Hotels; avoiding their horrendous wifi charges

I know why business hotels (which I mainly use when overseas for work) charge for wifi access; guests need the service and are not paying with their own money. That explains how they are able to charge £20 a day but it doesn't really justify it, especially when the cost of providing the service is, on a day-to-day basis, as near to zero as makes no difference. In a world where train operators, publicans and cafe owners offer wifi for free, surely the world's major hotel brands can do the same?

And they could, of course, but they just don’t need to, they aren't feeling the pinch of serious competition and guests are “happy” to pay. As a result, hotel wifi networks are generally slow, intermittent, expensive and, if that weren't enough, often difficult to connect to and limited to one device per charge (“a phone, an iPad and a laptop? That’ll be £60 per day, please”). The answer is simple but not necessarily easy to implement; stop paying the charges.

The trick, of course, is to minimise the sacrifice of utility and make the process as painless as possible. The easiest way to do this is to choose a different hotel, one with wifi included in the room rate, but this is often a low quality solution; many hotels will advertise free wifi but charge for its use if you venture outside the public areas, like the bar or lobby. Work can sometime be completed in the bar but sooner or later you’ll need peace for a phonecall or to concentrate on something difficult or your laptop will need charging and you will be kicked offline as you head back to your room.

Another option is to find a local cafe or coffee shop that offers wifi to its customers. As with the hotel bar you lose a little privacy and a rather larger amount of convenience (you may not find a suitable venue in the immediate vicinity of your hotel) but at least you should be able to get a decent cup of coffee (the value of good coffee when you are far from home cannot be overstated).

You might be able to rent a mobile phone or a 3G card but the costs probably wouldn’t be much less than just paying the hotel fees even if you gain some flexibility. If you’re abroad, 3G roaming costs (£3-£6 per Mb on my plan, depending on destination) are prohibitive and even at home it isn’t always easy to share data plans between devices (ever tried that with an iPhone?).

If none of that appeals the only choice is to drop off the net when you travel, which isn’t very appealing, especially as mobile data in particular is most useful when in a foreign city. That’s why, when I can’t get a hotel with inclusive wifi, I end up paying the hotel’s charges; life is just too difficult without access to the web.

Banking Requirements - a Wishlist

The Halifax are running TV adverts proclaiming their new policy of opening their every branch each Saturday. That may be impressive in terms of retail banking but it doesn't appeal to me as a customer because, to be frank, I never want to go anywhere near a bank branch. Here is the list of services I want from my bank:

1. Comprehensive online banking service - I want to see details of all my accounts; balances, payments, direct debits, standing orders and every other type of transaction. 
2. All my banking in one place - I have various accounts (current, saving and ISA) plus pensions, mortgages and share trading services spread over several vendors. It would be nice to consolidate them so that one bank supplied them all, giving me an accurate picture of my financial health. 
3. Access to competitive savings, mortgage and loan rates - the bank knows exactly what I have coming in to, and going out from, my accounts. They know how much I spend, how much I am paid and how much I save. They know which credit cards I have and how much I spend on them. They know how much is outstanding on my mortgage and how quickly it is being paid off. Strangely, they do not seem to use this information to tailor their offering - pretty much everyone gets access to the same basic set of products. It ought to be possible to examine my finances and offer me services that closely match my resources and requirements.
4. A menu of other benefits in return for my monthly fee - some accounts, like Barclays’ Premier Life account, offer a number of non-banking services in return for a monthly fee. The idea is that Barclays are able to deliver services more cheaply than could be obtained by a customer buying them individually. Great, but what if you don’t want the services? Barclays offer travel insurance, airport lounge access and phone insurance, which I would use, and RAC membership and 24/7 which I would not. I’d like to see a list of services with a variable set of charges so I could choose the things that would make my life easier.
5. Free access to transaction histories and other data - it’s my data, let’s set it free. I want to be able to download my transaction history into Excel, or grant access to my accounts to a specialised finance package, so that I can run my own analyses or otherwise keep track of my money. Granted, this is likely to be a rare use-case, but I would find it useful.

Taken together, I have described my ideal bank. It consists of a paid account (or, rather, a family of accounts and services paid for by a monthly fee) that takes into account both my lifestyle and my financial status. It offers me services I need and value, tailored to my requirements, at a cost I can afford. The bank, by delivering greater value, gets more of my business. Everybody wins.

Options to Combat Climate Change

One of the aims of good government is to pass legislation that balances individual freedoms with wider concerns, allowing unpopular but beneficial policies to be implemented to the benefit of society as a whole. The basic rule is that Government should limit the ability of one person to exercise his rights at the expense of the rights of others.

This principal ought to govern environment policy. We know that we have to change if we are to avert catastrophic global warming but we also know that most of the actions we need to take will improve quality of our lives (once people adjust) and make our cities more pleasant. This ought to help make the greening of our cities more palatable but only if the Government emphasises the advantages and persuades people that lifestyle changes are both necessary and beneficial.

So what could be done? Many things require considerable expenditure but others could be quite simple (although they might consume political capital, which some politicians may be reluctant to expend). Here are a few ideas: 

• Reduce the speed limits on motorways and dual carriageways. Vehicle efficiency improves at lower speeds so this change would reduce fuel consumption and slow the release of carbon dioxide and air pollutants. 
• Improve building regulations. All new builds should be as close to carbon-neutral as possible and should make full use of current technologies to reduce their environmental impact. 
• Go nuclear. Despite Fukushima, nuclear power is still the best method of generating reliable carbon-free electricity; use the new capacity to phase out the coal and oil generators. 
• Plant more trees. There’s plenty of space at the side of roads, along the edges of parks and on otherwise derelict land; trees will help to reduce both airborne pollution and atmospheric CO2. 
• Extend the rail network. Bringing the railways to new towns or reopening old lines would encourage people and business to move away from the roads. 
• Build trams. The tram system in Croydon works and allows people to travel locally without using their cars. 
• Close roads or restrict access at certain times. Building new roads creates more traffic; it seems likely that closing roads or removing lanes will reduce traffic, eventually. 
• Change the airport charging structure to spread traffic around between the major London airports. Concentrating flights at Heathrow is neither efficient nor pleasant. 

