21 June 2016

A Musical Self-Portrait

A word-portrait of who I am would run to many pages. What if I were able to describe myself in music? The composition would include orchestral parts, and folk guitar, solo and choral voices, a ukulele and a Hammond organ. There would be richly Romantic passages, and haunting airs, driving beats and the use of silence. Such a composition would be far, far beyond my capabilities. However, what if I were able to describe myself, at least in part, by means of a thoughtful choice of music, including song? I accept that whilst there is much of me that translates into music, or has a relationship with music, there is also much of me that does not. There are many sides to who I am, and consequently there are many songs and pieces of music that mean a lot to me. Were someone to want to know and understand me better, they would have to listen to quite a lot of music.

The reasons for my choice of each piece of music may be highly varied. For example, I may favour a piece because I enjoy playing it on my ukulele, or because I have enjoyed singing it, or because I like a particular arrangement, or because I like the voice of the singer, or because I am touched by the sentiment expressed, or because I resonate with the political stance of the song, or because the song reminds me of a particular period of my life (and therefore who I was then, and still am now to some degree): each chosen song offers a different nuance, or set of nuances, of who I am or how I choose to present myself. My selection is also significant in what I choose to omit: for example, there is neither any anti-social punk rock, nor any unmelodious rap.

In a sketch of myself, I should include the Schiller's poem An Die Freude (Ode to Joy) set to music by Beethoven in his Ninth Symphony; all of Beethoven's Third, Sixth and Ninth Symphonies; Amoureuse sung by Kiki Dee; Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds by The Beatles; Kathleen Ferrier singing Blow The Wind Southerly; Sandy Denny (both with The Strawbs and with Fairport Convention) singing Who Knows Where The Time Goes?; the Percy Faith arrangement of the theme from the movie A Summer Place; Edward Elgar's orchestration of Hubert Parry's setting of William Blake's poem Jerusalem; Iris Dement singing Our Town; Dave Brubeck's Take Five; Strawbs: Queen of Dreams, You and I (When We Were Young), Another Day; Morning Has Broken sung by Cat Stevens; Gustav Holst's The Planets suite; Maddy Prior and Steeleye Span singing The Saucy Sailor, The Weaver And The Factory Maid, Dark Eyed Sailor and Thomas The Rhymer; Lara's theme from the David Lean movie Dr Zhivago; Planxty (led by Christy Moore) singing Sweet Thames Flow Softly; Supertramp singing Give A Little Bit, and Even In The Quietest Moments; Leon Rosselson singing The World Turned Upside Down, and The Last Chance; Wonderful Tonight, by Eric Clapton; the poem by John Greenleaf Whittier Dear Lord And Father Of Mankind, set to music; The Eagles singing The Last Resort; Le Quattro Stagioni by Antonio Vivaldi (especially the controversial Nigel Kennedy recording); Joni Mitchell singing Big Yellow Taxi; Rachmaninofff's Second Symphony; Dave Cousins of The Strawbs singing Grace Darling; Bob Dylan singing Blowin' In The Wind; the ensemble arrangement of Take Me Home, Country Roads (written by John Denver) sung in Japanese during the anime movie Whisper Of The Heart; Norah Jones singing Come Away With Me; Let It Be by Paul McCartney; Aaron Copland's arrangement of the Shaker hymn, Simple Gifts; Carla Bruni singing Quelqu'un M'a Dit; Ladysmith Black Mambazo singing Homeless and with Paul Simon singing Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes; Buddy Holly singing Every Day, Oh Boy and Peggy Sue; Glen Miller's In The Mood; the extended Genesis piece called Supper's Ready; Spiegel Im Spiegel by Arvo Part; Imagine by John Lennon; Jon Anderson's Olias of Sunhillow; Ewan MacColl singing Shoals Of HerringFarewell To Stromness by Peter Maxwell Davies; Simon and Garfunkel singing The Sound Of Silence, America, Homeward Bound and Bookends; Mahler's First Symphony; Leonard Cohen singing Bird On A Wire; Charles Trenet singing La Mer; Tim Hart singing Dancing At Whitsun; Philip Glass's music for Koyaanisquatsi; The Moody Blues singing Nights In White Satin; Pachelbel's Canon; John Denver singing Sunshine On My Shoulders; ELO singing Summer And Lightning and Mr Blue Sky; Messaien's Turangalila; Steve Harley and Cockney rebel singing Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me); In Paradisum from Gabriel Fauré's Requiem; George Harrison's Here Comes The Sun; Jeff Beck singing Hi Ho Silver Lining; Old Crow Medicine Show singing Wagon Wheel; Wonderful World sung by Sam Cooke; and Louis Armstrong singing What A Wonderful World; Jane Russell and Hoagy Carmichael singing My Resistance Is Low; Streets of London sung by Ralph McTell; My Ramblin' Boy (by Tom Paxton) sung by Sandy Denny; and Van Morrison singing Brown Eyed GirlBrand New Day, and the well-known version of Madame George recorded on the album Astral Weeks, the mesmerising version played live at the Holywood Bowl in 2008, and the little-known, wonderfully chaotic version (unavailable on YouTube) recorded on the album T.B.Sheets.

