Postcards from Richard

Idea: Make it easy to cancel subscriptions

2011-08-21T10:25:00.000+01:00

Some time back, I took out an online subscription to The Times and The Sunday Times, mainly to help me understand their paywall system better. I found them to be reasonably good newspapers, but not worth my money. Especially so because you can't share a news story with friends who are not subscribers.

Today, I finally got around to attempting to cancel the subscription. There's no obvious link to do this on the website, nor in the emails they sent me. The FAQ does actually say "To cancel your digital subscription altogether, please visit timesplus.co.uk", but there's no way to cancel it on that site either.

So, I found the top result for "how to cancel times online subscription", which was this site, where the author (coincidentally also named Richard) describes the same problem. It seems that the only way to unsubscribe is to email help@timesplus.co.uk, asking them to cancel your subscription. Then they wait around for a bit over a week, and then cancel it.

It smacks of a lack of confidence in their product. If their product was good enough that people didn't want to cancel, they could make it easy, and have happier customers - and people more willing to sign up in the first place. Personally, my advice is do not subscribe to The Times. Of course, I will never subscribe to them again, even if their product becomes significantly better, because I don't want to have to go through a hassle to unsubscribe again.

The corollary to this, of course, is that if you're creating a business, make it easy for people to cancel their subscription. Make it easy for people to leave, and then work to make your product or service good enough that they don't want to leave. Make this "easy to leave" part of your marketing, so people are willing to try the service in the first place. If your product isn't good enough, you'll fail faster (which is better, because then you get to try to make a new product). But if it is good enough, you'll succeed faster also.

Not a revolutionary idea, of course, but illustrated with an example of someone doing it the wrong way, and tarnishing their own reputation by doing so.

Idea: Riot Cleanup - Triumph of the Commons

2011-08-10T15:44:00.004+01:00

UPDATE: please join here.

Immediately following the London Riots of August 2011, many people self-organised to clean up the mess that was left. They used websites and social networks to co-ordinate and ended up being the good news story to counter the negativity of the riots themselves. Many people wonder about how to capture this movement, and turn it into something more permanent. Here's my proposal:

Triumph of the Commons

A web-based clearing house for community work, designed to directly counter vandalism and urban decay.

People submit geo-tagged photos and descriptions of tasks that need doing.
People do those tasks, and submit before and after photos.
People use social networks to promote the helpers and thank them publicly.
People give tips to thank others for contributing.

The types of tasks would generally be small things that don't require significant capital resources or skills, just some time and effort. They'd be things like:

Cleaning rubbish
Fixing vandalism and graffiti
Removing illegal posters and escort calling cards
Repairing street furniture
Perhaps even repairing vandalism on private property

People who have time and energy could do good works and get rewarded for it. People who care and have money, but don't have the time or energy could contribute usefully to encouraging them. People who don't have money can contribute by promoting them. It's a bit like a marketplace for community work, but without the pure financial motive.

How

Some quick notes on how this would work:

Tasks are a photo, location, task type and description
Actions are a before & after photo, location, task type and description
There are five basic actions that need to be supported

Create Task
Report Action
Browse Tasks
Browse Actions
Thank/Reward User

Social integration is essential - each action needs to be shareable
This needs to work through apps on common phones, for mobile reporting
Thanking the user is a public note on their social network expressing appreciation
Rewarding the user is making a small payment, perhaps through PayPal or Flattr

Interested? Please share this page (share buttons below), or contact me directly. It would be great to get some comments on this blog post about how to improve on the idea. For that matter, if you want to take the idea and run with it, please do go ahead - I'm not possessive of it. But it would be good to connect anyway.

UPDATE: please join here.

Cooking: Lamb Tagine

2011-08-09T11:14:00.001+01:00

Made a delicious lamb tagine the other day, from lamb neck on the bone.

1kg lamb neck on the bone (or 500g off the bone)
1 tsp each of dried ginger, ground cumin, chilli, ground coriander, paprika
Pinch of saffron
2 onions & 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tbsp tomato paste
Cubed (1-2") butternut squash (or sweet potato) and chunky courgette
Cous cous
Casserole dish with tight-fitting lid

Then:

Mix the ginger, cumin, chilli, coriander, paprika and saffron
Coat the lamb with the mixture, and marinate at room temperature for 2 hours, or in fridge overnight
Brown the lamb in an open casserole dish a hot oven for 10-20 mins
Fry the onion in some oil until golden, add the garlic and fry for another minute
Add this to the lamb, add the tomato paste and some salt, and boiling water to cover the meat
Cover, put in 170 degree oven for 2 hours
Add the squash and courgette (optionally, some dried apricots or figs), cook for another 30 mins
Serve with cous cous

Politics: Climate Change

2011-07-20T12:19:00.001+01:00

I have frequently found it hard to find unbiased and clear information about climate change. Even basic facts are persistently obfuscated and misrepresented, and the processes involved are often poorly explained.

This happens on both sides of the issue, and is frequently accompanied by name-calling and sniggering about how obvious it is that the other side is wrong. The science gets reduced to soundbites, and commentators rarely correct the misunderstandings of their audience as long as their agenda is being pushed forwards. Anyone offering balance is put in a pejorative box, and dismissed along with the other side as hopelessly biased and uninformed. Moderates are dismissed as non-committal, and weak. The level of misinformation is such that giant conspiracy theories are invoked to explain how so many people are being brainwashed by the other side.

The result of this is that anyone seeking information finds propaganda and vitriol in its place. The debate escalates (or descends) into a war between the deniers and the alarmists, any any worthy points that either side may have to contribute are lost in the cacophony, and often discarded along with it. It appears as if there is no sensible debate to be had.

Fortunately, this is an illusion. There is real information, and there are real debates. Most of these debates have little to do with what goes on in the popular media. The science is reasonably robust, and while there are clear areas of uncertainty, there's generally research going on in those areas to resolve them. The media tends to prefer conflicts with antagonists and protagonists, rather than an honest depiction of uncertainty. It also serves politicians to paint such a battleground, so they can have fights to win and lose.

As my personal search for better information continues, I decided to start collecting what I find in one place. I hope that by sharing it, I can contribute to a better understanding, from which people (including myself) can make up their own minds. You can find it linked at the top of my blog, or here: Climate Change.

Food: Sausages in Stock

2011-07-17T18:52:00.000+01:00

This recipe comes from some good friends of ours. We made it (or a variant of it) the other day, and it was delicious.

Ingredients (serves 2):

Four sausages
A few rashers of bacon chopped up
Some onion, chopped lenthways
Some garlic, chopped finely
A cup of stock
A good handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
Herbs, salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to about 180C
Fry the sausages, bacon, onion and garlic for 5-10 mins, until the sausages are browned
Put them in an oven dish, pour over the stock (pre-heated, if you like)
Add cherry tomatoes, salt, pepper and herbs
Cook in oven for 40 mins to an hour, stirring occasionally if the sausages are poking out of liquid
Add some fresh basil just before serving

We served it with couscous, which I made by deglazing the original frying pan with some more stock (giving it some extra flavours), and then making the couscous normally. It would also go great with fresh crusty bread.

