Ryanair advertising strategy

From the BBC.

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Notice a theme here? Does it actually matter what you put in adverts, as long as it's noticed?

Reflecting on "The Abolition of Man", by C.S.Lewis

[The schoolboy] is encouraged to reject the lure of the 'Western Ocean' on the very dangerous ground that in so doing he will prove himself a knowing fellow who can't be bubbled out of his cash. [His teachers], while teaching him nothing about letters, have cut out his soul, long before he is old enough to choose, the possibility of having certain experiences which thinkers of more authority than they have held to be generous, fruitful and humane.

Is it surprising that Philip Pullman should have come up with the idea of intercision in Northern Lights and yet be so opposed to C.S.Lewis? My hunch is that when Pullman thought about Christianity, he assumed it was no more than the experiences he had rejected. Any more than passing interest in Lewis (or, for that matter, the Bible) would have revealed that there was more to it than that.

Why I don't support the public sector strikes

My first "proper" job (not counting the year I spent waiting to do what I wanted to do) had a final salary pension scheme. The retirement date when I joined was 60 - it had relatively recently been increased from 55. This is in a career in which a fair number of people end up having to stop on medical grounds before retirement date.

Around 10 years into this job, the final salary pension scheme was closed for new joiners. It was in a state of substantial actuarial deficit - meaning that the total amount of money that was held by the scheme, coupled with slow growth anticipated, could not meet the financial demands anticipated. The company put more money into it, but they also said that employees had to either increase their contribution to obtain the benefit to which they had previously entitled to, or accept a reduced benefit. It goes without saying that there was no "state" or "taxpayer" to cover any deficit, despite the fact that part of the reason for the deficit was because of a certain chancellor changing the rules to take money out of pension schemes.

Five years ago, I changed to a job in the same sector, but with a different employer. I was able to freeze my final salary pension with the first employer. The new one had a money-purchase scheme, but the retirement date was now 65.

So, over the course of just over 20 years, remaining in the same sector, I have gone from a final salary pension to a money-purchase pension, and my retirement date has got 10 years later.

No-one wants to see other people having to work longer or getting smaller benefits. But neither is it reasonable to assume that because you are a public sector employee, you should be entitled to have a pension that is subsidised with taxpayer's (my) money that is better than any I can hope to have. It used to be the case that such perks could be justified because the terms and conditions of public sector employees were generally worse than those in the private sector - but that's not the case any more. (Here's a report about the relationship between public and private sector pay.)

The public sector strikes aren't to do with economic reality: they are politically opportunistic attempts to chuck stones at the coalition government. There is no political party that would be prepared to back away from reform, and I suspect that the Labour party are secretly relieved that they aren't the party that has had to take the bull by the horns and risk alienating their union supporters. Whilst of course nobody would disagree with the idea of nurses and teachers being able to stop work before they are too old to do their jobs effectively, I suspect it's also the case that few people employed by the private sector are prepared to accept tax rises to allow the public sector privileges that are long gone from the private sector. 

Foreign exchange - what happened next

To continue the story I started in the post below .... I noticed that the foreign exchange at Marks and Spencers also did a very good rate - in fact, over the counter, within two tenths of a cent of the same rate that I could get online at the post office. So I went there.

They didn't charge commission. However ... they said that if I withdrew money using a Barclays debit card (debit card!!) then Barclays would charge commission. I have to say that this baffled me - since when have a bank charged for using a debit card for making a cash withdrawal?!

However, I went to a cashpoint, withdrew (free) £300, went back to Marks and Spencers, and exchanged it for dollars.

Had I bought dollars at the airport, £300 would have bought me around $425. A week or so later, at Marks and Spencers, about £299 bought me $455. The exchange rate had changed in that time, and this accounts for around half the difference.

It's also worth noting that if you order money in advance to collect from the airport, the exchange rates are far less punitive.

Currency exchange - what is good value?

I'd always assumed that the cost of buying and selling currency was "much of a muchness" for your average person (ie. someone who is trying to get money for a holiday, rather than someone who is trading currency as a means of making a profit). Specifically, I thought that since I work at the airport and the exchange bureaux there did "a little bit more" for people who work there, I was getting a fairly good deal.

I was intending to buy some US dollars for a holiday. It's some way ahead, but the exchange rate is quite good, so I thought I'd do it now. There was a little queue for the first office, and whilst I was standing there, I clocked their exchange rate. The published rate in the newspaper was around $1.55 to the pound; I'd been watching it. But they offered to sell dollars at $1.40ish to the pound and buy at $1.74.

