Property In The UK 11: Squeezing Out A Little Bit More

The house I live in has been on the market since September 2010.  Not a good time to be selling a house, but as regular readers know, I have never been lucky with property.  If it were not for HM Revenue & Customs admitting to overcharging me £16,000 worth of tax in 2008 and refunding it (with no apology) then, by now the house would have been repossessed.  I have been unemployed for 11 months, bar six weeks' of a few days of work (some weeks one day, some two days per week) and despite still having regular interviews I seem no closer to getting back into employment.  Consequently, because of the woman who lives in my house running a business I am not entitled to any benefit to pay the mortgage.  The mortgage lender, Nationwide Building Society, has repeatedly refused to discuss my inability to pay, saying that if I have enough to pay at least one month's mortgage payments, then it is too early to discuss me defaulting or going on to interest only payments.  With unemployment rising and despite 27 interviews now, no sign of work, the only option is to sell the house.  Of course, that is easier said than done.

I acknowledge that I am very bad at selecting companies to provide me a service.  I always pick the worst company available (though on a number of occasions, recommended to me) for the particular job.  Consequently I have been ripped off by letting agents, removal companies, electrical repair companies and now estate agents.  Within a five-minute walk of my house there are at least five estate agents, though the best decided to morph instead into a financial advice company, much to my frustration and the company they recommended nearby only lets, not sells properties.  Consequently I picked a large company close to my house that was tied into national networks so as to get the coverage.  However, the staff turned out to be clueless, making no effort to learn about the neighbourhood (even though you can see their office from my house) or the potential buyers coming round and what they were looking for (buy-to-let, buy-for-family, buy-for-self; elderly, middle aged, young; with/out children; local, from London, etc.) and said nothing bar 'this is the living room'.  They had the cheek to say they would no longer do accompanied viewings because I simply took over the sales role.  I said that was insulting as I had only taken that role because their staff made no effort to address the viewers or sell the property.  Anyway, we got one buyer from them, but it took him three months and he had not even sent round a surveyor.  We abandoned both him and the estate agent.

The next company we went for, is tiny, but works incredibly hard and within a week of transferring to them we have another buyer, offering £2000 more than the first.  I live in a town with still high demand for property, very close to a good range of shops and good primary schools.  Despite paying £240,000 for the house in 2007 it is now worth £230,000; to be expected with the downturn in the market.  Offers have come in starting at £205,000, not leaving enough to clear the debts on the house and have enough to put down a deposit on a rented property.  We have managed to get offers now up to £217,000 helped by the move from Winter to Spring, but still in line for a heavy loss.  Given the location and the benefits of the property, once the economy recovers, the value is likely to rise fast, especially with the revival of buy-to-let mortgages reported this week.  Thus, the person is getting a good deal on the property, £13,000 less than the valuation given even now by the estate agents.

These days, it is apparent, that a good deal is not enough for house buyers, they constantly want to squeeze out more from the seller.  I have experienced this even back in 2007 selling my flat in London, a time when the housing market was much healthier.  Due to being bullied by the landlord's representative, I effectively sold a two-bedroomed flat for the price of a one-bedroomed flat in the area of Newham.  It was clean and modern and I had replaced the bathroom and the windows and made other improvements in the six years I had owned it, primarily for my own benefit when living there, but clearly improving it over some of the neighbouring flats.  In my hurry, the buyer got a very good bargain.  However, this was not enough.  Living in rented accommodation I had no desire to move the furniture and white goods from it.  This was initially not an issue, but then suddenly the buyer wanted them gone at my expense.  Then he wanted the flat to be cleaned, by him even before he owned it, at a cost of £500 (€565; US$805).  The flat was not unclean and it took £40 to employ a woman to clean it thoroughly.  However, it was clear the buyer was using it as an excuse to squeeze more money for me, even though he was paying about £30,000 (€33,900; US$48,300) less than an equivalent flat in the same area would have cost him.  Once the front door lock had been destroyed by the estate agents' carelessness on the day before the contract exchange occurred, I took the opportunity while it was being replaced to ensure that the buyer would receive a welcoming gift of rotten milk, a mouldy fridge and faeces when he arrived.  Any waste paper and other rubbish I could find, was distributed over the flat so he could really see what an untidied flat looked like.  As you can understand, I was angered, by the attempt to squeeze more and more from me, even when I was selling the place at a bargain price.

A very similar thing occurred with the current house.  The second buyer we accepted first sent around three inspectors.  The surveyor spent three hours at the property and people came to check the central heating and electricity too.  This dragged out over a couple of weeks.  The buyer did not take efforts to conceal her contempt for us and I overheard her ridiculing myself and the woman who lives in our house as stupid.  Clearly she, like the buyer of my flat, believed that we were so desperate that she could humiliate us and we would have to swallow it.  I have no idea why humiliation is now seen to be a necessary part of buying a house.  Certainly getting an extra £500 from the buyer now seems to be part of a fashion.  In this case she did not demand cleaning, she asked instead that we paid £500 towards the £1000 it would cost to build an additional wall around the kitchen; a wall that we would gain no benefit from.  We naturally refused.  The estate agent felt the demand was ridiculous, which suggests that it may not be as common behaviour as I have experienced, but he did offer to take £500 off his commission instead.  The woman, disgruntled with our refusal to comply with us immediately withdrew her offer, over two months since she had made it, and like the first buyer, during that time, had effectively blocked other potential buyers.

These may be isolated incidents, but to me there does seem to be a trend that, as a buyer you see what you can squeeze out of the sellers.  Getting a good price is not enough.  There has to be some specific demand imposed on the sellers to make it clear to them that you hold the power.  To me this does not seem to be a healthy way to do business.  Either you want the property or you do not.  Either you can afford to buy the property or you cannot.  There is obviously room for discussion over the price and we have engaged with that, all the buyers (we are now on to the third, who rather worryingly has requested a third viewing of the house as I have been writing this) have got a price well below the asking price.  When seeing Niall Ferguson talking about the success of Western capitalism and how now it is not thriving so well as it is in China, he noted the fact that honesty in business is one trait highly valued in Chinese commerce.  This element seems to have gone from buying and selling in the UK and slows down exchange and discourages commerce.  This applies to selling on eBay in the UK as it does to selling houses.  Sometime in the previous decade, perhaps prompted by television programmes, buyers have been encouraged to move from simply getting a good deal, to squeezing unnecessary extras.  After all, on a £217,000 sale, the commission to the estate agent is usually £4880 and unless the buyer if a first-time buyer the Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is £2,170, so what is the fuss over £500?  It seems to be a principle that Ferguson missed that is damaging to capitalism in the UK today.  It is not enough simply to make a profitable deal, now you have to 'win a victory' too and rub the face of your 'opponent' in the mud by asserting how much more economically powerful you are than them.  This is one thing which harms sales and business in the UK and seems to be increasing as the recession widens the gap between people who previously would have been on the same economic level.  Selling your house should not require you to kow-tow to someone who explicitly holds you in contempt.

P.P. 28/05/2011
This aspect of the house sale has taken on an additional unpleasant twist.  It is clear that I have a sign on my forehead that I cannot see but which instructs everyone else: 'patronise and exploit this man as much as you can'.  Last week I was fortunate enough to get work.  This means there is no longer a need to sell the house, though we will struggle with paying the mortgage until my first salary arrives at the end of July.  However, given that the house is worth tens of thousands of pounds less than when we bought it and we own 1/300th of it more, every month of the mortgage we pay, if we can hold on to it until prices have at least returned to their 2007 level, then we will at least be a little better off.