Politics: How to Play the Andrew Bolt Game

2011-07-14T10:54:00.012+01:00

Andrew Bolt, a prominent conservative commentator in Australia keeps asking a question about climate change and the Carbon Tax that seems to have his interviewers flummoxed. It's variously phrased as:

What sort of temperature reduction do you [Europe] imagine from that kind of investment? (see interview transcript)
How much will it cost to cut our emissions by the [Australian] Government’s target of 5 per cent by 2020 and how much will world temperatures fall by as a consequence? (interview transcript)
Is all this pain worth what will at best be a 1/4000th of a degree cut in the temperature that’s predicted if [Australia] did nothing? (interview transcript)
So how much will Julia Gillard’s tax change the temperature? What’s the gain for all this pain? (blog entry from Andrew Bolt - I can't find the original radio interview)
How will your carbon policy affect global temperatures? (Newspaper column by Janet Albrechtsen)

The responses have not been particularly strong, though admittedly, any decent answer tends to get cut off or talked over. The soundbites people remember are Tim Flannery's "that’s a bogus question", Professor John Daley's "It's not a very helpful thing to analyse", and Julia Gillard's "I won't play the Andrew Bolt game".

Sensible answers, but not strong ones. Andrew Bolt's listeners actually believe it's a good question, so these answers seem like evasion. To respond to this question well, you need to tackle the nonsense head-on. So here's how to play the Andrew Bolt game:

Short Version

First, attack the question head-on with these objections:

It’s comparing degrees and dollars
It’s comparing the short-term present and the long-term future
It isolates things that aren’t isolated

Then, offer to answer a sensible question instead, comparing actual costs and benefits, and recognising assumptions. Make sure you have good and fair models and details of the underlying assumptions at the ready - or don't claim to be able to answer it!

Long Version

Firstly, to clarify the question so we all understand it clearly, it is to compare:

The aggregate cost to the whole economy of cutting our emissions over the next ten years, measured in today's dollars; with
The reduction in warming of the atmosphere of the entire world over a period of centuries, as measured in degrees centigrade

In order of importance, here's the three things that are wrong with this comparison:

1) It's comparing degrees and dollars.

These two things are not even measured in the same units. What's a degree worth? Is $A50m a good price? What about $A50tn? How should we assess that? If we're going to make a cost/benefit comparison, we need to be comparing apples and apples - the financial impact of the cost and the financial impact of the benefit.

2) It's comparing the short-term present and the long-term future.

The cost is shared by 21 million Australians over a decade or so. The benefit is felt by the entire population of the earth for the rest of time. If we're going to compare the cost and the benefit, we need to put a value on our future, and our children's and grandchildren's futures, and decide what that's worth to us, collectively, today. This can be done, but it's not as simple as just adding up the cost in dollars and comparing it to a temperature change in degrees.

3) It isolates things that aren't isolated.

The climate is fundamentally a shared resource. Any action we take must be assessed in the context of the actions that other nations take. This is the same as taking our rubbish with us when we leave the park. Each individual action has a relatively small effect, but the only way to ensure the park does not fill up with rubbish is to take individual actions. We also need to work to ensure that other nations take suitable actions as well. So we need to assess the influence that our actions have on other nations' actions, and the impact all of our actions have on the shared resource.

So, what is a sensible question?

Cost/benefit analyses are good ways to assess programs. But we need to be sure to be asking the right questions. In this case "what are the costs, and what are the benefits?" is a good question. One could even demand that both of these things are measured in todays dollars, though the assumptions need to be made explicit.

To answer this kind of question properly involves climate models, economic models, international geo-politics, and a discount model for future benefits. There are worthwhile debates about all of these things, and understanding them enables us to make an informed assessment on the value of any actions we might take.

And what's the answer?

I don't know. I am not a climate scientist, nor an economic modeller. From what I have been able to learn, I believe that the carbon tax is a good investment, though the obfuscation and misdirection in the debate makes it awfully difficult to find unbiased information on which to base an assessment. The very fact that Andrew Bolt and his climate skeptic cohorts continue to ask such dishonest questions makes me suspect that they are afraid that if they asked a straight question, they'd get an answer that doesn't suit their agenda.

Conclusion

This cost/benefit assessment is exactly what journalists should be asking of people in Government, Climate Scientists, advocates and detractors. They should ask these questions, and ensure that the answers given are reasonably comparable. They should be seeking to expose the assumptions underlying the answers, especially on how the future is valued. By doing so, they would allow their audiences to adjust for their own assumptions and values, and make informed decisions. They should be contributing to the debate by clarifying and educating the public.

But these things do not build an audience, unfortunately. What builds an audience is reinforcing prejudices, starting unproductive arguments, and following a populist agenda. Clearly, this approach happens on both sides of most political debates, and the environmental lobby is often guilty of similar sins. In this case though, it's painfully obvious that people like Andrew Bolt do not want to ask sensible questions, because they get more mileage from provoking the angry mob.

And the fact that he has managed to get away with this for so long is why Andrew Bolt is an Evil Genius.

Postscript

To contribute meaningfully to this debate, it would be great to collect pithy analogies in the comments below to help communicate the problems with the question itself. Abusing Bolt or laughing at his audience, while cathartic, won't actually help, as it feeds a victim mentality where they can claim that they are being oppressed by the left-wing conspiracy.

Also, while I really want to see the public debate move on to meaningful discussion of the actual costs and benefits, I don't particularly want to get deeply involved in that debate. I have a personal opinion, backed up by my own understanding of the models, but this post is not the right context for that debate. This is a meta-debate - a debate about the debate. It's about moving the debate to sensible ground, not about having the debate itself.

Politics: Andrew Bolt is an Evil Genius

2011-07-12T18:07:00.004+01:00

For those unfamiliar with his work, Andrew Bolt is Australia's most successful conservative commentator. He's Australia's Glenn Beck or perhaps Bill O'Reilly. He's one of Rupert Murdoch's star commentators (he's a Columnist and Associate Editor for News Corp's Herald Sun, he writes "Australia's most-read political blog" on the Herald Sun website, hosts The Bolt Report on Lachlan Murdoch's Ten Network, hosts a show on MTR Melbourne Talk Radio, and has published a book "Still Not Sorry" or his Herald Sun columns).

He tends to have fairly traditional conservative populist views, generally anti most things, particularly anything he can call "leftist", "green", or "politically correct". His audience, like similar audiences in the US and UK, generally consider his approach to be fair and balanced, in contrast to their perception of the rest of the media as hopelessly left-wing.

It's unarguable that as a media personality, Bolt is a genius. His skill at building an audience and creating noisy debate is (thankfully) rare, but clear. He's captured the imagination of the populist mob, all the while keeping them convinced that they are the oppressed minority. His talent is not up for question.

Take a look at this blog entry, or this more recent one.

In the first case, you see his skill at manipulating an interview to wrong-foot someone who is willing to talk and educate, cutting them off whenever they say something that he doesn't like (listen to the audio, it's pretty obvious). In the second, you see his skill at presenting himself as a persecuted messiah, and whoever disagrees with him as the manipulators. It's educational to see how a master works.

