Pay the band, you tightwads!

We’re now less than 100 days from the beginning of the rapture 2012 London Olympics, which of course means that it’s time for our island nation, and LOCOG in particular, to start abandoning any pretence of sanity. This way, we get to give ourselves a gentle warm-up for the opening ceremony, during which we are presumably collectively expected to lose it completely. The official merchandising stand  – which has now appeared nationwide in branches of John Lewis, who usually have more sense – offers ample visual evidence that the 2012 Olympics already got a divorce from any concept of taste or restraint:

Clearly, this divorce was not amicable. That’s Wenlock, the mascot for the summer games, rendered as two different kinds of cuddly toy, both of which look like an unsightly cross between a Dalek, a Cyclops, and some kind of personal stimulation device. It’s lovely to see us choose such dignified imagery as the vehicle via which we sell ourselves to the rest of the world.

It’s not entirely surprising that at this stage, under the surface, some aspects of the event’s organisation are beginning to smell a little. Take, for example, the engagement of musicians for the various park events during the games. There’s a growing suspicion that LOCOG have adopted a policy of not paying professional musicians who are hired to perform during the games. Apparently, the honour of being asked to participate should be payment enough, for musicians at least. Presumably LOCOG are under the boneheaded impression that professional musicians don’t have mortgages, rent, car payments, gas and electricity bills and all the rest of it. The Musicians’ Union is now investigating.

Now, OK, I’m not a professional musician, and nor do I play one on television. But this still strikes me as being a peculiarly obnoxious decision for LOCOG to have taken, particularly in the context of the huge amounts of money that are being lavished on staging the games. Presumably the technicians will be paid – the cameramen, the stagehands, the cleaners and groundsmen and ticket staff and all the rest would not, naturally, be expected to work without pay – and yet the musicians, who are also skilled professionals with bills to pay, are expected to sing for no supper. Sorry, that’s indefensible, particularly given that Heritage Lottery Fund money has already been diverted to the games.

Here’s the thing: despite the hideous logo, the outrageous cost, the problems processing ticket sales and all the rest of it, I want the games to succeed, even though I’m not remotely a sports fan and won’t be attending any of the events myself (or, probably, even watching on television apart from the opening and closing ceremonies). It’s a huge event, and people all over the world will be watching. But it’s because the whole world will be watching that we need to pay attention to how the way the proceedings have been organised will be perceived elsewhere in the world. Leaving aside the fact that professional musicians are as much entitled to be paid for their services as anybody else, adopting a policy of not paying professional musicians to perform at the Olympics just makes us look cheap, particularly given that the amount of money involved is a drop in the ocean in terms of the games’ overall budget. It’s a choice that certainly does not make me proud to be British, or English, or in any way associated via citizenship or geography with the 2012 games; the adoption of this shameful policy does Lord Coe and the rest of LOCOG’s board no credit at all. It’s the nastiest kind of penny-pinching, and it diminishes and demeans the whole event. We’re known, as a nation, to be proud of our artists, their tremendous heritage, and the enormous contribution they make to our society. By refusing to pay professional musicians at Olympic events, LOCOG is simply broadcasting to the world that art, in 2012, is not something that has any value at all to this country’s establishment, and that’s not a message we should be giving the rest of the world as we prepare to host the biggest international event this country has seen in at least half a century.

So, LOCOG – just pay the damn band, OK?

Please wait while the machine checks which decade you’re in…

Meet Ben Nelson. He’s 69 years old, and is one of two Senators representing Nebraska.  He looks a little bit confused here, doesn’t he?

It’s not entirely surprising. The modern world, it seems, is a place in which Senator Nelson chooses not to live. There is currently, in the US, an ongoing debate about legislating a cap on ATM fees – the charges you pay when you use an ATM from a bank other than your own, or a private white-label ATM that’s unaffiliated with any financial institution. Senator Nelson was asked for a quote on the subject by a journalist from his local newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald, and his response, to anybody who lives a life that’s, well, anything resembling normal, will seem a little surprising. Senator Nelson, at 69 years of age, has never used an ATM. Ever. He says he understands the holograms, though… except by ‘holograms’ he means ‘barcodes’. Never mind.

