Panel debate: Restoring trust in financial services - FTAdviser.com

Panel debate: Restoring trust in financial services - FTAdviser.com

Financial Adviser, one of the papers for which I work, has been instrumental in the launch of this campaign, from a germ of an idea in November last year, through to the official launch earlier this month.

On the way we have had some very high profile support, from the outgoing archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, Rabbi Jonathan Romain, Keith Tondeur OBE - founder of Credit Action - and many big-name companies from the world of finance: NS&I, Legal & General, Vanguard and SCM Private.

But sadly not a single front-bencher of any party decided to get involved. We asked known religious politicians - not a single one wanted to lend their support to the Question of Trust campaign. I guess none of the Treasury, DWP or policy makers in Whitehall think that it is important to restore trust in financial services and to instil values of fidelity, faithfulness and honesty.

That pretty much explains the following: Barclays, HSBC, Northern Rock, Equitable Life, PPI mis-selling... etc etc

ho hum!

Now if only I had thought of this instead of doing my roots...

The wonders of the weather in England at the moment will never cease to amaze me. We are wearing our winter coats, scarves and thick black tights. Those days of wearing strappy sandals and pretty floral dresses have gone. They left in April, when the good weather disappeared.

I've never known a summer like this. Sure, it always rained during Wimbledon, to annoy the players from hotter climates and see if it could put them off their stride, but all through May, June and July, this persistent, cold drizzle has become exceptionally annoying.

Negatives

1) We have to wear winter clothes
2) We can't go outside and enjoy a walk at lunchtime
3) Weekends are spent running from shelter to shelter
4) BBQ... not on your life. Nobody is having any.
5) Summer skirts and pretty shoes have been relegated to a corner of the wardrobe
6) Apples and orchard fruit have not grown. They are all the size of small plums or have not ripened at all.

Now I am trying to find the positive in all this and there are many.

1) Bewel Water has now become full again after many years of drought
2) Salmon fisheries are happy about their reservoirs being refilled
3) There's no hosepipe ban
4) Women no longer have to worry about keeping their legs shaved or using fake tan.
5) We're becoming more cultured as we are looking for indoor pursuits, including museum and exhibition visits
6) It's an excuse not to do gardening

But in all this it has become a big talking point, binding everyone together this Jubilee year. One PR told me: 'I have taken up running and now my hair just continually looks like I am wearing a frizzy poodle on my head'.

This has given me ideas - pet-themed headgear. And here is my personal favourite, courtesy of the good folk at Icanhascheezburger:

Lolcats: NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA - Cheezburger - BETA

My Milkshake, the Pliny Way

My Milkshake….

ego ventus reputo suus vicis la la la la,

calor es lalala,

pueris es exspectere

Mea crassum coagulatum lactatum qua se e addo totus pueris ut horto,

et they're like,

its melior quam suus,

nil refert, quam vox suus

melior quam vestra

Poseo docui tuam

Sed ego habeo ut tutela

can animadverto vestri in it,

tu volo mihi ut docui techniques

ut freaks illa pueros, nil potest exsis et vendere,

sed teneo, furtificus adepto caught,

ecce! si vestri smart,

la la la la la, calor es supies,

la la la la la,

pueris es exspectere,

Mea crassum coagulatum lactatum qua se e addo totus pueris ut horto

addo perficio totus pueris ut horto

et they're like,

its melior quam suus,

nil refert, vox suus melior quam vestri

Poseo docui tuam,

(c) Simoney Girard

THIS PRESS RELEASE WRITER SHOULD BE SHOT

Prolexic Mitigates Politically Motivated Layer 7 DDoS Attack Against Client of VirtualRoad.org

HOLLYWOOD, FL – (May 16, 2012) – Prolexic, the global leader in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection services, announced today that it mitigated an application layer (Layer 7) attack on behalf of VirtualRoad.org (www.virtualroad.org).  This web hosting company based in Scandinavia provides a safe web presence for global, independent news media and human rights organizations that are denied freedom of expression in their home countries.