But the point I want to draw attention to is the question he likes to ask on climate change, and particularly on Australia's Carbon Tax. It's variously phrased as:

What sort of temperature reduction do you imagine from that kind of investment? (from an even earlier interview here)
How much will it cost to cut our emissions by the [Australian] Government’s target of 5 per cent by 2020 and how much will world temperatures fall by as a consequence?
Is all this pain worth what will at best be a 1/4000th of a degree cut in the temperature that’s predicted if [Australia] did nothing?

To someone who agrees with his skeptic stance on climate change, it's a pretty simple question, a straight cost/benefit analysis, with an obvious conclusion - it's not worth it! We're paying so much for such a small number of degrees!

To someone who doesn't agree with his stance, it's pretty clear that this question is, as Tim Flannery calls it, bogus. It is not a question that any sane person would consider answering, because it's a nonsensical question.

If we step back from our prejudices for just a moment, and take a good, hard look at the question, we can see the genius at work (on that note, I'd love to see the origins of this question - has it been asked elsewhere, in other forms or in different subjects? These things are rarely completely original). The genius of this question is precisely that it's really, really hard to point out quite why it's nonsensical.

This blog post attempts to do just that. Bear with me, it might get complex ahead.

Genius

The genius in Bolt's question is in the misdirection it causes in people answering it. There are three ways people get wrong-footed by the question, and hence fail to address it for the obfuscation it is.

Emotional Response

The first thing most people who are asked this question (invariably people who disagree with Bolt's stance on climate change) do is become indignant. They can immediately see that it's a nonsensical question, and respond to it as if others can also see that, and that Bold should move on to a sensible question. The very fact that it's being asked is preposterous, and it doesn't deserve an answer.

As Professor John Daley (the second interviewee on the Tim Flannery interview blog post) points out, these things are not particularly helpful to analyse.

Unfortunately, pointing that out doesn't help, because Bolt is a master manipulator, and he paints this again as evasiveness and indeed denial. Anyone listening to Bolt without their brain switched on could conclude that this whole thing is some sort of poorly hidden conspiracy (Bolt's response is "'Not helpful' means you’d realise the pain is not worth the gain. Whatever we do - whatever anyone does - hardly seems worth it, really.").

To someone who agrees with Bolt's stance, this is interpreted as if the question has caught the interviewee out and they are being evasive. To someone who is convinced that this is a sensible question, the dismissal is personal - the question is not bogus, they and their concerns are bogus. This just reinforces the conspiracy that the establishment is out to get them.

Wording Quibbles

Many responses to the question jump on details of the wording. People focus on whether it's a cut in temperatures or a reduction in the warming. That's a red herring, an artifact of language. The same question can be asked in many different ways, but the way it's usually asked invites people to debate about whether we're cutting temperatures, reducing the increase, or slowing an increase, and so on.

In fact, this is one of the reasons why we've generally moved away from the term "global warming" and towards the term "climate change". Talking of "global warming" sounds kind of nice and even and predictable. It's hard to see how a few degrees increase in temperature could be bad, particularly when people get cold in the winter. It may even be a good thing.

But by focussing in on the language, the interviewee again appears to an acolyte as evasiveness and semantic games, focusing on the trivial and missing the forest for the trees.

The Wrong Debates

In many ways, the worst thing one can do with this question is to try to answer it. By doing so, the question is given legitimacy, and the interviewee is distracted by the debates around how to model either the climate or the economy. Depending on which model you choose, you can come up with answers ranging through several orders of magnitude for both the "cost" and the "benefit".

There's debate and uncertainty on both sides of this alleged cost/benefit equation, but the one thing that is clear is that the "cost" tends to be large numbers of dollars and the "benefit" tends to be small numbers of degrees. Many other sensible debates revolve around how to model the economy and the environment, and many people involved in the debate are involved in these specific debates. However, they are often too involved to realise that the way the question is framed, the comparison is meaningless, and get stuck on choosing models and so on.

Evil

The evil in the question is that it sets up a meaningless comparison as if it were a straight cost/benefit question. The comparison being asked is between:

The total cost to a single nation of cutting emissions, as measured in today's dollars; and
The benefit to everyone of reducing carbon emissions, as measured in degrees less warming

Pointing out the ways in which this comparison does not work is quite difficult, and requires a fairly good understanding of climate science. It's likely that most of Bolt's audience, being committed climate skeptics, are not in possession of much of this understanding, so are interpret the whole debate from soundbites, and can't see the problems with the comparison.

Apples and Oranges

So here's where the first real objection to the question starts. However it's worded, the question is always phrased in such a way that the interviewee is asked to compare dollars and degrees. Obviously, these are not directly comparable. What's the appropriate value one should put on a degree? Imagine for a moment, if the cost was fifty million dollars, and the result was two degrees. Would that be a good deal? How would we even calculate that? Would you even feel two degrees change in average? I'll bet you'd feel fifty million dollars. The question is phrased to bring out this visceral response.

Further, the nature of Government spending is that even small things seem big, because we're used to thinking about our own finances in the hundreds or thousands of dollars, and suddenly we're looking at Government budgets measured in hundreds of billions of dollars. It's a little disorienting, and requires some calm thinking. Specifically, we should change the basis of comparison to a cost per capita. Or perhaps as a percentage of GDP.

So, given the $A300bn number that is quoted by Professor Daley without much context here (but not endorsing it, see later, nor rounding up to "trillions" as Bolt likes to do), divided by the population of Australia, we get $A13,714 per person. Alternatively, we could consider it as a percentage of GDP, but that brings up a second point.

It appears that the $300bn number was a total of the cost spread over about nine years (the actual question was "To get to Julia Gillard’s target of cutting emissions by 5 per cent by 2020, how many more of these billions would we need to have spent?"). So that's actually about $1,500 per person per year, or $33bn a year, or about 3% of GDP ($A1.1tn), assuming the $300bn is actually accurate and represents an actual cost, or reduction of economic productivity. Daley also says (before he was cut off) that an emissions trading scheme would be far more efficient.

And of course, one would need to look at the timescale for the "benefit" also. Regardless of what model you use, the timescales are spread over fifty to one hundred years, and the benefit remains permanent beyond that.

How does one compare a financial cost over ten years with permanent climate change? Is $1,500 per person per year for ten years good value for 0.00025 degrees (as he claims) over the next one hundred years? Should we calculate this as dollars per degree-year? Even if we convert the financial cost of climate change in the future, the assumptions involved will dictate the numbers in the cost-benefit equation. How do we assess the cost of climate change on our childrens' children? It may not be impossible in principle, but it's certainly impossible in the context of an interview.

Isolated Systems

The other objection, that each of the people asked the question raised, is that nothing is in isolation. The nature of any climate issue is that it's fundamentally a Tragedy of the Commons or Unscrupulous Diners type problem. It's always advantageous to be the individual taking advantage of the commons or ordering the more expensive meal, and it's not possible to solve it by individual action, even at the national level, even for a country the size of the USA or China.

