Given Chelsea’s drubbing by Liverpool tonight, it looks like Arsenal will need to cling on to 3rd place in the Premier League in order to qualify for next season’s Champions League. As we are only one point in front of those Spuds (and almost equal on goal difference) , and 2 points ahead of Newcastle, it’s all down to this weekend.  Missing out on Champions League will surely lead to van Persie seeking pastures new this summer and all that that brings. So here’s hoping for a drubbing of the Baggies on Sunday.

As for Crewe Alex, their 16 game unbeaten spell means they have squeaked in to the League 2 playoffs.  So, home and away legs against Southend followed – hopefully – by a trip to Wembley.  It’s great to see such a turnaround from the form of the last couple of years, and testament to the dynamic approach brought by new manager Steve Davis. Suspect that wunderkind Nick Powell will have to be sold this summer so the club can afford to keep the lights on – let’s hope that he is able to help the team to promotion before then.

What I’m working on currently …
New ecommerce site for Decor8 Northern selling concrete floor paint and floor coatings. www.paintmyfloor.co.uk.
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Bad experience to share with serpbuddy.com.  I’ve been looking at alternatives to SEscout for tracking website rankings in search engines. Serpbuddy seemed interesting so I took a subscription. May as well have thrown my cash down the drain.  2 weeks later, my account is still not activated and there’s been no reply to my emails to support (naturally there’s no telephone number or physical address).

Had to cancel the subscription and write off the first month already paid.  Not really a biggy, but still money taken under false pretences and a time waster.  Has anybody had a better experience with this outfit? Not sure if it is a scam or they are just  lazy and don’t care.

What I’m currently working on …

Online marketing support for www.yourmotorhome.com – a great new business providing motorhome hire in the North West. They have an excellent range of brand new luxury motorhomes, and they offer a price beater guarantee so you know you’ve got the best rate on the market.

Arsenal were back on form – although still worryingly dependent on the historically fragile Robin van Persie – with a 1-2 victory over plucky Norwich on Saturday. Strange mutterings from le Boss over his future at the club, with some sort of retraction today, I see. Seems he’s taken the failure of the youth project hard, but at least is acknowledging it nowadays. So, there’s hope for moving on (the Club, I mean, not the manager). It would be good at least to finish the season ahead of the Spuds. On that subject, I know Mourinho once famously managed Chelsea from inside a laundry basket – not sure how Harry would manage from inside something rather more secure? Perhaps they do weekend release so long as you’re back inside by 6pm? Could be tricky away to Newcastle. Although the TV people seem so attached to Our ‘Arry that I’m sure they can arrange for Spurs matches to be early kick offs. Don’t know how he’s going to manage when the media campaign to give him the England job succeeds – will those electronic tag things work from abroad for away games?

Didn’t see Crewe beat Morecambe away 1-2 in Steve Davis’ first game in charge. But that’s definitely a result. Max Clayton winning goal in 95th minute – get in! I’m impressed with what I’ve seen of the young academy lads so far. Nick Powell, in particular, just stands out head-and-shoulders in these games (literally as well as figuratively). His work rate, determination, and skills are a cut above League 2 norms. It would be great to see him help the team win promotion in the next couple of seasons. But, I guess the economics of professional football in the lower leagues are so challenging that he’ll be sold sooner rather than later just to be able to keep the lights on at the club. Expect to see him in the Prem within a few years.

Finally, a great victory against Birmingham for the Crewe Academy under 9s on Sunday. Not sure if it was 7-3 or 8-3 in the end, but was the kind of score that the boys have been on the wrong end of in some earlier games. So, a great morale booster for them to play to their potential and to get that kind of result. Good passing, good pace, determination, and confidence all played their part.

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Working on right now: Online marketing for a broker providing specialist environmental insurance services

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Motor insurance, eh? I made the mistake of ringing Esure today to let them know that I’d be having a courtesy car for the day while mine was in for servicing. For my pains, I earned 15 to 20 minutes on the phone (mostly on hold) while they passed me around. They put me through to the claims department at one point … “what was the date and time of the accident?”.  Finally, they asked me for £26 to insure the courtesy car for the day!