All of these measures will have a benefit but the timeframes are sometimes long and most of them incur either heavy costs or short-term pain as people adjust to the new realities. Reducing the number of roads may not be possible until improvements in public transport render them unnecessary but that will take a while; we’re probably looking at a 20-40 year transport plan and infrastructure plan. Planting trees, though, could start immediately. Revising building regulations ought to be a quick win as well.

In short, there are loads of things the Government could do that would move things in the right direction. Let’s hope they start soon.

Supporting an Increase in the Speed Limit to 80mph

The UK Government is currently considering raising the speed limit on motorways from 70 to 80mph (source). This proposal has been criticised on grounds of safety and potential environmental damage (source and source) and seems to be no more than an attempt to win favour with motorists (perhaps to balance this proposal on fines for careless driving).

The argument is that a speed limit set in 1965 is out of date has been made redundant by improvements in the design of motor vehicles. An increase to 80mph makes sense in some respects - modern cars are undoubtedly much better able to copy with higher speeds - but it seems unlikely that improvements in driving have kept pace and it definitely isn’t a cost-free option.

One of the principles of good behaviour is that exercising one’s rights should not have a detrimental impact on the quality of life of other people (or, at least, that we should take all reasonable action to minimise the detrimental effects of our behaviour). As the environmental and safety risks of increased speed limits are non-trivial (additional CO2 emissions, for example, would have a negative impact on a very large number of people) it is necessary for the Government to take appropriate mitigating actions before increasing the speed limit.

Here are some ideas:

1. Improve driver training: require anyone wishing to drive at the new speed limit to complete an advanced training course, possibly with regular refreshers, to ensure that they have the necessary skills. 
2. Enhanced MoT: greater speeds will increase wear on cars and this should be countered by more detailed annual vehicle inspections. The scope of the MoT could also be widened to cover any safety equipment not already included. 
3. Tighter emission standards: fuel efficiency drops as speeds increase so vehicles should be restricted to speeds that ensure their emissions remain are below a per-kilometre limit. More efficient vehicles would thus be permitted to travel more quickly, encouraging investment in fuel-efficiency. 
4. Variable speed limits: trialled for many years on the M25, variable speed limits should be rolled out nationally to allow speeds to be automatically restricted during peak hours. 
5. Restrictions on older vehicles: if newer vehicles can handle higher speeds it is presumably true that older vehicles cannot. These older vehicles (pre-1985, maybe) should be restricted to slower roads or simply scrapped. 

It seems unlikely that these policies would ever be enacted. They might represent a reasonable compromise, allowing drivers to achieve higher speeds without endangering the rest of the population, but delivery would be politically difficult. A Government enacting such policies would be hailed by road safety and environmental campaigners but would lose the support of the right-wing press, who would see these moves as an attack on the motorist.

The most likely outcome to the consultation is the retention of the current speed limit. Anything else would be controversial, difficult and distracting, diverting the Government’s attention from areas that are, we could argue, more worthy of our limited resources.

Answers for Inquisitive Managers

I found via Reeder (my preferred RSS feed reading app) a post by Glen Alleman on Herding Cats about the four answers to a manager’s (Business or Project) question. He lists them (I have made minor changes to clarify answer 4) as:

1. Yes
2. No
3. A Number
4. I'll get back to you on [day] with the answer that is 1, 2, or 3

This is a good list but the author (Alleman cites an unnamed colleague) has assumed all questions can be answered and this assumption is false if we use only the above list of possible answers. To complete the list we need to add a fifth option: “Here is a detailed explanation” (we also need to enhance Answer 4 to include a variant of “I don’t know” but that doesn’t extend Alleman’s list).

It is easy to see why “Here is a detailed explanation” isn’t on the list; many managers act as if all questions can be answered with a simple yes/no/number, assuming that the provision of additional energy (usually in the form of sound waves generated by bellowing) can overcome any problem.

In many cases they are right (although asking questions like “why is that”, “how can we resolve that problem”, “where are your supporting data”, “have you considered [x]” or “can you explain that assumption” can also be very effective) but there are often questions whose answers do not fit into the above categories. Here are some examples:

1. When will the team be up to strength? Unanswerable - we only know the vacancies are filled when the last team member turns up to work.
2. When will the next milestone be reached? Normally answered by 3 or 4 but if you have team vacancies, see point a.
3. When will major problem [x] be resolved? Unknown - you could guess but sometimes (especially in my field, software development) you just need to let your people work on the problem until it has been resolved.
4. Why did major problem [x] occur and what have we done to avoid a recurrence? “Why” or “How” questions often require more than a yes/no/number answer.

It may be that a careful manager could phrase questions to provoke only the four answers listed above but it is likely that most managers would want to ask whatever they felt was necessary.

Taking this into account, I propose the following list of possible answers for management:

1. Yes
2. No
3. A number (integer range, date estimate etc.)
4. Detailed answer 
5. I don’t know yet; I'll get back to you on [day] with an answer that is 1-4 

I have two further comments. Firstly, investigation (see answer 5) will sometimes lead to a detailed answer like “we can’t answer this question”; this is a perfectly reasonable response (although it may lead to a “try again” response). Secondly, detailed answers should be as brief as possible (summarise your summary, then remove extraneous words) because many people will ignore long, complicated answers (especially if they aren’t the answers they want).