That was a pretty huge margin, I thought - almost 10%. So I thought I'd wait, and investigate other possibilities. The same day, the bank were offering $1.45 and the Post Office $1.49! To get some idea of how much difference this makes, if you are buying £500 worth of dollars for a holiday, you would get an extra $45 if you went to the Post Office. It's not the case that commission eats this difference up; in each case, the transaction would have been commission-free. I didn't look on that day at the rate I could get from a travel agent.

I then looked back at what we had paid for expenditure on credit cards. Payments made on credit cards last February, when the exchange rate had been around $1.61, had included a commission charge of around 2.7%. That meant that the equivalent exchange rate for purchases with a credit card had been at around $1.56 - comparable to the rate from the Post Office. I also looked at a transaction where I had drawn money out on a credit card abroad. The same commission charge is applied - about 2.7% - and there is an additional £2.50 charge for withdrawing money, but if you take a significant amount of money out in one go, this would be very cost effective. Bear in mind that the balance for cash transactions on credit cards may incur a higher interest rate, if you don't repay the whole amount every month. The commission rate for a debit card looked as though it was slightly higher, but the handling charge was lower.

So in conclusion ...

The best place to buy foreign money to take abroad with you seems to be the Post Office. But paying for things on credit cards when you're there or even withdrawing cash from an ATM using a credit card (in as large dollops as you can) will also get you a very competitive exchange rate.

Malinowski

... developed the concept of the 'context of situation', that is, that language is only really comprehensible if we take into account the whole context in which it occurs; the interlinking between the language that is used and the setting in which it is used.

Which about wraps it up for deconstruction.

More university fee stuff

Here's a very helpful article from Money Saving Expert about how the new student loan setup will work.

In related news, Open University have just announced a major increase in fees. At the moment, you get "points" for completing OU modules - a typical course is worth 60 points, and 120 points constitutes an undergraduate year. At the moment, a 60 point course costs around £700. This will increase in September 2012 to £2500. It will be possible to obtain student loans towards the cost of tuition.

In effect, OU is moving further in the direction of being a mainstream university: it will no longer be realistic for most people to dabble in OU studies; they'll have to decide whether or not to commit to them in a more formal way. It will be one of the most versatile and best value ways of getting a degree, but this is a big cultural change.

Transitional arrangements will exist for people who are already studying. If you want to take advantage of fees based on the current structure for courses starting after 1 September 2012, you must have completed a module which began between 1 September 2010 and 31 August 2011 or be studying a module that starts between 1 September 2011 and 31 August 2012.

"One in a million is not a fluke ..."

An interesting article on the BBC. It says that a five-sigma level of certainty is the accepted level in particle physics to claim a "discovery". Sigma here is standard deviation:

The number of sigmas (or standard deviations) is a measure of how unlikely it is that an experimental result is simply down to chance rather than a real effect.

To tag "five sigma" as certainty means that a one in a million occurrence is counted as not happening just by chance.

It would be interesting to see how that relates to the Universal Probability Bound (see where else I have discussed this here) or, for that matter, Behe'sEdge of Evolution(if at all).

Harry Potter 7b

A few random thoughts - hopefully without too many spoilers ....

Watching the film really did feel like the end of an era. Harry Potter, films and books, has been part of my life for a decade, and whilst Pottermore will doubtless offer interesting and enjoyable material, the narrative circle is now complete. Along the way, I've been introduced passim to Joseph Campbell, Jungian archetypes and radical feminism, so my intellectual life is richer. Whilst Grint, Watson and Radcliffe may not be the greatest actors in the world, they have come to strongly shape the characters; the repertoire of British actors who have played supporting roles in the series have been excellent; and the achievement that is represented by holding the eight films together without destroying anybody's lives is substantial!

In many ways, I thought the film actually worked better than the book. There were certain things that were quite hard to follow in the book, which were made clearer in the film. Whether having read the book was required to follow the film, I'm not sure. There were also some deviations from the narrative sequence in the book. For example, some key sequences - the final showdown, and the death of the snake, amongst others - were presented in a way which made better narrative sense. These also made for better cinema. The increasing connection between Harry and Voldemort as the film went on was also brought out very well.

The fact that this film is largely action-driven for me highlights how character-driven is part 1. There was no shortage of action in it, but Harry, Ron and Hermione were allowed to develop through the film. Perhaps as a consequence, with the exception of the exposition at the start of film 2, it felt like a bit of a rush - one got the feeling that anything not directly related to the action was a kind of quick "Oh, we ought to show this about that character here ...."

The remaining Harry Potter event will be the release of the DVD, I guess. My daughter is already talking about a back-to-back showing. I'm not sure that I could cope with 20 hours, but I'd certainly like to watch the whole of "Deathly Hallows" in one go.

