No geek
is an island

I may not be the train regulator, but… One of my eight wishes for 2008 was:

That the majority of my commuter trains into London are on time (December’s score: 0%).

Two months into 2008, how is Southern - my local train operating company - faring? I’ve crunched the numbers and the answer is that they’re getting better, but are short of my target.

Based on the wording of my wish, these stats are limited to journeys I’ve made into London for work, and only count the train I actually took: if I got to the station and a train due earlier than the one I was aiming for arrived late and I caught it, that counted as a late train; but if it was so busy that (rather than squeezing in) I waited for the next train and it was on time, that counted as an on time train.

On the one occasion that the train I went for was cancelled, I’ve made an exception and counted that as a particularly long delay (17 minutes; the longest delay otherwise was 9 minutes).

Here are the stats:

So my morning train did manage to be on time the majority of the time this month, but, averaged out against January (when I caught more trains), the proportion for 2008 so far is 45%.

Not great, but only a little way to go to get over the key 50%. And what a triumph that would be.

In a story about two British men trying to get their DNA removed from the national database, the BBC has reiterated one of Home Officer minister Tony McNulty’s arguments against having a mandatory DNA database of the whole population:

“How to maintain the security of a database with 4.5m people on it is one thing. Doing that for 60m people is another,” he added.

Excellent point, Tony. And guess what - it applies exactly as much to ID cards as it does to DNA.

Readers may be interested to know (and I’m going to plug it regardless) that since December I’ve been writing a regular weekend column for Liberal Democrat Voice.

Something for the Weekend is a light-hearted (I wouldn’t go so far as “humorous”) review of the week, and today’s post - written in Llandudno, from where I’m typing into your internets right now - is now up.

Not this one - this one.

And probably not. But still…

Whenever Barclaycard staff are recruiting new customers/borrowers/credit monkeys - usually at stations - I always turn them down on principle. The reason I give is that I already have one, which is true, but even if I didn’t I would refuse.

Because Barclaycard are Evil.

I am not, I confess, the sort of person to carefully pay off my balance every month and get the advantage of Nectar points/0% interest/cashback without paying any interest. For that reason, it’s all the more important that I have a sensible credit limit, so that I’m never tempted to book a round the world cruise on the assumption that I’ll pay it back one day when I’m rich.

A few years ago, when I was a student and very short of cash, I asked Barclaycard to increase my credit limit by £50 so that I could buy some new glasses (all the better to see things with, which was handy at the time). They duly increased my limit by several hundred pounds. It wasn’t long, given the option of some “free” money, that Student Me had spent it.

Occasionally, Barclaycard write to me and congratulate me on having earned another credit limit increase. These letters always insist that for “security reasons” they can’t tell me in the letter how much the increase is. I have to log on to their account management website or wait for a statement before I can find out, an implicit direction to just get on spending it without thinking.

I logged in this week to discover that they’ve increased my credit limit yet again - by £1,000. I’m now going to have to go out of my way to request they reduce back to what it was (and probably lower).

This kind of behaviour by credit card companies has fuelled the massive rise in personal debt in the UK, the sort of carefree lending that leads into a credit crunch. It’s irresponsible lending that will see families with existing debt problems getting further into trouble.

So boo to Barclaycard.

My highlight of the blogging year is back.

As I’ve plugged in previous years, Mike at Troubled Diva has been conducting an annual assessment of the last fifty years of pop music. Which Decade Is Top For Pops? reaches its sixth year this week with the first daily instalment, today featuring the single at Number Ten in the charts this week (Goldfrapp’s A&E) and its precessors from 1968, 1978, 1988 and 1998.

Head on over to Mike’s to hear today’s five tracks and to cast your votes.