Once the job had been confirmed, I telephoned the estate agent to tell him we were taking the house off the market.  I said I expected an invoice for services rendered in the four months they had been selling our house for us.  I assumed he would inform all the relevant parties.  Today, however, I received a very snotty letter from the solicitors' office, asking why they had not been informed as well.  It was clear they had found out in two days of me telling the estate agent anyway, but that I did not crawl round to them and kiss their feet and apologise for not continuing with the sale, was clearly sufficient to leave them indignant.  They were not our choice of solicitors anyway, we only took them as they are the ones the estate agent uses.  All our communications, bar one visit, have been through the estate agent.  Given their attitude now, I am actually glad I did not call them.

It gets worse.  When our second buyer decided that because we were unwilling to pay her £500 and have a wall built to no benefit of us, she would break off the sale, we were left with the solicitor's charge for the work they had done already, a sum of £300 [€318; US$483].  We contacted the buyer to see if she would reimburse us this money.  She did not say no, she simply refused to respond to any attempts to contact her.  We accepted that with no written contract we could not get the money out of her.  Now, however, this time we have broken the sale and now this latest buyer is trying to get his solicitor's fees back out of us.  Despite being employed by us, our solicitor seems always to be working on behalf of other people.  In the first case she did nothing to help us recoup the money from the buyer who broke off.  In this second case, however, she has forwarded a bill from the buyer's solicitor, at a cost of £8 to us, and written to tell us it is 'only fair' that we reimburse the buyer.  Why is it 'fair' that we have to pay the fees for everyone?  The solicitor seems to have no interest in aiding us, despite being paid by us, at fees £66 higher than those levied by the latest buyer's solicitor.

Part of the problem seems to be that we are too honest and treat people politely.  In contrast the two buyers have behaved in a 'chav-plus' manner.  They behave as if thuggish, self-centred people from a housing estate, terse and rude in their manners, expecting always to get that bit extra, and yet, they have the money to speculate in property.  I could be terse and aggressive in my business dealings, put on the accent and behaviour I learnt in Mile End and it is apparent in not doing so I somehow signal that I am open to being exploited by all and sundry.  My advice is: the only way to go into buying or selling a house in the UK in 2011 is to behave as if you are some small-time gangster who has retired from the Ocean Estate in Stepney to Chigwell.  In addition, avoid Aldridge Brownlee solicitors.

How 'World Of Warcraft' Ruined My Life

Back in 2009 I wrote about how I had started to play the so-called Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, 'World of Warcraft'.  My early views of the hazards of playing the game were posted back in July 2009: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/07/online-behaviour-world-of-warcraft.html   I am still playing it, probably even more because with me being long-term unemployed, losing my house and having no clear idea of where I am going to end up, escapism is vital.  During the Depression of the 1930s and the mass unemployment of the 1980s, consumption of alcohol and tobacco increased and funerals became more elaborate (if you have had a grim life people feel they need to give you a good send off, just witness any funeral in Mile End or Poplar in East London).  People seek escape and I am not exempt from that.

Of course, computer games of any kind have the danger of becoming addictive and you finding the hours passing by quickly.  Rather than doing the housework or the shopping, instead you keep playing even into the early hours of the morning.  With a game like 'World of Warcraft' in which there is not just a single character progressing down a chain of missions, but you can go and produce things like weapons or clothing and market them or go on quests for rewards or duel with other players or take part in the regular seasonal events, such as around the Solstice or Valentine's Day, there is even more to keep you engaged.  You can have up to 50 different characters so even if you tire of running around as a troll hunter you can log on and be a werewolf druid in a different location.  To stop players tiring of the settings and quests, periodically those running the game, a US company called Blizzard, recreate their world.  In December 2010 they launched 'Cataclysm' which saw regions of their world flooded, some split apart by earthquakes or volcanoes and new areas appear from the sea; new races were introduced and players could now rise up to level 85 rather than 80.  There were numerous new missions and even new skills that players could train in.  The game is always evolving and sometimes this is for gameplay reasons (such as no longer needing to buy ammunition for bows and guns or putting more mail boxes in certain cities) and sometimes to develop new storylines.  In such a fantasy continent there has to be lots of drama, invasions and betrayals.

This is all great.  Though I do not always agree with the changes made, and smaller updates and alterations come between the big relaunches like Cataclysm, it certainly keeps my interest which is why I am still playing it 20 months after I started.  The key problem for me and what makes me keep thinking I should turn away from the whole thing, is the people.  Of course, many of them are teenagers, you expect that with any computer-based game.  However, there are also older people with partners and children and work to go to.  Certain 'guilds' only permit people over 18 to participate in their group.  The range of nationalities is diverse.  There are different servers for the main language groups of Europe (and others for China and many for the USA), so being located in the UK I do not mix with French or German or Italian speakers.  However, the British server does have players from many minor states across Europe especially the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, but also Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece.  I quite enjoy playing with people from such diverse backgrounds.  Though English is the language for the server once in a while people go off into Dutch or Danish and some guilds intentionally recruit people of a specific nationality.  Of course, in this age of semi-literacy among English speakers, a lot of the online discussion is in fact in a hybrid of text speak and simply bad spelling.  'LFG' - Looking for Group, 'JC' - Jewel crafter; one of the professions you can study and the whole range of smilies; 'OMFG' for 'Oh My Fucking God' seems unnecessarily hyperbolic in its anger/condemnation.  However, new terms develop simply because so few people seem to be able to spell, 'Rogue' (a character class) is always rendered as 'Rouge' and now 'give' has been replaced when it is a demand by 'geif' which seems to be turning into some form of German.  Again, being a man in his forties, I recognise that with the English language changing far more sharply between my generation and the one that is following than between my generation and that of my parents or even my grandparents, I am happy to accept that when online I need to use a different language.  I can type far faster than the bulk of the gamers, so accept the need for abbreviations.

What is more of a challenge is not really how discussion is had but what is said and beyond that, the behaviour of the people it betrays.  Someone said that the 'World of Warcraft' was like a Gold Rush town in California of the 1840s.  This is unsurprising, people are doing missions and fighting monsters to win magic items and gain gold.  With such funds they become better fighters or magic users and get access to higher level areas and so on.  This is the basic dynamics of numerous fantasy fighting computer games.  The problem is that many of the people gamers are interacting with are not computer generated they are people with feelings.  In the game two warriors with the same equipment will be equally matched and in combat it comes down to luck and which combination of buttons you press.  A well-equipped person playing for 3 months could beat someone who has been playing the game for 5 years, though the latter generally pretends his/her knowledge somehow makes them stronger.  In fact people who have that attitude often lose because they have no flexibility in their thinking.  So, how do you show you are 'better' than the derided 'newbies' or 'noobs' as it is typically abbreviated to?

