Bank branch closures

Hardly a surprise that the proposed internal banking guidelines provide no protection for smaller communities, banks are businesses and obliged to return a profit. If a branch is not making money then it's only obvious it should be closed; the invisible hand of the free market dictates a simple logic: if people wanted a branch they would use it, if they used it then it would be profitable.

Except what dictates profit in these cases? If a customer makes a withdrawal does that count as a loss, is it how many loans and mortgages a bank sells that determines its success?

Can I be charitable and simply confidethat it's the number of transactions that a branch deals with? If so then with a decline in numbers, a branch would hardly be missed. But why would numbers decline? To listen to the banks its the advent of new technology, you can do your banking, apply for a loan etc. online. There is no longer a need to physically present oneself at a local branch, how much more convenient.

Except is this really the case or an example of false cause and effect, is the drive to online banking driven by the customer or rather by the banks themselves? Consider the operation of bank branches in the latter 20th and early 21st centuries compared to other businesses.

What time does your local branch open, what tine does it close? Chances are it opens at 9am (or even 10am) and shuts at 5pm (or even 4pm) and then only Monday to Friday. Where is your local branch? Probably in the main thoroughfare of your town or village.

Given that most employed work the same hours (although with the rise in shift work that's changing) that the banks are open and that places of employment became out of town estates, is it any wonder that the branches started to empty and that when an opportunity to bank at a time and location of your own choosing became available it was jumped on?

Does this mean that people don't want or need physical branches and points of contact? Not necessarily merely that the banks have slowly been removing them and providing no other option.

So is there an option available to maintain branches while acknowledging the main point of a bank's existence (making profit) and the addition of online services, I think the answer is yes and an example is already up and running in the form of every major airport in this country.

Unlike supermarkets and other convenience stores banks offer exactly the same non-physical goods, no requirement for any major physical storage just a desk and a computer; sound familiar.

Could banks pool funds for a 'bank terminal' and staff it 24/7 with separate kiosks? Reduced overheads, better footfall (anyone banking with a rival will get to see your offers), stops the whinging from the government (regardless of Party), and heck might even bring more customers in. Certainly better than just pulling services and shutting out or displacing customers to your rivals and certainly better than sticking your fingers in your ears and reciting "but this is what the customer wants" over and over again.

Tax avoidance

Still popping up in the news are the tales of the big UK companies who barely pay any of the 20% corporation tax on their profits; nothing new their. What did catch my eye were those trying to justify it.

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Basic PAYE Tools End of Year take 2

I had 'fun' at the end of the last financial year with HMRC's Basic PAYE Tools package, but with all the updates and feedback surely this time will be better?

Sigh

I go through the checkboxes again and yes the P11s are done as is the P32. As before I leave one box unchecked and as before it complains that I haven't selected Yes or No for a completely different question that only has a "Yes" option - excellent start.

The software tells me that it this process will produce the P14s and P35 and on I continue.

At the first checklist - "Have you produced the P14s?"

Well no, the software has just told me that it will be producing them. Oo Catch-22 to continue and produce the P14s I need to confirm that I've produced the P14s.

One phone call later to someone helpful and it turns out that the paper copies of the P14 (which you shouldn't need as everything gets filed online) takes its data from the P11s so you can fill them in if you've completed the P11s, which has been done. When submitted online the programme generates the P14s needed for submission, but it won't produce something you can print out per se instead saving it as a CSV file.

So the P11s, P32 and P35 are produced in a format that the software offers me the chance to print, but the P14s aren't.

Oh well it's better than it was.

The stupidity of Barclays Banking forms

I've just had to fill in a details form for a third-party mandate on a business bank account and got stuck quite quickly due to the atrocious wording being presented to me, try this for yourself:

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Why you need to look at your electricity bills

Another vacated property means another electricity bill. The trick on their part is that as we're out of contract they can bill us the massive out-of-contract rates until it gets finalised. In this instance being charged 20p per kWh for both night and day rates.

The first bill arrives post contract. It's been estimated that this empty unit used 100 night units @20p and 400 day units @20p as well as 50 night units at the new contract price of 10p and 400 day units at the new price of 15p.

Nuh-uh we used 50 night units and 300 day units. A new invoice is sent and we're credited out 100 night units @10p and 500 day units @15p. Can you see the flaw?