I asked them how that squared with the wording on my insurance certificate which clearly states that I am already covered under the policy: “the policyholder may also drive with the owner’s permission a motor car that they do not own and that is not hired or leased to them under a hire purchase or leasing arrangement”. They didn’t seem to think  that they were under any obligation to respect such irrelevancies as the terms of our contract. That doesn’t fill me with any confidence about how they would behave if I ever needed to claim on the policy.  Presumably, if I hadn’t bothered to call them as a courtesy and had had an accident, they would have then rejected the claim on the grounds that I wasn’t covered. Useful to know!

All credit to the team at Lexus Stoke who not only resisted the doubtless powerful urge to say as if to camera “calm down, dear, it’s only a breach of contract”, but who also kindly put the car on their own insurance at no charge to make up for the inconvenience caused by esure.

So, hoorah to Lexus and a great big raspberry to Esure. I’m sure they don’t care, but hell will freeze over before I insure through them again.  Here are more reviews of Esure – some unhappy customers there.

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Working on right now:  Online marketing for a client selling brick-effect wallpaper

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Mind you, the players (with the exception of Wilshere) were even more lukewarm and unenthusiastic than the support.  At Stoke, the tunnel opens in the corner by the away fans. Despite that proximity, there was no eye contact or acknowledgement from most of the players at the start, interval or end of the match. It was as if they knew the Wengerball experiment had come to an unsatisfactory end and, as passive (but highly paid) victims,  they could only wait impotentlyand demoralised to see what comes next. That’s pretty much how they played, too.

Today’s performance was dire.  The Stoke fans had a field day chanting “boring” as we tippy-tap passed around to no effect. As has been the case  for a couple of seasons at least now, we pass because nobody has any idea what to do when  the opposition defend in numbers. It’s not even pretty most of the time. I can’t remember the last match where I saw Arsenal consistently play beautifully and creatively with a view to scoring. Hell, I’d settle for seeing even one player getting in the box ready to receive a cross.

Today we again also fell into the trap of confusing strength with petulance.  Instead of demonstrating toughness and focus, immature fouls by Bendtner and Wilshere, amongst others, just showed our lack of it. I can forgive Wilshere for now as he’s a young lad and does at least seem passionate about the team and winning. But, the lack of team leadership on the pitch means that agression and frustration are poorly directed and managed instead of being used as a positive.

The Prof defends the  team by saying that coming in the top four is an achievement, a vindication even. Well, maybe that would be true if we were Fulham, Bolton, or Sunderland. But we’re not. At present, Arsenal is one of the biggest and richest clubs in the league.  Our aim should be to strive to dominate the top four, not to cling on to it. In that context, scraping fourth and getting into the Champions League via the qualifying rounds are not indicators of success.

I can live without trophies so long as I see entertaining football and the management and players – to whose astronomical wages I contribute a large part of my income – giving their all. Not getting either trophies or performance at present.

Here’ s hoping for some serious attention to the problems during the summer.

So, another lead thrown away. Another sterile low or no score draw at home. Yes, we had chances and near misses. And we are 2nd in the League, so we must be pretty good! But, the accusation that the team lacks leadership and fibre becomes harder to dismiss with every game.  The counter-argument to the no-trophies complaint has always been about the beauty and quality of the performance. However, even that aspect has arguably deteriorated significantly in the 2nd half of the season.

It must be time for a reappraisal and a vigorous reshaping of the squad for next season.

We dropped two points after scoring our own penalty right at the end of the match.