Status is clearly important.  People aim to reach that level 85.  However, this can take weeks and months and while your character is rising through the ranks, how do you show you are better than the others around you?  It is by making divisions.  In many ways whilst 'World of Warcraft' is like California of the 1840s it is also like London society of the 1840s, snobbery is rife.  People put out a call to get a group of assorted characters together in order to attack a castle or run through some caves, fighting monsters.  Now, of course, the opponents are of differing levels depending on the location and so a level 10 warrior would die quickly if fighting level 20 dragons.  However, the person soliciting recruits does not stop there in separating out the volunteers, s/he insists that they have equipment of a certain rating, their 'gear score' has to be so high or they are 'kicked' from the group.  They are commanded to go to a location for inspection, i.e. a player looks at all the equipment the character has.  Many players simply preen around the centres of the big cities showing off what they have like so many peacocks or prostitutes.   Those volunteering rather than preening are grilled about their 'dps', from damage per second, how much damage their weapons or spells can inflict.  If it falls below some arbitrarily set figure then the person is refused.  Now that level 85 is the peak, recruitment advertisements in the game often say 'level 85s only' even when going off to a level 70 dungeon.  At level 83 I asked if I could join in as my damage and spells were only a little lower than the level 85 set and, of course, I was refused. 

Once you have got through the equipment inspection, you have to have your 'achievements' checked.  This is the list of successful missions and quests that you have already completed.  If you have not been felt to have achieved enough already, again you are refused.  This is a chicken-and-egg situation, because people often volunteer so that they can win an achievement, and yet because they do not have it, they are refused.  A lot of this reflects the lack of maturity of thinking on the part of the recruiters, no matter what age they actually are.  Even if you recruit a group yourself you are quite likely to find a member leaving mid-way through some battle because s/he feels the rest of the group is not up to scratch.  Even more criteria are piled on to segregate and demean other players.  One is speed.  There are no benefits for charging through a castle quickly.  In fact you often find if you do this then some monsters appear out of a room behind you that you have rushed by and start attacking you from behind.  However, warriors, paladins, death knights, the physical attack people, are very impatient and charge on.  If they upset a whole room of monsters and die due to rushing through it, then, of course, they blame everyone else for being pathetic.  These people should be compelled to play games such as the paper-based 'Dungeons and Dragons' role-playing game and know that to succeed in such fantasy settings bravado has to be tempered with caution and forward planning.

This brings us to 'tactics'.  'Must know tactics' is another criteria often set for volunteers to groups.  This does not mean how best to use your character's particular weapons or spells, but precisely where to stand in a castle room when a specific monster attacks.  Again, of course, if you have never done that mission before then how are you supposed to know that.  If you are even a little wrong then you get a long lecture about how wrong and stupid you are.  In addition, everyone thinks their tactics are the only feasible ones and any alternatives are derided.  This is often how arguments start out in groups.  I have done the same missions with differing groups all insisting that their tactics are the only correct ones and if you do anything different then you are kicked out.  There is a sense of a single truth.  It is not surprising that numerous wiki pages and websites have been created to provide players with very precise details about what to buy and where to stand in a particular room of a particular castle or cave.  Like most computer game players I use walkthroughs and other resources that are not part of the game.  However, because specific knowledge is used to denigrate other players, you end up having to read as much as if you were doing an Open University course, just so you do not 'blunder' when you go on a mission.  You ask for help in the game and are told you must be an idiot for even asking, because, of course, to any intelligent person, the answer is obvious or are told to go off and open up numerous webpages outside the system.  The reason for this is supposed superior knowledge is the only real way that one player can make themselves seem superior to another.

Pride in your achievements is a fair trait.  However, the sense that anything you have achieved or know (however wrongly in fact that information might be) should be constantly used to put down others as vocally as it is in the game is unnecessarily nasty, but seems to be a constant behaviour in the game.  I suppose this is a reflection of our contemporary society, especially in the UK: you can only get on in life if you not only eliminate potential rivals but you humiliate them too.

If assistance is offered it is never in a constructive way, it is patronising.  I might expect too much of the average 'World of Warcraft' player to know the difference.  It is great to share knowledge, tell people about bargains in the auction house or how to get through a new mission or quest.  However, that is never enough.  The bulk of players who share information (and they in themselves are a small minority) want you to abase yourself before their greatness and acknowledge that you were stupid until they decided to pity you and shower you with their grace.  Trying to find a specific trainer I asked for help and one player decided to advise me.  Initially I was grateful.  However, he felt he had to lead me through the city and if I said something which disagreed with how he saw the world he went 'WRONG' at me in the text.  The one useful function is 'Ignore' which blocks communication from certain characters if you choose.  Unfortunately it does not block it from specific players and I have had some switching from character to character, pursuing me across the continents of the game repeatedly telling me how wrong or stupid I am until I have blocked every character they can spring on me.  Then they send me messages in the in-game postal system continuing their diatribe.

Interestingly, Blizzard tries to engineer the game so as to promote a better level of co-operation between the players.  You can block swear words to eliminate the harshest abuse, interestingly 'Nazi' counts as a swearword but 'wanker' does not, probably due to the game originating in the USA.  Racism does sometimes break through.  Periodically people condemn non-English speakers struggling to phrase things correctly, which is laughable given how many errors they put in their own writing.  However, it is mob rule and if the bulk of players spell 'rogue' as 'rouge' that is acceptable in a way errors from someone using English as their second or third language is not permitted.  A lot of general public dialogue seems to be as if it was between a group of drunken football supporters watching a match in a pub.  The rules can shift quickly, but always to their advantage in denigrating other players not deemed to be part of the mob. 

The sense that it 'that's the way it is, you cannot question it' is all pervasive.  I have seen that phrase or variations of it banded around.  Once I saw a discussion about so-called 'twinking' when people with characters who have a lot of money send it to their lower level ones to raise them quickly through the levels without much effort (sounds familiar behaviour to anyone who lives or works in the UK).  Someone questioned if this was the right way to behave and whether it was fair on other players.  Rather than put forward a reasoned argument for continuing the practice, the response was, 'it happens, live with it' and the player was condemned even for questioning it.  I know it is a game, but these basic assumptions are carried out into the real world and you do wonder if the regimes in Tunisia or Egypt had changed if the bulk of the population had had that attitude.  Perhaps British complacency and pervasive self-righteousness is what makes us behave this way.  It does not seem healthy in a game, let alone real life.  The worst case was a discussion about Hitler.  I have no idea why it came up in the game.  Some realms of the game insist you only speak about in-game things others start debating the football match or the weather or Michael Jackson's death.  What alarmed me was the view that 'well he sorted out the Jewish problem' which seemed accepted without question.  I started pointing out that any 'Jewish problem' had simply been an invention of the Nazis anyway, and yet was being taken here as something that everyone knew and accepted.  I was barred from the game for three days for participating in an off-topic political discussion, but I was proud to be for challenging lazy, dangerous, Fascist assumptions.

To earn money in the game many players auction off unwanted items through one of the auction houses.  This is a bit like eBay fantasy style.  When fighting monsters you are quite likely to pick up armour or weapons or food or even scraps of fur or rock that you have no use for.  Someone else might just need that item to improve their armour or make something using a profession skill like blacksmithing or leatherworking.  You are not supposed to make a loss but the prices many people set are ridiculous.  I remember having a level 20 character, who was recovering tens of pieces of silver from his quests.  I looked to buy a pair of boots from the auction house.  The best pair for my level was a level 19 pair of boots, but the cost was 799 gold pieces.  There are 10 copper pieces in 1 silver piece and 10 silver pieces in 1 gold piece.  I would be unable to afford them until I was many levels higher and by then their strength and certainly any magic on them would be too feeble for the kind of monster I would then be fighting.  Hyperinflation is a real problem in the game which makes it very discouraging when bringing on a new character.  It is exacerbated by 'gold sellers' criminals who sell gold in the game for real pounds or euros.  This allows some players to simply buy their characters everything they need rather than having to earn it the way most players do.  The gold sellers put software into the sysem which creates 'mining robots' or 'collecting robots' which go round scooping up the raw materials in the game, faster than any players can and then they auction it to raise game gold to sell to players.  Of course, this is illegal, but because status-hungry players indulge in it, it helps upset the balance of the game play.