20 June 2016

Greener Grass

When I was 16 or 17 years of age I worked at several part-time jobs, and it became convenient to have a bank account and a cheque book. I knew that I was a bit young to have a bank account, and I am uncertain if any of my friends had a bank account. The reason why I opened the bank account with Lloyds Bank was significantly because that it was the company with which my parents banked, partly because the nearest bank branch was Lloyds Bank, and partly because I had sufficient knowledge or understanding about the different banks to make a well-informed choice. It was not onerous to open the account. In 1985 I set up a small business: Alpha Word Power. I required a business bank account, so I researched my options. I was keen for the account to be at a bank which had a local branch, that claimed to understand the needs of small businesses, and was not closely associated with apartheid. I decided to open a business bank account with the NatWest Bank. It was not especially onerous to open the account, although I did consider the process to be a little more demanding than when I had opened the Lloyds Bank account more than ten years before. Some time in the late 1980s or early 1990s I decided that it would be convenient to have my personal bank account with the same bank as my business bank account, so I closed the bank account at Lloyds Bank, and opened a personal bank account at the NatWest Bank. Whilst opening a new account at the NatWest Bank was straightforward enough, I remember that closing the Lloyds Bank account dragged on interminably for some reason. A year or two later I started trading additionally under business name Authentic Counselling & Training, and straightforwardly opened a second business bank account at the NatWest Bank. Whilst I very seriously considered opening the new business account at the Co-operative Bank, not least because of its much-vaunted ethical policies, the completion of a considerable amount of paperwork in order to do so, as well as the inconvenience of banking at more than one bank, eventually dissuaded me. Several points are worth noting. First, that there is an expectation that a bank account will continue indefinitely, and whilst if not for life, then at least for a long time: one does not have a year's contract on a bank account. Second, a significant part of the administrative burden of opening a new bank account is (I understand) due both to the rise of identity fraud, and to comply with money laundering legislation: it is not the fault of the banks. Third, when I opened my first bank account, there was still a sense of mutual loyalty between a bank branch and its account holders. This loyalty was intentionally eroded by the banks during the 1980s and 1990s, both as banks appeared to become increasingly willing to foreclose on individuals (repossessing their houses) and on small businesses (closing them down) that were in financial difficulty, and contact between account holder and bank shifted from a personal, face-to-face interaction at a branch to an impersonal, telephone interaction with a national or international call centre.

During the earlier years of the 1980s I had no telephone at home, and would walk several hundred metres to a public telephone box. This was, understandably, inconvenient, but I could not afford the monthly fee for a residential telephone line. Part of the Post Office until 1981, British Telecommunications was privatised and sold off in 1984. In 1985 I set up Alpha Word Power, for which I required a telephone line, supplied by British Telecom. In 1988 I moved the business into commercial premises, and again required a telephone line. Unhappy with the privatised British Telecom, I decided to try the (equally private) Mercury Communications (a Hong Kong-based telecommunications company that was invited by the UK government to offer (sham) competition to British Telecom. The service I received from Mercury was worse than I had been receiving from BT, and after two years I cancelled the contract, and 'returned' to British Telecom. I continue to dislike British Telecom (now BT) for a wide variety of reasons, but ever since my experience with Mercury, have stuck rigidly to BT.

