Mourinho Misery

The story of Man Utd’s season is of a yesterday’s man of a coach throwing a prolonged tantrum as he didn’t get to throw good money after bad in the transfer window.

Again he couldn’t resist getting in a dig at his central defenders in the Champions’ League group stage post-match interview last night by comparing them unfavourably with Juventus’s. He bought Lindelof and Bailly (who was on the bench).

Mourinho cannot even be in the top 100 coaches when he apparently can’t get a performance out of players he’s spent a third of a billion pounds on. His criticism of players is also entirely driven by his own ego. The two biggest underperformers of the season have been Lukaku and Matic — both players he coached at Chelsea. Matic’s performances have been pretty appalling of late. His strength is meant to be shielding the central defence and playing the ball forward from midfield and these have been Man Utd’s main deficiencies this season. Yet he never gets criticised by his manager.

It seems that commercial considerations overruled ability to manage in the modern game in terms of Man Utd’s choice of coach two years ago. After his murky exit from Chelsea where, amongst other things, he managed to alienate the dressing room, no club with serious footballing ambitions should have touched the egotistical one with a bargepole.

Maybe he’s right in that the club management place success on the field second to social media buzz. However, if they were to change this headline-grabbing attitude the first place to start would be Mourinho’s dismissal.

That’s how it will end sooner or later, why prolong the agony?

Infant Land

England is like a country of five year olds screaming ‘I want, I want’.

Witness the transformation of the football team from a middling outfit who would make the quarter finals at best to a team now so expected to win the whole thing that it’s taken for granted that a small, apparently insignificant country like Croatia will be easily beaten.

It’s the familiar mentality of another instance of public mass hysteria of: “I want it, I think I’m entitled to it and think that if I believe in it hard enough then I’ll get it, no matter the practicalities and realities” (in the case of England that they’re indulging players who aren’t performing).

It’s also getting like Brexit in the way that anyone who presents a rational view based on the evidence (England have played some mediocre, cautious football, have had an exceptionally favourable draw and have been saved from elimination by the goalkeeper in at least one match, if not two) that it won’t be all straightforward is viewed as a heretic whose views will in some bizarre way undermine the team’s performance in Moscow.

I certainly want England to win — I’ve been to Wembley to watch them enough times (I think I saw Lingard’s debut) — but if they do I’m going to despair of the amateur part-time fan bullshit merchants in the media and elsewhere churning out unrealistic ra-ra hype for the next four days.

Pickford and Trippier Carry England

There’s a desperate need for a view on England v Sweden that’s less influenced by the colossal pile of BS spouted on the BBC yesterday by the overexcitable commentator and the ra-ra pundits (surely Klinsmann was whipped up by the mass hysteria?).

However, the facts are that Pickford made three outstanding saves and England never made the Swedish goalkeeper make a single one. Without Pickford England would have been 2-1 down immediately after scoring the second and could quite conceivably have lost.

Had Sweden levelled then surely Southgate would have had to end his indulgence of playing a striker who can’t score and bring on one that can (Rashford). Actually, I thought Sterling had a better game than his previous efforts – he made a few runs forward without losing the ball – but his hopeless hesitation when given several opportunities at the end of the first half was just embarrassing.

As for Henderson being the most indispensable player after Pickford, this is just Liverpool-loving bullshit. He’s a liability. There are three or four players in the England team who are being carried by the rest – Walker, Sterling, Henderson, Alli (for most of the time). Kane, Pickford, Trippier, Lingard and Maguire are the only ones who’ve played well. Young and Stones have been OK. (Without Trippier and Young’s excellent set-piece delivery England would have been out before now — and the pair make the 3-5-2 system work.)

That said, I’d rather England are facing Croatia than Russia. Like England, Croatia are a team that over-thinks, whereas Russia went fast and direct. I doubt our defence could cope with that.

