In praise of Pixar...

It's hard to know where to begin on this one, but probably the best place is a small picture house in a sleepy Surrey town in England where, I'd imagine, Pixar's John Lasseter would feel at home. It's one of those places where dreams are brought to life and where the past and the present somehow co-exist.

My father used to visit places like this little picture house when he was a kid, during the Second World War. He probably saw The Wizard of Oz in just such a cinema and felt as inspired as I did when I emerged, with my 11-year-old daughter, into the bright summer light of evening having watched and enjoyed Pixar's latest outing of the Toy Story franchise.

I say 'franchise', but to be truthful, the word doesn't really fit the bill. Toy Story One, Two and Three are better than that word, they're not a 'franchise' at all, they're three excellent movies that haven't in any way been ruined by anything. Nobody can say that One is better than Two or that Three was better than One; they're all good and there are many reasons: the characters, the storyline, the general vibe and, above all, the fact that all three movies follow a time line.

People – adults – went through their child-rearing years with these movies (my son Max was five when Toy Story 1 was released) and through the stresses and strains of raising kids, parents and kids alike had the pleasure of Buzz and Woody, Ham, Rex, Mr and Mrs Potato Head and Slinky Dog to make them laugh as they tried to make sense of the world around them.

And while this article is all about the three Toy Story movies, let's not forget Pixar's other excellent stuff: Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Cars, Up, Bolt, Wall.E, A Bug's Life and Ratatouille – all great movies worth watching again and again.

And let's face it, Pixar is not just making good movies, but defining the future of the children's picture – making the old two-dimensional Disney cartoons a thing of the past, not in a negative sense (they're all still great in their own right) but things have moved on – and got a million times better.

I love Toy Story. Infact, a friend of mine recently told me that I was very sad because I'd not only watched the movies, but analyzed them too. I was, he said, not only a dab hand with some of the movies' great quotes (like in Toy Story 2 when Ham says to Rex, "You can be the toy that comes with the meal"); I've noticed things that others have allowed to pass un-noticed.

For instance, the same friend asked me why it was that Woody still had the word 'Andy' written on the sole of his shoe when, in Toy Story 2, it had been painted over. Well, it's like this: everything is rectified in the Toy Story movies. Everything is 'put right' at the end.

In Toy Story 2, Woody's boot is painted over and his arm is repaired, but everything has to revert back to reality before the conclusion of the movie; so, if you recall, Woody scratches the paint off of his boot at the very end of Toy Story 2, so the picture reverts back to the reality of the situation, ie that Andy had written his name on Woody's boot and – perhaps – it was never changed in the first place (the whole thing's make believe). Likewise, Woody's arm – at the end of Toy Story 2, despite it being fixed earlier in the movie, the Pixar people ensure it's unfixed by Stinky Pete in the scene on the baggage conveyor towards the end, so it's down to Andy to fix Woody, which he does. Everything is put right at the end.

I often wonder whether strange things happen to people when they have kids; they become more emotional, easily moved, perhaps, I don't know, but something definitely happened to me; or is it that you somehow realise something – I don't know what – but it sends you down a strange and volatile path.

I was driving into a multi-storey car park one morning, on my way to work listening to a band called Spirit and a track on their Spirit of 76 album entitled Guide Me. I don't know what it was, but there must have been something in the tune. When I reached the top level of the car park I kind of broke up.

From that moment on, things were different for me; certain tracks on certain albums by certain bands just caused an emotional reaction that I had never experienced before and had to fight: Wake Up, Boo! by the Boo Radleys; Suburbia by the Pet Shop Boys, even New Order's 1990 World Cup song – they all prompted an emotional reaction. I hasten to add that I'm 'cured' now, at least I thought I was, but then I saw Toy Story 3.

And then there was a poem by Milton Kessler – Thanks Forever – and Michel Houellebecq's novel, Atomised, not forgetting Bruce Robinson's Peculiar Memoirs of Thomas Penman.

Atomised hit me square in the face while in a bar in Warsaw. There was a sadness about it that, for some reason, concerned me and I started to imagine an alternate reality where my kids had suffered unhappiness and it made me realise that you only get one shot at life.

It had a lot to do with my son growing up and no longer being the little kid I bought radio-controlled cars for; and I thanked my lucky stars for having a young daughter with whom I could live it all again – for now.

And I think that is why the Toy Story movies are so poignant for me; they let it slip that nothing is forever and that kids grow up and become adults and lose their innocence. They also make you realise that having kids was the right decision, however emotional things get along the way.

Toy Story 3 finds Woody, Buzz, Ham, Rex, Slinky Dog and Mr & Mrs Potato Head accidentally donated to a Day Care Centre where, it turns out, they're really in some kind of prison. They plan to escape the evil regime and get back to Andy's house where, they figure, that spending the rest of their lives in the attic wouldn't be too bad. Except that – fortunately for them – it doesn't turn out that way.

The toys do escape – as we all knew they would – but then there's some pretty amazing stuff towards the end of the movie that, for me, rivals anything any mainstream picture can dish out. Forget It's A Wonderful Life, Toy Story 3 is the real tear-jerker. I'll admit to it now: I was having major problems keeping it together. My lip was quivering a lot and I thanked the Lord for the cover of darkness provided by that picture house.

My eleven-year-old daughter admitted that she too was trying hard not to cry at the end, but hey, she's eleven – I'm a 6'1" grown-up!

