Ivan Leo's random thoughts

Once in a while one gets letters from his landlord (UWE in this case) about excessive electiricy consumption. A reply such as the one that follows is usually sufficent to get them to stop


Andy Keirle
Accommodation Services
Frenchay Campus
Coldharbour Lane
Bristol, BS16 1QY
Date: 10/01/2009


Dear Sir,
I have received your letter “Re: Electricity Consumption” dated 23rd December 2008, and I would like to raise the following points. First and foremost, our flat is extremely cold. I arrived back in my room on January 8th, my heater has been on constantly since then, and my room is still cold to the point where, without wearing two jumpers, I would shiver during the night and be unable to sleep. This is in itself outrageous and puts the accommodation on the limits of what should be considered to be a habitable environment. You have sent at least two letters asking all students to cut electricity consumption, I have since been replacing old light bulbs with energy saving ones, however if I turned off my heater I would essentially have to go and live in my car, which boasts significantly better heating facilities and insulation than the accommodation you have provided. I did raise the issue of double glazing with you a few months ago, and you did inform me that whilst there were some impediments to this, you had decided to have draft excludes installed. It is now January 10th and this has still not happened, due to this I have had to resort to draft excluding my windows with sticky tape (And please rest assured no damage has or will be made to the windows), and double glazing my bathroom windows with clean film. Therefore there is nothing which is in my power to do that could further cut electricity consumption. By admission of your own staff, there has been a gross underestimation of the electricity requirement for Bishop Monk, which would indeed appear to be the case since most if not all flats have received a copy of your letter. It would also appear to be the case that the unforeseen demand for electricity can be attributed to the inexperience of whoever made the estimate, rather than to wasteful use by the licensees. Since the initial offer of accommodation made it clear that our rent charges (which I have already paid in full) would pay for a normal use of the utilities, if it is the case that the electricity estimates were wrong, it could be argued that from day one we were misled into believing that we would be paying for a reasonable use of the facilities provided, including the cooker and heaters. It is also interesting to note we have no right of audit on the electricity consumption figures which you have so far failed to provide anyway. You have not stated what our electricity allocation is, nor have you provided any means for measuring it, it is therefore arguable you have not provided us with the most basic tools to allow us to keep track of our electricity consumption. We have done our best to use only as much electricity as strictly necessary, however it is clear that from the start we never could have stuck to the electricity allocation you have allotted to us. For all these reasons I believe any request for extra charges to be in breach of the spirit and letter of The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 (Statutory Instrument 1999 No. 2043) and as such has no merit. Expecting us to simply turn off our heaters and live in a freezing environment is arguably unfair and in breach of section 5.1 of the aforementioned regulations, and section 8.1 clearly states “An unfair term in a contract concluded with a consumer by a seller or supplier shall not be binding on the consumer.” Furthermore, under the Consumer Protection Act 1987, Part 3, paragraph 20, it is an offence to provide a misleading price which the consumer may later rely on, the Act also specified under paragraph 22 “Subject to the following provisions of this section, references in this Part to services or facilities are references to any services or facilities whatever including”, subparagraph C “the supply of
electricity”. Since by admission of University staff the electricity allocation was underestimated and we couldn't possibly have stuck to it, to lead us to believe our licence fee would cover a reasonable use of electricity is a misleading price indication under the aforementioned Act. I hope this letter will help you to clarify my position on this matter.

Yours sincerely,
Ivan Leo Murray-Smith

Last Tuesday at 6pm I found out I had some coursework due in on Wednesday at 2pm. I did somehow manage to get it finished by 5am on Wednesday, I don't think it's as good as it could have been had I had more time, but there you go. Comments welcome. The title was "The UK interbank market"

The UK interbank market is a wholesale money market for unsecured lending between financial institutions. It first developed in the 1960s as a way of allowing banks with a surplus of funds to lend money to banks with a deficit, over periods ranging from overnight to 12 months. The British bankers' association publishes the so called LIBOR rate (Where LIBOR stands for London Interbank Offered Rate), calculated as the mean offer price obtained from at least 3 lenders at 8:30am every weekday. This rate is used as an industry benchmark for borrowing and lending and it is always slightly higher than the LIBBR (London Interbank Bid Rate). Although the UK interbank market initially developed around the sterling, there are 10 major currencies for which the BBA collects and publishes LIBOR rates. Evidence of the UK's importance as a major financial centre lies in the fact that US mortgage rates are often linked to the US$ LIBOR rate.

