Self-Assessment
Posted: Tue 27 October, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, Security, Thoughts 3 Comments »Over the weekend, I completed – and sent off – my Self-Assessment Tax Return to Your Friends And Mine at HMCE. The deadline for receiving them is October 31st (i.e. this Saturday) so I’ve only just scraped it this year, having been really really good with it last year.
I know, I could do it all online, and have ’til January 31st to fill it in etc. – but I still don’t trust the online system. I wrote about this a couple of years back, and my feelings are still the same. Mainly, I’m happy to spend the money and use the Special Delivery stuff to get the tax return in – it just means I’ve got a signed confirmation that the Tax Return has been received where it’s been sent. I’ve been bitten by that before, the entire “Oh no, we haven’t received it” from HMCE. Of course, if you say you haven’t received something from them, it’s a case of “Well we sent it, so you must have received it”, but it’s not the same thing when it’s time to send stuff to them.
Basically, when it comes to sending documents to HMCE, it always pays to be paranoid. Always assume that they are either :
- Vindictive
- Inefficient beyond the dreams of man
- Both
and you’ll be OK.
It’s because of that – OK, it’s partly because of that – that I still don’t trust the online submission of tax returns. Yes, you can be pretty sure they’ve received it – but when it comes to HMRC, “pretty sure” simply isn’t sure enough. I feel the same way about HMCE’s online submission as I do about the people who store all their important data/files with Google, Amazon or some other internet cloud-based server – in other words, “Expect it to get lost. Expect it to get hacked.”
My tax return is on paper. Yes, I know it’ll end up being clocked in to the HMCE ‘System’. That’s fine. But letting their system be the only place it’s held? Sod that. I’ve got a photocopy of the tax return. I know where the figures came from, and I’ve got them recorded. I expect HMCE’s copy of the document to get lost, edited, hacked or mislaid. If/when it happens, I’ve got my own hard-copy backup. If you’ve done all the calculations on-line and not printed out the results (or even better, screenshots) and/or received confirmation from the system of those figures, what proof have you got of what you filled in?
Even if it’s simply that the electronic version gets corrupted, if HMCE also have it on paper then there’s some way they can recover the information without me even needing to be involved. If they only have an electronic version, then lots of people are going to be screwed if anything does happen.
So while I can, I’ll stick with doing my tax return on paper and sending it in to them. When they eventually go to “Online only”, I’ll still make sure I’ve got a printout of the entire thing, along with all the figures I’ve used to calculate it.
Call me paranoid, I don’t mind. Frankly, I’ve been kicked in the nuts by HMCE too many times to not be paranoid. And that’s not paranoia – that’s just common sense.
Strikebreaking
Posted: Sun 18 October, 2009 Filed under: Business, Stupidity, Thoughts 2 Comments »As I’ve said before, I don’t understand the point of strikes, as they do more to ruin the future of the business than anything else would. The current one, of course, is the upcoming Royal Mail strike which I’ve also written some thoughts about before.
It’s come out in the news today that Royal Mail plan to employ some 30,000 temps to work while the strike is going on, and thus keep the business going. And I’ve got to say, I think that’s the right message to send. The people who’ve been talking about going on strike say it’s “to keep their jobs” – when all it’s really going to do is drive more people away from using Royal Mail, and will thus screw their jobs in the long-term anyway.
In my opinion, this move by Royal Mail is a statement of “You’re not going to kill our business. We’ll keep going” and it shows that going on strike might just cost the union workers their jobs anyway.
Jobless
Posted: Wed 7 October, 2009 Filed under: Business, Stupidity, Thoughts, Work-related 2 Comments »
Sashinka's photo of job-seeking David
Even after having been crapped on last week by the jobs market (and one company in particular) I still find I have a problem with the kind of story and image posted by sashinka.
Now fair enough, I understand that David feels he can’t get a job. But really, is anyone going to stop him in the street to interview him? And offering to work for free for the first month – well that just smacks of desperation.
I understand, I’m not someone who wants to work “In The City” (ever noticed how City workers always capitalise it, even in spoken conversation?) so I don’t get some of it. But if you’re dedicated enough to want to work there that you’ll sack around in a Sandwich board for a while, you should be prepared to walk your arse into every single job agency going.
Equally, if you’re desperate to work, you’ll take on anything. I’ve been there and done that – worked in some of the shittiest jobs known to man in order to make ends meet. If I’m that hard-up, I’ll do it again. OK, I might aim to not work on the bins again (did that one summer in Oxford for a month. *shudder*) but if that’s all that’s going, I will.
I have a related problem with the people who whine that they’ve sent off “hundreds” or even “thousands” of CVs and never got a response from an agency or company. Now I’m sorry, but if I’ve sent off even twenty CVs and not had a single response, I know I’m doing something wrong. If I send out ten CVs, I’ll normally get at least five responses from agencies. It’s usually higher than that, but I’m trying to be equable here. (For once) My CV is good enough that it gets a response. It’s simple to read, lists my skills and experience, and that’s it. It breaks lots of the ‘rules’ that CV-advisors give out (I’ve never yet bothered with wasting space on a paragraph describing myself, for instance) and yet it gets responses – and, by extension, jobs.
