As everyone in the UK is well aware, this month saw the first run on a UK bank for 150 years. This frantic dash to withdraw cash came despite the soothing reassurances of senior figures from the bank, the Bank of England and subsequently the government.

It was not surprising that many customers ignored these calming words. In order to be reassured you need to have some level of trust in the person or institution doing the reassuring. Nobody trusts politicians or the BoE bods that put up interest rates, so their words obviously counted for nought. And trust in the banks themselves is certainly not what it was.

For example, my own bank - the HSBC, which I know for a fact has spent fortunes on CRM - rarely seems able to make up its mind what to say to me. Its representatives appear to say whatever comes into their heads.

On holiday in Italy last week, I found I could no longer use my debit card. The call centre worker I called at my own considerable expense said I should have informed the bank before using the card abroad, that the card had been flagged as a fraud risk as a result, that it would have to be cancelled as soon as I returned to the UK, and that if I wanted to have hassle-free use of my new card abroad in future I would have to upgrade to Bank Account Plus. Which involves a monthly fee, of course.

I was told I could withdraw £100 (about €140) in cash but after that no more. So, given the spiralling price of pasta, everything had to go on my credit card for the rest of the trip. 

On my return I called the bank to arrange delivery of a new debit card. However, another representative in the same anti-fraud team I spoke to previously informed me that my card didn’t need to be cancelled, that the fraud alert was nothing to do with me having used it abroad and was instead due to “intelligence gathering” that indicated my card had been cloned. He told me to change my PIN and carry on with the old card. Which I have done. 

All in all a very confusing, annoying and not in the least bit reassuring experience. It has left me wondering whether the HSBC knows its APR from its elbow.

Talking of APR, I also recently emailed the bank to point out that new customers were being offered a much higher interest rate on their savings than loyal old customers like me. I wondered if I could possibly benefit from the higher rate.

No prizes for guessing whether it said, yes certainly sir, or bugger off and be grateful for what you’ve got.

I think I’ll withdraw the lot and put it into Zopa...

Update, December 2007:

My debit card expires at the end of the month, so I called HSBC to find out when the replacement would arrive. It had already been dispatched, apparently, long enough ago to be considered lost or stolen. The bank's representative said she would cancel the errant card, and issue a replacement - which I asked to collect from my branch. It would take five working days (a week, in short) to arrive.

The next day I tried to pay for groceries with my debit card. The card was declined, and a security guard arrived rather promptly to ask if I could prove that my name matched the name on the card. Fortunately I could. A subsequent exploratory attempt to get cash from an ATM resulted in a swallowed card and confirmed suspicions. HSBC had marked the card in my wallet lost or stolen, not its missing replacement. A further call to HSBC about this incompetent mistake resulted in plenty of apologies but no actual action. No, I couldn't have upfront interest waived on any cash withdrawals on my HSBC credit card, the replacement card could not be hurried up, and no, I could not have any financial compensation.

I picked up the replacement card on schedule after the week's wait with a rather empty feeling in my wallet.

Another week later I found a note on the doormat, from the bank's delivery agent, asking me to call about the card that they hadn't been able to deliver...

I recently enjoyed a wonderful concert by David Sylvian and friends at London’s Royal Festival Hall. I would have enjoyed it even more were it not for the intrusive attempts to prevent the performance being recorded by members of the audience.

Before the band came on stage, the tannoy announced that photography would not be permitted because it would “endanger the performers on stage”. Everybody laughed out loud at this transparent lie. The edict was, of course, about copyright control. Even if Mr Sylvian were momentarily blinded by a flash, it’s hard to see how this might endanger him, since he gave the performance sitting down, and the rest of the musical ensemble was about as mobile as a waxwork. As any fan knows, Sylvian is all about emotion, not motion.