Hyperinflation always generates excessive behaviour.  A key problem is even if the collection 'bots are not around high level characters go into low level areas, able to move around on mounts far faster than anyone of the appropriate level can do, and mines or collects all the raw materials to then take them back to sell them at incredibly high prices leaving the poor low level characters with nothing to practice their skills working on or to make any money themselves.  Very quickly you have an elite of very high level characters whether migrated from another realm or who have bought their standing, simply selling to each other at very high prices, leaving poor lower level characters without a high level character to supply them, struggling to advance.  Guilds are supposed to help lower level characters advance, but as I consider below, this does not really work either.

Blizzard's steps mean that you need groups to run through 'instances' and 'raids' specific missions in castles or caves or wherever that gives good rewards.  Generally you cannot do it alone.  However, as seen above this actually promotes division rather than collaboration.  They encourage 'guilds', collectives of players focused on one or two activities in the game.  You get a guild 'tabard' showing the logo of the guild and access to a guild bank where items can easily be shared between players.  With Cataclysm Blizzard added other features, cheaper repairs to armour and weapons, access to greater funds, specific items, available to guilds that were thriving and successful.  The basic idea is that players help each other and more experienced players and higher level characters help lower-level characters.  Of course, you can be very experienced and yet be starting a new character among the 50 you are permitted to have, though you still seem to be treated as if you are new to the game as a whole.  The guild system does not really work.  There are some decent guilds.  The woman in my house is a member of one, but I have not been able to find one that is like that.

On any given server there are tens of versions of the world, each with a specific name, so that you do not get tens of thousands of people trying to move through the same area mining for ore or picking specific herbs.  When a 'realm' has too many players, people are offered free 'migration' to a new less populated realm.  This does mean you can have hundreds of people in the same 'place' who cannot see each other as they are on different versions.  Nowadays, random groups can be assembled automatically from across realms on the same server and it can be interesting to talk to people who generally play on an alternative version of the world to the one you are on.  Factors such as the cost of items sold by other players, how crowded certain locations get and even the tone of discussion in the realm can vary greatly.

The other element Blizzard introduced to guilds with Cataclysm was that they could attain levels by their members completing missions and other achievements.  I think the idea was to encourage people to become guild members, but it has completely back-fired and has simply added a new aspect to snobbery.  As in real history, large guilds that can offer their members lots of facilities prosper.  There is the snobbery 'I am in a level 10 guild, oh, but you are only in a level 5 guild, you must be a poor player, no-one else clearly wants you'.  As in our society exclusive clubs are yet another way to segregate players.  They have strict entrance criteria and anyone who does not fit with their arbitrary rules or does not carry out their designate tasks in time or simply is no longer liked, is excluded.  Some US companies take into consideration if prospective employees have run guilds on 'World of Warcraft', but from how most are run, the only kind of organisation such experience would really suit you for is working in the mafia.

Blizzard tries hard to encourage players not to behave in the cut-throat way so many do.  The 'hints' when you log on often advise players to be polite when playing with others and encourage them not simply to open a trade with a player or try to duel with them before actually talking with them.  However, walking through a city my character is quite liable to be repeatedly challenged or offered some trade with absolutely no dialogue.  You can see why many of us become 'backwoodsmen' keeping our characters in the less populated areas of the world.  Generally the whole feel from the players I encounter is that somehow conservative if not Nazi values have become the norm.  A lot of discussion is misogynistic.  I suppose you would expect this in a game about battling monsters, but there are female characters and female opponents.  Yet, a female character is often dismissed, even though a level 10 female warrior is no weaker than a level 10 male warrior in the game.  Of course, just because a character is female or male does not mean the player is too; yet that is the assumption so patronising of female characters is quickly translated into patronising of female players.  Some of the races are very glamourous, especially the elves and their accentuated femininity for the females, with tight fitting clothes, large breasts, slender waists, long hair and often large earrings, does not help.  However, saying this, troll and even orc females have a certain elegance but certainly a strength about them.  When you come across male characters named things like 'Hymenripper' then you have a sense that misogynism is not really challenged.

How 'World of Warcraft' ruined my life was not because I spent so long playing it and neglected other hobbies such as writing fiction or swimming.  What it has alarmingly shown me is that the norms of the next generation are focused on segregation of society by status.  That status has to be maintained rigidly by codes and that those outside have to be regularly humiliated.  The best the ordinary person can hope for is to give up their dignity and be told patronisingly how wrong they are and try to ape their 'betters' in the vain hope of being accepted.  It is a society in which people grab all the resources they can and shut out those coming on after them out of the opportunity of advancing themselves unless they can pay.  It is a society which is discriminatory to women who are assumed to be weak and interestingly that it is demeaning to accept assistance from a woman, no matter what your own gender.  It is a society in which bad language is used to show your level of anger at the 'stupidity' of people who have views different to your own.  It is a society in which you always believe you not have the correct answer but the only possible answer.  It is a society in which things should not be challenged and to even dare to question them opens you up to attack.  What I have seen in 'World of Warcraft' players is the very worst of British society distilled.  The government with all its plans for a very stratified society with opportunities for the few and people all 'knowing their place' should look to 'World of Warcraft' players for their footsoldiers.  These people have the perfect attitude to fill the ranks of the 'little Hitlers' that any authoritarian regime thrives on.  'World of Warcraft' ruined my life by not offering me the escape that I yearned for, but rather shoving the worst of everything I encounter in real life forcefully into my face every time I log on.

When is a State-Run Bank Not State-Run?

I have commented before at how stunning the greed of some many of the leading staff of businesses in Britain are, especially those in a monopoly or cartel position such as utility companies and banks.  The risk of the collapse of banks in 2008 led the British government to take over chunks of a number in the largest round of nationalisation seen since the 1970s.  Not wishing to be tarred with the New Right allegations against public sector business, the government has generally adopted an 'arm's length' model to running them.  The largest bank it now effectively owns is RBS (formerly Royal Bank of Scotland) in which it has a 70% share, so not under total control but quite clearly a dominant majority. In addition, last month it was revealed that towards the end of 2008 the Bank of England made secret loans of £61.6 billion to RBS and HBOS (formerly Halifax Building Society and Bank of Scotland; subsequently merged with Lloyds-TSB).  In total the UK banks benefited to a greater or lesser extent from a £500 billion rescue package.  This was classic Keynesian economics with government deficit financing economic stimulus measures.  It is clear that government action prevented RBS and HBOS collapsing leading to thousands of job losses and severe financial problems in the UK.

Are the current directors of RBS grateful for the fact that the government saved the bank for which they work?  No.  Do they feel even the slightest obligation to temper the greed which got British banks into the dire situation they encountered in 2008? No.  Despite the difficult two years they have been through the directors of RBS have decided to pay themselves £1.5 billion (€1.65 billion/milliard; US$2.49 billion) in bonuses (so on top of their current high pay).  Despite the ongoing difficulties with the recession these bonuses actually exceed those paid last year.  Where is the vast improvement to warrant such payments?  When the government suggested that they do not do this all the directors threatened to resign from their posts.  Lord Mynors the government minister responsible for the banking sector has called their bluff pointing out how many unemployed bankers there are ready to step into the directors' shoes.