We were charged for the 50 night units we used at 20p (£10)* and then an additional 50@20p and 50@10p (£15 total) and credited 100@10p (£10)

We were charged for the 100 day units we used at 20p (£20) and then an additional 300@20p and 400@15p (£120) and credited 700@15p (£105)

Or £30 over

At least when I pointed this out they instantly saw it and another new invoice is on its way. Given the way Electricity Suppliers change prices mid-invoice I do wonder how many in the same situation would  just note the credit and think it okay.

*although some of those might have fallen into the new period

Backups and Archives - knowing the difference

This entry resulted due to the failure of one of my home backup drives
"Oh one of my backup drives failed"
"One? Why do you have more than one?"
"Because otherwise it wouldn't be a backup"
"Huh?"

In the most simple of terms if you have a computer you probably want to make sure the data on it is safe. Cloud backup is fine, but they tend to have limitations and upload speeds aren't the same as download speeds as anyone trying to upload a video to YouTube has probably discovered.

For such things, and for peace of mind, a local external and portable hard drive is a good option; particularly given how cheap they are nowadays.

With disk plugged in data is copied across either by manually picking and choosing or by letting the Operating System run its own backup software. All done the user can now retire safe in the knowledge that if anything happens to the computer the data can still be retrieved. Or not.

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The joy of property rates

I've mentioned in the past how much councils charge business in rates (for services they don't receive) how this can be lowered thanks to Small Business Rate Relief which was set to be cancelled next year. What I can't seem to find is remarks regarding empty properties. I'll rectify that now.

Keeping it simple empty industrial properties were exempt from paying council tax rates. Some thought this unfair and some thought that it allowed landlords to keep rents high as they lacked incentive to rent out the building (such people being idiots as landlords are still required to pay utility bills from a zero-income building) as such the Labour government introduced a cap. If the Rateable value of your building was over £15,000 rates would need to be paid; the next year they raised the threshold to £18,000. In 2011 the Conservatives lowered it to £2,600.

Currently the council tax multiplier is set to 45.8p that means a property valued at £12,000 RV that stands empty and paid nothing now accrues a charge of £5,496 a year just as if someone was renting it. Recall that this is on something that is generating zero income. How would that translate to domestic property?

Take a property worth £100,000 rent per month is set to 1% or £1,000 which is an RV of £12,000 per annum. If it were a business it would pay that £5,496. In Stourport it's a Band E property and thus is charged £1,848.22 or almost a third the amount; oh and they'd have their bins emptied too.

Logic says that companies make more money. Except companies also have to pay tax - company, NI etc. which a household doesn't. So why are businesses charged in a different way to domestic premises? Isn't doing so a disincentive to all these home-start businesses?

I'm being serious if you start a business at home then you're supposed to notify the council as the room you call your 'office' is now subject to business levels of rates if used primarily for that function. So that's the full whack of domestic council tax plus the RV of that room multiplied by 45.8p. Assuming, of course, that you have permission anyway as your work may constitute a change of use and require planning permission.

It's a bit of a joke, but this distinction is not helping the economy.

Pointless letters from the Royal Mail

"Important Information about your Royal Mail services" the letter starts, except they're not really my services anymore are they, they're your services. Apparently they're modernising the way they operate and this may result in a few changes to the service.

They'll continue to deliver in the morning and for a longer period during the day and many customers will still continue to get their mail by lunchtime, which is a little vague. timing will depend on where you are in the route and will vary depending on mail volume.

Uh-huh in other words you've paid to have a letter printed to everyone to tell us that our post  may be later or earlier than a time we already don't have scheduled.

Okay I'm sure there are some who'd be looking at the time and thinking "The post is a little late" and noting that it seems to be always late now, but given we've slowly become habituated into the post arriving when it arrives wouldn't it have been cheaper just to let those phone in to complain and explain? Sure it's pre-emptive and darned polite of you to tell me, but I have to wonder at the cost to do this compared to the minor inconvenience of dealing with the few people who are likely to notice?

Do Microsoft use Outlook Contacts and Categories?

I have to ask as the contacts section of Outlook betrays some serious screwed-up behaviour. To start with there's supposedly a push away from using distribution lists and the "Select names" dialogue box in favour of categories and the actual Contact window.

Okay let's try that with something simple - a group of contacts some of which I'll categorise as "members" and the others remain uncategorised. I want to send an email to all the "members". To do this I need to change my contacts view to Categories, find the members section, click on that and then right-click and do Create|New Message to Contact just as I would a single contact.