The Olympic ticket bid

We didn't get any tickets either, having applied "within our means". Apparently, only 1 in 7 people didn't get anything. For myself, I think I know as many people who did as who didn't - though that may reflect the fact that most people I know would have been pitching for the cheaper tickets.

With hindsight, we can see that the system favoured those people who ignored the advice and applied "without the means" - there is no real penalty for this anyway, since anything you can't afford you can almost certainly pass on later on - and also those people of "great means". Not really a "people's games", then .... That does seem somewhat unfair - certainly the corporate sponsors want to make their bit, but a large chunk of the cost of the games (and all of the disruption) is borne not by the sponsors but by the people.

It is possible to imagine ways of improving the system, again with hindsight. It makes the process of applying more complicated - but to be honest, the system was pretty complicated anyway. People could rank the sessions they were bidding for in order of preference. First preferences are processed first, randomly. Those people who are successful with a bid have their subsequent preferences dealt with after those who are unsuccessful. That would almost certainly ensure a larger number of people actually get tickets.

But it doesn't make much difference now. We, like lots of other people, will just have to try and take our chances in the next lottery round.

Solar power update

Various snippets of news ...

EDF have told us that the first FIT payment and payment for electricity supplied to the grid is about to be transferred into our bank account. A mere £19 or so, this being for the 45 units we generated from mid-December to the end of February - but you have to start somewhere.

The reading was requested in March, and I sent it on 1st March - incidentally, just before the system really started to get going. As I mentioned in an earlier post, EDF only undertook to make the payment within 90 days of the end of the month that the reading was taken - which would have been the end of June, basically. So it was reassuring to be told it would be arriving six weeks earlier than that. I don't know if had I taken the reading later in the month, whether I'd have got the payment at the same time.

The next payment will be for electricity generated from March 1 to the end of May, and will be somewhat more substantial - we're running at an average of around 7 units per day at the moment, and I think we'll be claiming for around 500 kWh for those three months.

The amount of electricity we are drawing from the mains is lower - and noticeably lower on bright days than on dull days. Several years ago, we seemed to be using an average of around 20-22 units per day, all year round. I think our usage is somewhat less than that now - partly due to the replacement of appliances with more efficient ones, and use of low energy lightbulbs, over the last few years; partly due to the feedback from the energy monitor that we have - in the last few months of the winter, it sometimes spiked at over 20 units per day, but the average was around 17. Less power is used for lighting and so on in the summer, so that would bring it down a bit further. But the seven-day moving average of electricity units drawn from the main has actually been below 10 since early April. For a few days in the clear, bright weather at the start of May, we were generating over 11 kWh per day, and the moving average of the amount we were generating was actually above the moving average of the amount we were using.

U211 versus deconstruction

The OU course U211 "Exploring the English Language" continues to provide food for thought, and a drain on money as I buy books related to it. I've been interested by how "un-postmodern" it is as a course. The influential linguist Halliday developed a system called systemic functional linguistics, which intriguingly I brushed past as I was doing my computer science degree over 20 years ago, when as a field of study it would have been pretty much brand new.

Functional linguistics is in turn developed from the work of Bronislaw Malinowski, who focused on the use of language in context. He asserted that language is only really comprehensible if we take into account the whole context in which it occurs - the interlinking of language used and the setting in which it is used. In other words, if you take a text out of context, you are going to lose some of the meaning and significance. There's an old saying amongst Bible teachers, that "a text without a context is a pretext". It's not quite addressing the same issue, but it does work as an epigram in this field. And the most reliable Bible teachers take seriously the need to understand sections of the Bible in context, rather than using them merely as a springboard for their own thoughts.

English Literature as a field is almost next to this study of English Language/Linguistics. And yet, at times, its approach to context is almost the exact opposite. There is the deconstructive sense that (as I understand it) the meaning of the text is entirely found in the reader, rather than the creator. Thus, in literature terms, it is legitimate to analyse Shakespeare as a gay text, for example. I don't think the linguistic approach would object to a reader explaining the personal significance of a text, but it does insist that the full meaning of a text is found not in the response of the reader, but in its original context.

A deconstructive approach is ultimately self-defeating, as any text (including the one written by the person analysing another) is open to reinterpretation according to any context. Of course, there is the need to be aware of the cultural baggage of a reader as well as the cultural context of the writer - but this is very different from arguing, in effect, that authorial intent is irrelevant.

The FIT scam

It sounds fairly scammy that the government should pay people for generating solar power, far more than the electricity costs to generate or that any company can sell the electricity for. However, this is a government scheme to encourage uptake of microgeneration of electricity. There was a grants regime before, and this has replaced it. And the payback time is still likely to be over a decade - worthwhile, but you need to have a long view.

