I was contemplating the pleasure of writing a rant for Plymouth’s Chamberlink magazine while sitting in a hotel in Penzance, Cornwall.
Decisions: should I bemoan the ability of people to recognise that the letter aitch does not have an aitch at the start and so is not pronounced haitch; or should I find some element of grammar which is abused on aregular basis?
And then it came to me. Wi-fi in tourist accommodation was the issue.
Now, the hotel I was in, which shall remain nameless (but you know who you are), was very nice. TV, coffee and tea-making facilities, sea view, etc. But they offered, as they described it, “a generous 30 minutes a day of free wi-fi”. After that, you pay.
I cannot understand why hotels do this (and there are many big ones in Plymouth which are this short-sighted, too). You wouldn’t say “You can watch TV free for 30 minutes and then you have to pay” (although having put that idea in their heads, watch this space).
The hotel I was in cost £185 a night for a double room. For that you cannot give me free wi-fi?
There is a small cafe in Tavistock which has free wi-fi. If they can afford it out of the price of a cup of coffee and a sandwich, surely a hotel can offer it in the price of a room?
Of course the tourism industry has always looked for ways to maximise income, and that’s understandable, but you have to look at what you’re doing from the customer’s point of view. Making a phone call from a hotel room used to be an expensive business, with a premium rate being charged for outgoing calls. Now we all have mobiles, so that revenue stream has all but disappeared.
And it will be the same with wi-fi. Those who offer it free will succeed and get repeat business. Those who don’t will have customers who resent being charged and will probably use other means or other places to access the internet. The tourist industry is very competitive and times are tough, I know. But you have to find a competitive edge, and offering free wi-fi is a plus selling point.
Charging for wi-fi is not. Why make it harder to keep ahead of the competition?
Likewise, lots of hotels and guest houses are not dog-friendly. That’s fine if you have a good reason, but remember you are excluding some 30 per cent of the holiday market from choosing you.
By the way, the Tavistock cafe is also dog friendly – well done them.
So that’s the first part of my rant.
The second part is all about— ALERT! Your free reading time has expired. Please pay at Reception to read more.
Why oh why oh wi-fi
July 28th, 2010Welcome back
March 25th, 2010Life is full of minor irritations. It’s when they won’t go away that they really start to make you sore.
Television has produced one that is both irritating and illogical – the phrase ‘welcome back’. If there’s a commercial break or a regional opt out the main presenters wave us goodbye and then welcome us back afterwards. But I haven’t gone anywhere – they have. I’m still sitting in the same armchair watching the same TV.
Let’s move the scene to a pub or a bar. Someone is holding forth and then say’s ‘I’ve got to pop out to the cash machine – talk to Fred.’ We talk to Fred and then the principal returns, smiles broadly, and says ‘welcome back’.
We would all look at him or her as if some marbles were missing. Well it’s the same on television. Please don’t welcome me back. You can thank me for hanging around for you, You can say you are glad to be back with me. But please, please drop the welcome back.
Meet the parents – government assisted
December 30th, 2009I had to look at the calendar to make sure I hadn’t overslept and that it wasn’t April 1. Here was a story that couldn’t be true, surely. It had to be a spoof.
Some joker (possibly a P.Mandelson) is putting it about that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is telling parents how to treat new graduates in their households.
Graduating can be a tough experience and parents should try not to nag when they come back home, exhausted from the ordeal of all that work, not to mention all those parties.
But – and here is the really useful stuff – BIS says parents have to get these newly-qualified people to be realistic about job prospects, and encourage them to make their own ways in the world. Many people, says the guide, “waste away the years” attempting to become actors and film script writers. How stupid can people get? After all there are better opportunities with X factor and Britain’s Got Talent.
In a list of “dos” the guide says parents should “allow their offspring some time to relax once they graduate – but don’t let a few weeks turn into a few months.” Another tip says: “Arrange a regular update of progress to avoid nagging. This could be weekly or daily and if agreed in advance can help your son/daughter monitor progress and keep you informed, without adding any more pressure on them.”
The “don’ts” includes advice against nagging. It says “it might work in some circumstances, but most young people want to get a job and know there is a lot of competition. The nagging can make young people feel more stressed and makes the failure to get a job worse”.
However another tip says parents should not be too supportive.”Sometimes, it really is necessary to show tough love,” the guide says. “If you are making life too comfortable at home, why would they get a job? If you are providing free board and lodgings, a well-stocked fridge, washing and ironing done, plus an allowance, there’s not much drive there. So cut back to help increase their motivation.”