One key factor about the interbank wholesale market is the fact that loans between banks are unsecured, and this can pose system risks should one or more banks become insolvent. This issue was analysed in some depth by Simon Wells in the Bank of England Financial Stability Review published in December of 2002. The report does highlight that although UK banks (at the time) had high credit ratings, insolvency of a single major bank may cause a weakening of the system as a whole.

The UK financial services industry has benefited in many ways from deregulation which started under the Thatcher government, and few dispute that this has prompted significant growth in the sector. However the events of the past 18 months do suggest that excessive reliance on the interbank markets has the potential to cause a severe lack of liquidity when those markets cease to function, and only large scale government intervention has averted large scale failures in the UK banking sector. It is arguable that even if the UK had fully implemented the BASEL I and BASEL II accords well before the interbank market saw wide scale disruption in August 2007, this could not have isolated the UK interbank market from liquidity and insolvency issues which originated in foreign jurisdictions. There are dozens of foreign banks with branches or representative offices in London, and any of them could potentially participate in London interbank market. However the ability of the UK authorities to regulate these banks is limited, especially when a foreign bank does not seek authorisation to act as a deposit taking institution. Furthermore, the FSA has no direct control over banks with head offices overseas and has to rely on the banks themselves to report reliable data in a timely manner, which may hinder the early detection of possible liquidity problems.

At this point it may be worthwhile to analyse the reasons for the almost complete cessation of interbank lending during the third and fourth quarter of 2007. Some sources (C. Picillo, 2009) from the central banking sector have suggested that major factors influencing the high spreads between secured and unsecured lending is the general increased risk aversion in the market as well as tightening of lending practices by banks. Picillo also notes that discounted lending is available to the largest financial institutions, possibly because there is a general perception that under such exceptional market conditions, governments won't allow (and could ill afford) the failure of a major deposit taking bank. This does pose moral hazard issues for both governments and central bankers.

Central banks have attempted to restore liquidity to the interbank market by providing the financial sector with hundreds of billions in additional liquidity, however there is little evidence that the desired effect has been obtained. Reportedly commercial banks are currently keeping over 90 billion euros on deposit at the ECB, hence reducing the amount available to the money markets.

The UK government has attempted to free up the interbank market by guaranteeing interbank loans, however while this has allowed banks to raise much needed cash, there is little evidence that any of it has been being lent out. For example according to a Bloomberg news report RBS has raised £3BN in 3 year notes guaranteed by the United Kingdom, however LIBOR-OIS spreads remain wide, partly due to uncertainty in the real economy.

The Bank of England, like other central banks around the world, has been aggressively cutting interest rates over the past few months, in an attempt to kick start financial intermediation and through that the real economy, however with rates at an all time low the Bank is considering resorting to the issuance of currency. In theory, issuing new money should increase liquidity in the system and eventually allow normal lending to resume. However under the Bank Charter Act 1844 the Bank is under a statutory obligation to hold assets (In the form of gold coin and bullion, silver coin, government securities and other securities) on its balance sheet to back all of the currency it issues, so the amount of money that is made available through so called “quantitative easing” is limited by the amount of high quality assets that market participants can sell to the Bank.

It appears unlikely that LIBOR lending rates will return to pre-2007 levels for some time, and a change in economic fundamentals will be needed before that can happen. Without a return of confidence and economic growth it is rational for profit maximising banks to turn to safer assets such as gilts and Bank of England deposits. While the government hopes that increased volumes of interbank lending will lead to increased lending to individuals and non financial corporations, it may be cheaper and more feasible for the government to intervene directly in theses markets than to try and force the commercial banking sector to restore lending to previous levels.

It may be reasonable to argue that the LIBOR rate could be used as a barometer for the rest of the economy, it did signal turmoil a year before the UK entered an economic recession, it is to be seen whether it will be an advanced indicator of economic recovery, but in future (hopefully distant) years the interbank market rates may be an advanced indicator of economic turmoil, which could be exploited both by short sellers in a variety of markets, and by any government wishing to take preventive measures well in advance of an economic downturn.

