A passport to print money

I'm not into kicking dogs when they're down, but when it comes to the UK's immigration service I can't help myself.

Ten years slipped by fast and I ventured online to find out about getting a new passport. All I was doing was renewing an existing one. None of my details had changed, not even a new address.

And what does it cost? A whopping £77.50 that's what.

To make matters worse, the Passport Service encourage punters to use the Post Office 'check and send' service for another £8.50 and on top of that is the cost of getting two passport pictures. I could have attempting doing it on the cheap, but just went into my local Snappy Snaps and paid another £9.50. So actually it costs just shy of £100!

£100 for a single document?

It simply beggars belief that a service could be this inefficient. If Google had the contract, I daresay they'd be able to do it for £10 - maybe £20 tops.

It fills me with dread that successive governments can be this wildly inefficient and somehow think it's normal.

If one was to venture abroad for a single two-week holiday each year, the cost of the passport alone isn't far off £1 per day out of the country. I daresay the flights will be cheaper than that soon.

Back in 1992 it cost £18 to get a ten year passport - which doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. How times change in the alternate universe inhabited by the government.

With admirable understatement, Wikipedia tells us "while consumer prices in the UK have increased by 24% from early 1998 to 2009, the price of a passport renewal increased by 269%"

Now, don't get me wrong - I do have not problem at all with the folk employed by the passport service. I spoke to one of them on the phone. He was helpful and acted impeccably. My issue is entirely with the management and those behind the contract. People are hard up and the best you can do is make them pay £96 for a bit of paper.





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The death of spontaneity

There is an an evil afoot in modern society and that evil is the suppression of spontaneity.

Spontaneity adds to quality of life and the reduction of it reduces quality of modern life.

There are several causes. In London, for example, it may take 45 minutes to get to a friends' house - so it doesn't make much sense to embark on a 1.5h round trip on the off-chance your friend is in and up for beer or coffee or whatever.

However, the pricing models of transport companies activity suppresses spontaneous behaviour. Cheap deals on trains and planes invariably requires tickets to be booked weeks - even months - in advance. Fat chance of spontaneous off-the-cuff meetings and trips.

Flat-fees for off-peak travel would enable people who don't plan their lives weeks in advance to have a good deal more fun.

Stop the killjoys - start spontaneity!

Making zeebox rock

Anthony Rose's zeebox has much potential - especially when used in conjunction with the "pause" button on PVRs - but it also reveals a paucity of metadata associated with broadcast TV programmes.

It would be great to see broadcasters add such data as a) locations associated with scenes and b) clothes worn by actors. This would no doubt be music to Anthony's ears - as monetizing these data-streams would be a synch.

I'm a fan of the possibilities

A template for executive pay

The issue of fat cat salaries is a live one with the British Prime Minister talking about it on the Andrew Marr show over the weekend.

To give David Cameron and The High Pay Commission a helping hand with the current unfairness of it all, I propose a simple formula for setting the pay of chief executives – one that is both transparent and brings rewards in line with long-term performance.

The idea is to pay a modest basic salary, with the bulk of earnings derived from company stock. So far so normal.

Crucially, though, the shares are handed over to the executive at zero cost in installments over, say, a ten year period.

Complex ‘stock options’ - with the option to buy shares at discounted rates at specific times - are banished.

The best way to describe this formula is with an example.

Let us say the remuneration committee of a large FTSE corporation thinks their CEO should earn about £1m a year – but is happy to pay more if company performance is good and similarly wants a lower salary to apply if performance isn’t up to snuff.

The median wage for workers in the company is £30,000 and the stock price is £10 (on average over the current financial year). The exec is paid a basic salary of £30,000, plus the first of ten installments of 10,000 shares, valued at around £100,000.

A further 10,000 shares are given to the executive as remuneration (for his or her work this year) in each of the following nine years as well.

If the share price falls by half during the course of the following year, then of course the second installment ends up being worth just £50,000. Should the share prices double, the CEO finds their second installment is worth a tasty £200,000.

It’s worth mentioning that the share price has to increase in line with inflation to keep the figures ‘real’ (ie: equivalent to prices now).

Apart from delayed pay, the argument against this formula from CEOs would be that they may leave the company and have no control over some screw up nine years down the line which causes the share price to plummet.

Such nay-saying doesn’t wash for the following two reasons.

1. There would doubtless be some instances of unfairness, but given the large salaries involved one shouldn’t feel too sorry about it. And it cuts both ways. A CEO could equally be rewarded for future growth they weren’t directly responsible for.

2. This template incentivises CEOs to stick around longer and ensure good succession. If they stick around five years and their immediate successor does the same then they have had direct or indirect influence over company performance for the whole ten year period. So it disincentivises jumping ship without adequate succession planning (if a better job offer comes along or whatever). It also disincentivises a CEO jumping ship just before their company hits the rocks.

Over time, executives could generate a performance measure – namely the percentage their ongoing installment-pay is outstripping (or not) the initial baseline.

In summary, remuneration committees needs to get a grip on what top executives should be paid in the first place – as a reasonable multiple of median wage or whatnot - and then issue staggered payment in fixed units of company stock.

Job’s a good-un.