Parents across the land must be seizing this advice, muttering: “Thank God BIS has come to our aid. We were about to go to the supermarket to stock the fridge up again, after doing the washing and ironing of course, and we have been giving them money to stay at home.
“Now things will be different. No food, no clean clothes, and no place to call home – just like it was for them at university.”
In this time of uncertainty for business, with the country hopefully coming out of recession, and with many firms still finding things difficult, it is comforting to know that the BIS empire has not wasted it time on making business regulation less stringent, or helping firms with innovation or skills. No, it has focused on the next generation of entrepreneurs and whizz kids. Or at least their parents.
Or has some BIS civil servant been taking the P out of Mandelson?
Why al-Qaeda persists in targeting air travel
December 27th, 2009The latest terrorist attack on air travel, on the Northwest Airlines plane from Amsterdam to Detroit, raises the question as to why al-Qaeda keeps focusing on this particular type of target.
After all there must be easier options – sporting venues, concerts, theatres for instance – all of which offer the prospect of high numbers of casualties with minimal security. Attacks on venues like these would indeed cause chaos and fear, but they would not have the same economic impact.
There are approximately 50,000 commercial flights in the world each day. Assuming a meagre average of 100 passengers per flight that means half a million people in the air on any one day.
Every time there is an attack, even a failed attack, it has immense implications. Airport security across the world is reviewed and increased. This means additional costs for airlines and airports. And it means further delays and inconvenience for passengers. We often spend more time hanging around in airports than we do in the air – check in three hours before your flight, taken your shoes, belts and other things off when you go through security, undergo pat down or x-ray scanning – and we are still not sure that a potential terrorist has been spotted.
The terrorists are getting cleverer. Explosives in shoes, in underwear, inside bodies, in bottles, disguised as – what next?
And even when you go through security you can go and buy lots of inflammable alcohol to take on board to mix with – whatever innocent-looking substance is allowed. How long can it be before no hand luggage is allowed?
So attacks on air travel, even these failed attacks, have an enormous financial and social impact on the 1.8 billion or so annual air passengers, on airlines, airports, airport workers, insurance companies, passengers and, of course, governments.
Despite worries over global warning air travel continues to grow. Commerce needs it. Consumers demand it. And in the circumstances al-Qaeda probably knows exactly what it is doing.
After all, as the IRA said after the Brighton bombing: “Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always.”
Six rules for effective writing
December 16th, 2009George Orwell’s observations on effective writing are as relevant now as they were when he made them in 1946. You can find plenty of criticism about them on the internet and in other essays, but those who criticise generally miss the point of what Orwell was pointing out – that to be effective writing has to be from the point of view of the reader rather than the writer.
Anyway – here they are:
• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Let me know what you think.l
Tiger, Tiger burning bright…
December 3rd, 2009Well the world’s greatest golfer has been burned by the publicity surrounding his car crash and his admission that he has let his family down, but more importantly for businesses this affair (no, not Tiger’s) has an important public relations lesson.
That lesson is, if you leave an information vacuum, rumour and speculation will fill it.
That’s what happened in Tiger’s case. He said nothing following the crash, so naturally people started putting two and two together and came up with answers that were amazingly close to four.
Had he or his representative said something straight away ‘It was a silly argument and I drove away in a huff and wasn’t paying attention to my driving. Luckily my wife acted swiftly and bravely to get me out’ or something along those lines, then it would not have killed the story but it certainly would not have dragged on as long as it has.
Silence is not golden in PR terms. It is a lead weight, dragging down those who employ it as a tactic.
If you have a problem in your business, say something. Listen to your PR adviser, and if you haven’t got one, then find one quickly. It is not difficult to put together a statement which will satisfy the media to some extent, and then continue to manage the process. But please, don’t retreat into the black hole of saying nothing. Otherwise, like Tiger, you will find yourself in the deep rough.
Dear Bankers (part 2)
October 22nd, 2009Dear Bankers
I find I have to write to you again in the light of your activities now that we seem to be coming out of the recession – a recession, I would remind you, that was caused by you and your colleagues.
I am sure you will recall that we, the taxpayers, stepped in with rather a lot of the money we have to earn in order to save your irresponsible businesses from going under. Thanks to this money you still have a job, as do your traders who seem to have been doing quite well in the markets of late.
However it may have escaped your notice that, while you and your colleagues still have jobs, some of us do not. Some of us lost our jobs because of the recession which, again I would remind you, was caused by you.
So the prospect of you rewarding yourselves and your traders with large bonuses is quite offensive to anyone who isn’t a banker. That means most of us.
Even if you happen to be a bank which did not need lots of our money to save you from collapse, you still owe us. The money (our money) pumped into the economy and which made it easier for you to borrow still kept you going as well.