Word count: 1068

References:

Bank of England, 2009. Explanatory Notes – Wholesale [online]. Available from: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/mfsd/iadb/notesiadb/wholesale_discount.htm

[Accessed March 4^th 2009]

Simon Wells, 2002. UK Interbank Exposures: systemic risk implications (Bank of England financial stability review), December 2002 [online]. Available from: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/fsr/2002/fsr13art12.pdf

British Bankers' Association [2008]. BBA LIBOR – Frequently asked questions, March 4^th 2008 [online]. Available from: http://www.bba.org.uk/bba/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=225&a=1416&view=print [Accessed March 4^th 2009]

Financial Services Authority, 2008. List of Banks as compiled by the FSA on 31 December 2008 [online]. Available from: http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/list_banks/2008/dec08.pdf

[Accessed March 4^th, 2009]

Bank for International Settelments, 2006. International Convergence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards [online]. Available from: http://www.bis.org/publ/bcbs128.pdf [Accessed March 4^th, 2009]

Picillo C. (Banca d'Italia) [2009]. Presentation by Cristina Picillo, The interbank market after August 2007: what has changed and why?, given at the Agent-Based Modeling for Banking and Finance workshop, February 11^th, 2009. Available from: http://eco83.econ.unito.it/terna/abm-baf09/presentations/Picillo(presentation)_ABM-BaF09.pdf [Accessed March 4^th, 2009].

Buiter W. (Financial Times) [2009]. Now do something about the interbank market – directly, October 16^th, 2008. Available from: http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2008/10/now-do-something-about-the-interbank-market-directly/ [Accessed March 4^th, 2009].

Shelley Smith (Bloomberg) [2009]. Royal Bank of Scotland Raises 3 Billion Pounds by Selling Notes, March 4^th 2009. Available from: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=ay9F__d_kiyU&refer=europe [Accessed March 4^th 2009]

Ellen Freilich (Reuters) [2009]. MONEY MARKETS-Dlr 3-mth Libor rates up on global concerns. Available from: http://uk.reuters.com/article/marketsNewsUS/idUKN0351314420

090303?pageNumber=3 [Accessed March 4^th 2009].

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term. The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well :

Bonus Question:

Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell,then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,'and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct......leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God!''Oh my God!'
'Oh my God!'
'Oh my God!'
'Oh my God!'


THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.

I complained to both ARIN and GoDaddy about the invalid whois information for spedia's domain names and IP addresses, and the phone number in the whois database for spedia.com has changed to 925-627-1237, according to whitepages.com it's a Walnut Creek number, however, surprise surprise, nobody answers.
UPDATE: I finally contacted Mr Kirk Iliev at his new Sysmaster office and he told me Spedia is closed, I pointed out the fact that the website is still up and running and he said he would contact the administrator of the servers (Apparently there is or has been in the past a co-location agreement for the Spedia and Sysmaster servers) and get back to me, I will post any further updates as soon as I get them.

It turns out Sysmaster's London address is a forwarding address run by Westbury
However I found some more information that ties Spedia.com, inc and Sysmaster corp to each other, the whois record for the domain spedia.com lists mart@himel.com as the techinical contact, and this page says Martin Yosifov is Director of Marketing for Sysmaster, you can email him at martin@sysmaster.com
You can also email Mr Kirk Iliev on his new email which is kirk@sysmaster.com
According to the online CVs of Alex Ivanov and Konstantin Ivanov Kosev, Spedia was a subsidiary of Sysmaster
You can also call Sysmaster on (+1) 510-420-8837, and reach Martin Yosifov on extension 6 or Kirk Iliev on extension 222.

Spedia used to by a very popular paid4surf website back in the days of the .com boom. I signed up and after using it on and off for many years I finally got to the payment threshold of $30 (Actually I got $30.17), so I requested a cheque. Needless to say I never got one. So I decided recently to try and find out how I could get my money out of them. The website still works, but the software is kind of broken (crashes, doesn't count points properly and so on), last year the domain name spedia.com expired or was offline but it has since been registered again since 2010 so somebody has actually paid to keep it online. Ideally I'd like to start a class action lawsuit against whoever now owns the assets and liabilities of Spedia.com, inc, so if you're a lawyer please get in touch. If you've been ripped off by spedia, as many people have, also please get in touch. After some extensive research I have since made the following discoveries.

