Machtnicht

Being in Berlin and finding myself in the Reichstag (as one does), I took the opportunity to chat to my old friend Matthias Machnig, German state secretary for the Federal Ministry of the environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety.

Matthias spent some time kindly talking to our little group, outlining his views of the world of communications. His stance was broadly that only people who belong in, and therefore understand, the corridors of power should have the right to access those corridors and the grandees contained therein. The egalitarianism of the Internet and the wacky world of Web 2.0 was certainly something that Herr Machtnicht wasn't going to take seriously.

Challenged on this view, he became somewhat defensive and arrogant, instantly losing the sympathy of 180 communications professionals from around Europe. Having been charged with a certain degree of arrogance, his response was "If I was arrogant, I wouldn't have given up my valuable time today to talk to you!"

His valuable time, as a consequence, was invested in creating a most definite feeling of irritation and even alienation amongst his audience.

A lesson in communications, indeed...

Trucked

The scenes outside our local ADNOC have started to become apocalyptic: a line of 45 buses stretches out onto the sand-roads behind the petrol station, blocking access to our house from the main road: the line of trucks on the other side stretches out just as far, curling into a strange mandala of decorated, jangling, garishly painted flat-backs. We’re looking at well over 100 vehicles stacked up for the final approach to cheap diesel: Dhs10 per gallon less than Dubai’s filling stations. For a lorry with a 100 gallon tank, that’s a lot of Mars Bars. Every ADNOC’s the same - a line of waiting diesel consumers stretches around the back, down the road - any which way they can, really!

Lugubrious taxi driver Mr G says it’s because Dubai won’t buy refined product from Abu Dhabi and insists on importing the stuff. Interesting, the thought that this could all be down to a sort of family squabble.

Whatever the reason (and we have been rather short of investigative insight from our trusted ‘analogue’ media sources on that one, so Mr. G.’s speculative take is the best thing I’ve heard), the insane queues continue. It must be awful driving one of those orange tankers queued up outside Dubai Shitty City: ten hours to dump your load and then another five hours to fill up with enough diesel to get through the next day.

Paying Salik would be a relief for them: in fact, I could afford to let both queues cross Salik at my expense and still have credit left over, thanks to the muddled administration of the toll that likes to say ‘It’s not our fault our system doesn’t work’...

Silence from the RTA continues. Gulf News' report on Salik's failings today just makes me feel even better about my chances of recovering the money they took as a result of their screw-up.

GnnnnnNNNNN!

Cleared

Salik is a joy to the hearts of many Dubai residents. There are few things that make me happier than passing under that smashing RFID-tabulous gate and hearing the sound of another four dirhams going 'ching' into the giant cash register that is Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority, or RTA. It makes me happy.

Recently I started to get text messages telling me that my Salik balance was low. And then I realised that I really had to do something about it: I was in danger of triggering... gasp... violations. So I went online to try and pay.

The RTA website is a bit of a mess, if I'm honest. It hasn't really been updated since they launched the whole Salik scheme and much of its functionality remains 'under construction'. Online payment doesn't work if you use Firefox, either - only IE is supported. Which is a little Victorian if you ask me.

So I loaded (with a shudder) Explorer and got on with making my payment. It's enabled through the Dubai e-Government 'Epay' site and the mechanism is a little, well, Victorian. Worse, my attempt to pay 'em Dhs 250 (good for a while, about 62 'chings') bombed out: the transaction failed. I tried again, keying my card details in very, very carefully. Failed again. And then I noticed an error message:

“Server was unable to process request. ---> uspEPayResponseUpd: OKCannot insert the value NULL into column 'dtUpdTime', table 'dbDTS.dbo.tbEPayTrxn'; column does not allow nulls. UPDATE fails.”

This didn't look good. I left it a while and tried again, same error message. Three attempts, three failed transactions. I called 'em, but they won't do credit card transactions over the 'phone, which struck me as a little, well, Victorian.

You know what's coming next, don't you? I logged on to the Salik website next day to see how much trouble I was in with those potential violations and... ta da!!!! I've got Dhs750 credit on my Salik tag.

