Spellbound (165)

Various legal (and illegal) proceedings have been making the news this week —

• Six members of the Hatton Garden gang (all aged north of 60) were sentenced to a total of 34 years in jail — although the alleged ringleader, the red-haired “Basil”, is still on the run (“hobble”, shurely? — Ed)
• Dr Eva Carneiro’s unfair dismissal claim against Chelsea FC rumbles on — no resolution has yet been reached after a six day hearing.  Dr C is demanding “substantial” damages, and a public apology from the (ex-) Special One, Sr José Mourinho himself, and has issued dark threats to spill the (unspecified) beans if CFC doesn’t pay up (good for her — Ed)
• Dr Christian Solomonides (37) has been allowed by the BMA to keep his job, after a two year suspension for making known his feelings (in colourful language) about members of the public who take up the resources of A & E departments with trivial ailments (he posted 188 tweets over a three year period, using the hashtag #rant) (good for him — Ed)
• Prof Nicholas Goddart (of the Uni of Manchester) was revealed (only metaphorically, fortunately) as a porn star in his spare time (no court case yet, but watch this space, methinks — Ed)
• Researchers “counted Spanish shipwrecks and ancient tree rings” to prove (to their satisfaction at least) that pirates in the Golden Age of Piracy (1650 to 1730) owed their success to the weather (the boffins reckon that the average number of hurricanes fell by three quarters in that period) — as the Times pointed out, a case of a distinct absenceof shiver in their timbers
• and a lack of attention to detail cut short attempts to defraud the Bangladesh Bank.  Having hacked into the Bank’s systems, the scallies “bombarded” the Bank with over thirty transfer requests.  The first four (netting a miserly $81million) succeeded, but at the fifth attempt (requesting a transfer of $20million to a Sri Lankan charity called the Shalika Foundation — which, surprisingly, does not exist) they used the spelling “Fandation”, prompting a query from Deutsche Bank back to the Bangladesh Bank…..  who managed to stop the remaining transfers (a cool further $850million)

…..  which leads neatly (how else? — Ed) to this week’s Business Bit.

Attention to detail matters in business — in obvious ways (such as getting the account number right when making an online payment) — but also in areas which seem less important at first sight.

If I run a business in which I want my product or service to be automatically assumed to be accurate (which covers pretty well all businesses), but I misspell the customer’s name, or send in a formal proposal which is ungrammatical and poorly laid out — how is that going to affect the customers’ view?  They will assume (even if only subconsciously — even more damaging) that sloppiness in small things is indicative of sloppiness in greater things.

And the solution?  Spellchecker can help a bit — but it’ll only take you so far (eg it won’t pick up a homophone incorrectly used — say “their” for “there”).  The only reliable safeguard is attention to detail in the first place, supplemented by careful review procedures.

If this seems to you (as it does, sadly, to many people) to be mere pedantry, try thinking of it as brand management.  As any marketing guru would tell you (step forward, Ed Reid), what distinguishes great brand management from the run-of-the-mill is brand consistency in everything you do…..

…..  which is where your TAB Board comes in — you probably won’t want to ask them to check your spelling, but sure as eggs you’ll get robust and knowledgeable advice from seven other experienced business owners, a number of whom will have detailed and expert knowledge in this field.  If this sounds appealing, you know where to come!

Enough serious stuff already — back to the more arcane reaches of the week’s news.

Tuesday was International Women’s Day, and there was mixed news for the Sisterhood.  Daniel Ladler (of the Uni of Leicester) thinks he’s answered the question of whether the Lehman Brothers débacle would have been quite so bad if they’d been Lehman Sisters — Mr L’s research indicates that women on the trading floor are less likely to produce “extreme events” — but it transpires that the female staff in the Department for Education (the ministry responsible for equality, headed by, er, Nicky Morgan) are paid ￡2/hour less than the men.  D’ohh…..

Meanwhile, the Uni of Exeter revealed that “shorter and fatter” staff are paid less than their svelte colleagues (so if you’re female and less-than-slim it’s hardly worth clocking on at all…..).  Looking on the bright side, though, fans of Colin Firth’s Phwoarr moment inPride and Prejudice (the film, not the book) should make their way to Washington DC and form an orderly queue — the Folger Library has acquired That Shirt and will be exhibiting it (though, sadly, not Colin Firth as well) in August.

It’s been not only a sexist week, but an ageist one as well — the guys from Anglia Ruskin Uni think that pop music lyrics portray a negative view of old age (leading to an increase in heart failure, apparently — shome mishtake, shurely? — Ed).  “Part of the problem is that pop songs are written from the point of view of the young” (shock! horror!).  The boffins would like “less hip-op and more hip-hop”…..  groan>.

Possibly in an attempt by those past their first youth to rise above this, the last ten years have seen 20% of golfers resign their membership, “largely to ride a bike instead”.