Oh wait I can't as when you select more than one contact or a whole category Microsoft remove the Create pop-up meaning I have to go all the way to Action|Create|New Message to Contact. Of course I mean heck who's going to try to send an email to more than one contact at a time.

I now have a new mail message and all my "members" in the "To:" section Yup no option to Send them as "Bcc:" from the menu I'd need to cut and paste them in to do that.

Ah well time to send my email - oh wait I need to add in a couple of non-members who need to see this, but whom I don't want to give away their email addresses to the rest. Given I have both the Message and the Contacts window open at the same time it's trivial to find the non-members I want and drag them into the "Bcc:" section. Sure if I drag a contact into the message Microsoft will interpret that as to send the whole contact card, but dropping into a header section will mean just dropping the email address in surely.

Hah don't be silly it tries to paste the contact card in their instead.

There appears to be no way to add in any other contacts from the Contacts window to an existing message I could click the "Bcc:" button and use the "Select names" dialogue but a) I'm not supposed to b) it doesn't show the categories I'm supposed to be using and c) it won't search in the categories if they happened to have one.

It seems the only way to do this is to create a message to the "members" then create another message to the non-members you want to add, then cut/copy paste into the first message.... seriously that's the solution?

The dumb thing is that they've worked out that with multiple categories you only want to send a member of both one email. Sending an email to "members A" and "members B" where there's an overlap will only add one email in - so they got that bit right; how did they get the rest so wrong?

Businesses should work harder

Lack of growth in the UK not our fault says the government - businesses should work harder. William Hague states that

“I think they should be getting on with the task of creating more of those jobs and more of those exports, rather than complaining about it."

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond stated that

"Large businesses are sitting on a pretty large pile of cash,[...] What we have got to try and do is persuade businesses to take the plunge, to just use some of their cash pile, to take a judgment about where demand is going, where the economy is going in the future, and be prepared to back their judgment with investment in British jobs and capacity in the British economy."

Yep ignore the case that such large businesses are mostly banks who are still piling money into the stock markets so that there is a lack of direct investment into businesses so they can create "more jobs" and "exports".

Ignore the case that no one is going to take the plunge because the public don't have any money. I'm not going to build a house or business unit unless I know there's a buyer lined up. I can't start churning out some new products for export unless I can get an start-up loan to fund it which requires me to show that I'm already selling the products I can't yet make and do so cheaper than foreign competitors.

It's not a case of "working a bit harder" as Eric Pickles claims; the growth needs to be there first so businesses can move into it.

Fuel costs are up meaning it's more expensive to transport goods; the pound is still strong against most other currencies making it more expensive to export; the majority of goods are 20% more expensive than they need to be; and the government says 'Not our fault'.

The government needs to prime the pump. They need to start leaning on the banks we own to divest some of our money into the community; they need to alter the current tax rates on new buildings to encourage more building; they need to alter fuel tax and take a much better look at the transport infrastructure of this country. At the very least they need to start employing the unemployed directly - after all the government is already paying them - why not pay them to do some work?

But no our current (and yes our previous) government are all for reducing state interference and letting the market decide. Well shock news for them - the market has decided and this is the result; you know the one you're all complaining about.

Royal Mail misses pricing opportunity

The price of stamps increases from today, roughly 30% for first class stamps from 46p to 60p, however they've slipped up when it comes to large letters.

Previously a large letter under 100g cost 76p. If you only had a selection of first and second class stamps that meant having to use one old first (46p) and one old second (36p) giving 82p or 6p wasted. just over 100g and it was £1.09. That meant one old first and two old seconds giving £1.18 or 9p wasted.

Now they've managed well with the under 100g change by charging 90p two new seconds (50p) means a whole 10p wasted; but what a mess on the just over. They've made it £1.20! That's exactly two new first class stamps - no wastage at all.

I think words should be had with whoever set the prices and an instant increase to £1.21 is in order :-)

Can I have the actual graphic please?

The bane of a web developer - you ask the client to send you their logo or whatever and in return you get a Word Document with an embedded picture.

Worse yet the person I asked is a graphics professional - I suppose he's just used to sending them out like that to accommodate his clients.

Internet down

Came in this morning to see the VoIP phone light lit - "Oh DaBoss' internet is down again" I thought. Then I noted a rebooted computer and realised we'd had a power failure. Was it the server at our end causing the light... yes we had no internet connection.

Checked the settings; checked the line; rebooted the router soft; rebooted hard. No joy. Contacted our provider; no problems with the system at their end - they'd call me back.

