Thursday 30 October 2014

How is my support?

The process of voting is very different from the days when it took a rider 3 days to go fro London to York. But the current UK parliamentary voting process is pretty much unchanged since that time. The absurdities in order:-

  1. Once every five years
  2. Can be won "outright" with way less than 50% support
  3. Crass (corrupt, even) boundary fixing

Moreover, we now live in a world where if you ever do manage to reach a human in a support role in a company that is looking for any old excuse to pester you, you will be bombarded by email and text to rate the encounter.
Our politicians don't have to go the whole ludicrous CRM hog, just allow us to vote on key issues more than once every 5 years, please. And they do not need to use the usual costly ballot box process - which in its self is all too easily perverted anyway.
Meanwhile, this just in..
Hi, BT Business Complaints here. We'd like to ask 3 questions about your recent call with us. Text your reply at your normal text rate. Text STOP to opt out.






Note the replies are my expense!  
Three are equally keen to waste my time at no cost to themselves;


I could go on and find many more examples - we probably all could. At least the nagging to rate eBay and Amazon transactions results in a useful consumer satisfaction index and rating - most of these "internal surveys" do not see the light of day as they would be too awkward and embarrassing.
All this is just the latest manifestation of the "passing the buck" culture that has overtaken just about every aspect of our lives, and means that modern businesses are managed by a combination of process, statistics and automata, not human beings. It will all have to end in tears eventually, with a return to common sense.

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