It is probably not surprising that others such as Barclays bank and the National Association of Insurers are backing RBS directors in paying large bonuses.  However, as Lord Mynors has pointed out, it is not simply RBS which has benefited from government intervention. Not only did the government take over Northern Rock and the mortgage arm of Bradford and Bingley, it now holds a 40% share in HBOS-Lloyds TSB.  In addition, all banks benefited from 'easing' of the credit availability by the government pumping money into the system.  The government has only been able to fund such intervention which prevented large chunks of the banking sector collapsing, through borrowing.  This borrowing is criticised by the very type of people who benefited from the intervention and risks the UK's credit rating.  If RBS is in a position to pay £1.5 billion in bonuses then it is in a position to pay back many millions of pounds to reduce government debt.

The RBS argument, repeated by their allies in the sector, is that they have to pay such high bonuses in order to attract and retain capable staff.  You can argue that even the bonuses they have paid have failed to do that as clearly as 2008 showed they only had incompetent staff able to wreck the bank they worked for.  Apparently there are at least 5000 bankers in the UK currently earning over £1 million, so what incentive is there to work well if you offer them an additional £100,000 or even £250,000?  As yet, I have to see evidence that we have any skilled or clever bankers in the UK, certainly ones worth the levels that have been allowed to become 'normal'.  These directors can threaten to resign because they can live without pay for many years.  It is particularly bitter when people whine about postal workers who are striking to try to keep their jobs and say that the unemployed are only out of work because they demand too high pay.  There is no 'whip' to bring in line the bankers in the way that they and their kind have been so eager to use on people earning less per year than the cost of one of the bankers' cars; remember 80% of the UK population earns less than £25,000 per year.

I support Lord Mynors.  The directors of RBS can resign if they like.  It will actually do the banking sector a deal of good.  I think then that the government should either dismember RBS or totally nationalise it.  However, importantly, they must run it properly as a state-run bank.  At the moment all the state is doing is pumping cash in and yielding complete control to people who simply want to make themselves even wealthier by funnelling that cash into their own pockets.  That is the morality, the business model of a mafia-run casino, perhaps even an extortion racket, given the level of house reposessions, and bankers who behave this way should not be lauded they should be condemned as we would gangsters.  The government should not be embarrassed at true nationalisation and they should do it on the French model rather than the half-hearted models the UK has had in the past that too often have simply given power to the privileged rather than making the industry benefit the nation as a whole.  They should stop nationalising things on the verge of collapse and take over some businesses in a healthy state again so the UK economy and society can benefit. 

Though the bulk of the population seems to make its assumptions from a Thatcherite economic perspective, with unemployment still high and pay frozen and hours cut back, there is both shock at the arrogance of the RBS bankers (as there was at the MPs fiddling their expenses) and sustained support for action to prevent such flagrant greed continuing unchecked.  In such an atmosphere, the government has the backing to take the necessary action.  It needs to be done before David Cameron and his upper class cronies have any chance to begin again to praise this kind of behaviour in order to benefits their friends in the financial sector.  Gordon Brown, Alastair Darling, Lords Mandelson and Mynors, do not let the RBS directors resign, sack them and block the obscene greed which has done so much damage to the UK!

P.P. 7/12/2009: I was very pleased to hear that Alastair Darling intends to tax the bankers receiving bonuses.  They have been given repeated (too many) chances to moderate their behaviour and yet have not only not done that but have whined on about the government daring even to criticise them.  There was a stage during the MPs' expenses scandal when some MPs realised how genuinely upset the public were about it; the change in expression and response from Margaret Beckett when answering a question about the scandal on 'Question Time' was a physical expression of that shift.  Of course, some MPs still have not really caught on and a couple have been deselected.  However, it was clear that many at the start thought they were doing nothing wrong and even more arrogantly that the public would not take them to task.  Now it is happening, if slowly and incrementally with bankers.  Most of us have no control over what bankers do, it seems even large shareholders (including in some cases the government) have no influence either.  Any, pretty mild criticism of their behaviour has a strong response attacking the critics and telling them to mind their own business.  In many cases now, of course what the banks do is our own business.  I really hope the bankers get hammered for their greed which is sickening when so many people are facing unemployment.  If it compels them to resign, all the better for the UK.  I fear, however, as with the windfall tax on the greedy utility companies promised a couple of years back the bankers will find some way to wriggle out of all of this and thumb their noses at all of us.  Personally I have come now, in the face of sickening greed to favour ending any private banking in the UK and having either mutuals (I bank with the Nationwide, a very successful mutual) or state-owned banks.  Let us get control of the economy back into the hands of the people who it actually effects.  The millionaires are really exempt from economic troughs (though they benefit from the peaks) whereas it is us who lose our job and our house.

Online Behaviour: Greed and Need in The World of Warcraft

I have written previously about my lack of success in getting on one of the major social networking sites, Second Life, but it remains an area of interest to me. I was introduced to the World of Warcraft system by the woman who lives in my house. It has been running since 1994 and is what in the old days we would have called a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) though the acronyms have grown since then and according to Wikipedia it is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), which in itself sounds like a beast from a Tolkien novel. Currently it has over 11.5 million subscribers making it a virtual country with a population more than many in Europe. You cannot interact with all of those players, because there are a variety of servers, parallel versions of the world. In Europe I know there is a French and a German server for players from those locations; the British server also hosts players from the Netherlands, Scandinavia and it appears, Poland, but the language tends to be English with some Scandinavian dialogue. When I say English, in fact, unless you know text speak, it might as well be a foreign language. This is unsurprising as when battling a dragon it can be tough to write grammatically correct sentences at the same time.

As the titles Dungeon and RPG suggest, the game owes a lot to the paper-and-dice based role-playing games of the 1970s-80s though they are still played now, they are less popular than when I was young. Many of the type of people who would have been avid 'Dungeons & Dragons' (D&D) fans twenty-five years ago are now on World of Warcraft (WoW), and some of us from those days are in it too. The basic premise is that you explore ruins, caves, dungeons, castles and battle with fantastical creatures and aggressive people to steal gold and artefacts. As you fight and discover, you gain Experience Points and rise in levels so getting access to higher abilities and even better equipment. As in the RPGs of old, you play a role, hence the name. You name the character and select the class, the types in WoW are like those of D&D: spellcasters - mages, warlocks, shamans, priests and druids and other types such as warriors, rogues and hunters. Each has their own special skills and can use different weapons and armour. You can tailor you face, your skin tone and general appearance and even get shaves and haircuts in the game. The avatars of female characters tend to be elegant, sometimes even sexy and the male characters either robust or mean looking.

There are also professions. Your character can become a tailor or a leatherworker or a blacksmith or an engineer or an alchemist and so on. Some players ignore these skills, but there can be a satisfaction in getting a raw commodity and creating an impressive robe or potion and of course all of the output can be sold or used by players, for example, weapons, armour, health potions, etc. The level of technology is like that of the PC game, 'Arcanum of Steamworks and Magic Obscura' (2001). There is magic but there is also flintlock guns, steampunk motorbikes and even dynamite alongside the longbows, skeletal horses and fire spells. The continents are linked by Zeppelins but within a continent you can fly from town to town on the back of a giant bat or a manticore. Players can also learn cooking, fishing and first aid and it is fascinating how many different fish you can catch in the seas and lakes and the range of recipes available. Each food has different characteristics usually to help boost health or mana (spell energy).