England’s Penalty Neurosis

All credit to the players who put away the penalties (including Rashford who probably had most pressure as he’d been brought on specifically to score one) and to Pickford for a stunning save (and the one just at the end of normal time which was probably the save of the tournament but never got a replay).

However, all the reaction shows the collective neurosis and sense of paranoid victim hood that probably fuelled Brexit (i.e. the foreigners have always won because somehow it’s their fault for England’s own failings).

Like Murray winning Wimbledon, this penalty shootout will hopefully end the middle-class sense of injustice. In fact, you expect a certain element would have been happier to have been eliminated so they could pin the blame on the dirty, cheating foreigners, as has been the narrative for at least the last 45 years.

England were pretty dier (get it?) throughout most of the match. Kane was so deep he could have been Matic for Man Utd. Sterling was the only forward for much of the time and he was useless as ever (except for one run). Henderson was anonymous. Walker made the expected howling mistake. Alli was obviously injured (as he was during most of the Tunisia match). Is he such an egotist that he’s pushing himself forward to play?

About the only player who exceeded expectations, apart from Pickford, was Maguire.

The level of creativity in the team was also dire.

That said, if this bunch don’t beat Sweden, who are probably on a level with Watford in terms of individual players, then they’re a disgrace.

The point that’s so obvious about this World Cup that none of the pundits have realised it, is that with so many Premier League and Championship players in the other teams then England know all their opponents so much better than all other teams (apart from possibly Belgium) so they know how they match up against them. Stones, Walker and Sterling know they’ve played in a team on a level with supposed gods of football like Jesus (get it?) and Fernandinho and they know that Willian and Firmino play for teams who finished well below them in the league.

Narcissistic Cosmopolitanism

There’s an interesting blog article on the Economist website. It’s quite long article somewhat self-serving in the Economist world view but it does have a good section at the end on middle-class hypocrisy about globalisation.

I’ve always been sceptical about globalisation and global capital in particular because of exactly what the supposed Brexit backlash was about, although I tend to think that the Brexit backlash is in the imaginations of middle-class handwringers who can’t bring themselves to believe that their compatriots include rather a lot of, not to put too fine a point on it, xenophobes, if not racists.

It’s because, unless the Chinese model is followed, political power is still (no matter what misinformation Brexiters come out with about the EU superstate) vested in national institutions — and until you take the franchise away from the population then they will react when they realise they’ve been shafted. According to the article in The Economist that shafting is likely to happen to what they call the Narcissistic Cosmopolitans pretty soon.

To quote an interesting section from the end of the blog post: “Passing exams gives you an opportunity to enter a world that is protected from the downside of globalisation. You can get a job with a superstar company that has constructed moats and drawbridges to protect itself from global competition. You can get a position with a middle-class guild that has constructed a wall of licenses. You can get a berth in the upper-end of the state bureaucracy or a tenured job in a university. Exam passers combine a common ability to manage the downside of globalisation with a common outlook—narcissistic cosmopolitanism— that they pick up at university and that binds them to other members of their tribe. “

 

Yes, You Did Let Down the Nation

I’m no expert on rugby but it seemed pretty obvious to me that England were absolutely dire last night — neither possessing any organisation or any flair or imagination. The right hand literally didn’t seem to know what the left was doing, which isn’t surprising bearing in mind Lancaster’s indecisiveness and chopping and changing selection not just over the tournament but throughout his old tenure.

