It is a comfort to suppose that, should some villain raid your bank account and make off with half your life savings, you will get the money back from head office coffers. The Banking Code is explicitly soothing on the issue: fraud victims are only liable for the first £50 of their losses unless they acted without reasonable care, and it is up to the bank to demonstrate any such negligence. Anna Tims, The Guardian.

As Tims goes on to report, banks rely on the fact that few of their customers know the rules – for instance Lloyds refused to refund a customer until Tims sent them a copy of the Banking Code.

Still it’s not just the Banking Code as Tims also reports if your account is overdrawn then you’re also protected by the Consumer Credit Act 1974.

This states that if a stolen card was used as a “credit token”, the owner is again liable only for the first £50 of any losses. And it is deemed to have been used as a credit token if it was used to remove funds from an overdrawn account. Anna Tims, The Guardian.

So if your account is overdrawn

The act takes precedence over the Banking Code, according to the Financial Services Ombudsman. Anna Tims, The Guardian.

As Tims writes

So there are two lessons here: one, spend a night or two with the Consumer Credit Act and the Banking Code so you are well armed against banking deviousness. And two, it can sometimes pay to be overdrawn! Anna Tims, The Guardian.

In July Japan’s jobless rate hit a record of 3,590,000 (5.7%) over a million more than a year ago. For the same month core consumer prices fell by 2.2% from a year earlier, the fastest pace on record.

That’s despite the recession in Japan supposedly being over.

If this is what a recovery looks like then there’s little comfort for employees let alone the unemployed.

Source: BBC.

Every year our gas and electricity supplier writes to us and significantly increases our direct debit based on our previous years usage – which by the way, we’ve been reducing, installing low wattage light bulbs and not leaving things on standby. This is nothing but a scam aimed at increasing their cash reserves.

Now Ofgem has finally acted

The new condition in suppliers’ licences would mean they must ensure payment levels are clearly and accurately explained and based on the best available information. Suppliers will also need to be able to justify why they are holding onto credit surpluses built up by a customer.

Alistair Buchanan, Ofgem Chief Executive, said: “Direct debit is one of the cheapest ways to pay for energy and we are concerned that if customers cannot clearly understand how their payment plan works they will lose confidence. The proposed licence condition will help give customers peace of mind that the amount they are being asked to pay is based on their likely energy use. It will help ensure suppliers are more transparent about how they calculate payments.” Ofgem.

Good news – hopefully.

At Sony, PS3 sales fell from 1.6m units last year to 1.1m in the same quarter, while sales of the PlayStation Portable plunged from 3.7m units to only 1.3m. Both suffered the ignominy of being outsold by the antique PlayStation 2, which shifted 1.6m units. Jack Schofield, The Guardian.

Pretty amazing that people are still purchasing a PS2 which is approaching its 10th anniversary – which in terms of gaming as an aeon.

The boss of the UK’s financial watchdog has said he backs a new tax on banks as a means to prevent excess bonus payments in the industry.

Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), told Prospect magazine much of the activities of the City of London were “socially useless”.

…

He said such a tax would be “a nice sensible revenue source for funding global public goods”. BBC.

Now I believe this is a good idea – ideally I’d like to see the tax reward those who hold shares for longer – perhaps with those holding shares for 10-years or more being tax exempt and those holding shares for less than a year paying and additional 50%. Of course the city is more than straight share trading and I suspect bankers will find ways of circumventing the rules – which is a shame as encouraging investors to hold long term investments certainly strikes me as appealing – although I’m no expert – perhaps some can enlighten me.

Enoch Powell

Asked in an interview with a US internet television channel who was his political influence, Tory MEP Daniel Hannan said Enoch Powell “understood why you need to live in an independent country and what that meant, as well as being a free marketeer and a small-government Conservative.” BBC.

For those who have no idea who Enoch Powell is here’s a few extracts from his Rivers of Blood Speech.

Here is a decent, ordinary fellow-Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that the country will not be worth living in for his children. I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking – not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.

…

We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancées whom they have never seen.

…

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

Be warned, as much as Cameron would likes to describe Hannan as eccentric and a loose, other Tories share his views.

I was driving home along the motorway when I passed an Iceland lorry with the slogan “because mums are heroes” – blimey do they still use that slogan? Rather sexist isn’t it? And Iceland is still for mums.

So I checked out Iceland’s website.