The RTA call center won't process a refund because it's not their policy and anyway it's epay I have to talk to and not them and is there anything else I can do to help you?

The Dubai government helpline ('Dial one to stick knives in your head, dial two to eat lightbulbs, dial three to speak to a human being and solve your problem. Thank you for dialling three. Sorry, nobody's answering that line. Dial one...') says I should go to the RTA because they took my money. Great.

Having lost the plot with both, both have agreed to 'escalate' the complaint to 'the concerned department'. This has been followed by a long silence, but I'm not giving up. Even if it takes me as long as 187 crossings of Salik to sort it out...

Complaint

While there must have been much to complain about in India back in the early '70s, K. Malik, the literary leviathan behind 1111 Letters for Every Occasion (brought to us, as you all well know by now, by grace of New Light Publishers of New Delhi) has decided that the course of the true complainer shall be set in the direction of surrealism. Microsoft insists on underlining the word 'goom' in red, indicating that it is not a word. I say no and a thousand times no! If K. Malik uses goom, then goom it shall be!

Strangely correct in his predictions regarding the death of the newspaper due to television (we've had to wait for the Internet to do that), the Mighty Malik's words on the matter will remain with me for a long time yet...

Letters of Complaint

Letters of complaint must be drafted as diplomatically as the letters of advice otherwise they lose the savour and bring no good results – often bad results.

Complaint Against Husband

Dear Lizzy

Do you want to know how my newly married husband is providing for the family?

“Is your husband much of a provider?” That is what you asked in your last letter.

He just has not had anything else to do except providing. He promises to get some furniture provided he gets the money. He promises to get the money provided he gets a job. He promises to go to work provided the job suits him. I have not seen such a providing man in all my life.

Yours,

On Smuggling

Dear Sir

Some people are complaining that you are guilty of smuggling, but I don’t believe a thing.

At a particularly loud clap of thunder, a woman walked along a street in London during the Second World War with a bag of smuggled goods.

“It’s alright”, said an urchin. “It ain’t Hitler. It is God.”

Yours,

Bad Service

Need I complain about service in your restaurant? After long waiting, one of your bearers told a customer, “Your fish will be coming in a minute or two now, Sir.” The sad man looked interested. “Tell me”, he said, “which bait are you using?”

Market Competition

If anyone believes that TV will replace the newspaper just let him try to wrap up last winter’s suit in a TV.

Reasonable Query

The Baltimore & Ohio R.R. Co.

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Gentlemen.

Why is it that your switch engine has to ding and dong and fizz and spit and pant and grate and grind and puff and bump and chug and hoot and toot and whistle and wheeze and howl and clang and growl and thump and clash and goom and jolt and screech and snarl and snort and throb and roar and rattle and hiss and smoke and smell and shriek all night long when I come home from a hard day at the boiler works and have to keep the dog quiet and the baby quiet so my wife can squawk at me for snoring in my sleep?

Yours truly,

John Smith

Next week: Response to Notices

Rubble

This is Satwa and we're just going to see more and more of this. There are families still living amongst the rubble, but life just goes on around the margins of the demolition zone as people walk past the stained sofas and piles of rubble and get on with their daily lives...

Clueless

It's been an interesting week in the old and new media: the UK FCO terror warning for the UAE has really shown the contrast between Internet and Heidelberg speeds. Yesterday, of course, the newspapers all missed the news: the news sites and radio were the only place you'd find information and the blogs the only place you could go for analysis, opinion and discussion. In fact, the blogs were up and running with the news and reactions to it from Monday night.

Incidentally, it's worth taking a minute to take a look at the whole advisory from the horse's mouth. Overall, it's probably the best, most realistic and balanced advisory you could want and certainly worth sharing with visitors before they travel.

Anyway, getting back to it, Gulf News today leads twice on terror: the irritating wraparound ad that now seems to be a regular feature of the soaraway GN gives the subs a chance to write an extra front page headline, so we have 'Case of crying wolf on terror' as the wraparound headline and then 'UK's terror warning a 'routine advice' as the real front cover headline.