There are races that you can play, very much in the Tolkienesque genre: humans, dwarfs, gnomes, night elves, blood elves, orcs, trolls and undead. There are two races not from that kind of background, the Draenei, huge humanoid aliens from a different planet to Azeroth where the game is set and the ones I find most imaginative, the Taurens, large bovine humanoids very much in the style of Amerindian culture. Again the races have different strengths and weaknesses. One interesting element is the culture as shown by their homes and their accents. As noted, the Tauren live in tepees in areas looking like the plains, the Rockies and the mesas of North America. The trolls are clearly influenced by Jamaican and other Caribbean cultures and they live in sunny tropical locations. Most comic are the goblins, who you cannot play, but turn up as traders and engineers across Azeroth and all speak in New York taxi driver argot. Anyway, some of this draws on stereotypes but does make an effort to move a little away from the standard swords-and-sorcery elements. Many of the creatures are out of a range of Western mythologies, so there are centaurs, manticores and things like giant spiders and scorpions as well as simply ferocious wild animals like rheas, lions, wolves, bears and gorillas. Dinosaurs also survive, some as mounts for player characters. There are raptors and herbivores (some with the ability to fire lightning bolts, so very fantastical). Some creatures, such as the razormanes, who are humanoid boar-like people seem unique to the game, though I do remember some similar race from the 'Runequest' RPG of the 1980s.

You can kill the monsters, beasts, people but they 're-seed' meaning that within some set time they will come alive again to enable another player to complete their mission by killing them or you to try again if you failed before. Sometimes the re-seeding happens very fast. I was looting the corpse of one opponent only to find him standing over his own body trying again to kill me. Even player characters never die entirely. You find your spirit at a nearby graveyard and either resurrect there or find your corpse and get back into it, with penalties in either case. Sometimes in a tough area you can resurrect again only to be killed almost immediately. Also some graveyards are far apart and you can spend an evening as a ghost running across the landscape constantly trying to get back to your body!

There are many NPCs (Non-Player Characters) in all sorts of forms. They act as traders, trainers in various skills and to assign you missions. You do not have to interact with any human players to play in WoW as there are missions across the world appropriate for different levels. Different regions have monsters and creatures of different levels, so if you are starting out you do not face level 40 or even level 20 monsters until you are ready. Missions involve collecting artefacts, delivering messages, carrying out assassinations. Some of these revolve around the politics of Azeroth which is divided into two main camps: Alliance (humans, gnomes, dwarfs, night elves, draenei) and Horde (undead, orcs, trolls, blood elves and taurens) with camps and bases across the continents with no clear frontline. There are also racial battles such as between the tauren and the kolkars (centaurs). For me it is interesting to get involved in the politics of the place. There is also a nature vs. industry battle going on with the Venture Mining Co. despoiling areas of the plains and especially the forests and some missions are to try and stop them. In particular the taurens with their Amerindian culture, shamans and druids emphasise the environmental aspects.

One really winning element of the game is the landscape that your avatar can run or ride or drive around or fly over. You can adventure across every kind of setting from frozen wastes to forests of European or North American style to the veldt or badlands or desert or tropical islands. They are well realised. You can stand on a mountain top in the Barrens (very like the veldt of Africa) and watch the sunset. It rains, there are misty days and so on in different locations. The cities are incredibly imaginative too, ones I have visited (I play as Horde characters, it is the Goth influence) include in the ruins of a city, in sandy caves and atop mesas, connected by rope bridges. Each has its own culture and are really beautifully rendered with different districts for various traders and trainers to buy that vital sack to carry your loot or where you can learn to smelt mithril or whatever you need. It costs money and there is the standard D&D currency of copper, silver and gold, though simplified to 100:1 rise at each step.

In most regions there are also 'instances' which are like classic 'dungeons' from RPGs and these are for groups to attack and have numerous corridors and rooms to explore and there is, of course treasure and artefacts to loot as well as experience to gain. Now, these are very like the kind of missions done with the paper-and-dice RPGs. You need a balanced team with fighters, magic users, healers, etc. and generally you need to collaborate if you are going to survive. You can join a guild, a kind of club, with its own communications channels. There are trade and general channels. Guilds have insignia and a tabard. Guilds vary, some consist of friends from the real world, some of people from a particular country (especially the Dutch and Scandinavians who probably feel outnumbered by British players), some have a focus on fun and many have a focus on getting their members to rise through the levels very quickly. There is a technique called 'boosting' in which a very high level character (the current highest level is 80) leads the way and simply slaughters everything that moves leaving the lower-level characters to pick up the experience points and the treasure. I have participated in one of these, not knowing it was going to be like that (you often get invited to go on a mission especially if you character can 'tank', i.e. is a tough warrior or can heal) and it was really tedious, I might have risen in standing, but simply by being the equivalent of a refuse man tidying up after the carnage. High characters can be good to help you out, but when there is no challenge there is no fun. However, for many players getting high level characters is the prime goal. The fact that being able to buy software that gives you gold in the game for money in the real world, and allows you to easily complete missions shows how far people are obssessed with 'levelling', i.e. raising up their characters.

Finally having set the background I come to my main point. Of course where WoW goes beyond PC games is that even with the richness of the various NPCs, you get to play with real people from across your country and other countries. However, as has often been noted, for all the fantasy names and the avatars, in the online environment people in fact reveal their real selves and that is in part what is alarming. If I had got into Second Life then I might have had personal confirmation of this fact sooner, but it has been in WoW that I have found it out myself. I think this fact first came to popular attention with the PC game, 'Black & White' (2001) in which players played a god running various primitive settlements and it soon became apparent that however hard you tried to dissemble how the people ended up would reflect your personality. I do not know if this kind of thing is used in scientific analysis but it does seem to work.

It is interesting how, even when packaged in a fantasy setting, the real you comes out. My girlfriend notes that when I play with her online I always step into protect her or heal her character. I find she runs off in a random direction without telling me and I am uncertain what her intentions are. As in real life, her character will not be constrained. It is all via computer, but the behaviour mirrors who we are in reality. Interestingly one of the greatest controversies in WoW was in January 2006 around gay guilds for characters and Blizzard had to drop its condemnation of such guilds.

In WoW you have to remember that whilst players are drawn from all ages and both genders, the bulk of participants are as they were for the paper-and-dice RPGs of the 1980s, teenaged boys. There is nothing wrong with that. I had rather they played WoW that shoplift or take drugs. However, with them in predominance it tends to soil the collaborative nature that Blizzard, the producers of WoW want to foster. It is striking that when you log on you get a 'tip' about play, sometimes this is technical, but often the Blizzard include a homily such as 'a little kindness goes a long way' or 'if you talk to someone before trying to trade or invite them to join a group, they are more like to do so'. To explain, 'trading' and 'inviting' are technical functions rather than dialogue. However, the fact that such tips turn up so commonly reflects the terse, demanding nature of many players. Reflect on the teenaged male players. They probably lack self-esteem in the real world, put down by society, their teachers and parents, and yet in WoW they can be a level 80 Death Knight called Ikillyouall and ride around on a dinosaur with a huge sword. They can extol their knowledge and show up older players. They can bully without ever facing consequences, they are literally immortal. No wonder they are obsessed by raising themselves to the highest level as quickly as possible and set up guilds, often with very strict rules, to achieve this. When you meet a lower-level character the player will often quickly tell you 'this may only be level 20, but I have four level 80 characters already' to show you that they must know more than you.