A nice guy called back and he informed me the diagnostics had returned an incorrect password. Huh odd. He gave me the new one and without giving it away we both realised at the same time that it must have only recently been reset and at their end.

He's going to find out who authorised a password change.

Council Tax freeze - the other shoe drops

As mentioned last year oh how nice they're not charging us more for the reduced services and it even made it into the budget for our district. Yeah Council Tax isn't going up... just had the business rates bill. The standard multiplier has increased from 43.3p in the pound to 45.8p.

So along with the fact that Labour scrapped the void rates on industrial premises and the Coalition allowed the exemption threshold to drop to a pitiful value meaning so many landlords now need to pay who didn't before what a big surprise they're not raising council tax.

To crunch those numbers it's 43.3% of the rateable value increased to 45.8% which may seem a rise of 2.5% but is in fact a rise of 5.8%. But hey that's okay as it only applies to businesses. It's not as if they'll just charge customers more and there are plenty of new shops opening all the time around here to keep competition healthy even if they do.

How to keep the money coming in while keeping the electorate happy (and in the dark) - politics [spits]

Energy companies - just reading the script

A phone call from an energy provider (not ours)

Me: "Hello [company name]"
Girl: "Hello is that [company name]?"
"Yes it is how can I help you"
"This is [energy company] I'm contacting you with regard to energy usage by [company] at [unit]"
"Ah yes they'll be leaving at the end of the month"
"So are you going to take responsibility for the energy usage"
"Well we're the landlords"
"Yes I know you're the landlords, that's why we're calling you"
"Well yes we're the landlords what other choice do we have? Can we say no and not have to pay anything?"
"Yes you can; but then we'd disconnect you"
"So we don't really have a choice... okay I 'll suppose we'll have to work out a landlord's rate and only pay for electricity used"
"No you'd have to pay the standing charge too"
"No a landlord's rate where you pay a higher rate for electricity, but no standing charge"
"I don't know if we do that"
"That's okay I know [rival company] does we'll just switch to them"
"Well I don't know about rates that'd be the sales team; I'm from the [team] that's all I deal with"
"You don't think that given your sole job is to contact people in this situation that it might be worth finding out if you do a rate that only applies to the situation about which you are calling?"
"I don't do rates that'd be the sales team"

Marvellous. Seriously why is this person there; you could do this with an automated system... "Hi this is [energy company] calling you about [robotic voice - location] if this applies to you press 1 now...." and then pass on the details to the sales team.

Multiple copies on one A4 sheet in Microsoft Word

I'm printing some A6 A5 flyers off; just the one page and as it was mostly text it was done in Word. So you tell it to print and you select "4 per page" in the print dialogue box and you get a single page with one copy of the flyer sitting top-left. Okay let's try printing off four copies.

Four pages with a single flyer sitting top-left.

The trick is in being specific - in the page range section tell it that you want to print page 1 and page 1 and page 1 and page 1 by typing "1,1,1,1" without the quotes.

Okay now say you want 12 flyers how many copies do you print? Not 12 instead 3; you're printing 3 pages of the set (1,1,1,1). For 100 it'll be 100/4 or 25 of the set (1,1,1,1).

Logical, but potentially confusing if you approach it from the wrong point of view.

HMRC's Payroll Software

Rather than pay a continuous subscription for a bit of software that will give me PAYE and Income Tax values this year I've been trying the HMRC's own bit of kit.It's not bad if not exactly streamlined.

However one tiny annoyance keeps bugging me - every time I start it pops up a notice that I should check that it's up-to-date and that the best way to do that is to have the software check automatically and I should click here to find out how to do that.

Except it's already set up to check for updates automatically; by default it's set up to do that. However I ran the special link that would check for updates and it found none. Just to check I headed to options; automatic update settings and then (despite it stating it had checked) hit the "check for updates now" button - no updates.

As one last check I hit the link that was provided to check for updates manually - the latest version is 4.0.0.19694 my version is... wait a sec, gotta find a screen that tells me... 3.1.2.15508.

So despite running the check for updates in three different ways - it didn't detect I needed an update or perform the correct task. As one last check I ran their own Diagnostic Tool; it finished and pushed me to this page.

Gives me so much confidence in the HMRC.