All the email addresses for spedia (such as account@spedia.com) do not accept incoming emails. Their listed address is according to http://www.spedia.net/sp_h_p_privacy.htm is

Spedia.com, Inc.
5801 Christie Ave,
Suite 475
Emeryville, CA 94608

however according to whitepages.com there is no company by this name registered in California. Also according to whitepages.com there are 67 entries listed at 5801 Christie Ave but none appear to be related to Spedia.com, inc
Their phone number listed at http://www.spedia.net/adv_reporting.htm
is 510 567 0880, this is also the contact number registered in the whois database for the domain spedia.com, if you look up the IP address you get a slightly different number, 510-567-0800. Sadly all these numbers have now been disconnected, and this leads me to believe they have moved out of Emeryville for good. This would appear to be the end of the road, but I don't give up that easily.

Spedia has somehow (by changing its name, being liquidated and incorporated as a new company, by selling its assets and liabilities, who knows how??) become SysMaster Corporation, and according to http://www.sysmaster.com/company/contact_us.php
their address is

SysMaster Corporation
370 N. Wiget Lane, Suite 100
Walnut Creek, CA 94598
United States of America

According to the Council of Better Business Bureaus http://goldengate.bbb.org/WWWRoot/Report.aspx?site=99&bbb=1116&firm=40817
the address of Spedia.com, inc is

370 N Wiget Ln Suite 100
Walnut Creek, CA 94598-2454

The IP addresses for spedia.com and spedia.net (which still work to this day) are 65.119.37.70 and 65.113.143.70, they are both registered to SPEDIA.COM, INC, and the technical contact is Iliev, Kirk as you can see from the whois database
http://whois.domaintools.com/65.113.143.70
Interestingly, the website of the new company, www.sysmaster.com, has IP address 65.113.143.77 which is also registered to SPEDIA.COM, INC
http://whois.domaintools.com/65.113.143.77
Also very interesting is the fact that Mr Iliev Kirk is now involved in SysMaster Corporation as "Director of Operations" according to
http://www.sysmaster.com/press/c_press072505.php

According to the Council of Better Business Bureaus the Manager of Customer Service is Victoria Lambreva, however I have not found any more information about her (yet, but she may not exist).

According to the Council of Better Business Bureaus the current phone number for Spedia is 510 420-1631, however I've tried calling many times and nobody ever answers.
According to http://www.spedia.net/sp_h_p_payment.htm the fax number for spedia is 510 635-3035, it appears to work but I don't have a fax machine. Interestingly this is the fax number of SysMaster Corporation according to
http://www.insuranceandtechguide.com/company/165990/Sysmaster_Corp.aspx

Whether or not Spedia.com, inc still exists, as you can see from
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/hosted?netname=Q0114-65-113-143-0,65.113.143.0,65.113.143.127
spedia.com, spedia.net and www.sysmaster.com are all operated within the same netblock and under the control of the same company/people, regardless of what they now call themselves. If indeed Spedia.com, inc doesn't exist as an incorporated legal entity, then the spedia website, by offering consumers the chance to enter into a legally binding contract with a company that doesn't exist, must be acting on a fraudulent basis. If the company does exist, even under a new name, it is still liable for all the payments that it never sent or got "lost". So either the appropriate law enforcement agencies should shut down spedia.com (for all we now they may be selling addresses to spammers or using the site for other unlawful purposes if it is being operated/hijacked by someone other that Spedia.com, inc), or the company owes money to quite a few people. If you're one of them, please add your comments. They have some absurd policy that if a cheque is lost they don't issue another, but under contact law they are still liable for the money.

If you want to try harassing SysMaster for your payment, all their (current valid and working) contact details are at http://www.sysmaster.com/company/contact_us.php, they even have a UK office so there is a chance UK members of Spedia could take legal action on this side of the pond and if it ever came to it we could send the bailiffs round to seize SysMaster's assets in London

Labels: Spedia SysMaster fraud paid4surf

Since paypal has been made a mandatory payment method on ebay UK I have been looking for a good alternative and I think ebid has what it takes. On http://www.ebid.net/ listings are free, you can chose whatever payment method you, and the final value fee is only 3%, compared to over 8% charged by ebay. And you have the freedom to chose whatever payment method you want, no restrictions or mandatory paypal. It is available worldwide and has localised sites for most countries. You can join for free on http://www.ebid.net/

Today is a great day for democracy in Europe, finally the people of the Republic of Ireland have spoken and rejected the Lisbon treaty, aka the European constitution, thus preventing a corrupt, inefficient and unaccountable organisation to overrule the sovereign will of millions of people throughout Europe. It is however shameful that no other government in Europe has allowed its people do hold a referendum, and it is shameful on Gordon Brown to have prevented a referendum in the United Kingdom, which is supposedly one of the oldest democracies in Europe. Thank you to all the people of Ireland who voted no.