As we left the auditorium and hit the daylight, I was finding it difficult to talk coherently. I didn't want to let on to my daughter that I'd found the whole thing rather emotional at the end, and had to strike the right tone of voice when I eventually asked her what she thought of the movie. She loved it, of course, and we both drove home awestruck. I was in a kind of daze for the rest of the weekend.

I used to cite Kubrick and Tarantino, Peckinpah and Coppola as my movie makers of choice – back in the days when I felt it was necessary to impress other people and pretend that I was a complex individual, but, as Buzz Lightyear would say, "Not today!"

Give me a decent Pixar movie any day. I don't think I've ever looked forward to a movie as much as I looked forward to seeing Toy Story 3. In fact, I don't think I've ever really looked forward to a movie before.

So the big question is: will there be a Toy Story 4? I hope so, but somehow I doubt it. A fourth movie might ruin the magic, not that I think the guys at Pixar will disappoint, but everything has been resolved.

The toys have a new home, Andy's off to college and why would the toys want to escape from their new home? Still, we'll see. Never say never.

My son goes to college this year, just like Andy, and I'd imagine there will be some emotional scenes between him and his mother. I'll try and hold things together as that's what dads are supposed to do, but somewhere along the line I'll probably have my moment too – although, as my mum used to say about me, "he's big enough and ugly enough to look after himself."

I've still got a wonderful little daughter at home, so my life has, in many ways, mirrored what has been going on in the Toy Story movies – right up to the present time.

They say life imitates art, or vice versa, so, I'll leave it there. If you haven't seen it yet, go see Toy Story 3 this weekend, it's the best.

All is not what it seems...

I was around in the early nineties, during that awful recession. I was made redundant three times in a row, everything was uncertain, nobody had jobs and I found myself scrabbling around for work, freelance writing, then getting a job only to lose it again and so on, until things levelled off a little and everything went back to normal.

It's weird, isn't it? Nowadays, whenever the word 'recession' is mentioned, I worry. I don't want to go through all that again. I hate it when I hear people wheel out the old familiar phrases about 'battening down the hatches', 'any port in a storm' and all that making do rubbish. I start to get angry and wonder who's to blame.

I used to remember in the early nineties hearing phrases like, 'we've reached the bottom' and it always conjured up images of those infra red cameras on the sea bed lurking around the wreck of the titanic. It's bottomed out, we're scraping the bottom, all the imagery that suggests the only way is up. And then, of course, that was the mantra, 'the only way is up', Yazz and New Labour, images of Prescott and Mandelson and Blair jigging around self-consciously as 'New Labour' swept to power in 1997 and a new dawn beckoned. Cool Brittannia, Noel Gallagher in Number Ten, the whole thing.

For a while I remember thinking, nothing more to worry about, no more recession and so on and so forth, but of course, peace and tranquillity was never to be. The Twin Towers followed, then there was Dubya to contend with, Blair being the poodle, the deceit that was the Gulf War and that whole Jack Straw syndrome. I don't know, but I don't trust Straw one bit and the whole Iraq thing cemented him in particular as a key villian of the piece. Even recently, he was a key figure in vetoing disclosure of the minutes of the meeting about Britain's involvement in the decision to invade Iraq. Where there's smoke, there's friendly fire.

But while Iraq trundles on and Afghanistan continues apace, the last thing I wanted was another recession. Rumours started, there were occasional comments in the press, but a lot of the time they were brushed off until suddenly we started hearing the media talk us into it. People started talking about Fanny May and Freddie Mac, two people I'd never ever heard of before, but apparently they had always been larger than life characters in the American financial markets. Odd, when I consider how, throughout the nineties I was reading the Economist and the FT and never once heard mention of these two crucial financial institutions that, apparently, the world economies rely upon.

Sure enough, though, they were responsible for the current major recession or 'downturn' that we now, as a world, are confronting. They lent loads of money to people who couldn't afford to pay it back and suddenly the world faced an economic meltdown largely based on the greed of the banking community.

I find myself wondering many things. When did the world turn from being a largely safe place to the uncertain place it is now? How come I used to work in a variety of jobs (all within the world of publishing) but never once did the commercial realities of life gatecrash my world. I used to go to work, do my job, come home and that was it; the fact that the advertising sales team was either incompetent and not up to the job or that 'market conditions' were forcing their hands never really bothered me. Market conditions never bothered me, they were resigned to the financial pages and were always slightly boring.

Now, of course, market forces are all that seem to matter. Everything is about cost and budgets. We're all in the hands of salesman, sadly, and they determine whether or not we have jobs or not.

But that aside, I now find myself more in tune with conspiracy theorists than ever before. Why? Because things just don't add up. Take the twin towers in NYC, why did they come down like a controlled demolition explosion? How come they then gave Dubya the perfect excuse to flex the military might of the USA in just the countries he wanted to invade? Why did we believe all that rubbish about 45-minute warnings and weapons of mass destruction that have since been proved to be complete and utter rubbish? Who the hell are Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac and why did they suddenly emerge as the key protagonists in the current global economic downturn when we'd never heard of them before?

I read Orwell's 1984 recently, it was one of those books that, of course, everybody must read at some stage in their lives and I hadn't gotten round to it until just a few years ago. What struck me about the book was the similarity between our current situation in Afghanistan and the conflicts that take place in the novel, they're just ongoing and all the people 'at home' hear are the news reports: yet another British soldier dies due to a roadside bomb, constant mentions of Helmand Province and at home everybody wondering why, what's the point? It's almost exactly like Orwell's masterpiece with a mythical enemy and media machine pumping us full of propaganda to keep us on-side, as it were.