No, the thing currently driving me to despair is their rubbish redirection service.  By which I mean, their mail redirection service which is rubbish, just in case you thought I was unreasonably trying to get them to handle our waste. As Kent House (website development in stoke-on-Trent, as you ask) relocated in January from Keele to Stoke-on-Trent, we needed mail redirection.  Having filled in the form and handed it over the post office counter and made payment some weeks in advance, we waited. A long time later (in fact, some days after the service was supposed to have started), we got a letter from them saying that the signature of the managing director wasn’t sufficient and that they’d need something more, specifically an additional signature from someone ‘important’ within the company. Swallowing my bile, I did as requested and sent that.  Many days later, we got another letter from them saying that they hadn’t received the updated mandate and so still hadn’t started the service. Apparently, according to this communication, we didn’t have to worry if we had already sent the new mandate as they would eventually get around to actioning it. I made the mistake of trying to ring them on the advertised phone number to check what was actually happening. This is one of those automated systems designed by Lucifer himself to torture humanity.  Gave that up after several attempts, each time keying in reference codes and selecting from streams of options – none of it was right and none of it would get me through to a human being or to any kind of resolution. As we didn’t know whether they had lost the mandate in the 3 mile journey from our pillar box to their redirection centre, we had to assume that was the case and sent another mandate. Some days later, we got another letter from them, saying the service would start 6 days later (it seems that they had in fact received the original new mandate, but just hadn’t got around to it). Apparently, it took them 4 days to post and deliver that letter to us 3 miles away so the good news was that the start date of 26 Jan was now only a couple of days away.

Well, here we are some two weeks after the start date (and a month after we relocated). Some 60 items of post have, in that time, been delivered to our old address. Can you guess how many Royal Mail have intercepted and redirected? I bet you can. Luckily, our old landlord has very kindly been forwarding the misdelivered mail. If they hadn’t been willing to do  that, we would have been suffering serious business interruption thanks to Royal Mail’s incompetence and indifference. We’ve now made some suggestions as to what they might do do with their fabulous redirection service and asked for a refund.

On the basis of our experience, my advice to any business relocating would be to do everything possible to avoid having to rely on Royal Mail redirection if you want to stay in business.

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Working on right now:  Online marketing for a client selling Sadolin woodcare products

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The guy seems to have values. According to Wikipedia, his mantra as a hacker in his teems was the laudably ethical: “Don’t damage computer systems you break into (including crashing them); don’t change the information in those systems (except for altering logs to cover your tracks); and share information”.  However, his conviction about his own righteousness in leaking state secrets does seem to have blinded him  to the consequences of his own actions. Again according to Wikipedia, he defended accusations by the usual suspects of putting lives at risk by saying “…it’s really quite fantastic that Gates and Mullen…who have ordered assassinations every day, are trying to bring people on board to look at a speculative understanding of whether we might have blood on our hands. These two men arguably are wading in the blood from those wars.” That really doesn’t seem a convincing argument.

Here’s wishing Assange a fair trial if it comes to that, and hoping that WikiLeaks is able to continue to operate and even to prosper. We hope also, though, for a more mature approach to the rights of the individuals whose identities are contained in leaked documents. Exposing government secrecy and undermining the complacency and cynicism of those who perpetrate such things is a very valuable function. But let’s not trample all over the rights of the little guy in the process.

The message I got back by email was “… you have chosen a category that is … broader than we typically assign to a new editor. We would encourage you to re-apply for a category that … is smaller in scope, in order to increase your chances of being accepted …  If you wish to re-apply, you must fill out another application … Please do not reply to this email“.

Now, I could have taken umbrage given my experience and CV at the verdict that I couldn’t be trusted with what is a very small are of content. But, that’s entirely their decision to make and I have no grounds for complaint there. What really irks is the needless and insulting “If you wish to re-apply, you must fill out another application”. The application process is not trivial – it requires thoughtful responses, some research, and samples of work.  How difficult would it have been to enable me to log back in to my online application and edit it to select a narrower category and resubmit? At the very least the original submission process could have sent me an automated email containing my responses so that I could cut-and-paste them into a new application.

To be fair, I probably spent only about 30 minutes on  the original application. But, I’m not short of things to do and was volunteering my time and expertise. The inconsiderate response really doesn’t motivate me to spend another 20 minutes redoing things from scratch in the hope that I might be accepted to a programme that will require me to commit a lot more time voluntarily.

So, into the Hall of Shame goes the ODP. I hope they improve their systems soon as it’s a shame to see such a worthy project fail to reach its potential for want of some simple changes. The lesson here is that a small investment in improving a process can produce disproportionate benefits – something that I’m pleased to say we aim to practise routinely at Kent House on our client projects.