours truly and Val at The Odeon.

The lovely church of St Nicholas that we found on one of our walks.

We returned to Stansted and used the automated passport gates that you can use if you have a new biometric ‘chipped’ passport. These are supposed to speed the process up, but there was still a long queue and some people were rejected and had to be processed manually. It seemed to take an age for the machine to recognise my photo and open the gates and Sarah had to have a number of goes before finally being allowed through but overall it was probably a bit quicker than standing in line waiting to be processed by a human being. We picked up our car, which took a bit longer than I was happy about; the ten minutes they promised on the phone stretched out to half an hour, something which I was going to provide feedback on when Purple Parking sent me an email with a link to their survey. Unfortunately the link in their mail didn't work. Still, I did add a couple of reviews on tripadvisor (http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/) of the hotel and the archaeological park. Tripadvisor is a site which I've usually found pretty reliable, unlike some, as a recent news story from the BBC showed,  suggesting that at least 20% of comments posted on review websites are bogus (there is no suggestion that tripadvisor is one of those sites).

Cyprus in general and The Annabelle in particular are now firmly on my list of places I'd like to revisit in the future.

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[1] The Krypton Factor was a British TV gameshow that was part quiz, part assault course. It ran from 1977 to 1995 but was revived for two series in 2009/2010.

Maths: What Is It Good For?

Not since Einstein wrote E=mc² on a blackboard has anything containing an equals sign created such a hullabaloo as the now infamous Hannah's sweets question in last week's Edexcel  GCSE maths paper. The question, which got distilled down until it fitted into a 140 character Tweet, appeared to make little sense at first. It began  by stating that Hannah had a bag of sweets, some of which were orange and some yellow, that she then took and ate two. The students sitting the exam were then asked to show that n2-n-90=0, which at first appeared to be the mathematical equivalent of a non-sequitor, until  online articles began appeared that explained that the question was not asking for a solution to the equation, but was asking that the students did some basic probability.[1]

"Albert said that e=mc2"

Like no other subject, maths has always had a reputation for posing questions that try to smuggle the real world into the equation, although more often than not the links  are somewhat tenuous, or else the "participants" in the question are performing some apparently illogical or pointless exercise, like 'John and Matthew are filling a swimming pool 50 metres by 25 metres by 2 metres with Coca Cola, how many cans will they need to buy to complete their task?' But no amount of camouflage can hid the fact that like most questions in most exams, students are being asked to regurgitate facts they have learned by rote, with perhaps a little analysis thrown in. Yet whether it is showing that n2-n-90=0 or calculating how many 330ml cans of Coke are required to fill a swimming pool of certain dimensions, most people taking maths exams (or most other subjects, come to that) will know one thing for certain; after they have finished their exams they are extremely unlikely to need to call upon that knowledge again. Naturally those students going on to study a subject at university will use the knowledge they gathered in their chosen subject, but what thereafter?

Early tweets on the subject expressed students' frustration with the question

In many respects education is about learning to learn, learning to analyse, learning to apply rather than learning facts. For most people, education is about becoming capable rather than the specifics of subjects that will never be applicable to their work or indeed their home life. I once worked in an IT department where there were as many people with degrees in agriculture as there were in computing (there were one of each). There being no relevance in an agricultural degree in writing COBOL, the significance of that degree was obviously only in the particular programmer's ability to learn, assimilate and process information. How one gets from agriculture to computer programming is proof that that individual, like many people, did not know what it was they wanted to do when they started their course, or at least had their mind changed about what they wanted to do at some point during their time at university. Knowing what you want to do when choosing A levels or a university degree is helpful if not essential, and although embarking a medical degree without an ambition to be some sort of practitioner would be wasteful, I imagine there are many people whose career choice only becomes settled after they have started studying or even after they have finished. When I was at school I envied those people who knew exactly what they wanted to do when they left; I was one of a fairly large group of people who sort of drifted into a career. Forty years later I sometimes wonder what became of the people who knew what they wanted to do; did they achieve their goals I wonder? And those like me who ended up in jobs through inertia rather than ambition, how happy were they with their decisions? Going back forty years or more, to the days when I was taking my O and A Levels, I do not remember anything like the pressure that was exerted on my generation of students compared with that faced by 16 and 18 year olds today. I took eight O levels; passing four would have been considered a success, so long as one was maths and another  English and as it happened I passed seven. Nowadays, when 16 year olds are taking ten or more GCSE's, just passing is not enough; A's and A*'s are all that people want.

Hannah's sweets, the full question.

Funnily enough, the one O level that I failed was one which would have been quite useful in later life, at work. I failed French, and in some ways it was a conscious decision. I had no aptitude for the subject and disliked it immensely. I concluded that if I concentrated all my efforts on it to the detriment of my other subjects, I might just scrape a pass, so I abandoned any pretence of revising for the exam and failed miserably. When I ended up in the international payments department at HSBC I found that even a passing knowledge of French was useful as many banks in France and almost all of those in Algeria and Morocco would only correspond in that language. To my amazement I found that although I could not speak the language I could translate many of the telexes we got from the banks in those countries. The little French I remembered from school actually proved useful;  it certainly proved more useful than physics or history, both of which I passed, which made me wonder if I ought to have tried harder with French at school.

I somehow passed maths at O level, since when my use of the subject has been minimal and confined to arithmetic; algebra, quadratic equations and the like baffled me then and continue to do so now, but I cannot ever recall a time when I have thought to myself "I really wish I could remember my polynomial multiplication" so, as with the knowledge I gained in other subjects but which I subsequently forgot, that has never been a problem for me.

