tempus incognitum

Flush out the touts

Tue, 17 May 2005 14:52:06 +0200

So tickets for the Star Wars marathon went on ebay for £1,000, at over 10 times their face value? How many ‘real’ fans got to buy tickets at face value, and how many had to pay over the odds from touts and opportunists that are taking away the chance for people on lower incomes to see the most popular events?

This isn’t just a Star Wars problem. Madonna’s last tour sold out within minutes; by lunchtime the same day the tickets were up for sale on the internet at hundreds of pounds more than the face value.

This is becoming a dark stain on the way entertainment events are run. And yet, surely, it couldn’t be simpler to introduce a fair system for fans of concerts and other events that are extremely popular. All organisers need to do is insist of the name of each person buying a ticket, who would then have to show photo ID at the gate to enter the event. Tickets would be non-transferable, but in the case of people who were unable to attend, could be sold back to the box office at face value (or 90% of it.)

I know for a fact that as a person on a tight budget, unless I am fortunate enough to get through to one of these ticket hotlines within the first five minutes, I’ll never be able to afford the overinflated cost of getting hold of second hand tickets.

News reports often say ‘tickets have gone on sale on ebay within the hour with bids exceeding £500’, without ever offering any criticism of the system that allows them to do this. I don’t think it’s acceptable to say, ‘it’s worth paying that for such a great event’, because some people don’t have that possibility, even though they could afford the face value prices.

Some people are making a fortune out of ticket touting, and society seems to just stand by and say, ‘good for them.’ I say sort it out now. It’s not exactly difficult.

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Crime in South America?

Thu, 12 May 2005 16:34:53 +0200

South America can be a pretty dangerous place. After all, it’s home to some of the most infamous drug syndicates, angry guerrillas and corrupt military regimes the world has ever seen. What chance the poor traveller of having an entire holiday here without coming to grief in some horrible and unpredictable manner or being stripped of his every possession at gunpoint? The answer is virtually nil, if you listen to Rob Rachowiecki, author of the Peru and Ecuador chapters in the Lonely Planet series. In his enticing introduction to safety in the area, Rob adopts the tone of a man who sees himself in the role of the lead character in one of those Street Fighter games, where unidentified assailants try to bring you down at every opportunity.

The first defence against the myriad of attackers that Rob envisages on any trip from station to hotel is to carry your bag on your front. He advises us to “move fast and avoid stopping, which makes it difficult for anyone intent on cutting the bag.” He goes on to tell us that “if I have to stop, at a street crossing for instance, I move gently from side to side so I can feel if anyone is touching my pack, and I look around a lot…” If this begins to conjure up the image of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man standing on a street corner waiting for the lights to change, then Rob is quick to dispel the illusion that he might be a little too worried. “I don’t feel paranoid”, he assures us, before adding, sinisterly, “I never place my bag on the ground unless I have my foot on it.”

Rob’s best advice is to employ a friend to keep a twenty-four hour watch on you, as he offers us this fascinating insight into the psyche of your average South American thief: “They’d much rather steal something from the tired and unalert traveller who has put a bag on a chair whilst buying a coffee. Ten seconds later, the traveller has the coffee – but the thief has the bag!”

Rob is clearly a man who expects things to go wrong. He warns us against snatch-theft, pickpockets, razor-blade artists, group distractions and con men, amongst other things. You soon begin to realise that, in the eyes of Rob, every single passer-by in the street is a potential villain: ”A bunch of kids fighting in front of you, an old lady “accidentally” bumping into you, someone dropping something in your path or spilling something on your clothes – the possibilities go on and on.” I always have an image of Rob standing nervously in the street, swaying from side to side and looking in all directions, then sprinting away screaming and clutching his bag because an old lady has dropped her hot dog onto the ground in front of him.