Unlike more common bandwidth floods aimed at the network (Layer 3) or transportation (Layer 4) layers, application layer (Layer 7) attacks can be structured to overload specific elements of an application server infrastructure.  Even simple attacks – for example those targeting login pages with random user IDs and passwords, or repetitive random “searches” on dynamic web sites – can critically overload CPUs and databases. 

One of VirtualRoad.org’s independent news media clients in Asia recently came under a complex Layer 7 GET flood attack. VirtualRoad.org’s DDoS mitigation team routed the client’s traffic to Prolexic’s 500 Gbps cloud-based mitigation platform.

Prolexic’s Security Operations Center (SOC) quickly determined the type of attack and discovered that it was launched through a large multi-hop proxy network in order to mask the attackers’ source IP address. In minutes, Prolexic mitigated an attack that could have brought the site down for many days or weeks.

“Launching DDoS attacks for politically and ideologically motivated purposes is not new, but is increasing in frequency,” said Neal Quinn, chief operating officer at Prolexic. “This illustrates the ubiquity of DDoS and that targets are no longer limited to high profile commercial web sites.”

VirtualRoad.org offers DDoS mitigation services as a core part of its standard and customized packages of web hosting services. As part of an agreement with Prolexic, VirtualRoad.org can leverage resources at Prolexic’s SOC to mitigate large and complex attacks that are beyond the capacity and capabilities of its own network and technicians.

“The collaboration between VirtualRoad.org and Prolexic works extremely well because we can leverage Prolexic’s proven experience in protecting large enterprises against DDoS attacks to give our social justice clients more peace of mind,” said Thomas Hughes, director, Media Frontiers, the parent company of VirtualRoad.org. “Our partnership with Prolexic is now a crucial element of our mitigation services, and thanks to Prolexic’s proven expertise, our clients can continue their freedom of expression without disruption, even in an increasingly hostile web environment.”

To learn more, read the full case study at www.prolexic.com/virtualroad.

About Prolexic

Prolexic is the world’s largest, most trusted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation provider.  Able to absorb the largest and most complex attacks ever launched, Prolexic restores mission-critical Internet-facing infrastructures for global enterprises and government agencies within minutes. Ten of the world’s largest banks and the leading companies in e-Commerce, SaaS, payment processing, travel/hospitality, gaming and other at-risk industries rely on Prolexic to protect their businesses. Founded in 2003 as the world’s first in- the-cloud DDoS mitigation platform, Prolexic is headquartered in Hollywood, Florida and has scrubbing centers located in the Americas, Europe and Asia.  To learn more about how Prolexic can stop DDoS attacks and protect your business, please visit www.prolexic.com, follow us on LinkedIn,Facebook and Google+ or follow @Prolexic on Twitter.

Cutest cat ever?

This cat is just so funny - he is really enjoying his liquid catnip treat! Usually cats make that sound when they're fighting, but a lot of cats also mrowwwomnomnomnom when they're excited and eating something really yummy - that's the only time when my cat makes this noise - when he's eating a piece of ham!

So listen in and turn the volume way up for maximum fun effect! And thanks to CuteOverload for the cool link

http://cuteoverload.com/2012/04/12/more-catnip-more/

Food and Fashion and Fun

I've been trying - not very hard, admittedly - to get my OriginalShimmeringDesigns.blogspot.com blog up and running to feature all my recipes and crafty stuff.

However I've been extremely lax. Thank goodness therefore for Samantha Downes and her new EllaMag, where she has been kind enough to feature some of my baking recipes and photos.

Please check out her amazing website at http://ellamag.com/?p=573 and comment on my foodstuff!

Oh, and if you would also please kindly follow OriginalShimmeringDesigns too I promise to start uploading lots of photos of my craft creations and recipes for your delectation!

Crash and Burn

I am trying to lose a little weight before my friend's wedding in May. I don't need to lose a lot, but enough so that I can laugh and speak while wearing the bridesmaid's dress.