It's the same with the recession and the so-called 'credit crunch'. We're all being told to 'batten down the hatches', there are programmes on the television and articles in newspapers showing us how to use our leftovers and be frugal, and the feeling is that 'they', whoever they are, are making deliberate parallels between now and war time rationing and trying to get us all thinking, perhaps, that we're a country at war – we are not, by the way; nobody is trying to invade us and haven't done for 70 years.

And then, of course, there's the great mythical villan that nobody can catch, that former employee of the USA, Osama Bin Laden. How come they can't catch him? They can catch virtually everybody else, they can put men on the moon, imprison dangerous criminals but they can't catch a man with a towel on his head whose picture is everywhere. Once again, perhaps it's all a scam, perhaps that's the deal with Osama, who knows? Where is he? Does he really exist? Is he really in cahoots with the ruling elite and is the whole 'culture of fear' and the so-called 'War on Terror' merely designed to keep us all in our place, like a kind of religion. Is it all another 'Opium for the People'? We occasionally hear about the status of the current terror alert – it's either low, moderate, substantial, severe or critical. Well, I don't know what it is right now, but what's the betting it's not low or moderate? Got to keep everybody on tenterhooks, eh?

Why is it that the recession is supposedly a big, full-on thing, much bigger than in the early nineties, that we should all be concerned about, but people are still going on foreign holidays, there are still ads on the TV for cars – a Golf for only £14,000? Fourteen grand is a lot of money in a cash-starved country with a recession of the size an enormity our respective Governments and media organisations are talking about. Who CAN afford a Golf for just £14,000 in these troubled economic times we're being told about?

And what about the crowded cafés and restaurants in London. I pass them daily and inside there are loads of people eating and drinking, there are bottles of wine on the table, the food is ridiculously expensive for what it is but even now, as I sit here in an upbeat sandwich bar on Holborn Circus at 4pm looking around me there are people sipping tea, munching on almond croissants and the like. Why? Haven't they got jobs to go? They certainly don't look unemployed and if they are, why are they here when they should be out looking for a job?

And how come that everywhere I look there are houses being extended, drives being done – I know somebody who has just spent £12,000 on a new driveway – and why has everybody got a new car and expensive iPhones?

For some reason, nothing seems to ring true to me, although I'm sure I'll be told that it is all very true, very real. Unemployment lurches towards three million, the 'war' in Afghanistan continues apace, news reports of casualties in a far off land, just like in 1984.

And then, of course, there's the UK's growing 'celeb' culture. How come we're all prepared to 'cut our cloth accordingly, 'batten down the hatches' and so on but are quite content to watch various celebs, like Jordan, on shopping sprees with, supposedly, not a care in the world? Why the hell do we accept it? Why the hell has there not been some kind of revolution or uprising, why has nobody appeared as a people's champion, why has there been little in the way of rioting in the streets, why is there no militant group (or groups) attacking the icons of wealth and big business?

No, everything simply carries on. Perhaps nothing has really happened at all. Perhaps it is just a lot of posturing, a lot of political manipulation, creating a climate of fear through terrorist alerts and 'economic downturns' that might be all wildly exagerrated.

How come, for example, that we occasionally hear of how a major terrorist ring has been busted by the security forces that could have been responsible for untold atrocities, but it's all kept at arm's length and we all sit back with our espressos and cappuccinos and just accept it as gospel?

Recessions encourage apathy and give businesses an excuse to do nothing. Terrorism, or the threat of it, gives the authorities the excuse to clamp down on the man in the street. Local councils abuse anti-terrorist laws purely because they can and we all sit back and let it happen.

Our increasingly time-poor society...

This week I remembered, at the very last minute, that I was scheduled to take part in a charity bike ride this weekend in aid of Multiple Sclerosis. Unfortunately, I'd left it late to pre-register and save myself a huge 'on-the-day' entry fee, but in the end I drove over to the organiser's office and posted my entry form through the letterbox.

Now, I would call my lateness pure disorganisation. Others would say it's all part and parcel of our increasingly 'time poor' society. I think they're talking rubbish, but it's amazing how, if you say something for long enough, eventually it becomes gospel.

I often attend press conferences about this and that, notably the launch of new food products, where the latest trends are rolled out by marketing directors in an effort to explain the rationale behind the new product. A common 'finding' is that we're living in an increasingly 'time poor' society, meaning we don't have time to do stuff anymore – even eating is being done 'on-the-go' and 'lunch' as we know it, is becoming obselete. More and more people are sitting at their desks with a baguette rather than get up and take in some fresh air.

The big question here is why? Why are we time poor? We have the internet, which makes life surprisingly easy, especially for journalists and, indeed, for everyone else as we no longer have to visit a travel agent to book flights or holidays, we can shop online and save the journey to the supermarket, there's email instead of 'snail mail' so we don't need to visit our local post office and queue to buy a stamp. Technology, in other words, has made life a breeze and it means that we have more time to do the things we wouldn't normally have the time to do.

Why, then, are we tied to our desks, skipping lunch? Now there's a phrase. "Skipping lunch". It used to be something we did once in a while when somebody was away and we found ourselves doing the work of two people. "Oh, I'll have to skip lunch today," we might say to one of our colleagues. "Pete's away and I've got to write up his product pages by 5pm." But no, Pete's not away - he's not having a holiday this year because he can't afford it, so what's wrong with a spot of lunch?