[Update - it gets better. The link tells me I need the July update to get up to version 3.1.2.15508 (which I already am) to ensure the data is transferred before I download the 2012 update. Except there is no update just the full version which installs in its own directory separate to the  version I've got and then (smoothly I'll admit) allows me to click to import the databases. So now I've two versions of the software installed along with two sets of start menu icons]

Nokia C6-01 lost outdoor profile

A colleague brought me their phone (a Nokia C6-01) and stated they had a problem with it and perhaps I could assist. After an update they'd found they'd lost one of the profiles one labelled Outdoor that increased the ring volume automatically.

I checked the menu system quickly and found no such profile; I checked online and found no-one else complaining - so I headed to Nokia's own site and started digging.

If you try searching with the right parameters something interesting occurs. My first discovery was the South African web page that didn't list an Outdoor profile; however Google had it found with that search term? Pulling up their cached version gave me the reason why. The top version is cached, the bottom current:

It gets better - I located the current version of the manual at v3.0 and then a previous one at v2.0; changes in layout mean profiles appear on page 30 of the new version and page 32 of the old. As on the web page "Change your profile for meetings or outdoor use" has dropped the outdoor part in the newer version.

So Nokia have removed a profile as part of the system update and then removed every reference to it in the new guides without telling anyone. I wonder how many people are scratching their heads and insisting that it used to be there?

Outlook and Exchange

Remind me never to do that again. Just tried to set up an Exchange Account on Outlook with minimal information on a system where there's already a default POP3 account in place.

First of all the delightful bit that although it's possible to tell Outlook to set-up such an account one cannot be done while Outlook is open. So why give me the damn option?

So anyway chastened I scurried to Mail in the Control Panel; added in the information I had and hit Resolve and was told that the name couldn't be resolved unless Outlook was "active"; oh gee thanks for that. Seems the information was wrong.

So I cancelled out; fired Outlook back up and up popped a balloon telling me that send/receive wasn't working as there was no default store. "Huh?" The store was there and happily populated. Checked the accounts and everything was pointed in the right direction except... the default store was no longer the default store. Hit the default button; waited; closed Outlook; re-opened it and everything was fine.

In other words despite cancelling out of the creation of an account Outlook went ahead and started to set one up anyway and didn't bother to change the settings back. Delightful!

Workfare - yes or no?

If you haven't heard about Workfare where have you been? In essence it's a scheme to get the long-term unemployed back into work; which sounds great. However issues have been raised about its nature.

To begin I'm in two minds about this. Fundamentally I see the need for this type of scheme. Having been unemployed I know how difficult it can be to get out of that mindset and back into a 'work' mindset; particularly when it seems you're getting paid for doing nothing. Add in those who graduate from education straight onto the dole and it must be particularly difficult to shift.

Likewise I can see the need to force people onto this scheme. Given the choice to be paid to do nothing or something; who can be blamed for choosing the nothing option?

Given all that why is there a problem? Firstly there was the alleged disingenuity of the premise - the scheme was voluntary however once volunteered it became compulsory. The second major point was the companies being targetted as providers of this service - big billion pound profit companies. Which makes the third point even worse - these companies weren't paying for the services.

We the taxpayers through the government were paying people to work at companies returning massive profits. Backlash!

As more details emerged this seemed even more unfair. Allegedly miss a day of work and your 'quota' would be reset. Companies were obliged to provide a job interview at the end of the period; but not an actual job. This meant a company could 'hire' someone to do the job for free; interview them at the end and say "Sorry no job" and then 'hire' another person for free to do the same job. All at our expense. Why would the companies do that though; surely the time taken to have to induct a new set of trainees outweighs the 'freeness' of their work. Well yes if what they were doing was trained work; it's not it's all unskilled work that requires little to no training with minimal supervision required.

In short the companies were essentially being placed in charge and being appeased; hardly surprising of the Conservative Party though.

What could make this scheme work though? Firstly the company pays the trainee directly and then claims the money back from the government; and the amount paid post-tax must be equal to the JSA. This is important as it puts the trainee on the companies books and they become protected by the standard employment laws.

Secondly if after the trial period has finished the company decides whether or not to employ that person for that position. If they decide not to hire them then they cannot take on another trainee for that work unless they explain why the previous trainee wasn't suitable.

Thirdly the layoff terms must be balanced - the company can 'return' the trainee if they find them unsuitable (again with an explanation); but the trainee must also be able to leave the company without forfeiture (again providing an explanation).

All this should get the long-term unemployed into a work habit without leaving them open to exploitation by the companies.