Lancaster seems to be something of a Moyes — unable to deal with players with any personality or individualism. Despite only really following the Six Nations and the autumn internationals ,I can remember far more players from years back (Moore, Johnson, the Underwoods, Dawson and many more) than I expect I’ll be able to remember of the current, faceless lot.
Woodward and Wilkinson were a disgrace as ITV pundits — more concerned with trying to head off the storm gathering towards their cronies than giving honest analysis to the people who pay them. Australia were in a different league — but that was always likely to be the case. England should have treated the Wales game like a knockout but they thought they were too clever for that.
Seems like the more expensive the public school they went to the more they choked under pressure. If your parents pay £30,000 a term for you to go to school, you’re not going to be motivated in the same way as a ginger kid from Langley however ostentatiously you sing the national anthem.
I’m genuinely sorry, not for the useless bunch of losers on the field, but for the fans who have paid a fortune for tickets and the licensees of the pubs for whom an England run might have made the difference between profit and loss. I’m not so sorry for all the bullshit marketers who came up with crap like ‘Wear the Rose’. I’m sure the players will be full of contrition but, fair or not when it’s a game of sport, their actions will have had a negative impact on thousands of people’s livelihoods.
No rugby types can give football fans a sanctimonious, hypocritical lecture now about failure. True the football team went out in the group stages but they played in a rainforest after a long season. The rugby team had home advantage and everything else in their favour (except possibly a draw but this only required them to beat a depleted home nations rival).

Has The Evening Standard Been To Forty Green?

Evening Standard 'News'
Tonight's Breaking News

It’s good to see some reporting of what’s really happening in the debate about alcohol pricing, although the Evening Standard can hardly think that tonight’s front page is in any way ‘news’ to most of their readers. (One of the civilising aspects of central London is that so few people drive to work and the pubs are so numerous that an after-work drink hasn’t been eradicated by the health-fascists from commuters’ social lives.)

The headline (and the name of the paper) is quite apposite to my recent experience as I shelled out for my first £4+ pint of British real ale last week. Admittedly it was strong — Old Peculiar — but not strong enough to erase my memory of having had to pay for it. It was at the Royal Standard of England in Forty Green near Beaconsfield (in fact a 20 minute stroll from the station, as we proved). It’s a lovely old pub, claiming to be the oldest free-house in England with some parts dating from the 14th century, but at £12.50 for fish and chips (very good, mind you) and beer (also good) rising from £3.30 to £4.30 (ouch) according to strength, sadly we won’t be returning there too frequently.

But beer and wine are becoming a lot more expensive as almost anyone who buys them will know. Tesco’s are notorious for their ‘half-price’ wine sales where they reduce a bottle of mass-produced plonk from an eye-watering £9 to a more realistic £4.50 and try to suggest that’s it’s a short-term bargain when anyone who paid the higher price has more money than sense (and knowledge of wine). There are very few genuine bargains any more — as the Evening Standard article explains.

I wonder if those clamouring for the deterrent effects of high alcohol pricing will now notice a corresponding decrease in alcohol-related problems now that the weak pound, inflation and a government not above stealth-taxing sin have done their bidding? Even if a relationship was proved then I doubt they’d be happy — probably choosing to switch to the contradictory argument that alcohol is so addictive that its users will consume it whatever the cost.

But back to the story being on the front page of the Standard — I bet the journalists weren’t disappointed when they were given that story to research!

Is This Real Ale?

As found in the Parcmarket in Center Parcs Elveden Forest (why not Parcmarcet)?

Is This Real Ale?
Is This Real Ale?

I didn’t check the mini-casks carefully enough to see if there’s a ‘CAMRA Says This Is Real Ale’ logo on them but I very much doubt if this packaging would earn one. The casks themselves seem very similar to the type that breweries like Tring and Hop Back use to package their ales – although normall on an ‘on-demand’ basis, assuming that the beer is going to be consumed relatively quickly.

As these are being stacked on Center Parcs’ supermarket shelves then perhaps they’ve had some special ‘conditioning’ to ensure they don’t spoil.

But isn’t this exactly the sort of product that, in the broader sense, CAMRA should be championing. After all, Adnams are one of the leading ale brewers in the country and they are evangelists for cask conditioning (I’ve been to one of their ‘Meet the Brewer’ sessions with the transparent-ended cask used to demonstrate secondary fermentation).