I say this because the dress was so very snug in the first fitting and I have put on a little since then and I actually got asked the other day if I would like a seat on the train.

This is flattering in some ways - it means that I am pretty skinny except on my boobs and belly, so I look pregnant rather than fat. However it is depressing for someone who knows that a few sit ups each day wouldn't be so bad, but for whom the very thought of any form of physical exercise has sent shudders down the spine.

It's not that I don't want to exercise... I do. I love swimming but have been unable to do so thanks to prolonged labyrinthitis. I've had David Bowie chasing me on Esher staircases for weeks now, while small dwarves chant: 'you remind me of a man' while I sleep. It's most distracting.

But the last time I got into proper gym routines I lost far too much weight and ended up dangerously close to snapping in the breeze.

Is there anything apart from jogging/weights that would help me tone up without dropping weight? My metabolism is crazy and will go overboard if I try something too strenuous.

Tips would be greatly appreciated!

It's not Friday but the Budget has stolen a day from me.

It's not Friday, but the Budget has stolen a day from me. And caused me to repeat the headline of my blog post as my first line.

It's a cheap subbing trick that the sub editor's desk uses when they can't be bothered to think of a standfirst.

But that has nothing to do with chancellor George Osborne and his "Budget that rewards work"; his stern admonition to those wealthy who seek to avoid paying stamp duty on their big houses, "you have been warned" and various Despatches-box banging to emphasise his point that "Wallace and Gromit must stay in Britain".

 What happened yesterday was basically a later Budget (he usually stands to deliver at 12 noon on the dot) and 59 minutes (with some interruptions from a rather boisterous House of Commons) later, we had to scurry into meetings/to our desks to knock out the stories. In all we did 20 stories for the paper AND 10 stories for the web - from a team of just five journalists (I wasn't writing).

With all that copy editing, and with various hiccups on the way - from the machine at Marks & Spencer not working at 7:30 in the morning (the time I used to get up, last week, before the Budget planning wrecked my sleeping pattern) through to one of the Panelists being struck with a mystery bug and another forgetting to write their blog and various other minor irritations, I was completely copy blind by 5pm. I literally could not see to look at the screen nor even to look at the printed word. Which for a journalist whose job involves writing and reading copy, this is not a good thing.

Thankfully the Santander press office took pity on our poor team and treated us to Benihana's  in the evening - the food and the entertaining and slightly sexually disturbing chef almost banished thoughts of the boy-faced Osborne and his desk-thumpery.

However, it did not quite help.

This morning I was convinced that it was Friday. I sent out a twitter #FF to a bunch of people, most of whom said thank you; one was then convinced it was Friday and got worried that she'd missed a day of work.

I also started telling people I would see them tomorrow (thinking it was Saturday) when it blatantly wasn't and if my jeggings had not been hanging out to dry, I would have worn those to work forgetting that it is Thursday and I have three damn meetings.

Finally, I decided to go for my Friday morning ritual - a Cumberland sausage sandwich on brown bread at the Little Dorrit Cafe. Argle. Now I have to have one tomorrow as well ....

The only reason I can think is that on Wednesday, we did twice the amount of work that we would usually do on a press day and went out and almost died as a result. I think I also dreamt about work, which would add to my time-space-continuum confusion.

So thank you, George, for ruining my week, for stealing more money from female pensioners and seeking to shoo away all the wealthy people from the UK and send them scurrying to the Canton of Uri.

I am sure I am grateful. But you now owe me more than the £171 that the BBC's Budget calculator promises that I will be better off by as a result of Osborne's "working Budget."

Looking forward to penury

You know it is a bad time for pensions when even the Metro carries a story about the depletion of our pension savings.

Metro, by the way, is usually the one paper I strive to avoid in the morning, given that it usually only contains terribly depressing stories about children kicking ponies in the head or grandmothers sleeping with their progeny’s boyfriends - hardly the encouraging kind of get-to material one should read when going to work.