And that is something which students finishing their GCSE, AS and A2 exams would do well to remember. As important as those subjects are now, as important as the grades they will get in August will be, come ten years time, or five years time and for some people, even in just one year's time, those grades will be irrelevant except as a matter of nostalgia. The knowledge that they acquired will be useful principally to try and answer some questions on University Challenge. I am not saying that exams aren't important or that we should not care about grades but just as important, if not more so is learning how to learn and how to interpret and apply knowledge. The skills I learned at school that proved most useful once I started work were a retentive memory, curiosity and having an enquiring mind. At no time has being unable to show that n2-n-90=0 proved to be a disadvantage; better French would have been useful though.

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[1] The Guardian explained it as well as anyone, here: http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2015/jun/05/how-to-solve-the-maths-gcse-question-about-hannahs-sweets-that-went-viral

Absolute Power

Most weeks, when I sit down to write my blog, the subject presents itself quite nicely. This week however I have been staring at a blank screen and wondering what on earth to write about, because the story that has dominated the  news is that of the circus surrounding world football's governing body, Fifa and its president, Sepp Blatter, and regular readers may recall that I vented my spleen on that subject back in November (Sblatter! Are FIFA Beyond Parody?). There has been so much in the papers, on the internet, on radio and television about the arrests of Fifa executives last week and the re-election of Sepp Blatter as president of the organisation and his subsequent shock resignation a few days later, that there would seem to be little that I can add to the sum of knowledge on the subject, however as I have remarked before, ignorance is no obstacle to having an opinion, so here goes.

This whole saga has thrown up some issues that go beyond the specifics of the alleged bribery and corruption and the morally dubious award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, including the perception of Blatter and Fifa that we have in the West as opposed to that held in other parts of the world. Both Sepp Blatter and Qatar Foreign Minister Khaled al-Attiyah have said that the attack on that country's right to host the 2022 World Cup is "racist" and once the racist card is played, it is often difficult to refute. But is it racist to condemn the manner in which the stadia are being built in Qatar? Migrant workers have had their passports withheld, are unable to return home without paying for exit visas and many Nepalese workers have been unable to go home to bury their relatives who have died in the recent earthquakes.

Can we really gloss over the fact that in 2014 Nepalese migrants working on construction of the stadiums and infrastructure died at a rate of one every two days? According to The Guardian newspaper  that  figure excludes deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi workers, "raising fears that if fatalities among all migrants were taken into account the toll would almost certainly be more than one a day." The Washington Post estimates that 4,000 workers will die by the time the project to build the stadia is complete. Not since the construction of Britain's railways in the 1880s and 1890s when workers died at a rate of nearly 500 a year can there have been a construction project with such a high mortality rate. Yet the reason Qatar's fitness to host the competition is being debated is because of alleged kick-backs and whether the competition should be moved to winter to avoid the blistering heat, not the fact that there could be as many as 50 deaths for each game that will be played in the finals.  Is human life really so cheap that we can afford to ignore these deaths?  Last week, Fifa's sponsors, Coca Cola, McDonalds, Adidas, Budweiser et al were concerned about the reputational damage they might suffer by association with alleged corruption within the organisation; they seem to be much more relaxed about being associated with a competition that, by the time it takes place, will been responsible for  many thousands of deaths.

Before Sepp Blatter fell on his sword and resigned (or was he pushed? Rumours of a "smoking gun" have been mentioned), he had been blathering on about the support that he had from the world game, and in Europe many people would have been scratching their heads and wondering how he could be so deluded, except that Blatter did command a lot of support. Support from the Asian and African nations whose profile he had raised by increasing the number of places available to them at World Cup Final tournaments, nations whose Football Associations have benefited from Fifa's money to support and develop grassroots football in their countries. How much of that money went where it was intended is moot.

Some people have questioned the role of the United States in the arrests of Fifa officials and the potential investigation of Sepp Blatter himself. Just recently Blatter was pontificating on the fact that Fifa is not accountable to any other authority but for those who question the United States' jurisdiction in this matter, remember that if you use email or transact in US Dollars, the US will hold you accountable for any wrongdoing. Virtually every email sent anywhere in the world will at some point pass through or be stored on a server in the US; every time you transact in US Dollars (even if your transaction does not got to or originate from the US) your payment will pass through New York. By dint of these two facts the US have jurisdiction. To have any chance of avoiding the long arm of American law enforcement, don't correspond by email and don't use their currency. As with every person in a position of power, Blatter and his associates became to believe themselves fireproof, Teflon coated, able to act with impunity, until along came someone with greater power.

It is said that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,"[1] and this is entirely apposite to  the whole Fifa scandal (or scandals, because goodness alone knows what is to come); absolute power creates a cloak of invulnerability and self deception. The statement last week by  FIFA’s director of communications, Walter De Gregorio, that the arrests were actually “a good thing” showing that the organization is on “the right track," was a delusional piece of doublespeak worthy of Orwell and typical of the fantasy that all large organisations create in themselves that they can do no wrong and that any criticism, any prosecution even, is either a wholly unjustified attack, or as in this case an actual vindication of their methods.

While many have welcomed the US investigation and some people have positively rejoiced at Blatter's resignation, including FA chairman Greg Dyke (who is scarcely above criticism for some of his boneheaded plans to "improve" the game in England), it would be as well to inject a note of caution until the proposed reforms of Fifa are published and a successor to Blatter is elected. Nothing has changed yet and there is no guarantee that whatever change comes about will be to everyone's taste. Bowing to the inevitable, Blatter said "Fifa needs profound restructuring," but words are cheap, changing the culture of an organisation the size and diversity of Fifa, where dubious practices appear to have become the norm will be an immense challenge.

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[1] John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834–1902), historian and moralist, who was otherwise known simply as Lord Acton said it originally.