In 1990 I had a need for a cellphone. At the time, there were only two networks: BT Cellnet and Vodafone. I had little knowledge or understanding about either company. I cannot remember whether the company from which I obtained the Motorola 8500X offered me a choice between the two networks, but I was comfortable signing up with Cellnet, a successor company to the GPO, rather than the newly-formed Vodafone. However, several years later, when I decided to upgrade to a new handset, the best handset offer (technology and price) available was with Vodafone, so I switched networks. As more networks (Orange, T-Mobile, 3) arrived, I was comfortable continuing with Vodafone as it became a well-established company with good coverage and good roaming agreements overseas. Nearly twenty years later, on moving from County Durham to Kent, I discovered the local Vodafone signal to be extremely poor. Although I had been sufficiently satisfied with the service Vodafone had given me that I had not seen any reason why I should switch networks, staying with Vodafone made little sense, so I decided at this point to switch networks. Apart from wanting a decent cellphone signal, I still wanted to use a network with good national coverage and with good roaming agreements overseas. Whilst price was a factor, as far as I was able to see, all the available networks charged the same sort of price. I felt wary about using any of the virtual networks (such as Giffgaff, Virgin Mobile or Tesco Mobile) about which I understood little. I asked other people in the village to which I had moved which networks they were on, and they were mostly using either O2 or EE. As O2 was a successor company to Cellnet, I switched to O2. I did this by buying a new handset with a new monthly contract, ended the contract with Vodafone, and asked for my cellphone number to be ported over to the new contract. I had bought many cellphones before (mostly through the process of upgrading), so much of what needed to happen was alreadt familiar to me. However, it soon became clear that the not-very-local O2 cellphone masts were often out of action, leaving me with little or no signal for much of the time.  At this point, I decided to re-evaluate my need for a cellphone. My lifestyle had changed significantly, and it was no longer clear what I needed a cellphone to do for me. Moreover, since I first acquired a cellphone, the services on offer, both over the network (SMS text messaging, picture messaging, data streaming), and on the handset (digital camera, recorded music player, FM radio, GPS receiver, games device, handheld computer) had changed out of all recognition: which of these services did I actually need, and which were I willing to pay for? For nearly three years I continued with the O2 contract, all but unable to use my cellphone at home, even though home had become my workplace. Gradually my needs emerged, including the need for more bundled 'minutes', and to pay significantly less per month. I researched the number and precise locations of the local cellphone masts, and to which companies they belonged, found out what services were running on each of those masts, and read up about virtual cellular networks. Then I looked online to see what offers were available. BT were offering a a SIM-only contract (which I had not experienced before), with significantly more minutes than my then-current O2 contract, at half the monthly fee, on a virtual network running on the EE network. With some trepidation I decided to switch to BT Mobile. The switching was not too difficult, especially with the help of customer support staff, although there were layers of necessary complexity which felt a bit daunting, and I have little enthusiasm to go through the procedure again. The cellphone signal remains unreliable, but I am now paying much less than I was. However, should BT decide to increase the price to what I was previously paying O2, then the benefit of switching network will have become marginal, and it would appear that I had simply fallen for the lure of greener grass.