If a bunch of people on a weekend away pick up one of these barrels rather than a platter of Kronenbourg 1664 or Fosters then that’s surely better? And while the bars in the place itself seem something of a real-ale desert then perhaps that’s better than massacring some local brew by not turning it over fast-enough in their bars — and it’s an inevitably sad fact of demographics that the real ale lovers will be the ones in these situations that are dispersed in the evening to their responsibilities in their holiday villas (don’t say ‘chalets’ or you’re frogmarched out of the perimeter fence) rather than hitting the Sub-Tropical night-time paradise.

My Body is a Temple (or Gallery)

I was in W.H.Smiths in Aylesbury glancing through the rows of magazines, half interested in whether there were any new interesting running magazines out. Running is one of those basic skills that seems so intrinsic, that if you’ve just started casually jogging,  you wonder how on earth one magazine can find enough angles for articles let alone half a dozen or so — er, you put one foot in front of the other and then put the other one in front of that and…

…but there’s a surprising amount to learn about running, especially if you get into more serious racing — nutrition, clothing, shoes, injuries, health and so on. I’ve done quite a few races at the behest of my much fitter CAMRA friend Simon but I’m still generally far too fat to do a good time. I managed the Winslow 10k a few weeks ago and will be pounding the streets and lanes of Prestwood and Marlow in May and hoping to drag myself around the Wycombe Half Marathon course in July.

I looked in the sports section for the running magazines — but they weren’t among the football or rugby or cricket or whatever titles. I found them opposite, right next to the burgeoning tattoo and body art section (see photo below).

Lifestyle Magazines in Smiths
Lifestyle Magazines in W.H. Smiths

The retailers probably do some research about where to locate the magazines on their shelves — there’s a whole science to placing products optimally — so I wondered what the link between running and tattooing was. I guess it’s probably pretty obvious — it’s about a pro-active attitude to body image to a large extent.

Whereas the football magazines (and certainly the back pages of the tabloids) are often read by lazy lard buckets, it’s fairly doubtful whether there are any passive readers of running magazines — they’re all trying to get fit and improve (or maintain) the way they look. The same must go for fans of tattooing and piercing — that’s all about enhancing their appearance in a different way. And there’s probably a fair amount of overlap between the two — the people in the body-art magazines generally look after themselves. I suppose there’s not much point in spending a lot of money having a tattoo over your stomach, buttocks or other body parts that get bigger if you don’t look after yourself if it expands the artwork in random directions.

I was a bit intrigued about the type of magazines placed under the tattooing titles. I know there’s a lot of metalwork involved in body piercing but woodworker?

Neanderthal Man Spotted At Hotel Near Watford

Tweeted by Twop Tips yesterday a thoughtful and intelligent comment on the England captaincy farce: ‘JOHN TERRY. Don’t be so modest. You don’t divide opinion – everyone thinks you’re a c*nt. /via @EatMyStoke

As has been said by various commentators with apparently far more upstairs than the man himself, if the England captaincy means so much to someone then, almost by definition, that person is psychologically unsuitable for the job. Captain of a football team is a fairly ceremonial and symbolic function in any case — it’s not like cricket or even rugby. The captain gets to toss up and, sometimes, gets an extra word from the referee and, er, that’s about it in terms of the game.
Outside the actual game it’s all about ego — leading the team out of the tunnel and lifting any trophy first. This seems to be what Terry wants and, despite his denials in the press conference yesterday, the image rights associated with photos of lifting a big trophy must not be sneezed at. Even so, Rio Ferdinand probably has more chance of lifting silverware this season than Terry — despite his long-term injury.
It’s a classic case of putting the cart before the horse — fantasising about holding up the World Cup like an eight-year-old might while not appreciating the talent and work required to achieve that goal. It’s extremely debatable whether Terry will continue to be an effective selection for England up to the next European championship. He’s ageing and slow and needs a mobile partner at club level (fortunately for him Chelsea have found Luiz) to compensate for his inadequacies. Like previous ego-merchant, Beckham, before him Terry’s best chance of keeping his place in the squad is holding the captaincy — not that he appears to have the humility to realise this.
His comments at the press conference yesterday seem to have been exaggerated a little on the back pages but they still reek of bone-headed, arrogant bullying  — something which seems to complement Capello’s management style. According to Henry Winter in today’s Daily Telegraph:

Having gathered his players far from the TV cameras, Capello announced: “John will be permanentnt captain again. He’s done well on and off the field over the last year. Anyone got any questions or things to say?” Silence. Terry said. “Anyone… who [has] something to say, I’d feel they should have the confidence to say what they feel. I would respect people if they came to me and we dealt with it one on one.”’

So Terry expects players to come up to him one-on-one and tell him he shouldn’t be captain? What is that going to achieve for anyone? This pathetic example of ‘open’ management is typical of weak-minded, cowardly inadequate middle-managers in all kinds of jobs — make a decision without any consultation, present it as a fait-accompli and then challenge anyone to complain about it, knowing full well that since the decision won’t be changed then all that will be achieved is isolating any dissenters. Why not consult in the process of making a decision?

José Mourinho, with typical mischief, has apparently suggested England are blessed with many potential captains — Rio Ferdinand and, er, others. Look at some of the other potential candidates — Rooney (who has just as much commitment and courage as Terry and an infinitesimally better player but who’d be slaughtered by the media), Cashley Cole (the most hated man in the tabloid press), Glen ‘Toilet Seat’ Johnson, Wickle Feo Walcott?

I didn’t see the point in removing the captaincy from Terry in the first place unless there was something more to the story of him shagging a player’s ex-girlfriend than was commonly reported — as far as I’m aware she (who can remember the woman’s name now?) had finished her relationship with Wayne Bridge before taking up with Terry. Of course Terry was exposed as an adulterer, which would seem to undermine all his claim to the supposed heroic qualities of an England captain even though his wife ‘forgave him’ but it was the connection with the team-mate which seemed to cause the furore that led to his loss of the armband.

At least Rio Ferdinand, a prolific Tweeter, has had the dignity not to whinge about Capello’s disrespectful behaviour in public, although he can hardly be surprised that someone else is going to get the captaincy in the interim due to his appalling injury record. He may well get the last laugh anyway as Terry has to become the face of the players sitting in press conferences like a nodding dog to justify more of this joke of a manager’s terrible decisions in the future.

Let’s Get Quizzical for Lent

Apologies for the blog being quiet — this is mainly due to a few deadlines coming up in the past few weeks, particularly the submission of my MSc dissertation last Monday.

This gave me just the rest of Monday and Shrove Tuesday to celebrate in the traditional way before I tried to continue my own personal tradition of the last couple of years and attempted to give up alcohol for Lent. It’s now nearing the end of day 6 and I’m going strong — the only problem is that I keep eating all the time.

On Monday, to mark finishing the MSc, I was quizmaster at my local pub’s quiz night. I did 20 picture questions, 20 normal questions and 20 music ones. If anyone who wasn’t at the pub is interested I’ll post them below and then post up the answers in a few days.

First the picture rounds.

Name the painter (click on image to expand):

Name the Painter
Name the Painter

Name the famous British tall building (unless otherwise stated):

Name the Building
Name the Building

Now the 20 general knowledge questions:

  1. Professor Brian Cox presents the science programme ‘Wonders of the Universe’ but what was the name of the pop group he played keyboards for?
  2. Who was the referee of Tuesday’s Chelsea v Man Utd game – criticism of whom has earned Sir Alex Ferguson an FA charge?
  3. The world’s most expensive painting will shortly go on show at the Tate Modern. Who painted it?
  4. Who was runner-up in last year’s ‘I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’?
  5. What was the name of the female referee’s assistant who Andy Gray and Richard Keys were sacked for criticising?
  6. Next week CAMRA celebrates its birthday. How old is it?
  7. Which fashion house recently sacked the notorious designer John Galliano?
  8. The rock group Beady Eye released their first album recently. They were created after which famous other rock group’s break up?
  9. Which nation of cricketing minnows beat England on Saturday in the world cup last week?
  10. Who won best actor in this year’s Oscars?
  11. The M25 is London’s orbital motorway but what is the name of Manchester’s equivalent?
  12. What is the web browser developed by Google called?
  13. Which prime-minister lived at Hughenden Manor?
  14. Which brewery produces Tinner’s and Proper Job ales?
  15. A cottage pie is traditionally made out of which meat?
  16. What was the route number of the London bus that was bombed in the 7th July 2005 terrorist attacks?
  17. How old is the Queen?
  18. In which country is the wine growing region the Maipo Valley?
  19. What were the names of the two female dolls on BBC’s Play School?
  20. Who wrote the Angel series of novels, the titles of which include Angel, (2006), Crystal (2007), Angel Uncovered (2008), Sapphire (2009) and Paradise (2010)

The music round — this should play in Windows media player (if not other devices). Name the artist: Quiz Mar 11 3

A Modern Caravaggio?

I found this amazing photo on the MSNBC photoblog site (the image is a link through to the site) of last night’s brawl in the San Siro started by AC Milan’s Rino Gattuso. It looks like a modern day Caravaggio painting that you could imagine hanging in the National Gallery.

Gattuso vs Joe Jordan
Gattuso vs Joe Jordan -- via MSNBC

There was something quite remarkable about the incident, mainly because it involved Joe Jordan. Ironically Jordan played himself for AC Milan for two years in the early 80s after he’d left Man Utd. Before which he’d been a member of the notorious Leeds United side of the 1970s and, as expected for that team, was the sort of Scottish centre-forward who looked as if he’d been carved out of granite. But the most notorious thing about Joe Jordan — that anyone who followed football in the seventies would remember was his missing front teeth (knocked out in an early Leeds United match) which made him look like the most intimidating player ever seen on a football pitch — looking less like a human in the photo below than some sort of werewolf from hell.

Joe Jordan minus teeth
Joe Jordan minus teeth (via Telegraph website)

This is the sort of collective memory from an era well over 30 years ago that seems (to paraphrase Laurie Lee) to be almost from another country — the sort of childhood recollection that makes a TV series like ‘Life on Mars’  so popular. Joe Jordan, or at least his image, is forever a peculiar sort of icon for a huge portion of the population — an icon of looking hard — and now he’s sixty and wears glasses (although he took them off ready at the end) we all feel outraged that a mouthy, theatrical primadonna like Gattuso dares to assault that memory.

Ray Wilkins, who will have played with Jordan at Man Utd, was outraged during the commentary and in the post-match discussion Graeme Souness, a player himself with a reputation for being one of the ‘hardest’ midfield players and a Scotland contemporary of Jordan, looked as if he wanted to get into the Milan dressing room to sort Gatusso out himself, although he speculated that Jordan would have been able to so that on his own in five minutes.

The whole Sky end-of-match summary had something of generational respect to it as Spurs manager Harry Redknapp, surely the least cosmopolitan of Premiership managers, turned up on the panel with his son Jamie and they looked at the replays of the shocking Flamini (given almost surreal spice due to his Arsenal past) tackle as well as Gattuso’s raging bull act — it was almost like being in their living room as they bridled against a family insult. (Click here quickly to read a less-than-flattering Wikipedia summary of Flamini’s career before it is changed.)

Even eighteen hours after the game, Gattuso and Jordan are still trending on Twitter in the UK, such is the amazing interest in the incident, which perhaps shows underlying codes of human behaviour that are still almost primeval. Looking at some of the tweets randomly after the game there were probably more women than men who wanted Jordan to have nutted Gattuso back. Hayley McQueen (who, despite looking very much her part as a Sky Sports News female presenter is a good source of sports news on Twitter) mentioned about how her dad (Gordon McQueen — also ex-Leeds, Man Utd and Scotland) and her ‘Uncle Joe’ used to scare the living daylights out of her prospective boyfriends and posted this amazing retro photograph of the two ‘out on the pull’. That wallpaper alone should have been enough to floor Gattuso.