It’s so bleak sometimes I want to give up before I even get to the office.

But today, I wanted to get to the office to check my own pension savings. I’m afraid I’m one of those who have several small DC pots and one or two deferred DB pots left untouched. I intend to leave those DB pots untouched but to merge the three DC ones into my current scheme in the clutch-at-straws hope that by the sheer power of accumulated force, any incremental rise in interest rates/performance of the funds might be accelerated by having that additional £5k.

When I read that DB liabilities jumped £133bn in February alone, however, the safety of my old DB pots also looks miserable. And to think I dared to sign up for a company pension the very day I joined my first employer, Reed Elsevier Butterworths Tolley Et Al (as it was then, more or less) way back in 1999.

Was I really wrong? Jeff Prestridge, our esteemed columnist, has for many years extolled the virtues of Isas to augment - and perhaps even replace - traditional pension pots. I have an Isa too, of course - 10 per cent of salary to pension/Isa, 10 per cent to charity, the rest on the mortgage and the darn cat. That’s what I always believed.

But even with the wondrous Broughy of Schroders boosting my long-term Isa savings and cash, well, doing bleep all, I’m not exactly going to roll in the lap of luxury with this little bunch.

Now it seems with an estimated shortfall of 40 per cent I need to boost my own savings considerably. Perhaps even make it 25 per cent, 30 per cent of my monthly income. On my salary and with my bills, mortgage and travel expenses, that seems barely reasonable.

I’m pretty boring - I don’t drink, I don’t go out clubbing and my taste in clothes is so avant-garde that I pretty much hate, loathe and detest clothes shopping. But even if I squeeze a few more pence out of my salary, will any of it make any difference in the long-run?

We might not even have pensions by the time I come to retire which, it seems, will be a few weeks before I die - at least I won’t have to worry about long-term care costs, as I will be in my grave.

The only sniff of help might be from the fact that I have a property, although I am getting worried about my windows, my ceiling, rising crime (not in my property, although that could be a way out of my personal pensions crisis .... perhaps granny-crims will be on the rise... ) and a million other things to worry about, not least the fact the leaseholder of the flats has gone awol, just when I wanted to buy back some years on my lease.

I’ve forgotten my thread. Oh yes, so basically my Isa savings are pitiable, my pensions are pitiful and my retirement prospects are the pits. Well this is cheery.

I should never have read the paper this morning. Next time I board the 8:50 to London Bridge I’m going to get a copy of the Metro and shove it up, well, maybe I’ll be too depressed to do any shoving. Perhaps I’ll start collecting them and store it as fuel for when I’m 75.

Nobody understands me

Apparently I do not speak or write English and therefore people who do speak and write English cannot understand me.

I say this because quite evidently, I can do both fluently. However, it seems that nobody gets what I'm saying, so I must either assume they do not listen, they do not understand because they haven't grasped the meaning of my words and so take it upon themselves to do what they think I meant, or that they are being deliberately obtuse.

What has prompted this outburst?

Well several things. First of all, I put a job advert in for a 'literate reporter' to work across features and news on our weekly financial newspaper.

Out of the 60-plus entries I received, about five came through with no spelling or grammatical mistakes on them.

Many of the applicants had proudly informed me they were 'fluent' in English, only to assure me of the complete opposite through their appalling spelling, lack of syntax and complete fabrication of vocabulary. 'Journalisticism' is not a word, nor is our paper called XXXX 'Advertiser' (although we do carry a lot of adverts, so perhaps you were just being a smart Alec. In any case, you went into my 'idiot' pile').

One man went to great lengths to tell me how much he wanted this job, his dream job, because he loved Formula 1.

I don't know how he got from IFA to 'Bernie Ecclestone' but he also went onto my 'idiot pile'.

When I have a free moment, each of these idiots will receive a letter from me explaining why I dismissed their application instantly and suggesting that, if they wish to get a job in journalism ('journalisticism') then they either learn how to spell or use a spell checker.

