Do you pay too much?

Last week three clients overcharged by their utility providers hit the news. The first was a North London woman whose water bill for her one bedroom flat was £6,600; the second was a pub owner who was charged £37,000 for his water use; and the unbeatable record belongs to a Cambridge woman who was charged £90m for her electricity bill.

Nobody takes such huge numbers seriously. We all know that errors do happen and cannot be avoided completely. However, if utility billing systems cannot detect such errors, it is very likely that they don’t detect smaller errors as well. That is, all of us are likely to be overcharged regularly.

Will you know if your electricity bill, water charge, or bank fees are off by 20 pounds? I would not even be surprised to discover that some companies deliberately add a few pounds to every bill they send. How would we be able to tell?

These huge errors, as ridiculous as they may be, highlight a fundamental problem we all have. Utility companies and service providers can charge whatever they want, and we, customers, at their mercy, will never know.

My dear cucumber

One good thing that came out of the hike in food prices is that the EU has agreed to ditch the law controlling the curvature of cucumbers. If you were not aware, until now it was illegal to sell bent cucumbers.

My xxx imagination is working overtime. How did such a law come into being? Who suggested the law in the first place, and what was going through his or her mind? So the good news is that now we can all choose our cucumbers the shape we like them.

Let’s not let the EU take away our most fundamental liberties. Well done Irish voters.

The Dragon Den

At last! Giraffe milk has been pronounced Kosher by orthodox Jews. If you are not familiar with the term, Kosher is to the Jews what Halal is to the Muslims, that is, a set of arbitrary biblical rules that define what a Jewish person can or cannot eat.

So now I am planning to establish the first dairy giraffe farm in the UK. Investors are welcome. Please subscribe below.

Trust the news: crime and savings

"Automated phone system should be brought in to report crimes. This would save money and ease pressure on the police."

In a time when violent crime sores, the question should be how to prevent and fight crime effectively, not how to cut cost. After all, if cutting cost was our objective, we could get the police off our streets and let citizens defend themselves. Then to justify the money that goes to the legal system, we can arrest those citizens who harm criminals while trying to protect themselves. Alternatively, we can get rid of the legal system too. After all, if we can’t put in jails those sent there by the legal system, why bother at all?

Another option may be to privatise the police force. This seems to work very well in many third world countries. Pay your own policemen policy will clearly improve our GDP and create new business opportunities, especially if we make it tax deductible. If we save the government a great deal of money, don't we deserve some back?

On the other hand, why don’t we get rid of the government and use the money wasted on politician to pay the police. At least I know what the role of the police should be, something I can’t confidently say about the government.

Trust the News: House Prices

Expert forecast that house prices may fall 30% in the next two years. Do they mean that they will fall, they should fall, or maybe that they might fall?

I also wonder if these are the same experts that only nine month ago, when I moved to London, tried to talk me out of renting, claiming that: “house prices are sure to rise for at least eighteen months.”

We are lucky to live in a society in which we can express nearly any piece of nonsense that crosses our mind. I just wonder how much do you pay an expert to express his nonsense? Because the they nonsense they express seems no better than mine. Unfairly, I do not get paid for them. 

 

Goodbye Ken (and thanks for all the fish)

 

Goodbye Ken. It's been long eight years; far too long. I just wish that you’d realized that you were not the person for the job far sooner.

It’s true that London had been booming during most of your reign, everyone with a property have become book-rich. Most of us, however, have far less to live on. It had nothing to do with you, it’s the global financial markets that made it happen. We neither blame you nor credit you for it.

London has become a rich city; too rich to care about those who do not have; who cannot afford private education; too rich to care about the environment.

Most of us have been paying for this richness by suffering soaring prices, deteriorating education, and worse of all, decrease in our personal safety. London has become a dangerous city, a city in which random violence can hit anyone, any time.

All these had nothing to do with you. These, as well, have been international trends we do not blame you for.

We do, however, blame you for not taking advantage of the good trends that brought nearly unlimited influx of money to the city, to fight the bad trends. We blame you for doing nothing that made the life of the average person better or safer; we blame you for not doing what is important for us, the citizens of London.

I don’t know if your successor will be any better. But I believe that if those elected knew that unless they demonstrated exceptional performance they are out – and not kept by inertia just because we are too afraid of the devils we don’t know – we would have a much better system.

So lets all give Boris a chance. And kick him quickly if he fails. The king is dead; let the new king prove himself worthy of our trust.

Should anyone be allowed to have children?

John Ward was compared to a Nazi after he wrote in his blog that people living on benefits should not be allowed to continue having children for the good of society.

Whether or not you agree with him, it still raises a moral dilemma that we, as a ‘free’ society refuse to face: “should anyone have right to have children?”

Let’s focus on question, rather than finding an escape path by referring to China’s one child policy or Nazi Germany. After all, we don’t shun breakfasts because Nazis had them.

Like it or not, our 'freedom' is always restricted. We can’t drive without a driving license; we are not allowed to drink before drinking age, and we can’t teach without a teaching qualification. These laws - justified or not - limit individual freedom to protect society's. So can't we consider situations in which we prevent people from having children?

What about extreme situations, like the mother that has killed three of her children in violence attacks, should she be allowed to have a fourth? Is the mother's right to have them succeeds the unborn children right not to be born to be sacrificed?