And in other news —

• Talking of Leicester (if we must — Ed), other boffins discovered that Leicester City fans made the earth move this week — they detected a seismic shock when the Foxes scored against Norwich City.  Admittedly the effect was 1,000 times less than an earthquake in Oxfordshire (also this week), but one has to start somewhere
• Knight Frank, the property agents (what have they done with Rutley?  I think we should be told — Ed) reckon that millionaires move round the world to “follow the weather” (who’d’ve thought it?)
• Prof Lieberman (from Harvard Uni) thinks that the secret of Homo Sapiens‘s success was learning to eat meat.  In what must have been a fun experiment, he asked volunteers to eat a variety of diets, and found that every calorie ingested by eating raw goat’s meat (rather than vegetables) resulted in 156 fewer chews (excellent attention to detail — Ed).  He reckons that 2,500,000 years ago our heads and jaws markedly changed shape (indicating the period when we started eating meat) — though we were pretty slow on the uptake — it took another 2 million years for us to learn to cook it first (thus really cutting down the chew count and giving us time to concentrate on other things, like warfare and other delights).  “If a specimen of Homo Erectus walked into a modern surgery, the dentist would be hard put to tell him apart from modern man” (apart, presumably, from the shreds of goat’s meat in his teeth, as the press report pointed out)
• if you fancy a (distant) connexion with Royalty, a Lagonda once owned by Prince Philip comes up for sale shortly — a snip at ￡450,000 (despite having had numerous minor repairs as a result of the Prince’s dashing style of driving)
• for once, the Google driverless car was absent from this week’s headlines, but it is thought that the Budget will unveil plans for driverless HGVs, with a trial on the M6  near Carlisle (a safe distance from London — cynical Ed) in which a dozen of these monsters will drive “just metres apart” (though how will they tell the difference from normal HGVs? — Ed)
• a “mystery fisherman” has been taunting Christchurch Angling Club by sticking a series of 19 photographs of record-sized fish to the walls of the clubhouse
• Ipswich is appointing a Hedgehog Czar (to help the little critturs move in safety) — Ipswich is apparently a “hedgehog hotspot”
• the Standards and Testing Agency is requiring examiners (in this summer’s exams) to mark down 7-year-old pupils who use an exclamation mark at the end of any sentence which doesn’t start with “what” or “how” (what rubbish!  how ridiculous! — Ed)
• and if you’re searching for that unusual, must-have, gift for your beloved, why not go for the Van Gogh stuffed toy, complete with removeable ear (to be detached and presented to your inamorata/o)?  This gem is available from a (sadly unnamed) museum shop (please don’t let it be the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam — Ed)

Three items in Columbo Corner this week.

1. The Bishop of Leeds officiated at the rededication of Otley Parish Church recently (after the splendid reordering of the inside of the church).  Prompted by the almost faultless (hem hem) ringing of the bells before the service, the Bish recalled a hoary story (peotry) — Senators William Spong of Virginia and Hiram Fong of Hawaii sponsored a bill recommending the mass ringing of church bells to welcome the arrival of the U.S. Table Tennis Team in Hong Kong after its tour of Communist China.  Sadly, the bill failed to pass, thus cheating the Senate out of passing the Spong-Fong Hong Kong Ping Pong Ding Dong Bell Bill (the old ones are the best — Ed)
2. A French café is doing its bit to encourage its clientèle to improve its manners — its menu offers a cup of coffee for €1.50 (if the customer asks, in French presumably, for “a coffee”), €1.30 (“a coffee please”), or €1 (“hello!  a coffee please”)
3. The State (sorry, Commonwealth) of Massachusetts is worried about its declining rattlesnake population (there are only 200 left in the wild) (but who counted them, eh?  — Ed).  In an attempt to boost rattler numbers they are planning to release a colony of (young) rattlesnakes on an island in a reservoir.  Mr Tom French (of the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife) pooh-poohed fears that “they will breed like rabbits” (shome mishtake, shurely? — Ed) and “escape and kill everybody”, and made light of the fact that rattlesnakes can swim and that the island is connected to the shore of the reservoir by a causeway.  He said that “rattlesnakes will not attack unless provoked” (though has anyone told that to the rattlesnakes? — Ed), and that the last death from a rattler bite was “in colonial times” (so it’s still our fault! — Ed).  Rumours that Mr Donald Trump is proposing to build a ten foot high wall round the island (WHICH THE RATTLESNAKES WILL PAY FOR) have not been officially denied

Have a great weekend — and if the earth moves for you, it’s probably another Leicester goal…..

Cheers for now

Tom

For a light-hearted look at some of what TAB does, have a look at this animation

I presently run three Boards –

Dark Blue (for people who run large businesses) – one spare seat

Light Blue (for people who run large businesses) — one spare seat

White Board (for people who run fast-growing businesses) — three spare seats

“As someone who sends text messages more or less non-stop, I enjoy one particular aspect of texting more than anything else:  that it is possible to sit in a crowded railway carriage laboriously spelling out quite long words in full, and using an enormous amount of punctuation, without anyone being aware of how outrageously subversive I am being”  (Lynne Truss)

“Life’s pretty good, and why wouldn’t it be?  I’m a pirate, after all”  (Johnny Depp)

“Suddenly you’re a pirate, you’re 65 years old, and you’ve got an earring”  (Fred Willard) (no I haven’t — yet — Ed)

“Start with an earthquake and build up to a climax”  (Cecil B de Mille)

“If there hadn’t been women we’d still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends”  (Orson Welles)

“The fox has many tricks.  The hedgehog has but one.  But that is the best of all”  (Ralph Waldo Emerson) (ie — go and live in Ipswich — Ed)

“I’m one of the more pessimistic cats on the planet.  I make Van Gogh look like a rodeo clown”  (Dennis Miller)

“True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights.  If you hear bells, get your ears checked”  (Erich Segal) (and if you feel an earthquake, Leicester have scored — Ed)

“A rattlesnake loose in the living room tends to end all discussion of animal rights”  (Lance Morrow)

“A woman is like a teabag — it’s only when she gets in to hot water that you find out how strong she is”  (Nancy Reagan) (RIP)