His senate colleague Mike Johanns is almost as confused. At 59, he’s a decade younger; he admits to having used ATM machines fewer than five times in his life – an oddly specific answer, you might think, but I suppose if you engage in a particular activity that infrequently you’ll remember each time as if it was your first. Or something.

Quite how you get to age 59 having only used an ATM five times, though, is entirely another question. Getting to age 69 without ever using one beggars belief. Getting through life without ever using a bank machine constitutes the kind of exercise in avoiding dealing with the world that should win several awards and be made into a documentary. It’s the sort of achievement that those of us with normal, humdrum lives view with awe and wonder. I mean, really, being able to spend your entire life on a plane of existence that far removed from normality deserves at least a round of applause, if not a standing ovation.

Except, of course, they’re elected representatives, and their job is to represent the interests of their constituents in the Senate. Doing that job necessitates having at least a basic understanding of the processes of everyday life. If Senator Nelson is so out of touch that he’s managed to live almost seven decades without familiarising himself with something as ordinary as a bank machine, then he’s in the wrong line of work.

Credit, crunched – or, the bill that keeps on billing.

I think I’ve found the mail order company of the damned.

I’m not going to name them. I’m also not going to use them again. All I wanted to do was to buy a couple of shirts. Shopping for clothes is not something I enjoy, so I looked online, found some shirts I liked on special offer (3 for the price of 2), and tried to buy them.

Foolish, foolish man.

I chose three shirts (two denim, one corduroy – we can discuss my absolute lack of anything resembling fashion sense later), added them to the cart, and tried to check out. This is where the fun began. I entered all the details I was asked for – not, at this point, including any kind of bank card information – and clicked ‘confirm’. The next screen told me that a credit account for the merchant had been opened for me, with a spending limit of £150 and an APR of you-don’t-want-to-know; I could, however, bypass the credit account by clicking on a particular button and paying by debit card. This I did.

Does anybody else see what’s wrong with this picture? We’ve had, over the past couple of years, an endless stream of news stories about, basically, individuals/corporations/governments who have got themselves into severe financial difficulties by using too much credit, and now here’s this company effectively telling me that the only means of purchasing their goods is to open a credit account – a process which, moreover, required me to give them precisely no information about my finances, just my date of birth, address and postcode. That’s irresponsible batshit insane. I assume they checked my name, date of birth and postcode against a credit register; I didn’t agree to that, I didn’t need that to be done, and I’d never in a million years have undertaken any kind of credit agreement at the kind of APR these people offer (a whopping 39.9%).

Fast forward a few days, and the parcel arrived. Given that it was only supposed to contain three shirts, it was surprisingly large. I found out why when I opened it. Six shirts, four denim, two corduroy, three charged to my debit card and three charged to this unwanted credit account. Cynics among you may not be astonished to learn that this delightful organisation’s customer service line is an 0871 number (= 10p/minute, not covered by any kind of inclusive billing plan). The call took 35 minutes, 20 of which were spent on hold listening to the kind of muzak that makes Frank Wildhorn sound like Tchaikovsky, with periodic interruptions from a recorded voice that told me the company cared about my call. It took conversations with three different people to arrange a returns label to send the unwanted shirts back and get the billing straightened out so that they would be refunded against the credit account. I sent them back, I heard nothing more, I forgot about it.

Fast forward another couple of weeks, to yesterday, and a bill plops into the mat for this credit account, for three of these shirts. I go online, log into this credit account that I’d never asked to open… and see that, yes, they’ve received the returned shirts and refunded them to my debit card. The result – another lengthy call to the 0871 number to check that the payment had been applied correctly and get the account closed down. In the end, my attempt to avoid spending 20 minutes in Debenhams by ordering online took far longer than I’d have spent just going into town. And, really, 39.9%? That’s not an APR, it’s a stick-up. At least I like the shirts.