Banking manifesto

Dear UK Banks,

I am willing to pay for really useful services, like cheques and cashpoint withdrawals. Don’t make cheques free, that kind of thing leads to 10p cheques and such silliness.

Don’t steal from loyal customers. A bank-to-bank transfer takes around a second, not 3 days. Other countries have made illegal this practice of delaying bank transfers and stealing the interest. If the UK government doesn’t have the guts to do this, you could always do the decent thing and change your ways without being forced by legislation.

Charge what you need to charge for the running of the account and pay interest on my money. If the account costs a lot to run but has useful services, I’ll pay.

Don’t conceal card charges. For a long time, card transaction charges were concealed from the card user by foisting them onto the vendor, who had to lump it. Now the vendors are biting back, with excessive card changes. Why can’t it just be fair and open? I don’t mind paying for well-supported, safe and insured transactions but not at 6%+.

Yours sincerely,

AH

Taiji from the beginning: 1

One lunch break, around 12 years ago, I turned up at the Isobel Dunn dance school and attended my first lesson in taiji with Bob France. It was a wierd and wonderful experience, not least because of Bob’s incongruous combining of genuine teaching with off-colour anecdotes. It felt good and seemed to fit pretty well with the Alexander Technique I had done before, especially the Zhan Zhuang (standing post) exercises. So I decided to come back again the following week.

I didn’t realise it then but I was starting out on a 12 year journey into taiji. It didn’t turn out to be the most magnificent trek but it certainly had it’s ups, downs, stalls and restarts.

Why is software so bad?

Why is computer software so bad?

Well, not exactly bad. Lots of software does great stuff nearly all the time. But nearly all software does hideous things some of the time and it’s very frustrating. My motivation to use a particular piece of software is greatly reduced if I think there is even a small chance that my time will be spent trying to overcome a defect rather than doing the task I actually want to do.

It’s stopping computers from being fun. Many of the problems come from integration of lots of components that get selected, essentially, because they were the cheapest option. The result works most of the time but if anything goes wrong at any stage in the huge complicated combination of different components, the ability of the collective to handle it sensibly is pathetic. It’s usually a case of virtual vomiting and then lying, helpless and waiting for the operating system to clean up.

Is there a way to make software better? Yes, certainly. There is a huge body of evidence to show that even quite simple measures can massively improve software quality. But the problem is how to begin: because modern software reuses mountains of existing code, just improving one component will increase the costs there without delivering a particularly noticeable benefit until more components are re-engineered.

So the requirement is simple: we need ways to develop software components that increase quality whilst simultaneously reducing costs. Better get started…

Why are we still inventing new computer programming languages?

Why are we still inventing new computer programming languages? We know that they don’t have more expressive power than their simpler, earlier predecessors.  Concepts like encapsulation and data hiding are powerful and useful and every individual language seems to have a good reason for coming into existence.

And yet few, if any, programming languages are actually completely known by more than a tiny elite of super gurus. Most programmers live comfortably with a subset of the language which “gets the job done” and, with a bit of luck, doesn’t get them into too much trouble.

It feels as if the rate of language invention is increasing, whilst the depth of knowledge of each individual language is decreasing. The C++ language is huge and knowing the language it is only the tip of the iceberg. Then you need an encyclopaedic knowledge of the libraries you use. Again, programmers settle for a subset of the library that seems to work for them.

Where will it all end? Probably not in better software.

England Germany 2010

I have spent almost all of my life living in England but I have also spent periods of time living and working in Germany. I am fascinated by the English view of Germans and Germany. It’s a cocktail of envy, fear, admiration, suspicion and, increasingly, familiarity.

The envy is of German organisation and economic strength. Of having a serious manufacturing sector.

The fear is of German influence and control. I, and a fair few people I know, have worked for English companies that have been bought up by German ones. Germany is seen as the centre of gravity of the European Union.

The admiration is for vast, efficient, clean public buildings and for premium brands such as Porsche, BMW and Mercedes. Janice Joplin didn’t sing “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me an MG Rover” and, if in some kind of time-warp, she had done, it wouldn’t have had the iconic resonance.

The suspicion is because they can understand our language but we can’t understand theirs, the cunning swine! And because of all the parallels between the two cultures. It’s not just about a taste for beer and football, the deeper you scratch, the more the similarities. Not least the Northern European polite reserve in personal interactions, leading slowly and gradually to firm friendships.

And now that you can fly to Germany for about £30, even more than ever before, we’re there, they’re here and the cultures are becoming mingled and familiarity is extending beyond the stereotypes. Despite Schadenfreude being such an acutely English characteristic, we don’t even need a word for it because we just recycle the German word. German Christmas markets are in every major English city. English pubs are cropping up all over Germany. We start with the stereotypes and then the real identities start to leak out, including the darker sides of each nation.

Why is music education important?

Why is music education important?

It’s a question that makes music teachers look slightly sheepish. I went to a school concert where the compère volunteered a reason for the performing arts in eduction: to make school more fun.

Well that’s nice. Nothing wrong with having a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down every once in a while. But is music education really nothing more than a bit of organised play?

It turns out that learning music at school measurably increases IQ: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/musiciq.pdf

Furthermore, being good at hard sums (and other classic 3Rs stuff) is a lot more useful if you can communicate it to other people. And to communicate to other people you need to, at some level, put on a public performance. Of all my subjects at school, the performing arts turned out to be one of the most useful but they were shockingly undersold as 2nd class subjects, a consolation prize for anybody who underperformed at humanities and foreign languages.

Who is going to rediscover the value of music education? It seems not even the music teachers quite know how important they are.

Dear Diego

Dear Diego,

It would appear that God wants his hand back, and he doesn’t like where it’s been.

Regards,

AH

Dear Fabio

Dear Fabio,

I am very happy that you are being retained as England manager. You must have had a bit of a shock when you saw spirits crumple after the disappointing result against USA and, it seems, you didn’t really know how to get your team back on track. The ability to psychologically self-destruct after one poor result is something of a speciality in England and you probably couldn’t have been prepared for it. Next time you will be better prepared. Good luck for the Euros!

Yours faithfully,

AH