This sort of behaviour has always occurred in RPGs, I remember back in the early 1980s running a 'dungeon' in D&D for friends' low-level characters, but of course one boy with a level 4 character happened to have befriended a gold dragon, only the most powerful monster in that version of the game. His name was Jason Comfort, ironic because he was one of the most unpleasant people I have ever met. Last I heard he was with the RAF; just so I know I get the right one as there seem to be scores of them out there with that name. He insisted on bringing it to an adventure which was for far lower level characters than that dragon and wiped out everything with ease. He loved lauding it over the other players and demanded they behave in a certain way, even forcing one to sacrifice himself. So, this behaviour has always been around. I suppose what makes it worse, whereas in the past a boy like Jason would be one among a few, now they can band together through the wonders of the internet and that seems to make them feel that their behaviour is vindicated and thus 'right'.

Where tensions reach the highest level is in the 'instances' as the rewards are so much higher and there are often items that cannot be secured or bought anywhere else. When the fighting has stopped and the bodies are looted, special items are rolled for among the players, through and automatic system. You can 'Pass' if it is an item you have no interest in, you can select 'Need' or 'Greed' which has a bearing on the outcome. As you can imagine this causes immense tension. Of course the bulk of items could be traded later between characters (there are also auction houses in the cities, funnily very much like eBay but in medieval setting), but for many players that is too late.

Many of the hard levellers do no professions so do not understand that to make a potion or a piece of armour often needs an exotic range of ingredients. I clicked 'Need' for a piece of moss agate, a semi-precious stone used in metalworking worth a few silver and it was as if I had gone round these players houses and insulted their mothers. I offered to pay anyone for any item they felt I had 'Need'ed wrongly. Something similar happened on another mission and I was accused of being a 'ninja' looter, because again I had put 'Need' for some armour. Being the only warrior in the party it seemed not unusual that I should ask for armour or weapons that only my character could use. However, clearly that broke etiquette, more of that in a moment. Being called a 'ninja' looter means you are condemned by other players who will not go on missions with you. I asked if they wanted me to leave the instance if they felt so badly and they said not to. In fact I had 'Pass'ed on the bulk of the items and of course dared not touch any others and I realised that had been the point. The players who moan the most and condemn others are the greediest taking everything they can even if they cannot use, simply to sell off later. In some cases a player who takes an item the party leader wants, sometimes by simply clicking the wrong key, finds themselves dumped out of the instance. I suppose it is unsurprising that when mixing with teenagers you find them squabbling like children.

A lot of the dialogue goes on in text speak. Players have to type in to speak to each other, so this is no surprise. OK is reduced to 'k' and ready to 'r'; 'omfg' is popular to get around the system's built in swearword detector. A lot of smilies are used, again no surprise. Capital letters seem unknown to many players and a lot of discussions can become a string of consonants. If you cannot keep up or use full sentences for clarity (often necessary when planning tactics) you are condemned. In fact there is very little tolerance of difference. Everyone is expected to know how these players see things and if they do not they are patronised. 'Noob' from newbie, i.e. a newcomer is another insult, that is hardly likely to endear players not having played for the past 3-4 years. There is similar intolerance for players who have slow internet connection or have characters that do not hare around. As a warrior with a full suit of chainmail armour of course my character moves slower than a rogue in leather or a mage in cloth robes. Yet you are expected to be constantly at the front. There is no thought of the differences and any reference to them is taken as an insult or you somehow trying to trick the other players.

Of course, at the end of the day, it is only a game and the items are just electrons, though many players treat it almost as if was reality. It is an environment of constant warfare, disease and brutality like any pseudo-medieval setting, so I suppose in such a context you would expect selfishness. However, what is more worrying, aside from reducing the enjoyment of newcomers, is how behaviour in the game reflects so badly on the behaviour of these numerous players in real life. It is clear that greed is dominant and that it is seen as far more legitimate than need. Furthermone anyone even questioning that greed let alone contesting it is seen as illegitimate and offensive in trying to curtail the person's taking of everything. There is no sense that there can be negotiation and trading even though the system has such easy facilities for these things. They seem to entirely miss the point that collaboration actually helps you win through better than a lot of clashing egos.

Boastfulness, an easy access to wealth and rewards without effort, intolerance of any difference, unwillingness to listen to explanation all seem to be the expected norm. Of course, they need my character, otherwise they would not bother trying to recruit me to help, but there is no sense at all of quid pro quo, I am to be their servant and if I question that, they eject me. Given the numerous tips about behaviour provided by Blizzard it is clear they would prefer collaborative activity; partly because they know if newcomers feel they are entering into a hostile environment they will leave, as happens to people bullied in Second Life, and for the company that damages their revenue.

Of course there are good people in WoW and if you look carefully you will find guilds that promote the fact that much of the fun comes from the participation rather than a hard nosed drive to reach level 80 in a fortnight. Doing so means you miss out on the interest of a very complex fantasy world to explore and the interactions that are possible in what is a game but concealed beneath that is actually a very vibrant social network. Yes, it is escapist, but that is nice. If you are downtrodden in the real world, it can be good to take out your frustration killing a giant scorpion. However, what I also think it reveals, if we did not already know it anyway from driving on the UK's roads, is that a lot of young men are terribly rude, greedy, hugely ambitious, intolerant and self-obsessed and I am not keen to be an elderly person in a country where these men will be in charge very soon.

Utility Companies Lie and Drain Us Dry

I suppose it does not need me to draw attention to this fact, as anyone living in the UK, unless you are a multi-millionaire, will be aware of how expensive gas and electricity is becoming for consumers. This is very much a posting on the basis of anger management to tap off a bit of my fury at the incredible greed of utility companies in the UK.

The bills for the average house (usually reckoned to be a 3-bedroomed house with two adults and two children) has risen from around £900 (€1098; US$1584 using current exchange rates as the pounds has fallen a lot since then) at the start of 2008 to £1200 (€1464; US$2112). As we have a cartel in the UK, all of the suppliers have raised their prices to the same level, though British Gas (despite the name, it used to be a state-run company, it also supplies electricity) with 11 million customers, the biggest company, charging the highest and giving a 35% increase in one go last month. There is no competition in the UK for energy supplies. You can shift from one to the other, but there is in fact very little difference between them. Like other utility companies, they also now lock you into a contract. Despite it being summer and us using less gas and electricity (and us going to great efforts in this house to reduce consumption, our electricity consumption is 1000 KwH (kilowatt hours - literally 1 kilowatt being used for an hour, that is 16 x 60-watt bulbs being left on for 1 hour) per quarter than the previous people who lived in this house) I am still paying exactly the same as I did in January. If I have over-paid, which I am doing each month, I may get it back at the end of the year, by which time the company has been earning interest on it.