Because I am the human spell-check, sweethearts.

So, either 55 of these applicants were being deliberately obtuse, failed to understand my meaning or just didn't read the job description properly, or I was not writing in English. So many people cannot be wrong... can they?

The second thing to tick me off is the lack of understanding that people have when I speak on the phone. Admittedly you now only have my word for it but I can at times, and helped by gin, sound extremely posh. Sort of like a sardonic Lady Thatcher but without the apparent insanity.

So when I speak on the phone, I am offended all the time when people whose verbal skills are only slightly better than that of a Macaw keep asking me to repeat things because they 'don't understand my accent'.

This really gets to me. How many 't's must I overemphasise on words until you catch my drift? Why should I have to say 'ow-ah' instead of 'hour' or 'Stre-am' instead of 'Streatham'?

However, I am evidently not speaking English. (I am, just in case you didn't already pick up the gist of this post).


The third thing that frustrates me is when I email things so carefully, using short words and short sentences, and people ask me to explain it all verbally.

My temptation in this matter is to just read my email to them, pointing at each word in turn and enunciating v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y the various syllables just in case the vocabulary was too much for them.

This does not go down well with colleagues. Or my mother, who put the phone down on me, but that was probably fair enough.

I don't mind people asking me to explain things, or to clarify things. But when they have an email in front of them and ask me: 'What did you want me to do with this?' the logical conclusions to draw are either that I have been writing in ancient Sanskrit or they just haven't bothered to read the email properly.

All these things, and so many, many more things - oh, another example: Facebook posts where people instantly jump down my throat thinking I've declared allegiance to one flag when it is clear to all the other 30 commentators that I had categorically not declared any such thing - make me sad.

What has happened to communication? What has happened to the beauty of the written word, where once upon a time, great novelists luxuriated in finding the mot juste or, if they couldn't, they just stuck a French phrase in, like wot I just did, and pretended they were educated.

Alas! Text speak and 140-character Twitter feeds have killed the radio, television and newspaper star.

KTHNXBY

No cash please, we're mates!

Your friends will be borrowing £1 coins off you: beware

As we start 2012 with a whimper, carefully nursing our battered wallets back to financial health by not spending on anything except reduced lines baked beans and bread, let us not forget those whose friends are responsible for their penury.

Yes, friends. I'm not talking about lending money to friends - although I would no longer advocate this as you never know what situations may happen to prevent your friends from repaying you in full, in the time you needed. It can affect the dynamics of a relationship or, like Charlie Sheen's character Charlie in an earlier-than-Ashton series of Two and A Half Men, mean you get stung in an elaborate plot that involves you sleeping with your step-sister-in-law-to-be, lending her $50,000 and buying a Ferrari you didn't want.

What I am talking about is the Cash Converter friend. The friend who turns to another for all their coinage and notage needs. The friend who gets the bus with you and has not got £2 for the fare. The friend who does not have anything smaller than a £20 when it comes to paying tips. The mate who suggests getting a taxi but somehow does not carry anywhere near enough money to foot the bill.

According to a Capital One survey, Brits have been forking out £562 million a year as a result of ‘subbing’ friends.

More than 43 say they never receive a penny of this borrowed money back.

Now you have been warned. Next time you go out with friends, ask them to make sure they have some cash. Or don't carry any yourself and make sure you recoup your 2011 losses in 2012!

Capital One asked respondents which items they had paid for on behalf of others who did not have cash in the past three months:
Drinks in cash-only bars/restaurants	18%
Items bought in cash-only stores e.g. markets	13%
Tips in bars and restaurants	12%
Taxi fares	10%
Charity donations and fundraisers	6%
Items purchased with cash due to a minimum card spend	6%
Tolls and one-off/unexpected charges	6%

Muddlin' through

This seems to be the mot du jour as the US continues to debate the finer points of cutting taxes and expenditure, the Tea Party continues its lunacy, Spanish people take to the streets without there being any young bulls to kill and the spectre of debt knocks at the door of M Sarkozy et Co.

