Fair Energy?

What is it about the UK's institutions that makes them think it's okay to drag consumer champions through the courts?

The banks have been tireless in their battles with consumers and regulators across numerous products.

Now Scottish and Southern Energy is appealing its losses on doorstep mis-selling cases brought by Surrey County Council's Trading Standards unit, while MoneySavingExpert reports:

"Some 73% of Scottish Power's pre-payment customers in 2010 came from the doorstep while SSE, which has just announced price increases of 18% for gas and 11% for electricity, says 45% of the new customers gained in the UK came from door-step selling."

As Mike O'Connor, chief executive of Consumer Focus, says:

"Organised confusion, pressured selling, misleading information - no market should be able to operate like that, and especially not one that provides an essential product that is getting more and more expensive."

Today, MPs reported that "four of the Big Six [consumer energy suppliers] were under investigation by Ofgem for mis-selling" and that:

"On 7 July SSE announced that it was suspending all door-step sales activity with immediate effect. Its press notice stated that it had taken this action for four reasons:

1. There was low confidence in the way companies sold energy on the doorstep, and the way in which salespeople were remunerated;
2. Energy was a significant purchase, and the sales process rightly required increasingly significant customer safeguards;
3. Customers have a growing need for objective information and help to enable them to use efficiently the energy they buy, especially in an environment of rising unit prices; and
4. The energy supply market was evolving from the simple retailing of electricity and gas to providing a bigger range of smarter energy products and services, and engagement with customers needed to reflect this."

So why are they appealing the Surrey mis-selling findings?

Because our energy providers are not in the business of solving their customers' problems, but their own. They are institutions, not facilitators. Which, as they may be starting to gather by now, exposes them to the downside, not the upside, of social media.

CDSs on Financial Crime?

Insurers emboldened by the bail-out of AIG and a rock-solid culture of greed and stupidity, Schumpeter warns us, are boldly venturing into the directors and officers insurance marketplace with a great little product that will cover “damages established by FDIC due to non-intentional wrongful acts or omissions by the executive or director.”

I love these guys.

Love them!

Talk about the "The Big Short". These guys are short of just about everything.

I mean, how is this a good idea for anyone but criminals and the criminally insane?

WHERE ARE THE REGULATORS???!!!

Well, Schumpeter tells us, "The FDIC, and three financial-industry lobby groups we also approached, declined to comment."

F*cking asleep.

I despair. Really, I do.

Might even rush out and buy a KickOut Bond.

Or Greek debt.

Finish up on a park bench under old PPI policies outside the FSA.

Wasted Talent?

Biding my time in our smallest room recently, I was confronted by Iman's revelation [The Week, 9.7.11] that, instead of "a dirt-poor goatherd who couldn't speak a word of English" - as American modelling agencies were apparently led to believe when she first came to their attention - she was actually "fluent in five languages and studying political science at university in Nairobi."

Well, what can I say? I guess I'm as surprised by this as Iman's first modelling agent, but it has little to do with her job description. And it's a bit rich now for her to expect us to be impressed by her deep knowledge of languages and political science, having preferred to present herself to the world as a human coathanger.

But, hey, I guess it's never too late.

I don't mean to 'pick on' Iman, but her story presents an interesting illustration of a theme. As Lord Turner pointed out, much activity in the City, for example, is ‘socially useless' and 'of no real use to humanity’. And, I've suggested before, if we are going reverse an ugly trend in our society, we must agree on at least one higher ambition than the accumulation of wealth (or fame, or celebrity).

Perhaps the fact that, notwithstanding fortune and fame, Iman now wishes to flaunt her academic credentials suggests that attaining a decent education is that higher ideal.

Any Similarity?

U-turn On Horse-drawn Carriage Ban A Victory For Common Sense

The decision of the Transport Secretary not to phase out horse-drawn vehicles in the UK over the next 7 years has been hailed as a "victory for common sense" by consumer groups.

A spokesperson for Charioteer.org said, "Seven out of ten people born before the horseless carriage was invented still enjoy the ceremony of parading through the streets in their horse-drawn vehicle. Transport in the modern era is easy-come-easy-go; the ceremony of carriage-riding gives importance to a journey, and reminds people of an era when the ability to travel was a great deal more scarce, and a great deal more valued."

"In this time of great austerity it is important that we continue to support expensive, outdated travel methods abandoned virtually everywhere else," she added. "Otherwise, we'd have no jobs for stable boys and nothing to put on the roses."

A spokesperson for FaceBoogle said, "What's a carriage?"