I'm starting to feel guilty when I go to out to lunch. We're allowed one hour and I like to use the time to take a walk, even if it's raining (I'll take an umbrella). I don't want to be sitting at my desk ALL DAY, I need a break, I need to stretch my legs, get a bit of exercise and a change of scenery; but as I leave the office, I notice that my colleagues have a sandwich on their desks and they're still sitting there, sandwich half-eaten, when I return, refreshed.

What, I ask, has changed? Why are we time poor? I've already alluded to the internet and how it's supposedly made life easier for us all, so what's changed, why can we no longer afford a proper lunch break? Why do we work late? Ironically, we're all earning less money so it's not as if there's an incentive.

The worst thing, of course, is that if everybody keeps doing it – skipping lunch or having a 'working lunch', which is even worse in my book – then it will become the norm and lunch breaks might suddenly disappear from contracts of employment. Even more annoying is the fact that if we're all putting in the extra hours, 'skipping lunch' and working through, what exactly are we achieving? Despite ALL of our 'hard work' the country is back in recession? In other words, it's not achieving anything, but then you might sit back and start thinking: somebody is benefitting from all this unnecessary hard work, but who is it?

I was watching Question Time last Thursday and I noticed, in amongst all the rhetoric being spouted by a bunch of useless MPs and political commentators, that the 'coalition' wants austerity, because that's the way to get the country back on its feet again (it hasn't worked) and the left wing politicians want less austerity but still want to achieve the same goals; except that they would prefer to tax the rich (the people gaining from the masses skipping lunch). The right wants the masses to suffer, the left wants the elite to suffer.

Yesterday, at around 1845hrs, I was on a train coming home from work. Next to me, across the aisle, was a man frantically tapping out an email (or something) on a laptop. Like me, he'd been working all day too, but obviously not hard enough. He figured he could still cram in some work while sitting on the train. But how misguided! He won't be thanked for his hard graft. He'll probably be made redundant, but he thinks that, by working really hard, he might avoid the axe. Think again, my friend. Put the laptop away and enjoy the ride.

My wife mentioned to me the other day that the country seems to be reverting back to Dickensian times: an increasingly poorer population working long hours for less pay while employed by the equivalent of the wealthy, unscrupulous mill owners of the past. There are more rats on our streets as local councils cut back on refuse collection and who knows, perhaps one day the plague will return and then, perhaps, another Great Fire of London. How exciting!

An encounter with Lloyds TSB...

Staggering incompetence is an increasingly common facet of modern society based, no doubt, on greed. Greed? Well, yes, because the business world doesn't like spending money, it has no interest in 'the customer' and only exists for profit. This means one thing: business pays peanuts and it knows it's getting monkeys, but, hey, it saves a bit of money here and there. The key thing for the consumer to remember is simple: do not trust a businessman (or woman); they are not acting in your best interests, they are acting in their own best interests. When you're queuing in the bank to deposit some money, the reason you're in a queue is because there are not enough cashiers on the desk. The reason for that is because the bank wants to save money. There is no interest in the customer at all.

In fact, it's the banks that I want to discuss in this article. Lloyds TSB to be precise. Let's get back to that great word 'incompetence'. I went to Lloyds TSB to initiate a balance transfer from a Nat West credit card to a Lloyds one. In other words, I'm bringing some custom to Lloyds. You'd think that they would bend over backwards to help me (and keep my custom) but no, they are incompetent. Oh, hold on, they want my custom, but they have no interest in me whatsoever. As long as they can get my money, that's all they care about.

Sadly, despite the fact that I'm a journalist and possess a very sensitive (and tiny) digital recording device, I didn't think of taping the whole thing. If I had done, I could be having a field day right now. But let's just live with the fact that I didn't and that all future conversations with bank managers will be secretly recorded – for training purposes, you understand.

So, I enter the Redhill, Surrey, branch of Lloyds TSB and ask if I can make a balance transfer. I'm not planning on closing my Nat West credit card. By and large, Nat West have been very good and very helpful. I'm just working on a way of reducing interest charges and freezing a debt for a few months. I won't go into details for obvious reasons, but allow me to continue.

I want a balance transfer for a certain amount of money. I'm directed to an office with my banker (I use that word advisedly and should, perhaps, substitute the 'b' with a 'w') and take a seat. We discuss the amount and contact Nat West by phone to check the existing balance and most recent transactions. A figure is reached and I say that is how much I wish to transfer, ie pay off. But oh no, that's not enough for Lloyds. They want more money and suggest that I should make the transfer for a couple of hundred pounds more to cover any interest payments that might still keep my Nat West card 'active'. I agree, but it's my lunch break, I'm a bit rushed, but okay.

Later I leave the bank with a brown envelope. I think the envelope contains information about the transaction I've just made, telling me, perhaps, how much was transferred, what the fee amounts to and so on, but it doesn't: it's just basic information about my new card and I'm left in the dark about the details of the balance transfer other than those I can remember from the conversation.

Over the weekend, I get a little disgruntled about the whole thing. It niggles a bit and I get a feeling that  I haven't really been treated fairly. In fact there were a few things that got to me: one was the fact that the man in the bank was asking me how much I earned. Why? It wasn't necessary. Foolishly, I told him. Another was that, because we both phoned Nat West while in the meeting, he knows my security question. On top of that he told me that, should I so wish, I could, if I ventured into the high street, get credit for up to £25,000 if I wanted to (inciting me to get into further debt). In short, I realised that I didn't like the bloke one bit, but, for the moment, let's leave him out of this.