Complicate the whole issue with the intricacies of international politics, and competition, trade and other tensions between nations, and it's a really hard problem to solve. Hypothetically, even if one was a world dictator, it's really hard to decide who should be allowed to produce what amount of carbon. Consider the following three things:

Developing economies produce far less carbon per capita than richer countries, but due to their large populations and rapid economic growth, produce more in total (see a list of countries by CO2 emissions, and a list by CO2 emissions per capita, and even a list by ratio of GDP to CO2 emissions).
Some countries have little natural resources that are carbon-neutral, or have developed carbon-heavy industries or are spread out and require large amounts of transport infrastructure (compare per capita emissions for Qatar, UAE and even Australia and the US with those for Switzerland, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Sweden).
Much of the emissions in developing or resource-rich nations are incurred through export industries. Should the emissions be counted at point of consumption or at point of production, and how does this relate to international competitiveness?

Needless to say, it's hard to solve, and no individual country wants to lose any competitive advantage in relation to other countries. If the solution is collective action, we need to take action at an individual level which will influence other nations to also take action, and remove their internal political barriers to taking action.

Perhaps the best end result is a global carbon market - a ton of CO2 emitted in Australia should incur the same cost on the emitter as a ton of CO2 emitted in Qatar, Indonesia, China, or Sweden, because it all pollutes the same commons. Presumably, a ton of CO2 stored (in new growth forest, carbon sequestration schemes, or whatever) anywhere should also have the same value. Then we let the market sort it out, and address the inequalities between nations separately.

But that's a little premature. How do we get started? What action can we take that will have the greatest leverage on other nations, because this is where the biggest result will be felt. So if we're going to be considering the costs and benefits of our actions, we need to consider the total benefits, in context of the wider system of which we are a part.

The Nature of Cost & Benefit

The last point here is how costs and benefits are restricted in the question. To the skeptic, the "degrees cooler" is clearly the sole benefit at some distant time in the future, and the headline cash cost to the economy as a whole, added together and taken out of context, is the cost. By restricting the question to these areas, which match well with soundbite politics, the skeptic agenda is able to be presented as if it were rational. If the skeptic were actually interested in costs and benefits, they would ask about them.

Actually modelling the costs and benefits is not something I'm going to attempt here. There are many options for modelling the economy and the environment, and I am not qualified to choose between them. There are many people who are qualified, and I would be interested to hear a response to a straight question. However, I'll make a few notes about costs and benefits here:

The vast majority of proposed actions to address carbon emissions are either some sort of Pigovian Tax or a Cap-and-Trade system. Assuming for a moment that the Government implements an idealised system, while the total tax bill (or amount traded) may be quite high, the overall impact should be fairly neutral. In the case of the Australian Carbon Tax, designed to raise $A25bn each year, and redistribute this to consumers and an investment fund, that $A25bn will be exactly countered by the compensation to consumers and businesses and new investment.

So the cost to the economy is not equal to the tax levied. The actual cost will be much harder to calculate, and will depend largely on the set of assumptions one chooses to make. When this is modeled, the analysis needs to take into account the new investments that are made (which are of course, higher risk and harder to model), as well as the changed spending patterns. I am yet to see such an analysis, and certainly haven't seen one free of spin. Even the earlier $A300bn figure quoted by Professor Daley may be a simple extrapolation from the tax rate rather than an actual model (Bolt didn't give him the chance to explain what it was).

I haven't even started on how to calculate the "benefit" yet - needless to say, it's really hard to calculate, because it requires discount rates over many many years, massive uncertainty of climate modelling, and trying to value things which we can't generally put a value on (such as the livelihoods of our grandchildren and so on). But if one is to try to make a cost/benefit comparison, the benefit needs to be translated from "degrees" to some sort of financial model, taking into account the likely influence of our action on other countries' actions, and an assessment of the value of mitigating the potentially disastrous consequences of continuing carbon emissions as they presently are.

Conclusion

The question is genius because it brings out an emotional response in the interviewee, and it misdirects them with wording quibbles and peripheral debates. It's evil because it subtly asks to compare things that are not comparable, it tries to isolate things that are not isolated, and it constricts the definition of cost and benefit to suit a certain agenda.

It masquerades as if it were a simple cost/benefit question, but it's revealing that Bolt never asks "what are the costs and benefits?", instead choosing his obfuscated phrasing. He doesn't ask the simple cost/benefit question because he knows he'll get a sensible answer, and that does not make good climate skeptic listening. He's not trying to contribute to a debate, he's trying to push an agenda and build an audience, and doing both very successfully.

Postscript

The one thing that is obvious is that in the future, the world will converge towards sustainable carbon emissions levels. The economies that adapt to this first and most effectively will be best placed to prosper in this new world. It's like the Button Car Plan in Australia in the 80s and 90s. Some short term pain and re-adjustment occurred, and a stronger car industry was the result. If it weren't for that early pain, Australia wouldn't have a local car industry at all by now, and certainly not one capable of exporting around the world.

In the final analysis, the debate should not be about comparing the total cost of an isolated action in dollars with the number of degrees of anticipated "less warming". The debate should be about what is the most efficient way to internalise the cost of carbon emissions, where is the most efficient place to deploy that revenue to aid the goal and incur as little pain as possible, and how do we influence other nations most effectively. A comparison of the costs and benefits of any scheme should also be done, and it would indeed be helpful if Bolt could ask such a question of someone like Tim Flannery, and then actually let him answer.

Andrew Bolt's evil genius is that with a single question, he derails the whole debate away from these useful and important issues, and clouds the air with fear, doubt and uncertainty. Of course, this is without considering the fake scientific debate he's likely to resort to (confusing the healthy variety of environmental models and diversity of research with real deep-seated scientific uncertainty about the reality of climate change) or the genuine political and economic debate about how to manage resources.

UPDATE: See my post on How to Play the Andrew Bolt Game.

Money: My Insurance Policy

2011-06-18T16:06:00.000+01:00

I have a policy about insurance. I only get insurance in two situations:

When I can't afford an uninsured loss
When I want to make a decision in advance

The first situation is pretty obvious: I can't afford to have an accident or health problem which might cost me tens of thousands to take care of myself, particularly if I was travelling somewhere. If I owned a car, I wouldn't want to risk losing it, or being involved in an incident where I caused damage to some other property, because that damage could exceed my ability to pay.

I assess this by working out what the cost of the worst case scenario is, and deciding if I can afford that without too much pain. I am willing to pay an insurance company a premium, even if they make a profit from it, to ensure that that scenario is insured against. As a counter-example, I don't insure my mobile phone, because while it would be annoying and costly to lose, I can afford to buy a new one if needed.

The second situation is a little less clear: It applies where there is a choice I may have to make in the future, where the best course of action would involve spending more money that I would normally feel comfortable with. By taking out insurance in advance, I can make the best choice at the time without needing to take into account the incremental cost.

There are actually situations where I can't take insurance, but would want to. For example, I'd like to get insurance which would give me a flight to Australia in the case of major health problems in my immediate family. Instead of this, I maintain an emergency fund for these situations, so I can afford to spend the money when I want to, and at least will always have the option, even if I still have to make that difficult decision.