Yesterday was a perfect example of that. I sent in my CV to an agency for a role they advertised, they called me back, and I’ve got an interview for it this morning. The company involved took less than an hour to come back from seeing the CV with an interview request. I’m in there today, and we’ll see how it goes.
The same happened with the one that fell through – CV to agency, from agency to company, and a phone interview on the same day. Two days later I had the interview, and had an answer by the end of that day. Sure it fell through, but that was a funding/project thing rather than a “me” thing. I can’t do anything about that.
But if I’d sent a hundred CVs and not got a response at all? You can bet that I’d be doing a few things including:
- Rewriting the damn CV – big-time
- Calling agencies, if only to use the “checking it got through to you as I hadn’t heard anything” line
- Asking those agencies for feedback, why the initial CV didn’t get a response
- Reconsidering how I was doing things.
Ah well, rant over with for now. There’s more I was thinking about, but I haven’t quite got it strung together in my head yet.
Postal Strikes
Posted: Sun 20 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Business, Customer Services, Thoughts 2 Comments »As I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, I really don’t understand how strikes are supposed to work.
The case of the (probably) upcoming national postal strike is a perfect example of this. As the BBC story says,
At the core of the dispute is the Royal Mail’s plans to trim its 121,000 frontline postal workers as part of the modernisation it says is needed to secure its future against a backdrop of falling mail levels.
But the strike itself, if called, will mean more people stop using the Royal Mail, and thus there’ll be a need for even more redundancies over time.
Because of previous strikes, for example, the last three agencies I’ve worked with have all done pretty much everything online. In the current one, only one thing goes through Royal Mail (because it’s a) more expensive to use, and b) not reliable) and that’s the payslip, which is fine to be delayed.
At the start, all my contract documents were sent as PDF files by email. My ‘timesheet’ is filled in online, and submitted electronically. My invoice for the week is created on the computer, and emailed across. Payment is done by BACS Faster Payments, and then the agency posts out the remittance advice. (And I’m sure they could automate that too)
However you look at it, that’s a significant bit of money that Royal Mail is losing out on – it would’ve been Special Delivery for the contract documents both ways (Recorded not being worth the paper it’s written on), first class post for invoices and timesheets, every week. When the agency deals with a couple of thousand contractors, that’s starting to add up even more. Bear in mind that there’s one hell of a lot of agencies out there doing this too, and that’s serious cash that Royal Mail isn’t receiving – and all because they can’t be relied upon to provide a good service.
Royal Mail spouting on about “needing to modernise” is all well and good – but they can’t modernise enough any more. People simply don’t rely on them, the service has steadily decreased over the years, and all those past ‘modernisations’ have left them with an organisation that can’t cope.
But the strikes don’t help either. If this new one happens, it’ll cause another wave of customer to go elsewhere – either online, sending things by email instead, or doing as companies like Amazon do, and using courier services for everything.
In my opinion, the best thing Royal Mail could do would be to go back to the service of twenty years ago – deliveries to the home first thing in the morning, a reliable service, and open to all. It would involve investment rather than modernisation and taking on more people instead of getting rid. It would be a massive PR win into the bargain – “We’re bringing back the service you want” – and would raise the public perception of their service in epic style.
However, I can’t help but suspect it would also be far too late to get back all the customers they’ve alienated over the last two decades. And that’s a great shame.
NHS Staffing
Posted: Thu 3 September, 2009 Filed under: Business, Charm School, Creativity, Cynicism, Health, News, Thoughts 2 Comments »Today there’s a lot of coverage about a suggestion to reduce the workforce of the NHS by 10% – and the resultant kerfuffle between Government, the NHS, and management consultants.
Currently the Government is saying that they have rejected this advice by McKinsey and Company, (Never heard of ’em? Me either.) which included closing 137,000 clinical and admin posts in order to save £20bn by 2014.
I’m pretty sure I could show how to save the NHS that much money by 2014, without losing a single clinical staff member.
Mind you, it would involve getting rid of shitloads of middle-managers, consultants, and fuckstick accountants. And of course that’s a plan that would never achieve approval – because it’s got to go through all those levels of shitbag middle-managers, consultants and fuckstick accountants before it can happen. And those self-serving fuckers are never going to do themselves out of a job. (Which is the same reason the “paperless office” will never happen)
I’m not suggesting getting rid of all the managers, as I think most people would agree that there need to be some of the buggers around, if only in order to make sure that the clinical professionals don’t drown in paperwork and procedures in the meantime. (Although of course if you get rid of enough of the middle-managers, you probably get to eliminate a whole host of the bullshit paperwork at the same time – sorry, it’s “streamlining” now isn’t it, not “getting rid of the shit”)
Still, wield a big enough axe, drop it from high enough, I’m pretty sure it’d still work…