No wonder companies from outside the UK are interested in buying into the British market. EDF Energy has appeared as a leading player, EDF actually stands for Electricite de France. This is 85% owned by the French Government; it used to be their largest nationalised industry. The Spanish company, Iberdrola took over Scottish Power in 2006 and of the other 'Big 6' energy suppliers in the UK, only Centrica (which owns British Gas) and Scottish & Southern Energy are in British hands, the remaining two, E.ON and RWE are owned by German companies. This means they have refused to comply with government steps to provide fuel vouchers for poor customers or to pay windfall taxes. The British owned companies have said they will comply, probably because the government can exert more moral pressure on them, but as yet, no provisions for helping those in fuel poverty (spending more than 10% of their income on heating and lighting) have been announced. The jump of a third in bills this year, has shoved many more millions of people into this category and it will not only the elderly but young families and single working people who also will not be able to heat or light their houses. What is the point of trying to get the UK the most internet-connected country in Europe when people cannot afford to pay for the electricity to run their computers? How many more people dead from the cold are going to be found this winter?

Of course the energy companies have said it is because of increased oil and gas prices. These did rise sharply but have fallen back by 25% from their peak, though of course we have seen no impact on domestic energy prices and only a saving of about 10% of petrol prices, less on diesel. The companies whine about their profits being squeezed, but announcements today of dividends paid to shareholders shows the complete opposite has happened, their profits have just kept growing. This comes from the BBC website but I am sure it is all over the internet. Of the Big 6 all have raised dividends. The figures compare 2006 and 2007. Centrica dividend payouts went from £408 million to £478 million (€583 million; US$841 million at current exchange rates); Scottish & Southern from £400 million to £474 million; RWE (which owns NPower) went from £37 million to £250 million, EDF (bearing in mind that only 15% of it is not owned by the French government) went from £105 million to £110 million (€134 million; US$194 million, out of a total profit of €5.61 billion for 2007. The British public are actually subsidising the French Government! In France the government only let it raise prices by 1.5% for French consumers) and E.ON went from £0 dividends in 2006 to £250 million. So where is the poverty among energy companies. Scottish Power which kept its rise in bills back until the last moment this year cut dividends from £427 million to £83 million, but that probably reflects the takeover in 2006 and the need for it to re-invest a great deal at that stage. I predict their dividends will be back up this year.

So, all this stuff about price rises cutting profits is a lie. It does not matter if their margins are squeezed for a few months in 2008, they have made more than enough money in the past 2 years to tide them over for another five years, not just one blip. This is incredibly insulting. We are being compelled not to keep these companies from bankruptcy, but to keep up the earnings of their shareholders. People are going to be suffering ill health and people are going to be dying so that the shareholders and the directors of these companies see no dip in their vast earnings.

If I was Gordon Brown, I would do the following. An immediate windfall tax, taking equivalent to 25% of the dividends paid out to shareholders. I would threaten any company that did not comply with nationalisation, with no compensation. I would compell all companies to slash prices back to the level at the start of 2008, end fixed contracts and move to billing which took account of the income of the consumers. There is no point the Bank of England tweaking the interest rates at all, when basics like heat and light (and of course food as well, but that is for another posting) are rising. You cannot reduce the inflationary pressure just by raising interest rates, when what is boosting prices are things that people pay for out of their basic income, not usually from loans (if they are are at the stage when they have to borrow money just to pay for heating and lighting, they are beyond worrying about interest rates). Of course this will not happen. Yet again, we are shown that actually the government has no power to contest the will of big business. Ironically Sakozy's government in Paris could make a greater impact on energy prices in the UK that Brown's in London can.

How immoral a society have we become when companies are in a position to kill people (and this is what they are doing to elderly people, look at the mortality rates this Christmas) for the sake of not just profit but super-profits. We are nothing more than the scum on the feet of the fat cats of the utility companies. Their cartel was handed a monopoly power because we cannot get energy from other sources. The much vaunted competition that was supposed to keep prices down has proven to be a farce (as anyone could have told you, in a monopoly position, you get cartels and unlike the USA, the UK has no anti-trust (i.e. cartel) legislation to prevent this). Greed, massive greed in the UK is killing ordinary people and yet those who challenge this or call for something else are condemned as the ones who are 'wrong' in trying to restrict 'free' enterprise. This is an immoral country when that is seen as the 'correct' approach. We have no choice but to suffer it and in 2008 you will see many people dying for it. Later this year when you look out on your street and see the coffin of the old woman from the house at the end of the road or the flat downstairs from you, know what killed her: fat men enjoying a hearty lunch in front of a roaring fire in some exclusive restaurant, no-one else.

Not A Lone Voice On UK Society

Seeing how the UK seems to be falling rapidly into some cyberpunk scenario with a police state politcially and constant violence on our streets can be really disheartening. What makes it worse is the fact that the responses from average people are things which do not address these issues but exacerbate them: stronger legislation, more prisons, armed police, carrying weapons, etc. The populist-nationalist attitude that is really how the bulk of British people think will never blame the behaviour it fosters for so many of the problems it creates. Thus, these days it is seen as a God-given right to be able to speed in a car and consume everything with no restraint. Very few people see that they reap what they sow and the reason why they are mugged for their mobile phone or have their 4x4 broken into for the sat nav is because of the country they have helped to create. Above all, they condemn the 1960s permissiveness and laud the hard-nosed Thatcher years of the 1980s, without realising, it seems, that it was that latter decade that has caused these problems. People forget the 1960s (they are a decade that I do not like, but in comparison to the 1980s caused less long-term harm to UK society) meant greater availability to contraception and a beginning of more standing for women, so a move against underage pregnancy. It is the 1980s 'I don't give a damn' attitude especially among men which has led to the UK having the highest level of underage pregnancies in the Europe. People blame the welfare state, but in fact anyone who has lived on benefits knows that they do not make you complacent, they actually force you to work hard to get a better life. It is the greed that is so lionised in the UK that makes things worse as it is not about having a 'decent' or 'comfortable' life any more it is about 'having it all' or feeling you are failing. At no stage in history have all but a small slice of any society been able to 'have it all', the rest of us should be striving to 'having it decent' and feel successful if we achieve that.

Anyway, having been wittering on about this for so many, many years, I am finally glad to see some media coverage in step with my views. Have a look at this BBC website story from last week about greedy society: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7502057.stm It looks at the report from Sir Alan Steer who has been investigating the issues since 2005. He shows that all adults have a role to play, not just parents, because so many of us indulge in greedy and violent behaviour as a norm. How, then, can we expect children to behave any differently. Bad pupil behaviour is the main reason why teachers leave the profession, and 40% leave after working for 2 years, so we get into an even worse spiral. Are we then surprised that there is so many stabbings of and by young people? Interesting it seemed to chime with another report from the same website about what girls attending the Girl Guides are now trained in: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7502678.stm Organisers of the movement have noticed how girls feel compelled to dress older than they are, have the latest gadgets and indulge in fashionable neuroses such as self-harm and eating disorders in order to feel part of the 'in-crowd'. Again, they demonstrate how little the 'norm' is actually normal. We have got British society into such a state in the last 20 years that it may be impossible to pull it back from the crisis it is facing. I know things are not perfect in French, Belgian, Dutch or German societies, but it seems incredible that within an hour's journey of the UK are countries where things are not so dire as here. British people are so wrapped up in their own lives and whining about what is happening to them, that they do not see that it is they who have brought about the problems they are experiencing. Why is it alright for you to speed and to consume without end and then somehow not for a young man to try to do the same? UK is an archetypal 'do as I say, not do as I do', but in fact unsurprisingly young people behave just as we do and the whole of society pays the price.