But for pretty much any other situation, I will avoid insurance. I see no reason for a company to make a profit from me if it's not providing me with real value. Insuring personal electronics items (or taking out extended warrantees) is a specific example of insurance which is, in my view, wasted money. Likewise with reducing the excess on a hire car - I can afford the few hundred pounds excess if there is an accident, but I can't afford to pay for the whole car.

Cooking: My New Favourite Sandwich

2011-06-18T14:52:00.001+01:00

Unexpectedly delicious:

Toast a slice of bread
Spread with avocado
Open a tin of mackerel in spring water
Mix it with some tomato ketchup and fresh basil
Put on bread, season with salt and pepper
Eat

I've recently been converted from a sardine eater to a mackerel eater. The flavour is a little more subtle, and the lack of bones and scales etc makes it a bit more pleasant. Mackerel used to remind me of catfood, but now, it reminds me of deliciousness, which is how I like it.

Cooking: Braised Lamb Shank

2011-04-02T20:51:00.000+01:00

Braised lamb shank is probably my favourite dish. It always makes me think of some medieval feast in the banqueting hall of a castle in Yorkshire, full of large bearded men laughing raucously while they drink red wine from pewter goblets, listening to a band of drunken irishmen on fiddles, as an open fire roars in the background.

Tonight, I ate perhaps the best lamb shank I've ever had. I'm proud to say that I cooked it myself. It was tender and moist, falling off the bone, just how I like it. The gravy was rich, dark brown, strong enough that you knew it was there but not overpowering, and the roast parsnips with honey and nutmeg were slightly too dry (still perfecting my roast veggies), but still delicious.

I based my recipe on this one, though I didn't have any celery, and used fresh rosemary rather than juniper berries. I also added some sliced mushrooms after cooking it for an hour or so. And I had two shanks rather than one, so there was some left over for lunches. It took maybe 1/2 hour to prepare, which I did while lunch was cooking (lunch was another favourite of mine - feta, basil and chilli stuffed chicken thighs wrapped in parma ham), and then another 3-4 hours to cook, and then 10 mins to reduce the gravy a little.

I also discovered that the key to soft meat when you braise is to keep the temperature down so the liquid is simmering gently, as opposed to boiling. It doesn't really matter if the liquid completely covers the meat or not. I used a Le Creuset cast-iron casserole, and had the oven at around 150C, and the liquid about half-covering the meat. The liquid itself never goes much past 100C, and the meat cooks gently, the top part being steamed nicely. I think the tight-fitting lid helps here, though some suggest to leave some ventilation so the steam can escape, keeping it from getting too hot.

Certainly, I've decided to do this meal again. Shanks are pretty cheap (these were about £5 each), and completely delicious. It takes time though, so it's not really possible to cook it after work (unless I can work out how to use the self-timer on the oven).

Cooking: Pad Thai

2011-03-25T14:37:00.000Z

I've always wanted to cook Pad Thai. Especially the really fresh variety you get in Thailand on the street - it seems to be so much better than most of what you get in restaurants, which often seems to be made with sweet chilli sauce or even ketchup.

So I asked my manager. I don't normally ask her about cooking, but she was nearby, and I was about to start searching for one. She pointed out this one.

I looked at it, and it's long. But I decided to try it anyway, and it was delicious. Turns out most of the text is background information about ingredients and techniques, and is good reading. The recipe itself is really simple, and I feel like I now understand something about Pad Thai, rather than just know a recipe. It even resembles the process that I recall from watching the street vendors in Bangkok.

I think I'm going to read her blog more, to see if I can find more recipes which help me understand food, rather than just show how to cook a particular recipe.

Cooking: How to make better cookies

2011-03-25T14:18:00.001Z

I don't bake much. But I did figure out a way to make better cookies. It goes like this:

Find a simple cookie recipe.
Make 10 copies of the recipe.
In 2 of the copies, change some things. Randomly do any selection of the following:

add an ingredient
remove an ingredient
change the quantities
add a step
remove a step
change the sequence of steps
change some words
smudge it
rewrite it backwards
destroy the recipe and try to do it from memory
replace part of it with part from another recipe
replace it with another recipe

Make 10 batches of cookies, one according to each recipe, as best as you can.
Lay them out on plates in front of a group hungry people
Note which order they get consumed in.
Make two copies each of the best 2 recipes.
Make one copy each of the middle 6 recipes.
Throw away the worst 2 recipes.
You now have 10 recipes again. Repeat steps 3-9 forever.

You're pretty much guaranteed to have at least 8 good batches of cookies every time. You're likely to have two bad batches every time. But if one of the random changes to the recipes happens to be "add sultanas", then you may well have a winner, and eventually, you'll be making sultana cookies.

If you do this whole thing many times over in parallel - imagine a thousand cookie bakers, making 10 batches of cookies each, using the same process - then you're likely to end up with a thousand pretty good cookie recipes, all different. It will take a long time.

Alternatively, you could ask a cookie chef to give you their best cookie recipes. That's probably easier, but you'd need to trust the cookie chef.

Cooking: Steak and Creamy Tomato Sauce Pasta

2011-02-23T03:36:00.001Z

I cooked something pretty delicious last night. I was in Coles, trying to think what to cook, and I knew we had pasta and sour cream and a can of tomatoes, and I wanted steak, so I looked up "steak with creamy tomato pasta" and cooked something based on this recipe.

Our temporary kitchen was missing a number of the ingredients, so I simplified the recipe somewhat. I used balsamic vinegar, ground pepper and garlic for the marinade, and made the rest of the sauce with onion, tinned tomato, sour cream, basil and half a green chilli.

The mustard and cinnamon and "italian seasoning" (whatever that is) mentioned in the recipe could have been nice, and probably red wine vinegar rather than balsamic would have produced a milder taste, but what we had was delicious. The meat (scotch fillet) was tender and delicious, and the sauce had a good mix of heat, tang and creaminess.

I will make this one again.

Money: Regular and Irregular Cashflows

2011-02-22T10:58:00.000Z

I recently wrote about Managing Cashflows & Personal Spending. The process I outlined there helped me to restrict my spending to a limited portion of my income, leaving the rest for savings and bills. In fact, the "personal spending" I mentioned in that post was quite varied, from groceries to concert tickets and books. Some of this spending was on regular items, which I bought almost every week, and some were one-offs. Some was essential, and some was entirely optional.

While I wasn't overspending any more, I found it difficult to manage regular and irregular spending in the same account. A single account turns out to be hard to manage from a budget perspective, because the balance doesn't mean anything. It was hard to say whether I had the money available to spend on concert tickets, or whether I would need that for clothes or even groceries.

I started to mentally classify spending into four categories - regular, irregular, discretionary and essential. For example:

Groceries are regular and essential
Dining out is regular and discretionary
Clothes are irregular and essential (mostly)
Concert tickets are irregular and discretionary

I then set up some more accounts. I started by keeping discretionary and essential spending separate, but soon realised that the difficulty is actually in managing regular and irregular spending in the one account. The budgeting process is entirely different for both. So, I ended up with one account for regular spending, and one for irregular spending.