The next scene of this sorry tale is that I'm sitting in a car, in a car park, on my mobile phone, with my wife, trying to talk to Lloyds on the phone about the whole thing. In a nutshell, I want to know if it is possible to simply stop the transaction, take a rain check and then, possibly reconsider the transfer in less hurried circumstances, ie not in my lunch break. I have to go through the procedure: 'key in your account number, key in your date of birth, key in the last three digits on the back of your debit card'. And then there's the infuriating 'you are important to us' bit where they keep you hanging on the line waiting for 'an adviser'.

Eventually, I get through to Sue. She is incredibly rude. Very curt and bad-tempered and showing a clear sign that she lacks patience with her 'customers'. I ask for her name but she's only prepared to give her first name. She's not obliged, she tells me, to give me her full name despite the fact that I've given her my full name and my date of birth. I am transferred to another adviser and have to explain the situation again. If possible, can I stop the transfer going through, I'm not happy with the bank's attitude and I'd rather stop the process and restart it at a later date. I'm told to hold on as she, whoever she is, needs to talk to her supervisor.

I can only imagine what goes on while I'm put on hold. Something like, "Listen, this guy wants to stop the process, get out of the deal. What do I tell him?" And I imagine the 'supervisor' says something like, "We can't have that. Tell him, I don't know, tell him he can't." So she comes back and says I can't and, to cut a long story short, I realise that I'm not getting anywhere. Another line of questioning I take is this: "Can you tell me if the transfer has actually gone through?" There is simply no record whatsoever and nobody appears to know. I'll have to wait for it to go through – which means that Lloyds gets its fee and then, of course, they don't care, they've made their money and if I want to transfer the money elsewhere I can. But for now, they've closed ranks and are being very, very unhelpful. I realise that I'm not getting anywhere and hang up. Oddly, the night before, I'd dealt with a very competent member of staff who told me that changing things on the transfer shouldn't be a problem. How wrong he was! And how interesting it is that different members of Lloyds' staff are told different stories. For some it's a case of it should be fine to make changes. For others, it's simply impossible to do anything and I'll have to wait to see what happens. Amazing. I hang up.

As the week progresses, I wonder why the transfer hasn't gone through. Nat West has heard nothing and Lloyds claims it has no record of the transaction. Well, we all know why Lloyds has no record. It wants the transaction to go through so that it can collect the fee. Bankers are wide boys, rogues and, in some cases, criminals. Wasn't it HSBC that was discovered money laundering for drug dealers? I can't remember the details, but it'll be out there on the internet somewhere.

All week I'm left feeling a little anxious. Nobody seems to know whether the transaction has gone through or not, Lloyds says that once a transfer is initiated it can't be stopped. Nat West – the innocent party in all this – says nothing is pending. Meanwhile, having transferred a fairly large sum of money from my Nat West credit card into my Lloyds current account, I'm accruing interest that won't stop until the card has it's balance 'transferred' by Lloyds.

It's now Wednesday morning. I'm in London at the Marriott County Hall. Just across the river from that other rather dishonest institution, the Houses of Parliament. After my meeting, I decided to call Lloyds again. What I want from them is fairly straightforward: I want to know a couple of things. First, has the transfer been activated. Is it, in other words, in the process of happening or has it stalled for some reason, possibly due to my conversations with the bank in the car park last weekend? In which case, fine, I'll simply initiate the process again.

But I can't get a straight answer. First I go through all the fuss of keying in my account number, the last three digits on my debit card, I answer security questions and, once again, I get through to somebody at the call centre. I ask the questions, but I get, "I'll have to talk to my supervisor about that that, I'm going to put you on hold and...". The line goes blank and then, about two minutes later she comes back. She's stalling for time, but she does let slip that there's no record of a transfer having taken place and would I like to do one on the phone with her now? No, thanks, but what I would like is a letter of confirmation that the transfer has not happened so that I can either to do the whole thing again at a later date or do it with another bank, a bank that might, perhaps, be a little more competent than Lloyds TSB."I'll have to go back to my supervisor...." and off she goes again.

By now, I'm losing my patience. Surely she can tell me whether my balance transfer has gone through or not and surely, if, as the customer phoning 'customer services' I should be able to get a letter confirming that the transfer has not gone through or, conversely, that it has gone through. But no, she has no idea what to do and has to discuss the matter with her supervisor again. By now, I'm getting very edgy. "But I'm the customer, you're customer services, surely...".

I was on the phone for at least 90 minutes and by the time I finished – having achieved nothing – I was in a quiet, seething rage. I went back to the office and decided to call the branch, in Redhill, and speak to the guy who did the balance transfer for me – his name was Jack. But when I called the number first there was no answer, then, on a second try, I got somebody else who said Jack was in a meeting. I said I'd call later and when I did, I got Jack. Could he tell me anything about the balance transfer that him and I had arranged and whether or not it had gone through?

"That was cancelled, wasn't it?
"I don't know, you tell me."
"Uh...I'll call you back..."

I never heard from him.and then I went home and I thought I'd try again, and see if somebody at the Swansea call centre was less incompetent – although I already knew the answer to that question. Watch out, I thought, for anybody who uses the word 'obviously'. Whenever it's used, you can bet that whatever is being discussed or whatever point is being made, isn't obvious.

I was pleasantly surprised. Donna, for that was her name, was understanding and friendly and put my mind at ease. Fine, she'd have to speak to her supervisor, but the word 'obviously' was not used and she came back with an answer: in short, the balance transfer had not gone through and it wouldn't go through unless I went to the bank – any branch of Lloyds – and started the whole process again.

"Are you 100% sure about that?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.