What is more of a scam is the electricity company role in this. The standard regime is that electricity that we generate and don't use we get paid 3p per unit for. The electricity doesn't bother metering it - they have decided to pay us for half the units we generate. The payment scheme for this is that they say they will pay us within 90 days of the end of the month on which the meter reading was taken. And herein lies the scam.

The next meter reading I do is due in June. Let's say I do it on June 1st. It will relate to the electricity I generated in March, April and May, which will amount to around 500 units, let's say - worth £200 of Feed-In Tariff payments. A significant proportion of this electricity will have fed into the grid - let's say half. That is 250 units that the electricity company doesn't have to incur costs to generate in March-May. But they don't have to pay for them until 90 days after the end of June - that is, the end of September. And when they do pay for them, they only pay 3p per unit. In the meantime, they will have billed and collected their standard rate for them - 12-13p per unit at the moment.

I hadn't put the numbers together when I had this installed just how good a deal it is for the electricity companies. Ours is already exploiting our direct debit scheme to ensure that they are almost always sitting on (and earning interest on) several hundred pounds of credit balance on our account. The companies pushed people to take up direct debit, on the basis of convenience, and a small reduction in charges - but if our experience is typical, they are probably sitting on, and earning interest on, several hundred million pounds of prepayments. Add to this the FIT scheme - it makes it clear that the main short-term beneficiaries of the scheme are not the people who have the systems installed, but the electricity companies.

The morning after

It may seem an odd thing to say, but I am not political - or at least, not party political - or at least, I haven't been party political up to now. I have fairly strongly (and apparently unsuccessfully!) backed the AV campaign. The fundamental reason for this is because I believe in weak government - government that takes place by consensus and co-operation between parties, rather than through the control of one political party. My adult life, until this time last year, has been spent under governments which have doggedly placed the concerns of vested interests and ideologies above their responsibility for the nation, and consequence of this is that the nation has mortgaged its future, and we will basically be paying the price for this forever. Seriously. There were good things that we had as a nation 25 years ago that we will simply never have again, thanks to the last two governments. The wealth of our nation has been squandered.

In England, this seems to be simply not understood by the electorate - either that, or the "electorate" (if millions of votes can be represented as a single entity) simply wished to register a huge howl of protest at its discomfort. The idea of people returning to Labour at the moment is absurd - it has a new leader, but there is nothing to suggest that it has any better idea of how to govern than when it was turned out of office last year. The fact that even in opposition, they are still talking about allowing the deficit to continue to increase confirms this - just how much of the national income do we have to spend on interest payments? And what is going to happen when the base rate starts to increase? I don't understand how anybody with any sense of how government finance works can sleep at night at the moment.

The idea of people realistically thinking that the junior partner in the coalition could or should have been able to do more than they have to change the direction of the senior partner is also absurd. I don't understand why the Liberals should be punished when they have actually done what they can to make sure the impact of the fiscal tightening is felt by and large by those who can afford it (I say this as someone who by this time next year will be literally thousands of pounds a year worse off) - or, for that matter, why the coalition should be punished for trying to sort out the pile of poo that the economy was left in by the last government, or, for that matter, how anybody can tolerate the smug self-righteousness of anybody in the Labour party criticising the current government.

As for the referendum, it looks like there goes our chance for electoral reform for the next generation - and probably the only chance the nation had to save itself from government by ideology rather than consensus. It's interesting that even with a big reaction against the coalition government, the share of the vote in England was: Labour, 37%; Conservative, 32%; Liberal, 15%. The strong government approach would give one of those parties the mandate to run the government according to its party ethos. A weak government approach (of the sort that I'd prefer) would point out that no party is attracting even 40% of the vote, so no party should consider that it has a mandate to rule according to its party ethos. Only by working together can political parties claim to have a democratic mandate where the vote is split in this way, and the reason the vote is split is because no normal people believe in the ethos of parties any more. A voting system which more clearly highlights the subtleties of what people are looking for in politics - as AV would have done at least a little more - would have served the nation better than the current system, which keeps asking people the same question that they stopped being interested in 30 years ago.

More money may have been raised by the "Yes" campaign - but they had a lot more work to do, given the opposition of most of the press. It has been acknowledged that the "No" campaign simply made stuff up - something which is okay in a referendum, apparently, because no candidate is affected as a result. Hmph. A lot of candidates stand to benefit from these lies, and a lot of voters stand to have their votes ignored.

But the people have spoken. We had the opportunity to think about the issue, to ask questions and so on - and we weren't interested. As I said earlier in the campaign, as a nation, we probably get the government we deserve.