Morning:
5°c
I had a letter this week from the fraud department of a major building society, informing me that someone had tried to open an account in my name, and asking me to call them to confirm itwasn't me. My immediate reaction was to suspect fraud perpetrated by crooks pretending to be the building society; so before I phoned, I Google-mapped their office address.
When I got through I voiced my suspicions and suggested that the woman tell me the name of the golf course across the road from where she was - allegedly - sitting. Needless to say, she was incapable of doing this and instead called across to the office to ask someone else.
Or did she? Perhaps she simply bought a little time while she Google-mapped too? That's the trouble with the internet: by making it possible for us to engage in myriad completely anonymous financial transactions by pushing a few buttons, what should be an enormous boon to humanity has in fact introduced new extremes of fraudulence and distrust. More-over, since we're all now instantaneously interconnected, the web isn't just an information superhighway but a misinformation one as well.
As the global financial system is routed by electronic panic, so the cyber-criminals are winning the battle. In the small hours of yesterday morning Microsoft issued a warning that its Internet Explorer web browser was severely compromised: more that 10,000 websites had been affected by malware designed to raid the computers of people who logged on to these sites and then extract information. The initial object of the cyber-criminals seems to have been passwords for games, but they may well widen their ambit to banking information and credit card details.
Last week, on Newsnight, I saw Martha Lane Fox, the dotcom millionaire, deny that internet commerce could in any way be implicated in the current financial crisis. This seems to me utter nonsense - it's indisputable that the ease with which consumers could buy online helped to rack up a trillion-worth of unsecured British credit card debt. As for the banks, keen to cut their wage bill, they embraced the internet, even giving out loans online.
My hunch is that just as much as this recession will be viewed as a toxic debt bubble, so it will also be viewed as an electronic one. From the frauds perpetrated by Bernard Madoff to the billions ripped off by cyber-criminals, the common currency has been the pixel quite as much as the pound. And just as our current travails should result in a root-and-branch reform of the banking system, so should they encourage a reassessment of internet commerce. Bankers should look their customers in the face, while consumers and retailers should once more speak unto one another. This society needs more personalised contact and an end to the anonymity of the electronic crowd.
For those who claim that such Luddite nonsense will lead to the collapse of our prosperity, I say: no need to worry - it's already happened.
Dignity in the face of gangs
The parents of Rhys Jones, the 11-year-old shot dead in Croxteth last year, have endured the trial of those accused of their son's killing with great dignity. In the meantime they've helped raise £2 million needed for a youth centre to be named in Rhys's memory, surely a far better solution to youth crime than heavy-handed policing.
Now the guilty verdicts have been returned on the gunman, Sean Mercer, and those of his gang who protected him, we all hope the Jones family can achieve some kind of closure. Nevertheless, the 22-year sentence handed down to Mercer — only five years older than Rhys at the time of the killing — does seem severe. With our prisons cesspits of drugs and criminality, there's little chance Mercer will be anything but brutalised by more than two decades inside. Perhaps those who clamour for justice in these cases should reflect on how those three shots in Croxteth didn't just extinguish one young life but two.
My lament for a great five and dime
Family lore has it that my American grandfather kept the family afloat during the Great Depression by organising closing-down sales for department stores, so it was with a sense of tradition that I took the kids over to Brixton on Saturday so we could witness the demise of Woolies, the original five and dime.
After the long boom years, the emptying shelves, the slightly frenzied shoppers and the overall atmosphere of desperation were desolating, but saddest of all was a dispute between the till staff and a woman who'd bought a wickerwork trunk and not been given her 50 per cent Closing Down Sale discount.
As she grew more and more irate, I itched to intervene and give her my own percentage: madam, you may have paid over the odds for your trunk — but these poor souls are going to have to pack theirs and move on altogether.