Humping in Bishopstone

Bishopstone is a long, sleepy village to the west of Aylesbury and has been blighted to some extent by being a rat-run as the road through the middle of the place from Stoke Mandeville to Stone is the only north-south route that avoids going right into the middle of Aylesbury. There’s plenty of money to build a monstrously large HS2 rail link right through the area it seems but none for a proper ring round to relieve the through traffic in the area.

The residents of Bishopstone banded together to fund some traffic calming measures to stop these speeding rat-runners a couple of years ago and now the entrances to the village have chicanes with a speed hump. (btw I’m not a rat as I live close enough to justify it being the most sensible route if I go up towards Hartwell House direction.)

Bishopstone Hump
Bishopstone Hump

Some new signs appear to have been erected to warn of these obstructions — it’s quite a common symbol in the warning triangle but I’ve never seen it had to be explained with the word ‘hump’ underneath. Maybe I’m mistaken that it refers to the traffic at all but is some warning about the possible fecund activities to be possibly found in this part of Buckinghamshire.

It might be even more alarming if the symbol was in a red-bordered circle as anyone who knows the Highway Code knows that means the injunction is compulsory — often on the penalty of a fixed fine if caught — ‘YOU MUST HUMP AHEAD’.

Seems like Bishopstone might give Cerne Abbas a cheeky run for its money.

Sainsbury’s Merry Christmas for Traditional Beer

When all the supermarkets are doing 3 huge crates of fizzy pop beer for £16 or £20 at least most make an effort over Christmas to promote traditional British bottled ale.

Waitrose has a fantastic selection, Majestic has beers from Rebellion, Loddon and Tring and Asda and Morrisons make a reasonable effort. Bigger Tesco’s, such as the two Extras in Aylesbury, also have some great beer, such as the Finest ‘Double’ IPA (see previous post). Even the modestly sized Tesco in Princes Risborough has three or four metres of shelving of bottled British beer, including some local breweries.

But Sainsbury’s, at least the Aylesbury branch, has a pathetic offering — see photo below. This is quite a large branch, albeit a town centre one and there’s a long aisle of wine, spirits and other beers (of the crateloaded discount variety). But only two rather pathetically chosen shelves of British traditional beer are on offer — and all below knee level where most people might not even look.

And look at the diversity: Newcastle Brown, plus Fullers, Hall and Woodhouse (available in almost every supermarket), Greene King Abbot, Marston’s Pedigree and Hobgoblin, Young’s and Wells Bombardier and Courage Directors (whoever brews that these days). At least they were selling them at 3 for £4 — maybe ale drinking doesn’t fit with the pukka Jamie Oliver cheeky chappie image. No doubt he’s guzzling champagne on all his book sales but I reckon Sainsbury’s probably pose him with something like a bottle of inoffensive, profitable Peroni.

Aylesbury Sainsbury's Christmas Ale Range
Aylesbury Sainsbury's Christmas Ale Range

www.customersgetstuffed.co.uk

The current snowy weather has exposed one of the most insidious aspects of how cheapskate companies have exploited the internet in the last decade or so — by outsourcing customer service to the customers themselves.

In normal circumstances, this can be quite empowering — rather than have to phone up a call centre or turn up in person the customer can cut out the intermediary and access information more directly. The classic example is travel — now everyone can access an airline or tour operator’s systems via the web rather than have to go into a high street travel agency. This also demonstrates why the internet isn’t really in itself such a paradigm-shifting technology — all it has really done is connect the devices that people use personally (computers and now phones and other innovations) with the commercial systems that organisations have been using internally to run their businesses since the 1970s or 80s.