Screen Print of Iceland's website

As you can see the bottom right is taken up with the slogan “…so that’s why mums go to Iceland!” Then there’s a whole section under the heading “for busy mums” which list the reasons mums shop at Iceland – “re-useable shopping bags”, “saving stamps and high street vouchers”. I’d like to add it’s no wonder the chain’s in trouble, however I’d be wrong.

Iceland chief executive Malcolm Walker has declared that the retailer is “not taking part” in the recession after revealing record sales and profits.

Revenues at the frozen foods specialist soared 16 per cent to £2.08bn in the year to March 27. EBITDA jumped 36 per cent to £163m, and net profit before tax rocketed 84 per cent to £113.7m. Like-for-like sales rose 16 per cent.

It was the fourth consecutive year of double-digit like-for-like growth for the 723-store retailer. The dazzling performance has continued into the current year, with like-for-like sales up in double digits. Walker said Iceland’s continued success is down to “great management – the best we have ever had” and “the massively increased morale” of its 20,000 staff in the four years since he returned to the retailer.

He said Iceland – which he founded with £30 in 1970 and ran until he was frozen out in 2001 – had grown in both boom and bust times. “Recession, what recession? We are not taking part. You can talk about our marketing, product and pricing strategy, but do not underestimate staff morale.” Amy Shields, Retail Week.

So it seems too many mums are happy with the patronising twaddle that Iceland peddles – why I’ve no idea.

I’m not a fan of the high pay commission campaign – more because I haven’t seen one idea that seems enforceable and I won’t cover ground that Hopi Sen has covered in his post High Pay, No way… I believe there’s more to be gained from concentrating on eradicating low pay. However Polly Toynbee makes a very good point

A high pay commission would change the climate of what is socially acceptable by challenging the self-serving myths of mega-earners. The commission’s only power would be to take evidence and make recommendations to ministers. With powers to investigate, it would make transparent who is earning what and why, ending secrecy: information has transformative power. I would go further and make all income tax returns public documents. The initial shock would be salutary, as it threw daylight on earnings and wealth. When so few people know where they stand or what others earn, how can voters judge questions of fair distribution?

Politicians worry about alienation between people and their representatives after the exposure of MPs’ expenses brought revulsion and the loss of what little trust there was. “Them and us” resentment runs deep; just read the blogs to see the anger at “ordinary” professional incomes by those who earn less. When Alan Duncan stupidly called £64,000 “rations”, it was because he doesn’t know that over 95% of people earn less. How can people govern or know how to vote unless these basic facts are common knowledge? Research by the Fabians for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows how little people know, and how astonished they are to find out: it changes their views. Most people on £42,000 don’t feel rich because they don’t know they are in the top 10%.

A high pay commission would spread that knowledge far and wide. Objectors raise the problem of footballers, rock stars and Dyson or Branson entrepreneurs. But the vast majority of high earners work in hierarchies where they are not indispensable: if they fell under a Rolls-Royce, someone else would take over tomorrow. No one suggests some national pay scale of merit from street cleaner to superstar, but it’s time politicians stopped being bamboozled by bog-standard bankers blagging their way into billions “because I’m worth it”. Call their bluff, before the bubble blows up all over again. Polly Toynbee, The Guardian.

So whatever the pros and cons of a commission lets call their bluff.

Here’s two photos’ the first is from Microsoft’s US website the second is from Microsoft’s Polish website.

Microsoft's Doctored Photos

Did you spot the difference? Of course you did – Microsoft has replaced the face of the man in the middle – so one of the world’s largest companies is still riddled with racists. No it’s not an error of judgment if you aren’t racist then there’s no judgment to be made.

Source: BBC.

A London council has described children of Pakistani origin who attend the borough’s schools as “Pakis”. The term appears in an official council document that provides a breakdown of the ethnic background of pupils at the borough’s schools. Diane Taylor, The Guardian.

First it was a simple error (sic)

“The council is aware that a document produced by an early years development worker does contain abbreviations of various ethnic minority groups, however this was due to a computer error. The full titles were inputted correctly into the database but had been reduced due to the size of the cells. This was automatically done by the computer and was not displayed on the screen but was apparent when printed”. Diane Taylor, The Guardian.

And then it wasn’t

However, the word “Pakis” does not appear at the edge of the spreadsheet where half of “Pakistani” might have been chopped off but on lines with plenty of space or where other words follow it.

Later, the council said human error was involved and the manager of the council’s Sure Start programme had investigated. Diane Taylor, The Guardian.

What does this say about the culture at Redbridge Council – the use of racist language is commonplace – vote Tory and BNP and this is what you will get.