The regular spending account is managed by having a weekly allowance paid into it, and then I regularly check the balance to see whether I've overspent or underspent my budget. The balance itself tells me this without me needing to maintain records of what I've spent.

The irregular spending account requires active management, but as the spending is infrequent, this is relatively easy. I create an explicit budget for it, and enter in the items I wish to purchase and approximately when, and track how much I have over time. The balance fluctuates, but isn't confused by regular daily spending. I can then just transfer a regular monthly amount to this account, thereby converting my irregular spending into a regular expense from my salary. This is a bit like a short-term savings account, where I'm saving for multiple things at once.

Simplifying by setting up multiple accounts is a bit counter-intuitive. But it works. The balance of each account now tells me something useful, on which I can make decisions. I'd actually like to have more accounts, but I think that the benefit of that is outweighed by having more cards and banks to deal with.

Book: Getting More

2011-02-21T06:45:00.001Z

Getting More by Stuart Diamond is by far the best book on negotiation I've ever read.

Diamond takes a holistic view of negotiation as part of a relationship, as opposed to mere manipulation. His whole book (and the courses he runs at various business schools and corporations) boils down to three questions to be asked in any negotiation:

What are my goals?
Who are "they"?
What will it take to persuade them?

The first two questions are critically important, because they form the basis for answering the third, which is what most of the book is about. The tools given consistently emphasise valuing the other people in a negotiation, and building a basis for a better relationship in the future.

There are many anecdotes, which become a little repetitive ("[Name], an [occupation] in [location or company], had [problem] with [other party]. They said [single magical sentence], and [met their goals]. [Name] is now a [more impressive occupation] in [more impressive location or company]."). However, these stories provide ample material for direct re-use. Reading them is like getting instant negotiation experience, despite the simplified nature of the scenarios described.

My main criticism of the book is that it lacks a little in structure somehow. It's hard to put my finger on it, but sometimes it feels as if he's making a list for the sake of having a list, but doesn't really have any underlying structure that the list represents. For example, he lists twelve "tools", but actually, some are principles and some are tools. Some of the principles have tools included within them for how you can exercise the principle (for example: "It's about Them" is really a principle for negotiation, but it includes tools like role-reversal and research).

But this aside, it's an absolutely excellent book. In fact, I'd say it could be in my top five business books (that's a list I haven't yet compiled, but this is a clear candidate for inclusion). I'd strongly recommend it for anyone who feels a little frustrated sometimes that they can't convince others of things that they feel should be obvious. It's applicable not only to business, but to life. In fact, I'd almost suggest it's a more profound book about interpersonal relationships within a family than about business.

Money: Personal Finance Blogs - The Simple Dollar

2011-02-14T04:23:00.002Z

So I have to admit, not all my ideas about money are entirely original. Well, I write my own words, of course, but I often take inspiration from a few sources, including my wife, my friends, books I've read, and a couple of blogs I occasionally read.

Here's a review of one of my favourites:

The Simple Dollar by Trent Hamm

This is one of the better blogs I've read on the subject of personal finance. The author and I share some similarities in our personal stories, though plenty of differences also (see his story). He writes in an engaging and personal style, which means it's fairly easy to identify with him.

A lot of his current writing is individual money-saving tips, book reviews, his personal inspirations or responses to reader emails, but I find gold frequently enough to keep reading, and there's some great stuff in his archives. He's also a little verbose for my taste (but then, so am I), as his 49 page document entitled Everything You Ever Really Needed to Know About Personal Finance on Just One Page might indicate (it's actually quite good).

I read this blog primarily for inspiration, but also for occasional thought-provoking, book reviews, and rarely, practical tips. He doesn't have many techniques which are widely applicable, just good advice and inspiration.

Cooking: Sharp Knives

2011-02-13T05:50:00.000Z

Staying in Sydney for the month, thousands of miles away from my kitchen, the items I miss most are my sharp knives. The pleasure derived from cooking is in direct proportion to the sharpness of the knife. If the knife is blunt, the chicken is not neatly diced, but coarsely mashed between implement and chopping board. I guess the food still tastes pretty much the same, but the effort expended and frustration incurred means that I enjoy it less.

When I say "sharp knives", by the way, I mean sharp as opposed to particularly special. Good knives are a particular pleasure, but a cheap knife well-sharpened is not to be sneezed at (for reasons of hygiene as well as safety). I have a couple of cheap knives at home, and the difference between them and the more expensive knives I have is in their hand feel and in how often I need to sharpen them. I'd choose a cheap knife, a sharpening stone and a honing steel over an expensive knife any day.

The apartment we're in at the moment has got cheap, blunt knives and no sharpening devices whatsoever. Needless to say, cooking was frustrating for the first few days. Last week I bought a new (hence, sharp) cheap knife, so that was better, but still not optimal. Today, I bought a sharpening stone for nine dollars, and sharpened all the knives. Now I can slice tomatoes with joy, and look forward to cooking tonight (tomato pasta).

I couldn't say that I'm an expert in knife sharpening, and I'm probably doing it wrong, but then, as long as you don't hurt yourself, how bad can it be? It's not as if a knife is a particularly sophisticated instrument. Occasionally, especially with the stone, I'll scratch the face of the knife, which doesn't look too nice, but doesn't actually cause any problems. But if I just wanted knives that looked nice, I wouldn't use them. I want sharp knives, and don't mind much how they look.

I usually get a cheap sharpening stone from a hardware store. I'm sure the ones in kitchen stores are finer and all that, but they also cost four to ten times as much, and basically do the same job. I use it dry (some use water or vegetable oil), and place it lengthways on a folded tea towel on the bench. I fold the end of the teatowel over the bench and hold it still with my waist. I hold the knife in one hand, parallel to my body, blade facing away from me, with the handle end of the blade resting on the stone. I use my thumb of my other hand to get the angle of the knife about right (15-25 degrees), and place my fingers on the blade to ensure even pressure. I then push the knife along the stone away from my body, and slightly diagonally, so the whole blade is sharpened.

I do this same movement a few times, then swap hands to do the other side of the blade. Some stones have a coarse and a fine side, so I'd repeat first with the coarse side to get it sharp quickly, then the fine side so the cutting edge is pretty smooth. I check how sharp the blade is by looking for reflections on the pointy bit (evidence of the blade being flattened), and then by cutting something like a tomato (after cleaning the knife on some kitchen paper so I don't get a dirty tomato).

After this, and every time before I use the knife (at least, when I remember), I use a honing steel (mine is ceramic) to ensure the edge is smooth and straight. The movement is a simple slicing one, along the length of the steel and the blade away from my body, and doesn't require a lot of pressure.

And then I slice, smiling to myself about how easy and pleasant the cutting experience is.

Money: The Psychology of a Spending Habit

2011-02-10T00:10:00.002Z

I received an email from a friend who reads this blog, who wondered why I didn't ask myself "is it possible for me not to spend this money" whenever I went to buy something. He doesn't relate to the posts, because he's never found it difficult to make the conscious choice before spending money.

He makes a good point. Why not "just spend less"? It's a logical solution to the problem of spending too much. Why would I introduce all these measures and systems to gain control over something that I am in full control of anyway? It's not like anyone else was forcing me to spend money.