In many call centre or customer service situations the person you interact with is really just there as a conduit to access the IT systems — and in the vast majority of cases this can be made user-friendly enough for a customer to do themselves over the web. And customers can now access information that previously wouldn’t have been cost-effective to pay employees to give out — like where exactly your train is meant to be on the line.

Even the likes of Twitter and Facebook aren’t really new — messaging services and bulletin boards have been in existence on private systems for decades.

Online shopping is an odd mixture between new technology and antidiluvian business processes — as Amazon and others have been discovering, parcel delivery is their Achilles heel. I’ve ordered Christmas presents from Amazon that, according to their whizzy, integrated tracking feature, have stayed in the Royal Mail’s distribution centre in Scotland since 9th December (12 days now).

No wonder Amazon tried to grow as big as quickly as it could because its basic business proposition is very unoriginal and easily copied — basically plugging web browsers into wholesalers’ catalogues. There’s little difference between Amazon’s bookshop and the old-style book clubs that offered members 4 books for £1 — just a more interactive catalogue.

Amazon has also set a very bad precedent in trying to handle all its customer service online. Phone numbers disappeared off their site as soon as they got big enough as a company to afford not to care too much about their customers. When they first started off in the UK around 1997, Amazon’s customer service was brilliant — I got several unsolicited free gifts. Try and contact them these days and all you get is some auto-generated reply and if you try and get something more personal you may be lucky and get an e-mail a few days later from someone in India with a very vague understanding of the problem.

In fact, every time I try to contact Amazon they annoy me so much that I don’t know why carry on using them. In fact I do — they’re cheap and their competitors, such as Waterstones, often can’t get their act together. I had a reading list of books to buy for a course and wanted to get them from Waterstones but their website kept being unavailable at the time.

Amazon has plainly gone for cost leadership and size — and if it’s customer service is irritating then it’s usually only some goods that have gone missing.

Plenty of cheap-skate companies inspired by penny-pinching, unimaginative managements have tried to use the internet principally as a means of cutting their own costs — thinking technology is a clever wheeze that would allow them to get the customer to do unpaid work that their own staff used to do. They can get away with this when processes are simple and straightforward but when things go wrong then this cynical attitude to the customer is ruthlessly exposed.

So airlines like BA have been encouraging passengers to use their own labour and materials to check-in and print out boarding passes so they can eliminate check-in desks at the airports and the staff that man them. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Willie Walsh and his band of asset strippers that an airline, unlike Amazon, doesn’t just dispatch packages — it transports people — and these people need information, require food and accommodation when delayed and become very upset when they don’t get either and are piled up in airport lounges like a pile of delayed mail in a sorting office.

Also, pointing people to the web to get information in emergencies is useless because companies, both for reasons of cost and security, only expose the simplest and most straightforward functions of their IT systems via the internet. In a shop or call centre there’s almost always an ability to over-ride the simplest rules on the system — to allow a discount or impose a refund for example — because the company has given someone the authority to act with that discretion. This can’t be done in a self-service way.

So for complex interactions with its systems, a company always needs to have staff — but, because the vast majority of sales can often come online, these staff are seen as a necessary evil as they incur cost rather than generate revenue. Therefore they try and employ as few as possible.

BA asking its customers to rebook online is plainly ridiculous for a customer-facing business — how can customers self-prioritise their needs — for example distinguishing between passengers stuck in transit at Heathrow for four days as opposed to tourists jetting off for a bit of winter sun? Also many IT systems that are aimed at customers don’t get updated quickly enough to reflect exceptional operational circumstances — Chiltern Railways (who are way better at customer services than most train operators) were running an emergency timetable yesterday that bore no relation to that on the National Rail website.

People make the most ridiculous claims about the internet and the web and say how much it has changed everything — in the area of customer service I’d agree that it has had a big transformational effect — for the worse.