Ertblog

Ouch: foolish words cost reputation

Anyone who has been a spokesperson for an organisation will know that awful feeling when they say something foolish to a journalist. Mark Gouldthorp, the managing director of Raleigh cycles, must be wondering why he ever agreed to become the subject of last week's Guardian's Friday business profile. Gouldthorp dismissed the big retailers that sell his products such as Halfords as a 'bunch of vipers' while mocking other bike shops:

"Independent retailing in the UK is a shambles. It is real Steptoe and Son stuff. Most of them will turn the lights off on a sunny day to save a bit of lecky. If you want to imagine the typical independent bike dealer, he is 50-60, highly cynical, miserable, moaning, scruffy. That's my customer. It is great."

I imagine Raleigh's marketing and PR people will have spent the last few days busily rebuilding bridges destroyed by their boss.

Talking of PR disasters, Tesco will have been embarrassed by a story in today's Daily Mail about a heavily pregnant woman who was fined £90 for parking in a mother and toddler space at the Tesco store. Tesco has sensibly refunded the fine but the company that operates the car park for the supermarket was unrepentant. The paper quotes Brian Walker, operations manager of Safe Park UK:

"There are signs saying that if you park here and you don't have a child then you will be fined and this lady did not have a child.

"Pregnancy is not a disability. It is a lifestyle choice and these bays are aimed at being wider for buggies."

He then rather ruined an already threadbare argument by adding:

"If someone has a broken leg and they need a wider bay then we will show compassion and let them park there."

When steam engines rusted at Barry

Small boys love trains. Especially steam engines.

I was born in 1963, when the steam age was fast drawing to a close. The year Flying Scotsman hauled its last scheduled train for British Railways. The diesels were taking over, and the state rail network lost all sense of pride as expresses were hauled by steam engines in filthy, rusty condition.

I never saw a steam train in public service: the nearest I came was a National Coal Board locomotive in the early 1970s. But my consolation was an amazing place called Barry scrapyard at Barry Island on the South Wales coast, where hundreds of old steam engines were rusting away in the salty sea air. Here I was able to clamber over engines ancient and modern. The youngest was just three years older than me - a BR 9F heavy freight engine that lasted just five years. What a scandalous waste of taxpayers' money. This photo taken at Barry shows me, aged 20, on the footplate of 92219, the penultimate steam engine built by BR. The engine was 23 years old at the time (1983). It was built in January 1960 but withdrawn in September 1965. You can see a photo of 92219 on a freight train the month before I was born here.

Barry scrapyard was the domain of Dai Woodham, who bought hundreds of steam engines from BR for scrap but gave most of them a stay of execution. Britain's preserved railways owe Dai Woodham a huge debt of gratitude because the engines he saved now provide most of their motive power. The scrapyard closed twenty years ago.

This is the earliest photo I have of me at Barry. It was taken by my father Bob Skinner in 1979 and shows me, aged 15, on the footplate of LMS 0-6-0 4F 44123, built in 1927 (so a year younger than Dad!) and withdrawn in June 1965. I understand this engine is awaiting restoration at the Avon Valley railway near Bristol.

UPDATE: I have posted a number of photos of locomotives at Barry scrapyard on Ertblog. 

 

Visit the new Ertblog on Wordpress at robskinner.net!

The man who went into the west: Byron Rogers' magnificent biography of RS Thomas

RS Thomas was a poet of genius. But he was an idiosyncratic parish priest. That's a kind way of saying he displayed few of the pastoral or human qualities you'd expect to see in a priest.

Byron Rogers' biography of RS Thomas, The man who went into the west, is one of the finest biographies I have ever read: 315 pages of pure delight. Rogers explores the contradictions deep within this extraordinary character: the champion of the Welsh language who failed to teach his son yr hen iaith; the Welsh nationalist who was most comfortable amongst the English middle classes.

Rogers quotes RS's son, Gwydion, at length. Most readers will feel huge sympathy for Gwydion, who suddenly found himself sent away to an English boarding school at the age of eight. His father later told him: "If you hadn't gone away we wouldn't have had the time to write and paint". I don't imagine that helped this father and son relationship.

It's easy to dismiss such heartlessness, and other examples of RS Thomas's lack of human touch. (His most significant comment to Elizabeth Taylor was: "Have you tried plaice?") Yet Rogers quotes many examples of parishioners who were comforted by his rather gruff form of human kindness. I was left with the feeling that this talented poet was blighted by shyness and a romantic, rather than practical, view of his nation.

Seven years ago I read RS Thomas's Welsh language autobiography, Neb as I prepared to sit my Welsh for Adults A level exam, Defnyddio'r Gymraeg Uwch. The review that foilows reflects my view of the greatest living English language Welsh poet just months before his death.

England fail against Croatia: money fails to talk

So England are out of Euro 2008. Steve McClaren is surely out of a job.

The newspaper billboards tonight said the England players were on £250,000 bonuses. How much gold do these people need to show any kind of pride? Shouldn't the fear of humiliation be sufficient motivation to perform well?

Microsoft Outlook 2007: email killer?

I got a new laptop a few months ago. Soon afterwards, I bought Microsoft Outlook 2007 as I wanted something a little more sophisticated than Microsoft Mail, the new version of Outlook Express.