When I lived in County Durham the electricity and gas were latterly supplied on a dual-fuel contract by Eon, formerly Powergen. I have no memory of how I came to have an electricity contract with Powergen, which was wholly owned by the UK government  (about which I will have been entirely happy) until 60% of it was sold off to private investors in 1991 (about which I will not have been happy). I was occasionally irritated by their processes, but felt little inclination to switch to a different electricity provider (such as Npower). Natural gas was supplied by British Gas, again formerly owned by the UK government, but sold off in 1986 ("If you see Sid ... Tell him!"). I found the behaviour of British Gas unpleasant, and when given the opportunity to switch to a dual fuel contract with Powergen, I jumped at the chance of consolidating my energy costs into one bill. On relocating to Kent, I discovered, eventually, that the electricity contract on the property was with British Gas. The attitude of the company towards me was as unpleasant as ever, so I quickly made the decision that I would switch electricity supplier. However, I needed to decide what my criteria for selection were, and researched the matter fairly thoroughly. I decided that although the size of my monthly bills were an important factor, so was the means of electricity generation. I am, and always have been, profoundly anti-nuclear, and I have a strong, long-standing preference for renewable generation. By taking these preferences into account, my choice of electricity supplier became relatively simple, and I selected Good Energy. The process of switching from (the imposed) British Gas contract to Good Energy was somewhat drawn out, but not especially burdensome. I feel happy to know that Good Energy buy their electricity only from non-nuclear, renewable resources, and if I am paying a little more for the electricity I use, then it is for a good cause. However, the electricity that travels through the cables to my house may, in fact, have been generated locally at Dungeness nuclear power station, or at a nuclear power station in France, or in the coal-fired power station at Drax in North Yorkshire. It is a fiction that I am buying renewable energy from Good Energy, although Good Energy does have its own wind farm in Cornwall. I pay my monthly bill in order that the presence of Good Energy in the electricity generation marketplace can influence more electricity generators to generate electricity using non-nuclear renewable resources.

On relocating to a village in Kent not connected to the national natural gas pipeline, I was thrown into having to buy heating oil for the central heating boiler. There are several companies that supply heating oil to the area. However, most oil purchasing locally is not done directly with the delivery company, but in the context of either a local consortium (the Oil Club), or a national purchasing company called Boilerjuice. These organisations identify which local delivery company is offering the cheapest price at any one time, and organise the delivery. By making several deliveries in the same area, the delivery company is able to charge less than were it making a one-off delivery. The down-sides are that I have little say about the date of the delivery, which can be anything up to a month from the date of ordering the oil, and no say about the company supplying the oil.

When I lived in County Durham, mains water and sewerage services were supplied by the Northumbrian Water Authority. Kielder Reservoir has always been popular in north eastern England, partly for its amenity value, but also because it means that, while other parts of the UK are experiencing hose-pipe bans and other drought strategies, north eastern England enjoys plentiful water supplies. However, in 1989, the UK government privatised and sold off the Northumbrian Water Authority, and mains water and sewerage services are now supplied by Northumbrian Water, a company owned by the largest infrastructure holding company in Hong Kong, China. On relocating to Kent, I found that I pay one company, Affinity Water (owned by an investment management company), for mains water, and another company, Southern Water, for sewerage services. I have no say in who supplies, and I pay for, mains water and sewerage services.

In each of the examples outlined above, I am buying a commodity: electricity, gas, oil, water, sewerage services, telephony, mobile telephony or banking. As a domestic consumer, the commodity I am buying is no different from the same commodity bought from a different company. The electricity in my cables is no different whether I pay Eon or Good Energy. The telephone calls I make, whether using a fixed-line telephone or a cellphone, are no different from the calls I could make were I to pay a different company for them instead. For some of these commodities, I have a choice about who I can pay for them, but the reality is that I am mostly choosing only on the basis of the quality of customer service, not for any difference in the quality of the commodity. I have a strong desire to make ethical choices, which I exercise where that is possible. However, I am unhappy that fees that I used to pay to the UK government (whether for water, sewerage services, gas, electricity, telephony) are now paid mostly to commercial, often overseas, corporations. Whereas, once, the infrastructure of the UK was owned by and operated for the benefit of the UK, the infrastructure is now almost entirely owned by people whose interests are solely the maximisation of their profits. We were told and assured, when the infrastructure was being sold off, that putting state assets into private hands would engender competition, and from competition would come cost reductions and improvements in service. Instead, it has been necessary to create, and more importantly, continue to make use of, regulatory and competition authorities, such as Ofcom, Ofwat, Ofgem, FSA, FCA.