The answer to this is that I lacked the willpower to control myself. I've since developed it (mostly), and now do make conscious decisions whenever I spend money. But some years back, my impulses ruled my rational mind. Here's how:

Having money problems makes me depressed ... eventually
Buying things makes me feel happy, immediately
Buying things contributes to money problems ... eventually

This pattern is common with most other addictions, like overeating, drugs, gambling or smoking. The problem is in the immediacy of the positive feeling, and the delays around the rest of the cycle. In my case, the delays were exacerbated by the use of credit and a lack of organisation.

Counterintuitively, while within this cycle, receiving a pay rise can end up being a curse because it increases access to credit, delaying the crisis point. This is one reason why wealthy people go bankrupt spectacularly whereas poorer people tend to just struggle by, lacking the means to get themselves in serious enough trouble to cause a real crisis.

The lack of organisation contributed to my state of denial about the true state of my finances. I knew I wasn't in such a good financial state, but I was disorganised, with my problems hidden in the complexities of credit cards, personal loans and general disarray. I could convince myself that I didn't have a problem, because I never actually ran out of money.

I reinforced this denial by comparing the wrong things with my peers. For example, amongst my friends, I counted people who earned less, had expensive cars or hobbies, spent more on going out, or had many overseas holidays. Of course, this wasn't all the one person. I was comparing myself to a mythical person made up of the worst financial characteristics of my friends, and used this to justify myself.

A lot of this was in the subconscious, and none of the denial stopped the underlying problem from depressing me. It just enabled me to continue the pattern. But I wasn't conscious of it, and didn't systematically think though it. If someone had pointed it out, I would likely have denied it all.

When it's written down, it looks ridiculous, because it is. But it's surprisingly common. The number of people I personally know who have unnecessary financial problems is staggering. They earn reasonable wages, but are have a similar set of problems managing it as I had. At the time, I felt alone with my problems, but the more I look around, the more common I find them. By sharing my solutions, I hope to help others find theirs.

Solutions

To fix these problems, I had to bring the subconscious into the conscious. Recording my daily spending connected my actions to my financial situation. Breaking the credit card habit removed some of the delay between spending and the impact on my finances. Starting saving created a means to counter the depression. Managing my cashflows helped me see my true financial situation and escape the denial. Each step helped build my willpower and changed my behaviour. Over time, my very basic thinking about money changed, and now, I am a different financial person to who I once was.

If I had had the willpower to start with, I would be significantly richer now. But I didn't. If I had kept on the trajectory I was on, I would probably be bankrupt by now. But I'm not. There's no point regretting what might have been but isn't. I'd rather look at what is, and create what will be.

Money: Managing Cashflows & Personal Spending

2011-02-08T06:36:00.001Z

One other money problem I encountered early on was managing cashflows. It took me a while to realise that cashflow wasn't the flow of cash through my wallet, and improving it didn't mean making it flow faster.

I have not one, but multiple cashflows, in two categories: in and out. If my inflows exceed my outflows in any month, my current account balance grows. If my outflows exceed my inflows in any month by more than the balance in my current account, then I'm having cashflow problems.

Managing cashflows means ensuring the second scenario never happens. Improving my cashflows means matching my inflows and outflows better so I don't need to maintain too much of a buffer in my current account. As I am paid a regular salary, my inflows are quite predictable, and managing my cashflows is all about managing expenses over time.

Interestingly, it’s possible to have good cashflows, but negative net worth. Likewise, it’s possible to have a great net worth, but bad cashflows. In fact, this is often how wealthy people get into financial difficulties. Owning a £4 million terrace in Chelsea doesn’t necessarily enable you to pay the gas bill, and if you can’t pay the gas bill, you are as good as insolvent. Of course, they could always sell the house, but that’s probably not the best way to keep warm.

But, back to me – unfortunately I don’t have a £4 million terrace in Chelsea. I also wouldn't say that I've got managing cashflows entirely figured out, but the system I have now is reasonably good.

The system started when I wanted to get better control over my personal spending. I had a good start by recording my daily spending, but this wasn't really sustainable long term. Leaving my credit card at home and carrying my debit card for my main account helped, but it still meant that I had access to far more cash than I needed to.

So I set up a second, daily spending account. I kept all my bills in my main current account, and transferred a weekly allowance to my new account. I then left all my other cards at home, and took only this card with me. Given that I only had access to a limited amount of money, I had to spend less. I couldn't buy a new camera on impulse, and I couldn't have after-work drinks every day. If I wanted to buy a new pair of jeans, I had to ensure I had the money available, rather than just putting it on a credit card blindly.

Initially, I gave myself quite a large allowance, but reduced it fairly rapidly. I started to discover that my current account had more money in it available to save, so I could increase my savings rate. I also found that I would never spend money earmarked for rent or bills, because I didn't have access to it.

Setting up this separate account changed my thinking about money more than anything else. I went from seeing myself having £salary every month to spend, to having £allowance every week to spend. That round of beers went from being a barely noticeable rounding error to being 10% of my weekly allowance. If I spend £100 tonight, I might have to wait for the next week before going out again.

Interestingly, while this did curtail my social life a little, it meant that when I did go out, I was comfortable in making the decision to spend that money. I knew that I had the spare in my allowance, and by spending it, I wouldn't be affecting my rent or savings. It was freeing rather than limiting.

Personal: Surprise visit to Adelaide

2011-02-07T03:14:00.000Z

I did intend not to post personal stuff on this blog any more, but this was too good not to write about.

I've been living in the UK for almost a decade now (well, 8 years), and have always wanted to make a surprise visit to my parents in Adelaide. This weekend just passed, we had the chance.

Due to a project my wife is doing for her company, she is working from Sydney for the month. Due to my company being particularly flexible, I'm able to join her. But we only had a week's notice of this ourselves, so decided not to tell my parents, and arranged with my sister that we'd visit as a surprise.

My parents had been told to expect a surprise and to keep the weekend free, but otherwise had no idea.

After a kerfuffle with Tiger Airways (don't fly Tiger), we flew JetStar to Adelaide early on Saturday morning, and were picked up at the airport. We filmed our arrival, to capture the moment. Mum's reaction was great - she almost forgot to breathe.

We spent the weekend just relaxing with the family, and it was a really nice time. So great to have a low-pressure visit like that, without the buildup. Hoping to also visit my brother in Darwin while we're in the country, and also expecting to see Mum, Dad and Beth in Sydney in two weeks time.

Happy days!

Idea: London Tim Tam Slam Van

2011-01-27T17:58:00.000Z

There's a recent trend in London for Australian-style coffee. New coffee shops are springing up everywhere, serving the traditional Flat White (an Australian-style Caffe Latte, a little stronger and creamier than the UK standard). There's been a place called Flat White in Soho for a few years, and even Starbucks UK has got in on the act.

I also recently managed to introduce many of my colleagues to the pleasure of the Tim Tam Slam. As expected, they were almost universally enthralled. Apparently, it even works well with tea, though I don't recommend it.

