Student Finance - Don't You Just Love It ?

Well .... no, actually. Sunday afternoons are supposed to be a time to relax and chill out and catch up with the rest of the week. Not this last one! It was completely wasted trying unsuccessfully to sort out student finance for young Alice who is off to uni in the autumn. She had made her application for finance on-line. Now I and Mrs Journeyman had to fill in our bits. Not too onerous you might think. You would be wrong. In the sensible, ideal world, which I like to try and promote, we would have logged into Alice's account using her registration number and filled in a few financial details. Simple (as the meerkats would say). Unfortunately the Student Finance Company has never heard of meerkats. It has, instead, designed the system to be as complex as possible, presumably with the intention of putting off a large proportion of would-be applicants from applying at all!

Firstly both I and Mrs Journeyman needed our own individual registration numbers. Why this was necessary, when neither of us is applying for funding and when our details will have to be linked to Alice's application to make any sense at all, completely eludes me. However, I bow to Big Brother and try to register. The system says I am already registered! How this can be also completely eludes me. I have never applied for student finance on-line before. The last time was five years ago and then I filled in a simple paper form - I am quite sure I didn't get a registration number. The system flatly refuses to let me apply for a new registration number so there is no option but to phone. The good news - the office is open until 5.30pm on Sunday. The bad news - I'm held in a queue - for nearly half an hour - listening to the recorded message going round and round. And to make matters worse - after stating the obvious, that they were very busy, it said "you may like to visit us on-line"! That was the whole point of my call. I'd tried to be helpful and do things on-line but their system didn't work.

At last someone answered. After taking about a dozen bits of personal information which had no relevance to the case, the lady at the other end informed me that I was indeed already registered. She started off by being quite helpful - she actually told me what my number was. Then things started getting nasty! Having already guessed that Mrs Journeyman would need a different registration number to me, and anxious not to lose the person on the other end, as it had taken so long to get through to her, I asked for a registration number for my wife. You would think I had asked for a consignment of radioactive plutonium or something similar. She had to speak to my wife. I explained that I was upstairs in the bedroom and that Mrs Journeyman was in the kitchen cooking tea, and that I could provide all the information she might need. That was not good enough. She had to speak to Mrs Journeyman in person - because of the Data Protection Act. Now, much as I dislike this iniquitous piece of legislation, I do have a rough idea what it is for - to prevent organisations disclosing sensitive information to persons who are not authorised to receive it. But the caller had obviously not been briefed on this. Try as I might to point out the obvious - that I was offering to give information rather than request it - she stuck to her guns. Rather than lose her, I had to run around the house with the mobile phone looking for my wife. She was then asked the same questions as I had been. When she finished she passed the phone back to me and I said to the nice lady, "there - I could have told you all that couldn't I!" I got no response.

So we now had two individual registration numbers. Nearly at journey's end? No! Read on. We input one of the registration numbers and the computer then demanded to know the answer to a riddle - "a memorable place other than where you live or were born". Now, even if we restrict the places to England, there is probably about a million to choose from. The chances of me hitting on the exact one the computer has in mind are pretty slim. I tried one at random - and of course it didn't work. With most systems there is a facility to reset your password if you have forgotten it (or in this case, never had it). But on this site, no, this facility did not exist. Mrs Journeyman was asked for "an inspiring person" - again, a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack. In the end we had to get Alice to print off two copies of the application form (at vast expense in both paper and ink) to be completed and sent in manually.

If the government is as committed to e-commerce as it says it is, it really must do something about making the systems useable.

Cheese Sandwich - Licensed to Kill

The Times reported on Friday (30.4.10) the very sad tale of a two-year-old boy who had his lunchtime sandwich confiscated by staff at his day nursery. The reason - it was a cheese sandwich. The mainstay of British workers' lunchtime sandwiches for many years. Good old Cheddar. Mainstay it might be, but it was not on the authorised list of approved sandwich fillings. If his mother had thought to add a lettuce leaf or some tomato it would have passed the healthy eating test but plain Cheddar ...... definitely not. It obviously escaped the attention of these morons, but by adding a lettuce leaf or a piece of tomato, the size and nature of the cheese involved would be altered not one jot. If a certain sized piece of cheese is inherently unhealthy then it will be just as unhealthy whatever else is added to it.

In my professional capacity I am supposed to promote and encourage healthy eating but with the food gestapo blindly taking unilateral action like this without thinking what they are doing, the whole subject gets a bad name. The little boy in question went home completely traumatised, not to mention hungry. Was that healthy? Certainly not. These people had fallen foul of the common failing of many in authority whether individual or corporate. They see a problem and solve it ...... never mind what other problems their solution may cause; never mind whether the action is proportionate or not. It solves the problem doesn't it .... so it must be good.
I seem to remember a gentleman by the name of Adolf Hitler once had a little problem with some Jews. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.