Now once again we hear the mantra that you have to pay these large bonuses to keep these clever people you employ from defecting to other organisations. Here is some advice. Let them.
It has probably slipped your mind that these clever people are the same ones who got you – and us – into the financial crisis in the first place. Is it really worth so much money to keep such questionable talent in employment?
Or should you consider perhaps, letting them go. You would save lots of (our) money and your competitors would have to spend more, while at the same time fresh, new talent could come in with a more considered approach to how a business like yours should be run.
I am somewhat perturbed that I have to write to you again concerning your activities. I trust that you will review your actions and will change your ways.
And do remember that until we have got all of our money back from you all, you remain, sirs, my humble and obedient servants.
Coleslaw – NO
June 30th, 2009Marmite has made a whole advertising campaign out of the fact that some people love it, while others recoil in horror at the thought of going anywhere near the stuff.
For my money there is another product which is just as bad – coleslaw. The word comes from the Dutch koolsla which means cabbage salad. Whoever thought cabbage salad was a good idea?
The thing that really bugs me is why some cafes and restaurants insist on putting the stuff on your plate. A side salad means a side salad, and it should be uncorrupted by the gooey revolting mess that is coleslaw.
We need a Freedom from Coleslaw campaign. Who will join me?
Let’s have some meaningful voting
June 2nd, 2009The first-past-the-post voting system in the UK is not fit for purpose. It stifles real voting intentions and means too many people get elected without a having any sort of meanginful mandate from the people.
Proportional Representation (PR) is cumbersome and separates people from their representatives because of multi-member constituencies. So what do we have to turn to? The answer has to be AV or Alternative Vote.
With AV you can vote for your real preference – a Tory in a strong Labour place or vice versa – without trying to think about whether or not some tactical voting is worthwhile. Then you can put down your second preference and then third and so on.
The bottom placed candidate drops out in each round and the next preerence votes are transferred. This way someone will eventually win but with qualified support of 50 per cent of those voting.
This has to be better than the present system and is certainly easwier to understand and administer than PR. With the current debate over parliamentary reform we need some radical changes – get rid of the House of Lords, change the voting to AV and get everyone out of the Palace of Westminster (see previous blog).
The currenrt furore over MPs expenses must not take our eyes off the real need for change here. Expenses do need reform, but it is the whole system which has to change.
This way democracy will work better for everyone and will start to make people feel more engaged with our politicians. The real danger is that we will get a general election before too long and then everyone will just settle down for more of the same. We are tired of the confrontation system of politicis in this country. We want politicians to work for the good of us all.
Bring on AV for a start.
Time for change – radical change
May 17th, 2009Public relations professionals are always telling clients that the best way to deal with an issue is to turn it into an opportunity.
The Palace of Westminster certainly has an issue at the moment, so let’s give the appropriate PR advice. Much of the problems surrounding the House of Commons and MPs expenses, as well as those separate issues in the House of Lords about members being prepared to change legislation for money, stem largely from what many politicians hold dear – the tradition and the setting of Parliament.
All the paraphernalia, customs, robes and traditions, including the unwritten rules and the inevitable lack of transparency they bring, are largely what makes politics unpalatable to much of the the British public. We need a non-confrontational, business-like, sensible Parliament, where politicians can do the business they get paid to do without being hidebound by what are frankly outdated surroundings and inappropriate customs.
So here’s the solution. The Palace of Westminster must become what it is anyway – a museum of the political system. It’s a wonderful building and would make a wonderful place for the people of this country and others to learn about political history and all the tradition that goes with it.
Then we have a new chamber for MPs where debates can be held, not facing each other with the awful yah-boo behaviour, but reasoned, sensible debate in a modern setting like most other democracies do.
Anything that smacks of custom and practice which ties us to the old ways must go. Goodbye Black Rod; goodbye Queen’s speech (we know it’s not her ideas anyway so why pretend); goodbye sergeant-at-arms; goodbye the mace; goodbye not saying someone’s name only his or her constituency; goodbye ‘honourable’ as it seems so many of them are not. All these should be consigned to the museum.
We need a fresh start in British politics and now is the time to make that bold step.
Any MPs who read this and think these are bad ideas needs to talk more to people and less to colleagues who have been working in the present museum for years. We demand a business-like parliament, doing serious work unencumbered by the trappings of history. We have a Parliament that likes to pretend it is still in the 17th century – and that includes the way many politicians do not respect the people of the UK.
The issue of MPs expenses is a symptom of a serious illness which needs radical surgery. Time to bring our politics into the 21st century, Out with the old and in with the new.