And then, I found the Piaggio Ape, which can be turned into a mobile coffee cart:

Picture from thebigcoffee.co.uk

I imagined combining all three - a mobile coffee cart, selling Flat Whites and Tim Tam Slams in Central London. What a great idea! The high quality coffee would mean you could charge a premium (maybe £2.50 or £3 per cup), and you could add £0.50 to £1 for a Tim Tam, and sell whole packs of Tim Tams as well. The novelty of the Tim Tam Slam would drive word-of-mouth, and the customers would line up for miles. If it was located in a busy place like Victoria Station, £300-400/day or more in revenue is not out of the question.

Costs are minimal. A good Barista is £10-15 an hour, and the cost of the consumables is relatively low (less than 20%). Allow £50/week for financing and operating the van (purchase price £12,000). Total costs are maybe £200 a day (200 cups, 10 hours), plus business overheads and licensing. The profit would be a few hundred pounds per week, likely more.

As similar businesses are reasonably common (though apparently not in Central London), the level of confidence in this model can be relatively high. The key differentiator here is in the location, the high quality coffee, and the Tim Tams for marketing purposes. It would be a sure-fire winner.

So I called Westminster Council to find out about licensing (their online pages about Street Trading are under development). I discovered that they don't license mobile traders at all.

There goes that idea, destroyed by Local Government rules.

Or is it? I contacted thebigcoffee.co.uk, and it seems that it may be possible to run such a business in private land in front of a shop etc. Somehow I doubt it, but I might well ask. Of course, there's always The City and the surrounding boroughs. I could imagine this working in other busy locations like Clapham Junction or Fulham, or perhaps even the South Bank.

So what do you think - should I continue down this track? Particularly interested to hear from Londoners, of course.

Money: Starting Saving

2011-01-24T16:09:00.001Z

Once I had broken my credit card habit, I decided to start saving money regularly. It's not that I hadn't tried to save in the past, but I had never succeeded. This time, I played a few psychological tricks on myself to make it work. They were:

Start Small
Save Before Spending
Save Before Paying off Debt
Set a Realistic Target
Celebrate, don't Regret

Firstly, I started small. A few percent of my monthly income, to get the habit started. I then progressively increased this, as I adapted my spending habits. This meant that rather than becoming discouraged and quitting because I couldn't save "just" ten percent, I was encouraged by my success to continue and save a little more.

Secondly, I saved at the start of the month rather than at the end. I felt slightly less flush during the month, and automatically spent less, choosing not to buy that extra coffee or round of drinks. It took a while for my spending habits to adapt, and I had to break into my new savings to make it through the first month or three. In the end, the barrier of having to access my savings was more significant than just having no money left to save at the end of the month, and it had a greater impact on my behaviour.

Thirdly, and counter-intuitively, I prioritised saving an emergency fund over paying off personal debt. This cost me money, as I was paying relatively high interest on my debt, and making low interest on my savings. But having some cash saved for emergencies meant that I didn't need to rely on a credit card at all, helping to further break the habit of spending money I didn't have. Further, seeing a positive balance in my savings account made me feel better than seeing an equivalently smaller balance on my personal loan. This positive feedback reinforced the new habit.

Fourthly, I set a realistic target. I wanted to have one month of income saved, in case I became unexpectedly unemployed or decided to change jobs. Over time, as my saving habits improved, I increased the target, to three months income, and eventually to saving for a house deposit. If I started out trying to save for a house deposit, it would have been demoralising.

Finally, I stopped regretting not having had a savings habit all along. Rather, I celebrated my new savings habit (no, not by spending, just by being happy). Nothing I can do can change the effect of thirty-odd years of bad financial habits, so there's no point thinking about it. The only thing I can do is create new habits, and improve my next thirty years of life (and even my next few months).

As my habit strengthened, I would occasionally increase my savings rate by a percent or two. When I had a payrise or reduced my regular expenditure on a bill, I put most of that extra money into my savings, rather than allowing myself to spend it. When I paid off a debt, I put that monthly payment into my savings. When I got a (modest) windfall, or sold an unwanted item, the money was deposited into my savings. I applied constant but gentle pressure to my spending habits. The rewards were not just seeing my savings grow, but seeing myself change from someone who spent everything he earnt into someone who was good at saving over the course of a few years.

Cooking: Slow-roast Beef Forerib on the bone

2011-01-22T21:08:00.001Z

This is one of my favourite recipes. I found it when I first got a Le Creuset casserole dish, and searched for a slow-cooked beef recipe. I was actually looking for more of a braised beef style dish at the time, but this one looked appealing, so I tried it.

It's available online, so I won't repost it here, but I will recommend it. I'm actually preparing it now for some dinner guests tomorrow (you can half-cook it a few days in advance, then finish it off on the day).

In a funny co-incidence today, we were going for a walk before heading to the supermarket to buy the beef for tomorrow, and we saw a butcher which happened to have the same name as the website with the recipe on it - Sheepdrove Organic Butcher. It's actually the very place which posted the recipe, and they happen to be a short walk from home. I was convinced (for no good reason) that the website was an American one. The Internet is smaller than I thought.

We also bought a rump steak, which we just had for dinner. It had the most incredible flavour - strong and meaty. I have a feeling it's primarily because it's dry-aged, but perhaps being organic, or just from happy cows had something to do with it.

Either way, I'm definitely planning to buy more steak from them (or at least, more dry-aged steak).

New Layout

2011-01-20T16:59:00.000Z

So I have a new blog template now. I think it looks nicer now (and doesn't suffer from a few formatting bugs I found previously). I'm also experimenting with Ads. Hopefully they are not intrusive. Let me know if they are bothersome.

Money: Breaking the Credit Card Habit

2011-01-20T13:24:00.001Z

Not long after I started tracking my daily spending, I realised I needed to stop using my credit card.

I was in the habit of putting all purchases on my credit card, and then trying to pay it off in full at the end of the month to avoid paying interest. But sometimes I would need to make a large purchase, like plane tickets, or would just overspend. I would then have to shuffle money between credit cards and current accounts to avoid fines. I have bad memories of making cash withdrawals on a Visa card, to deposit into my Current Account so I could pay off my American Express card.

In the past, I had tried to address this by chastising myself and committing to spend less in future. It didn't work. The easy availability of credit was too much temptation to handle. So I decided to live on debit.

That month, I paid the minimum balance on my credit card (if I had paid it off in full, I would have had nothing left to live on), and kept only my debit card in my wallet. Knowing that I was spending money from my account rather than an abstract credit account applied some realism to my finances. Perhaps the potential for embarrassment and inconvenience at having a transaction rejected due to insufficient funds added to this. Either way, I successfully spent less that month.

Of course, I then had to pay off the debt itself. I did this by taking out a personal loan to consolidate the debts I had at a reasonable interest rate, and paid the loan payment at the start of the month. I cut up all but one of my credit cards, keeping that at home for emergency use.

The debt then became a monthly expense, effectively reducing my income. The reduced income became a hard spending limit due to how debit cards work as compared to credit cards. This, in turn, helped me to reduce my spending and start paying down the debt. It took some willpower, but not using the credit card at all was much easier than just trying to exercise restraint.