Apparently all these precautions are intended to make you as less susceptible to crime as possible. Yet it’s difficult to imagine a more conspicuous target than the one outlined in the Lonely Planet guides. At times the advice seems to border on outright paranoia. What seems most startling is the assumption that if you don’t follow this absurd amount of detail then you must actually expect to be the victim of crime. Phrases like “don’t fall asleep in a railway compartment or you will wake up with everything gone” or “don’t place your bag down for even a second” make you wonder what kind of unfortunate incidents befell Rob in the past to drive him to such lengths. He must have literally got mugged every time he stepped out his front door. You can imagine what his insurance broker must have felt like when he opened his post of a Monday morning (“So they got Rachowiecki again? How much did he lose this time?”) You begin to wonder whether he was christened Rob at all, or whether it is simply a cruel and ironic nickname that he has picked up along the way. One even wonders whether thieves saw “Rob Rachowiecki” on his luggage and viewed it as an open invitation.

Whatever, anyone reading the Lonely Planet advice on travel precautions can be left in no uncertain terms that this is no safe continent for the unprepared traveller.

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Tax Credits Advice

Thu, 12 May 2005 16:27:02 +0200

The following is advice for those wishing to claim tax credits:

To calculate your working tax and child tax credit entitlement (this replaces the old working family child tax credits, the baby family fully employed semi-retired credit, and the teenage mutant hero ninja turtle credit), you need to tell us how much you were earning for ten months of the tax year between April 1997 and March 1998. Enter this figure into box d.11. If you cannot remember how much you earned six years ago, beat your hands against your head in frustration.

You need to divide the figure in box d.11 by your average monthly co-efficient for the test period as described in Notes GA 456.2, “How to complete your tax credits.” These notes are neither readily available nor downloadable from our website.

To obtain your co-efficient, take the date of your second pay rise from your first job since leaving school, and look along the row of the week in which this date is entered in the test period table. If you do not know this figure, or it is not in the table, let out a scream of irritation and pace around the room trying to keep your cool.

If you were self-employed but not employed, or if you worked but did not try very hard, you may enter an average figure for the year, providing that the sums are not taken from concurrent weeks or those in which there was a public holiday.

Multiply the figure that you have now calculated by the number of rooms in your house, unless you are in privately rented accommodation, in which case it is acceptable to simply include bedrooms. Add this number to your IQ, and subtract the last three digits from the signature strip on the back of your credit card. Enter this final number in the blue box on page 8.4.

Remember to sign and date the application, and return the form in the envelope provided. You do not need a stamp, though adding one will greatly increase its chances of actually reaching us.

What happens next?

You will receive a letter from us to tell you that we have received your application, but that some of the information is missing or is incorrect. You will then be required to send us certain documents from the past that you no longer have. You will now be seriously considering tearing up the forms and preferring to struggle by on your current income. By the time you obtain new copies of the requested documents, you will need to submit a new application as the first one will have been declared void and your account inactive.

When you do finally get a decision from us, you will need to write to us again to tell us that we have calculated your credit entitlement wrongly, as you now earn an entirely different amount than you did in 1997. Any delay in telling us of these changes could result in you having to repay what we have already awarded you.

Tax credits are paid through your employer, rather than straight to you, so by the time they are set up you will almost certainly have changed jobs or had a pay rise. We will then need to recalculate your entitlement based on your new income.

Appeals

If you do not agree with our decision, or you do not understand it, please call us on 0800-GIMME A BREAK. Calls are free from landlines, through your mobile operator may charge you an extortionate amount, regardless of whether you actually used it or not. If you are not able to communicate fully in English, or the operator who answers is not, you may put a representative on the telephone to talk to us.

However, thanks to the data protection act, we can only talk to the named individual (or someone masquerading as them). Should your representative not do a convincing enough impression of you, we will require you to name your representative in writing. It will take a week for the relevant form to reach you in the post, and then a further two weeks for us to process the authorisation. By the time your representative is authorised to speak to us, you will have forgotten why you phoned in the first place.

Millions of people are now enjoying the benefits of tax credits. Don’t miss out – return your form today!

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