Everything worked fine, until last week. Then I found my emails took longer to send and receive. Then they dried up completely.

I googled 'email problems Outlook 2007' - and was alarmed to find a vast number of results.

I'm still no nearer finding a solution, despite running Outlook on a new computer with Vista. Yet Microsoft Mail continues to send and receive, so there's no problem with my email account.

Why do IT companies continue to churn out products that aren't stable? It reminds me of the spat between the IT and car industries 10 years ago. The IT people mocked the lack of real innovation in modern cars. The car people retorted that if cars were as unreliable as modern software you'd have to reinstall your car engine after putting a new music tape in the stereo.

dabs.com: nice website, appalling customer service

If you're thinking of ordering computer software from the British website dabs.com, beware. You may find it impossible to get your hands on the goods because of the company's appalling customer service.

I ordered a copy of Microsoft Office 2007, home and student edition, from dabs.com last week. I paid extra for next day delivery. I chose to have the goods delivered to my home address, assuming that the courier would arrange for one of our neighbours to sign for it when we were at work. When I got home, I found a slip saying they had returned the item to the depot but would try again the next day. I called the courier the moment the office opened, asking them to get our neighbour or my mother-in-law, who lives down the road, to take delivery. I was told they would not do this, blaming security. And they didn't deliver on Saturdays. Instead, they said I'd have to make a 60 mile return trip to their nearest depot to collect the parcel myself.

Ah, I thought, I'll call Dabs. No chance. They don't believe in letting customers phone them. Instead, they use live web chat. I won't bore you with the rest of the saga. If you're interested, I've pasted the webchat transcript as a continuation. It speaks volumes about Dabs'complete lack of interest in the needs of their customers. How of earth can a mail order firm employ a courier that doesn't deliver on Saturdays?

The moral of the story? If you're in any doubt about whether you might miss the Dabs courier, give them a miss and buy from Amazon. That's what I did in the end. The Amazon parcel arrived on Saturday morning, less than 24 hours after I placed the order. That's what I call customer service.

Can childhood be risk-free? Tim Gill provides the voice of reason

There's a terrific article in The Guardian's family section today. It's an interview with Tim Gill, who "wants to free children from a zero-risk culture that overprotects and infantalises them at just the time they should be tasting freedom and taking responsibility".

Gill has written a book, No fear: Growing up in a risk-averse society, published by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

He argues convincingly that children growing up today are no more at risk from adults than his - my - generation was in the Sixties and Seventies. The chances of a child being abducted remain vanishingly small. Yet the media hysteria over tragic cases like Madeleine McCann encourages parents to treat their offspring with extreme care - which can actually do more harm than good. He cites the case of Abigail Rae, a toddler who wandered out of her nursery and drowned in a nearby pond. A male passer-by told the inquest that he had seen her and been concerned. But he did nothing, because he was afraid of looking as if he was abducting her.

Gill is a member of CTC, the UK's national cyclists' organisation. CTC has long campaigned against a classic example of misguided risk prevention: the attempt to make it compulsory for cyclists, especially children, to wear helmets. Despite soaring levels of child obesity, recent years have seen a number of MPs launching private members' bills attempting to force children or adults to wear helmets for cycling. The latest example was by Conservative MP Peter Bone. (So much for the idea that the Tory party opposes the Nanny state.) Can you imagine toddlers being arrested for leaving their helmets on the front lawn? That's the level of stupidity involved in this attempt to banish risk from young lives. And who has any evidence that cycling is more dangerous than climbing a tree or running downstairs? Surely we should all be forced to dress in full body armour at all times for fear of ... life.

Tim Gill is right. There's no such thing as a risk-free life. (Even if there were, it would be too miserable to contemplate.) Forcing every child to wear a helmet simply sends the message that cycling is dangerous. It isn't. Yes, there are risks, but they are far fewer than allowing youngsters to balloon in weight. CTC's website suggests that children are more likely to suffer a head injury on foot than while cycling. So why isn't Peter Bone MP calling for children to be forced to wear helmets while out walking? Just as alarming, cycle usage has fallen dramatically (between 25% and 40%) in countries that have introduced compulsion. Exactly the wrong thing to do if we're to tackle obesity and reliance on cars for personal transport.

All this simply shows that we've lost the ability to judge risk. Campaigners for cycle helmets always cite cases where a helmet has prevented serious injury. Similarly, parents will point to cases such as Madeleine McCann as justification for never letting their children out of their sight. It's understandable: fear is a powerful force, and can easily overcome rational judgement. When I was 11, I regularly cycled around Cardiff, visiting my aunt and uncle or escaping into the countryside. (Alone or with a friend - no helmets in sight!) Small chance of that happening now. Instead, we'd get a lift in a car. Ah, but there are far more cars around than in 1974, cry the risk-warriors. True, but a car is a car, and if you're afraid of 100 cars you'll be afraid of one. I had learned to watch out for careless drivers. Best of all, I discovered the pleasure of getting exercise in fresh air - helping shed the excess pounds I was starting to put on.

Tim Gill is unlikely to reverse false fears overnight. But he is a voice of sanity in a world where reason is in short supply.