I now owe Gulf News something like $25 if we take AP's new anti-blogging measures into account. Sorry, chaps: I ain't paying.

We can start to guess what angle GN's taking on the UK terror warning. It's on its own, too: KT has decided that it is above such petty things as terror warnings. So GN has, quite properly in my opinion, set out to pour cold water on any unnecessary panic or alarm. I do, however, find the reaction a little, well, overly positive. Terrorism is, after all, terrible for trade.

And so we have Dubai Police Chief, the charismatic and poetic Dahi Khalfan Tamim professing himself, according to GN, to be clueless: "We have no clue about what the British Embassy is talking about," the paper quotes him as saying on a local radio station. GN also quotes a well-dodgy sounding 'security expert', who apparently has information that the Brits couldn't substantiate a terror threat and so issued the warning to put pressure on UAE security forces to step up their own efforts. Hmmm.

There's a nice story inside with lots of Brits saying they think it's all tosh. There's nobody saying they're worried or concerned, which does rather puzzle me. Perhaps I'm just being silly in looking for some form of balance in what is clearly an effort to react responsibly to the situation.

GN's page 10 editorial says it all, really. I found the tone of the piece fascinating.

Personally, I'm not about to start introducing route diversity into my life. But I'd perhaps have liked to have seen a more reasoned, balanced reaction. It does carry so much more weight than this rather crude, relentless positivity.

Ads

I have a problem. I like to listen to The Business Breakfast in the mornings on my way to work. However I keep having to switch off the radio at the ad breaks and then I forget to switch it back on.

I think they should have an RDS based station changer that people can use to tune elsewhere during the ads and then tune back once they’re over. You could make it a premium service: I’d pay.

Pal Tim ‘Evil Journalist’ Burrowes, the former editor of The Magazine Formerly Known As Campaign Middle East (TMFKACME. I know, it doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well as TAFKAP, does it?) and currently the man at the head of Australian uber-marketing mag B&T came through town last week and we met up – we got to talking about the fun we used to have co-hosting ‘The Editors’ radio show. We occasionally managed to give radio advertising a hard time but it never seemed to provoke a response from the advertisers we were lambasting. I rather think that this is because nobody in their right minds, having produced this mindless, excruciating dross, would dream of actually having to listen to it.

I mean, what about the hospital recently that was punting its cardiology capability with the immortal line: “Managing a stroke takes more than a stroke of luck.” Did they really not consider that the weak gag is redundant, irritating and even tasteless?

Sadly, the ads are so weak and so formulaic that it’s possible to sort them into types.

There are the irritating declamatory calls to act redundantly: “Add an address to your business” and the one that really gets my goat, “Add life to life.”

Then we have the dumb attempts to be linguistically clever. The most galling recent example used the fact that the Greeks weren’t just great at astronomy, but at gastronomy, too. Is that complete drivel honestly justified by the ‘onomy’? What about their skills at taxonomy? Are we really suggesting that the Eastern Empire, the flowering of art, architecture and culture that followed the transformation of the Roman into the Byzantine Empire is really down to some astronomy – which was principally an Arab art in any case?

Another irritation is bad grammar or the misuse of words, which is regrettably common. I’ve spoken to voice over artists who’ve corrected ads and then recorded the original as well as the suggested correct version, then sent both back to the agency only to hear the incorrect version running on the radio.

Then there’s the “Dubai Classic” ad. I’ve been listening to this one for over 20 years now in many different guises. But it always follows the same basic theme:

Broom broom!
“Hi Dave! Why are you in such a hurry?
“Hi Barry! I’m off to the Khara Centre!”
“The Khara Centre?”
“Yes! The Khara Centre!”
“Why the big rush. Then?”
“The great WinABarOfGoldFamilyFunFestival is on! You can win a bar of gold just by shopping in all the great shops and availing of the great deals in the many outlets!”
“Great deals?”
“Yes. Great deals! There are loads of great deals. At the Khara Centre!”
Brrrroooom!
“Dave? Dave? Why are you in a rush now?”
“To get to the Khara Centre of course! I can't wait to win a bar of gold too!”