Ebay have from today started forcing everybody selling on ebay.co.uk to accept paypal.
This comes just days after the UK banks started the new 'Faster Payments' scheme (see www.fastpayments.co.uk for details) that allows real time payments between UK account at no cost, hence making paypal pointless for UK transactions. Ebay are abusing their market position by forcing people to use paypal, just as Microsoft forced people to use Windows medial player, internet explorer and Microsoft Office. I have therefore reported them to the office of fair trading and urge all ebay sellers to do the same. You can contact the Office of Fair trading Consumer Direct service on the following numbers

Scotland: 01851 822401
Yorkshire and the Humber: 0113 2013670
South West: 029 20367800
East Midlands: 01522 563000
South East: 01622 626520
East of England: 01438 737460
London: 0208 7999200
North East: 01642 495600
North West: 020 31035167
West Midlands: 024 76786610

I am also going to write to my MP about this. If need be I will also contact the European commission, and the more people complain about this the more likely the authorities will be to take action. Please help if you can.

I have started the following petition on the downing street website

The UK could be part of the European Economic area, with access to the single European market, without being part of the EU, and hence saving billions of pounds in EU membership fees, by joining the European Free Trade Association. Britain wold also no longer be subject to most EU legislation, and would hence benefit from most of the benefits of being an EU member without having to be a member itself.

Please sign it at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/JoinEFTA/

IMPORTANT: Please note to sign this petition your must either be a permanent resident of the United Kingdom, or a British citizen, or both. If you are not British and don't live in the UK, please DO NOT sign.

In mid December I was quite ill and went into A&E at the local hospital. Turns out I have type 1 diabetes, and spend a week in hospital. During this time I was doing night shifts at the local mail centre in Norwich. The Royal Mail in its infinite wisdom had not considered the possibility that casual employees may take time off due to illness, so they didn't set up any mechanism to allow the mail centre to inform the wages office of periods of sickness, or at least this is the excuse they gave me for a while for not paying me SSP. They then informed me I was entitled to SSP but did not qualify for it, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. The manager in Sheffield who I was speaking to on the phone either A) is an idiot, B) thinks I am an idiot or C) Both A and B. In any case I filed a dispute through HMRC (New fancy name for the Inland Revenue, although I think the old name was better), and today I got a reply and it turns I'm right and the Royal Mail has to pay me after all, so if your employer refuses you SSP and you do qualify for it (And not everybody does so be sure to check that out first), take the time to file a dispute because it's well worth it

Please be aware if the MET thinks you're a terrorist remember chances are they will not arrest you. They will shoot you in the head instead. Whether you actually are a terrorist or not isn't really that relevant. And if you are innocent, nobody will be prosecuted, or resign.

Nice isn't it? And it runs on LPG too

Whoever was responsible for the recent attempted attacks on the UK should now be hiding in a hole. Not cos he might get caught, but out of shame. The UK decided to remove the Taleban and Baath regimes, and the armed forces went in, and whatever you may think of the aftermath, those regimes were swiftly annihilated. Now it looks like al-qaeda or some similar organisation was utterly pissed off because of this, and decided to retaliate. We now have two amateurish car bombs, that failed to detonate, because of visible petrol fumes that allowed the cars to be quickly identified. Then two would be suicide bombers drove a car into the airport, but cos their driving skills left much to be desired, they crashed into the doors, got the car stuck and failed to drive into the building. They failed to hurt anybody other then themselves, failed to kill themselves (Apparently some islamist terrorists think they get to go and screw 200 virgins if they die whilst killing infidels, although there is no way of knowing if these terrorists had such hopes), and tried to take a few swings at police and members of the public before being easily overpowered. One of the terrorists that attacked Glasgow airport apparently had an explosive device on him but failed to detonate it and police took it from him whilst he was in hospital. If terrorists were quoted on the stock market, their shares would be down today. In the mean time there are way more serious issues, one person has been killed in a huge pile up in Kent, and there are still serious flooding problems, making the rain and bad drivers a much bigger threat to national security than terrorists.

Any new EU treaty is by definition a bad idea. The EU treaty signed today is bad for all member countries as it is an attack on the sovereignty of nations. I therefore urge all residents and citizens of the United Kingdom to sign this petition, to ask the govt to give us a chance to vote on whether we want to be part of this new and more powerful EU