I went downstairs to watch television, safe in the knowledge that the balance transfer hadn't gone through and that, under more relaxed circumstances, I'd go to the bank over the weekend and start again. What a relief, I thought. There's nothing worse than not knowing where you are, being in the dark, especially when it concerns money. But now, thanks to Donna who, incidentally, compensated me for the long mobile phone calls I'd made earlier in the week AND gave me £25 for the simple fact that I'd been messed around, all was fine.

The following morning I went to work, safe in the knowledge that I knew the position and that all was resolved. No more anxiety.

After lunch my phone rang. It was my wife. The balance transfer that I'd been assured hadn't gone through, had gone through. I found myself back in a rage and stormed off to the Redhill branch to have a go. I felt like Michael Douglas in Falling Down and had somebody handed me a gun or a rocket launcher, I'm convinced that I would have massacred half of Redhill as I stormed towards the bank.

Unfortunately for the manager, who was out to lunch, I spotted him and pointing at him like a football hooligan chanting at rival supporters, I said, in a raised voice, "incompetent!" He looked confused so I explained all of the above to him, throwing in a few choice expletives in the process.

He ushered me back to the bank and into an office where I continued my rant about how incompetent they all were and I demanded, menacingly, my hair resembling that of the Toecutter in Mad Max, a letter that I hadn't received before, detailing the entire transaction, the fee, the lot. I noticed his hand shaking (either with anger or fright) as he typed and printed out the letter. We shook hands and I left the bank, still seething, but feeling a bit like John Candy in Uncle Buck when he emerges from a meeting with one of his neice's teachers. I needed a drum roll and a 'yeah!' as I headed back to the office, but then changed my mind and headed straight for the barbers for a number four crop – just what the doctor ordered.

The moral of this story? Forget being nice to people. Remember one thing: they're out to get you. Nobody's your friend and least of all banks and big business. Forget also 'peaceful protest', it'll get you nowhere. The only way to achieve anything is to be confrontational. Direct action, armed struggle – alright, perhaps that's a little extreme, although you could use a Spud-o-Matic – is the only way to get people to sit up and listen. Talking is a waste of time. Alright, I felt mildly guilty about my behaviour, but now that I've calmed down, I realise that had I maintained a sense of calm, I would have achieved nothing – treat people like they treat you.

Why don't we go on strike?

Wandering around the supermarket recently, I discovered something not earth shattering but just fucking annoying. Razor blades cost more than the razors. Or rather, the razor blades for MY razor cost more than my razor, a Quattro. This is very annoying because it is forcing me to rethink once again my strategy on shaving. Don't get me wrong, I'm not considering a beard, or half a beard so I can offer the world two different profiles, but it might mean switching back to disposable razors, which are not very good when it comes to achieving the perfect shave.

To be fair to the disposable razor, I've been using them for some time and they're cheap, but I never get a smooth shave and my face always feels rough afterwards – you get what you pay for, never forget that. 

Whatever happened to those razors with the double-edged blades? You know the ones, they used to open up like a trap door in Thunderbirds and you simply placed the Wilkinson Sword or Gillette razor blade in the razor and then screwed it back up again. My dad always had a razor like that and a shaving brush and Ingram shaving 'lather', none of that foam rubbish you get these days. I think dad switched to disposables too.

It's weird having a situation where the razor blades are more expensive than the razor, like if bullets were more expensive than the gun. Perhaps they are, but it all comes down to something the media call 'shrinkflation' – basically the fact that these days we often get less for more. It's been publicised a lot recently, with crisp (potato chip) manufacturers putting less in a bag and then charging the same price or more. Famously, Toblerone increased the size of the gap between the triangular blocks of chocolate, something that doesn't bother me because I don't like Toblerone, although many people do; it's become a big 'international' brand, seen at most airports around the world. But what about Cadbury's Creme Eggs? No longer Cadbury, of course, they're now owned by an American company who, it is reported in the media, are using inferior quality chocolate but, again, still charging either the same money or more. I think Chocolate Orange is the same: either there's less segments or inferior quality chocolate or both.

Everything is shrinking in size but costing us more and it's a result of pure greed. What always annoys me is that people simply accept it, nobody says they're not going to buy the products anymore, they just keep paying the money, pandering to the capitalists when all they have to do – en masse – is no longer buy the products the media tells us are shrinking. Just stop buying them!

I'm all for bringing these people to their knees. If we could all simply agree, millions of us, to simply stop shopping, if you like we could go on strike and, say, stop shopping for just one day, all of us, stop consuming, stop going to work by train or bus or anything that means paying a capitalist money – it would be fantastic. I wonder when they would start pleading with us, reducing their prices, putting back the value for money they've taken out?

How would we work it? Perhaps more than one day is needed and regularly. How about some kind of commercial fasting? Let's say the first weekend of every month, nobody uses public transport, nobody visits any shop or pays for any service. Imagine that! Every month for one year and why not step it up, perhaps two weekends. We don't drink in pubs, we don't eat in restaurants, we don't take trains, visit supermarkets, anywhere. In short we give them a dose of their own medicine. We announce the days like ASLEF and Southern Railway announce their strikes and then, after a year we review our success. I think this would have to be a long-term project, we'd need the time to recruit people to the cause, but gradually it might start to work and sooner or later, as I said earlier, they, the capitalists,  the clothes retailers, people like Philip Green, would get very worried. Prices would come down, quality would go up and we would be the winners.

Think on that, people, it might be worth putting into practice.

Hung Parliament, 1974 version: what happened inside No.10

The late Gerald Moggridge

The following article is an extract from An English Family 1680 to 2009 by my father, the late Gerald Moggridge, to be published very shortly.