The newest one is from HP. I can’t believe that an agency and client have actually produced another one of these insane, cookie-cut radio ads, but it’s true. The efficiency of an HP graphic workstation allows the protagonist to keep up with the workload of projects in Dubai and also get to go home early to meet his kids. It’s inconceivable that any intelligent marketer would believe that this scenario would be greeted by anything other than irritated disbelief by any consumer with an IQ above that of primordial soup.

I'd name and shame more of the advertisers, BTW, but I genuinely can't remember who they are other than HP and Du. The companies and their products are buried in my consciousness underneath the disgust that their attempts to communicate with me have triggered.

I want to take the people responsible for these ads and gaffa tape high powered headphones to their heads before playing the massively amplified sound of screaming horses being eviscerated with rusty rice sickles. I want to keep the sample looping until their ears bleed and they stop twitching. Only then will I feel that justice has been done.

Warned

I probably wasn't the only British expatriate puzzled by the news that the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office had raised its terror warning status for the UAE to 'High' today.

You see, the FCO is a little more, well, British than, say, the Americans, who'll issue an extreme travel warning for Belgium on news that someone in Kamchatka has been annoyed by an ingrown toenail. The Brits tend take the old fashioned 'Listen, chaps, there's an awful lot of shooting in Gaza so we suggest any British nationals there may like to wear a hat if venturing out' type of approach to travel warnings.

So when the dusty old crusties at the FCO say they're raising the level to 'high', we're either up a certain creek without a certain implement, or the UK has turned into a nation of milk-sops and scaredy-cats. Obviously, as a good old fashioned expat, one has to believe the latter.

But now comes the news, the evening of the day in which the warning broke, that the UK has frozen the assets of Bank Melli Iran - and is encouraging other European nations to follow suit. You have to wonder if the warning is linked to fears of reprisals - and the timing of the warning and the asset freezing move do tend to point to a high level of integration and forward planning.

But if the two are linked, it's the association I don't like. "We're going to freeze the assets of one of their banks so you can expect terror as a response - because their only response is and ever can be terror", is what they appear to be telling us. The conditioning inherent in the messaging is something that I confess myself uncomfortable with.

Why is it so important to demonise Iran in this way?

Answers on a postcard...

Blag

An interesting debate on copyright and content theft on the Internet over at Charles Arthur’s blog had the effect of making me think about this stuff more than I would normally and I happened to want to put up a post last week that quoted some lyrics from a Stranglers song. With that in mind, I trotted off to try and find the publisher to ask permission. After a vast amount of time-wasting searching, which had the result of delaying my post by 48 hours, I finally found a company which appears to own the publishing rights to the Stranglers’ back catalogue, Complete Music. They have a single email address, info@complete-music.co.uk. The mail bounced.

At that point I finally gave up and posted anyway, reckoning: 1) It’s part of a larger work and a partial quotation of the original work. 2) It is used for illustrative purposes, attributed and linked back to the artist 3) Sod them. If they ask me to take it down, I will.

In this fast world we live in, where we all slap up posts on blogs that are frequently of great currency and rarely of any commercial (or even intellectual!) value, tracing down rights ownership does all seem a little redundant. And, as I found out, not easy. For instance - how do I obtain permission to quote from The Guardian? How long does it take? Surely in 99.9% of cases, by the time the permission request has been processed and granted, the posting finger has, as it were, moved on. AND the vast majority of posts have a lifetime of 24 hours before the next post comes along - so by the time you’ve granted your permission, I’ve moved on to something totally different and so have my (two) readers.

As long as we’re not distributing whole works of value and charging or distributing saleable property for free - and we’re crediting and also linking back to the rights owner, surely we’re doing enough? It seems to be impractical to impose the standard of rights/permissions regime that you would impose on, say, The Guardian, on individuals having ‘a conversation’.