I happened to be sitting next to two fans who clearly wanted to record as much as possible for posterity. One sat with a video camera perched surreptitiously on his knee, capturing the on-stage lack of movement at 50 frames per second, while the other had a bulky digital SLR camera hidden under his jacket. The long lens emerged snakelike at regular intervals to take a snap.

Maybe these two were hardened bootlegging felons - I don’t know and I don’t care. What I do know is that I spent what seemed like a quarter of the concert with a burly, sweaty security guy leaning in front of me trying to give the bootleggers an earful. It wasn't effective at preventing copyright theft and as ambient background it wasn’t exactly adding to the experience.

It’s a shame on levels beyond my spoiled enjoyment. Sylvian is a smart, experimental artist in more ways than one. He set up his own record label in 2003 to allow him to do entirely his own thing and I suspect he does the bulk of his business online. He has a lovely web site, offers downloadable track samples and podcasts and generally seems to “get” what the post-iTunes music business needs to be all about.

So he really ought to be open to the needs of people who want to have a record of his performances.

Today we’re in a transitional phase. As digital recording devices become smaller, more unobtrusive, and higher in fidelity, it will become harder and harder for the sweaty, burly guards to tell who is bootlegging and who is simply wearing a pair of thick-framed spectacles. My advice is that performers and venues should give up policing piracy now.

What performers ought to do is go with the unstoppable flow rather than resisting it. It’s cheap and simple to record every concert, and make the official recordings available for download. Filming doesn’t have to be broadcast quality - it just has to beat the fidelity of a knee-held camcorder or waving cameraphone. Then charge a reasonable sum and almost everyone who wants a copy will buy one. Or why not give a download voucher to ticket holders and charge everyone else a nominal sum? This would not only boost takings but also remove most of the market for pirates and bootleggers.

And it might even mean that, in the future, I might be able to see the stage, rather than an armpit.

I'm delighted to learn that IT Week's web site has been shortlisted for an award by the UK Association of Online Publishers, for achievement in design and usability.

It's even more gratifying that the award category cuts across all web sites in the UK, large and small, business and consumer. We are shortlisted alongside The Sun, The Telegraph and the BBC.

Even if we don't carry off the silverware on the night of the awards, I'm very happy that we've got this far.

We revamped the IT Week web site in November 2006 and usability was very high on our list of priorities, so it seems we've done a decent job.

I've just handed back the first car I've ever tested in my capacity as a professional poker of new products. Sadly Lamborghini of Bologna didn't lend me a supercar for the weekend so I could test out its Bluetooth connection. No, the Nice Car Company of Ladbroke Grove gave me a Mega City electric car for a couple of days so I could review it for our BusinessGreen blog.

Over the years I've driven a lot of vehicles: scooters, motorbikes, vans and all sorts of cars from a clapped out 2CV (not mine) to a brand new Porsche 911 (also not mine, and which I spun in the rain but thankfully didn’t hit anything with).

Along the way I learned how to, er, break into cars. Not because that 911 was stolen - it’s just that it used to be a lot easier to lock your keys in the car. Today you tend to lock a car by plipping a button on a keyfob dibber, but for years I drove old bangers where you locked them by pushing down a button next to the window and then slamming the door. And that’s when you’d spot the keys still hanging from the steering column.

The Mega City brought all that flooding back on Sunday morning. It does have modern remote central locking, but it also unfortunately locks the doors automatically when you drive off. Wanting to get some nice shots of the car in the sun I jumped in, switched on, drove into position, jumped out, slammed the door. And then spotted the keys hanging from the steering column.

Fortunately I was able to pop open the door, but I can’t imagine why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to have a car automatically lock itself. If you’re going to build that kind of system surely you need to sense two things: is the key in the ignition and is anyone sitting inside?

That aside, my time with the car was a lot of fun. My full review of the Mega City will appear at BusinessGreen.com shortly.

Update 19 October 2007:

My review of the Nice Mega City electric car is finally online. It was delayed while we were busy launching the new bigger and better BusinessGreen.com web site.