Gerald Moggridge, a Downing Street press officer at the time, describes the drama that was played out within No.10, from Friday 1 March 1974 (the day after polling day) until its conclusion late in the evening of Monday 4 March 1974.   

Most civil servants would think themselves fortunate to serve at No. 10 during a general election.  I was lucky enough to witness the beginning and the outcome of not one, but two general elections during my five years there. The first of them was the General Election of 28 February 1974. It brought about an unexpectedly tight result between the two major parties and produced a situation that had all the same ingredients that are now preoccupying everyone at the end of the May 2010 general election.

There is no escaping the drama and, in a real sense, the potential for tragedy that faces a Prime Minister in this position. Whoever you are in No.10, and whatever your politics and the politics of the serving Prime Minister, you feel considerable sympathy and sadness for the person who may soon be leaving by that famous front door for the last time.  I write with experience that, whatever your politics and whatever the Prime Minister’s politics, you will have developed an allegiance to and an affection for the man  (or woman) who, as the song says and the record shows - took the blows and did it their way.   Yes, there were to be tears in Downing Street on the evening of 4 March 1974.

But before that there were to be three days of high political tension and drama as Edward Heath and his party sought to reach some kind of an agreement with the Liberal Party to see if together they could form  “an administration which could  carry on the business of government.”   Throughout the weekend the press office was directly involved in both announcing and keeping an accurate record of the ebbs and flows of those negotiations . This we did through the series of ”press office bulletins”  (“pobs”) that had been part of the machinery of the Downing Street press office operation for some years. The first ”pob”  of this crisis - No. 89/4 dated Friday 1 March - confirmed that the PM had arrived at No. 10 (from Sidcup) at 0300 hours that morning and had watched the election results on television for a little while before going to bed.  He had breakfast at 0930 and then held a series of ad hoc meetings with various ministers.  A later ”pob” dealt with a story that Arthur Hawkey of the London Evening Standard had picked up to the effect that the PM’s doctor had called in at No.10 that morning. We confirmed that this was true, but that the doctor was not called in by the PM. He just looked in. (He - Dr Brian Warren - was a personal friend of Edward Heath). We later denied a BBC report that the Prime Minister was to hold a press conference at 1500 hours that day.

Then came the major announcements of the day. At 1940 hours we told the Press Association and the lobby correspondents that the PM had chaired a meeting of the cabinet and that “The Queen has granted the Prime Minister’s request to her to grant him an audience at 1945 hours so that he can report on the current political situation”.  In the feverish atmosphere that was now developing every word we uttered triggered a host of supplementary questions. The main one was ”Is the PM going to the Palace to submit his resignation?” The answer to that was a blunt ”No”. The following day - Saturday 2 March - the pace quickened when the PM had his first meeting with the Liberal leader, Jeremy Thorpe.  Any guidance? ”No commitment was entered into on either side.  The atmosphere was friendly and easy”. Full stop. More speculation followed on Sunday 3 March when we announced that there would be a meeting of Ministers in No.10 that evening, and a  further meeting with Jeremy Thorpe. 

The last act. Sunday 3 March saw a further meeting of Ministers and, at 2300 hours, what was to be the PM’s final meeting with Mr Thorpe. Monday 4 March dawned. There was now a tangible sense of events moving inexorably, to a conclusion - as in a Greek tragedy. We arrived in the press office early that morning, to be ready to announce a meeting of the cabinet at 1000 hours. The meeting lasted two hours. Soon afterwards the lobby were reporting that a meeting of the Liberal Party was taking place in the House of Commons.  Later we confirmed that the Prime Minister had received a letter from Mr Thorpe together with a copy of a statement issued by the Liberals. There was a further meeting of the cabinet. It ended at 1720 hours.

The stage was now set for the last act in the drama.  Three people had been selected to play supporting roles. In alphabetical order they were: a private secretary, Robin Butler**, a chief press secretary, Robin Haydon, and a chief press officer, me.  The script required Robin Butler and Robin Haydon to go across the road to the House of Commons and, with the prior agreement of John Egan, the chairman of the lobby, to position themselves in or near the lobby room  there. They would have with them a press statement and copies of the correspondence between Mr Heath and Mr Thorpe. From there Robin Butler would telephone my number in the press office at 1815 hours. He and I would then keep the line open until the moment I could confirm - by my view from the open door of the press office through to the hallway - that the Prime Minister had arrived at the front hall and was, literally, “on his way out of No. 10”. On that signal, he and Robin Haydon would release the press material to the lobby correspondents, and brief them on its contents.

And so it was that, at 1820 hours on Monday 4 March 1974, it was announced that Edward Heath’s period at No.10 had ended. My last act for the Prime Minister, after I had passed that telephone message to Robin Butler, was to record Mr Heath’s departure in the press office bulletin for that day.  (For the record it was  “pob” No. 92/4). It bore my initials and gave the text of the press notice which, in nineteen words, formally brought to an end the premiership of Edward Heath.  It read: ”The Prime Minister has sought an audience of Her Majesty in order to tender the resignation of the Government”.   

The rules say there must be no interregnum. Some two hours later the new Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Harold Wilson, OBE, MP, entered No. 10 Downing Street.  That event, too, I recorded on a press office bulletin. Clearly, there must be no interregnum  The King is dead. Long live the King.

** Now Lord Butler of Brockwell.

Is it just me or are Kindles annoying?