Over the past five or six years the 'big six' energy companies (British Gas, EDF (French), Eon (German), Npower, Scottish Power (Spanish) and SSE) in the UK, selling electricity to consumers, have suffered from an appalling reputation for poor customer service, dodgy selling practices, opaque tariffs and inflated prices. British Gas has also been accused of accepting money from the UK government for the purpose of insulating people's houses (in order to reduce energy bills), but then failing to carry out the work. It looks like a cartel, swims like a cartel, and quacks like a cartel. The response of the government has simply been to exhort customers to switch energy supplier. BT, which in many areas of the country operates in a near monopoly, has been repeatedly criticised, including by Select Committees, for pocketing money from the government but failing to roll out high speed broadband except in the most profitable areas, such as towns and cities. The 'big four' high street banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS) have variously been implicated in the causes of the financial crash of 2007/2008, in rigging foreign exchange rates, in mis-selling payment protection insurance, as well as attracting public opprobrium for paying hugely inflated bonuses. The response of the UK government is to chastise account holders for not switching banks. Many of the now-private water companies have been criticised for a lack of investment in new infrastructure, and for allowing pollution both on land (including in the Elham Valley) and at the sea shore (there has been a reduction in the number of Blue Flag beaches). There is no opportunity to switch water company, but even if there were, it is hard to see how doing so would actually make any difference.

There are academic studies of consumer switching behaviour. The following paper makes interesting reading: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268801499_Consumer_Switching_Behaviour_A_Theoretical_Review_and_Research_agenda. It identifies many of the ideas that I have illustrated in my case vignettes. It is to be noted that the switching behaviour under examination in the paper is based on customer self-interest. It is not about the political policy that demands consumer switching behaviour in order to force a market to operate more satisfactorily.

During a recent (mid-June 2016) news report on BBC Radio 4, a government spokesperson was reported saying that the market (whichever market was being referred to) was not working as it should because consumers were too reluctant to switch supplier. It dawned on me that, as a consumer who is reluctant to switch supplier, I was being blamed for high prices and poor customer service. That is, the efficient operation of an artificial market was relying on my compliance to do something I had little wish or interest to do. Surely this is putting the cart before the horse, and then blaming the cart for not pulling the horse along. Since the 1980s, the UK government has privatised and sold off many perfectly good public corporations, making money for a lot of people in the City of London and in other financial centres around the world, but with little or no tangible benefit for the consumer, who is often left to pay higher charges, and certainly in the case of the banks, a significantly inferior service. The railways appear to be in a similar state: very high prices and a poor quality of service. The supermarkets, which have now taken over almost all grocery retail in the UK, appear to be in a race to the bottom as far as prices go, but in this case small suppliers instead of consumers suffering, sometimes grievously,. 

In my opinion, the provision of basic commodities to consumers, for which the commodity is identical regardless of the supplier, should be in the hands of publicly-owned bodies, as is the NHS, so that the consumer is buying that commodity from a supplier whose only interests are to serve the customer as well as possible, and to save the customer money when desirable. This would then do away with exhortations to switch energy supplier, to switch bank, to switch cellphone network provider. A simple, basic bank account which allows an account holder to pay in money, take out money and occasionally borrow money at reasonable rates, is all that most people want or require of a bank. Clean water that comes out of the taps, and the removal of their sewerage is all that people want of their water company. Electricity and gas / oil at a reasonable price, coupled with help to reduce consumption is all that energy consumers want of an energy company. Telephones calls with simple, transparent tariffs that don't cost the earth is all that residential customers want from their fixed line telephone. An adequate cellphone signal, using whatever mast is in the locality; simple, transparent tariffs; and a promise that they will not be ripped off with unexpected, astronomical bills, is what cellphone users want from a cellphone network. Let the market squabble over those things that are not commodities.

Instead, we are offered an oligopoly. This does not feel like a stable situation that will end well.