Waste...and more waste
One can't help think that the world would be such a better place without all that waste.
Take, for example, the way our beloved Government spends its tax revenues. Now, I know this is a somewhat unhealthy focus I have, but bear with me. If the TaxPayer' Alliance's estimate of £80Bn in squandered revenues (our money!) is even partly accurate, then surely to goodness someone ought to be held to account? The evidence is that, in the forthcoming Budget, Alistair Darling will - far from introducing the sorts of controls that have been promised - simply raise yet more monies from us to balance the Government's books.
Of course, to squander other people's money on an £80Bn scale, requires an endemic commitment to apathy and self-interest. For waste to occur at that level, involves a whole sequence of smaller, largely unaudited, wasteful practices, and it requires those who work within the 'system' to be dissuaded from exercising any initiative whatsoever.
Which brings me to product-providers, life assurance companies...and dangerously close to making a sweeping generalisation.
At 2020 Financial Services, every month we receive through our letterbox the equivalent of a modest forestry plantation, in the form of commission statements. Some product-providers - like Standard Life, Transact - even Norwich Union - are pretty good in consolidating those statements into one, cost-effective, package. At the other end of the efficiency scale, you have...Guardian Financial Services. In one postal delivery alone, we received six separate commission statements in six separate postage-paid envelopes - some of those statements were for total renewals figures of 15p, 88p & 43p.
We've raised this one with Guardian before. "Please explain the logic," we asked, "of sending out individual statements for sums of money which are less in value than the cost of postage". To which, not surprisingly, there was no response. More worryingly, there was not the slightest flicker of concern or interest.
Now, I'm sure of two things here:
- The Guardian FS example may be a pretty crass example of mindless waste, but it is far from being the only one.
- If I held any investments with such a company, I'd have them out of there before you could say 'Bob's your Aunty'. Do we have clients who have, say, with-profits investments with companies like this? Might be time for a review.
It's a shame I can't take my money out of 'UK Government plc' in a similar way. Apparently, all the Government's politically-correct initiatives to make us work harder and more effectively for our customers, and with less remuneration, don't apply to those in Government. But then that's hardly surprising, is it? |