And so it is: most people are perfectly happy that you quote them and link back to them. The debate, however, was triggered by Charles taking exception to the fact that a number of bloggers had ripped an entire article along with its illustrating photograph from The Guardian. If you go doing that, a link back to the source of the content would, indeed, seem redundant. But the line between acceptable use of other people’s content and unacceptable use would appear to be particularly ill-defined – and that doesn’t even touch the issue of how you could possibly enforce your rights when you’re dealing with the multi-country, multi-jurisdiction Internet.

If you look at current UAE legal practice, for instance, I think you’ll find pretty much anything electronic is going to involve high risk, a lot of court-appointed experts and a great deal of wasted time. Like two years of it.

So I guess it's lucky that we're such honest little bears, isn't it?

Love

Coming from the tradition that gave us the Karma Sutra, K. Malik has a lot to live up to when he proffers assistance to his countrymen in the preparation of letters of love. But it is precisely this noble endeavour that we are to celebrate in this week’s extract from that most efficacious of guides for the correspondent, 1111 Letters For All Occasions. Not for Mr. Malik all that messing around with pestles and mortars and bawdy talk of pinching and slapping, lingams and yonis. Oh no. Mr. Malik is much higher minded than that, although, by these examples, he lacks no ardour – and the spelling mistakes below are faithfully reproduced: it is, I believe, a testament to the strength of passion that overruled M. Malik’s normally scrupulous eye for grammar. But it is when he turns his hand to poetry that he transcends his own very high standards. And if anyone can be sure of what a household motion is, please do let me know. I suspect it is to do with housework rather than the toilet...

It is just possible that young people following his guidelines will find the effect of their epistles more prophylactic than procreational...

One last note. My apologies in advance to anyone reading this who realises that the silk ribbon-tied letter which led to love’s young dream blooming that has been preserved in a drawer all these years was not actually penned by young Lothario, but cribbed from K. Malik’s example. Please do not address your complaints to me, but to New Light Publishers of New Delhi.

LOVE LETTERS

Love letters are the most delicious part of all correspondence. Here below are a few specimens which you can use, employ and emulate.

Personal Magnetism
To see you is to fall head over heels in love with you. You are like a red rose that’s newly sprung in June. Your voice is like a melody that is sweetly played in tune.

When may I have the honour of meeting you and pressing you to my breast and squeeze the elixir our of your kisses and embraces?

Yours,

Feeding a Flame

All my thoughts, all my passions and all my delights feed the sacred flame of love for you in my heart.

Let us live, Lizzy, and love, and value at a paisa all the talks of crabbed old men who do not understand love.

Yours,

Ministers of Love

All my thoughts and fancies are concentrated on you. Day and night I think of nothing but you. When are you coming to me? Whatever stirs this mortal frame are but ministers of love. When shall I squeeze you in my arms to let the elixir ooze out of your rose-petalled lips?

Why not meet me Friday evening at Lido? I shall be there at 6pm.

Elopement

Let us leave everything and everybody. We shall sail beyond the sunset and the horizon. We shall follow the morning star until we die. It may be that we shall touch the happy Isles.

Censure

There are some meannesses which are too mean even for men. Only Women – Lovely Women – can venture forth to commit them!

To Middle-aged Women

You are a perfect woman, nobly planned, to warn, to comfort and to command. In your eye serene I see the pulse of the universe. You are a spirit, yet a woman too. Your household motion is light and free. Your steps possess virging liberty.

Best and Brightest

Oh, my beautiful beloved, best and brightest, come away. Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead, are heaped for the beloved’s bed. Let me be crushed to juice under your satin skin. Your passion vibrates in my memory and makes me a slave of your passion. Help me to live or die.

Enhanted Boat

Bear Neena,

My soul is an enchanted boat that floats like a sweet swan on the ocean of your love. I am lost upon the silver waves of your singing. Come, love with me and merge into my heart and be mine forever.

Yours,

Nath

Stealling a Beloved

The seed we sow another reaps.

The wealth we find another keeps.

Let it not be said that the girl I discovered was kidnapped by another college student!

Be you mine forever.

From the Girl to the Boy

Oh, I am in love with the janitor’s boy.

And the janitor’s boy loves me:

He’s going to hunt for a desert isle

In our geography.

Next week: Letters of Complaint