I’ve never really seen myself as a Luddite, but of late I’ve found myself getting a little inwardly frustrated whenever I’m in a supermarket and one of the staff tries to direct me towards the automated check-outs. I feel as if I should say to the person concerned, “What are you doing? You’re standing there putting yourself out of a job! Why do you want me to use the automated check-out? You should be advising me to use a human being, not a machine, and that way you’ll still be in work. Carry on promoting the auto-check-outs and soon you’ll be receiving your P45.”

Go and buy a proper book! Most people seem to use Kindles on the move.

But I say nothing, although I have started to refuse them when they beckon me over. For a start, I find them quite difficult to use and I can’t be bothered to try and learn. Why should I? All I want is human interaction, I like to chat with the check-out assistant, put my debit card in the machine, refuse or accept cash back and then bid them a cheery farewell.

If the supermarkets get their way, there won’t be any check-out assistants, just machines with, perhaps, one member of staff overseeing the process. What is already a chore will become a nightmare and one really has to think about the aims and objectives of the supermarkets. Are they trying to make the whole process so unbelievably dull that we all shop on-line instead? Probably, although shopping on-line I can cope with: you log on, order your weekly shop and then, hey presto! It turns up in a little orange van. It’s cheaper too because there are no temptations, but then I start to think about all the people that will be put out of work by on-line shopping as it means there’s no need for a store, so they won’t need store managers, shelf stackers, you name it – they’ll all be out of work.

And even if they don’t abolish supermarkets, those who like seeing what’s on the shelves will have to cope with the automated check-outs and all the grief they bring.

That aside, though, it’s the ignorance of the staff that gets me: the way they stand around watching people grow more and more accustomed to an automated process that will, ultimately, put them on the dole queue. The supermarkets will argue that it frees up the staff to do something more productive instead, but that’s just a lie. The idea is simple: if they can get a machine to do a cashier’s job, they’ll save money and that, of course, is what it’s always about: saving money. The customer isn’t really king; that’s a lie too. And then, when the customers decide they’d rather shop on-line, we’ll see derelict supermarkets being turned into over-sized bars and restaurants and casinos by over-ambitious leisure operators – not good.

Sadly, of course, nobody cares, not even the ignorant people who stand to lose their jobs. They are so grateful they have a job in the first place, they’re happy to promote automation and risk losing the only job they have.

On a similar note, I get really angry when I see somebody on a train – or anywhere – reading a Kindle. I can’t stand Kindles! There’s nothing worse than reading anything on a screen and I always feel that owners of Kindles are part of some kind of conspiracy, a conspiracy that leads to the end of books, printed books. Kindle users exist to get rid of books and make us all have to download novels rather than buy them from bookshops or borrow them from libraries. Hell! It means the end of bookshops and libraries because, as Kindle users will tell you, a Kindle allows you to carry the whole library with you on the train! Wow! Isn’t that great! No it’s not fucking great, you morons! 

Kindles take all the pleasure out of reading in the same way that music downloads take all the pleasure out of buying an album. I want to read the sleeve notes! I like the little booklet with the lyrics! I want to see photos of the band! And I like the tactile quality of a book too. I like bookmarks! I like looking at how far my bookmark has sunk through the book, how much I have left to read and how much I have already read! With a Kindle, all that is lost! It means that libraries, like supermarkets, will become ‘venues’ full of back bar fridges crammed with ‘premium priced lagers’.

Imagine reading War & Peace or Infinite Jest on a Kindle? You’d have no idea of where you were in terms of how much you’d read. Okay, you’ll have page numbers to tell you, but there wouldn’t be that sense of achievement that you get with a book and, after reading it, you wouldn’t be able to put it proudly on your bookshelf at home – instead it would remain on your Kindle, in your briefcase or handbag, and then one day, when the system crashes or burns out, you’d lose it forever.

The worst thing about Kindles, of course, is that they’re probably good for the environment. The phrase ‘woodman, spare that tree’ would be redundant and I’m sure that Kindle users will always bring up their mission to save the planet in defense of their new gadget.

If Kindles catch on, books will disappear and so will bookmarks and the home environment will become sterile and minimalist. Rooms would be bare and characterless except for furniture and a television set – and a digital picture frame on the sideboard.

I don’t want to curl up with a Kindle. I want to read a book in front of the fire without worrying that I might melt my new reading gadget.

I often feel like asking a Kindle owner why. Why have they got one? Was it a present? Or did they go out and buy it themselves? They would probably say something like, “It’s the future. It’s the way things are heading.” And, prior to punching them, I’d feel like saying, “Only because you’re letting it happen.”

I hope I’m not alone in my anti-Kindle feelings. I don’t think I am. I just hate the way things are becoming so sterile and insular. We can stay behind closed doors and order our shopping online instead of mixing with real people at the supermarket or in the high street. We can download our books from computers at home rather than visit a bookshop where we could enjoy a cup of coffee and possibly meet with friends. Everything can be done from the safety of our own homes. We all communicate using social networking sites instead of meeting in the pub for a beer. We’re losing our sense of community.

A couple of years ago I boarded a train to Winchester with a work colleague and, once aboard the train, he said to me: “Do you mind if I sit over there and play my PSP?” Of course I didn’t mind, but what he meant was: I hope you don’t mind, but rather than engage you in conversation, I’d like to play Grand Theft Auto on my portable games device. This guy queued up overnight to be one of the first to buy the latest edition – sad or what? He was (and probably still is) such a nobhead! I told him to feel free and he went and sat at the other end of the carriage for the entire journey so that I wouldn’t disturb his gameplay.