Germany - the former 'sick man of Europe' seems to have shaken off his cold and emerged triumphant, standing tall through the sun roof of his VW as he zooms along the autobahns regardless of rising oil prices. What cares he? He has cash in the bank and the bank has cash in its own banks, and well, so on and so forth.

The UK too seems to have found its feet again, slipping and sliding but struggling ahead nevertheless, free from the encumbersome burden of the Euro and thankful for a nice stretch of water between the island and the continent, or else there would be more political force exerted upon it from Brussels to cough up for the Piigs and the next dominoes in the line should these all collapse.

FTSE100 keeps fluctuating between 5800 and 6000, bound in a range but buoyed by corporates putting out relatively good interims, while gold - ah, gold - shines like a star in the firmament for those canny investors who paid attention to my postings in 2006/2007 and bought it back then.

Too late now for the rest, perhaps, unless you can melt down your gran's old rings in a frying pan.

China is in for a soft landing and on the Eastern front, Japan's equity markets have not been as dire as one would expect, although exo-shocks to the region are still very much on the cards as we head into typhoon season.

As for me, well the money under my bed is now showing signs of strain as the bed itself looks like it is breaking. Depreciation of Norwegian wood stock after six years of wear and tear is having an effect on the resale value of my sofa bed in the secondary market. Home improvements and renovations may need to be a wise expenditure in this market, without being able to get off the first rung of the housing ladder and onto the second.

However, owner of the freehold might not like me adding decking onto the outside of the property and erecting a barbeque/half-covered seating area on the first floor of the flats in which I live. Therefore perhaps I should invest in shoring up the bed until the cash beneath it is safe enough.

Note: of course I've not put £ under my bed. I fear the eroding effect of inflation. Instead, I keep the ex-boyfriend's body under there. It is eroding by itself, but at least it keeps the bed frame from collapsing. The smell might be one of the reasons the resale of my flat is becoming more difficult.

Still - gotta keep muddling through.

Note: of course the ex-boyfriend is not under my bed. I'm not that cruel. I let him live in a cage in the garden.

Greece, Greece, Greece - and Harry Potter

And the Walls Came Tumbling Down

Every single fund manager in the world is talking about Greek debt, whether or not he or she actually manages Greek debt.

UK equity investment managers are putting out statements about the situation in the Hellenic Republic; US academics are stitching together 19th Century political and economic history and the current situation in the Aegean.

This week we received about 30 press releases about Greece: manager comments on Greece, Forex traders' comments on Greece, Equity fund managers on the impact of Greece's debt on the Eurozone, Bond fund managers' concern about sentiment towards fixed income, Consumer groups lamenting the knock-on effect, SAY NO campaigners heralding this as yet another reason to stay well out of the Euro, Australian Farmers simply taking the proverbial out of the UK because they couldn't care less..

All week we have had missives of doom and gloom, such as this one, which interpolated normal text with BIG BOLD LETTERS ABOUT UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: "Despite politicians expressing their strong commitment to keep the Euro together through this new package, we continue to worry about the peripheral countries' capacity to deliver on their adjustment programme."

But when it becomes ridiculous is when fund management groups strive too hard to attract the attention of media pundits and financial journalists with their own take on Greece.

For example, one press release we received this week said: "This weekend’s family activity centred on the final film in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, 10 years on from when we saw the first instalment of the magical film series in 2001. Meanwhile in the Monday to Friday muggle world, the markets are focusing on the modern classical tale of Greece, that also began 10 years ago in 2001 when they entered the European Monetary Union. How will that blockbuster story end?

"In the final instalment of Harry Potter, the story centres on the deathly hallows. Spookily, the three elements of the deathly hallows are comparable to some of the magical instruments Greece has at its disposal."

I mean, really, mashing together the last of the great Potter blockbuster films with the situation in Greece is going three Quidditch pitches too far in an effort to get our attention.

Expelliarmus Hellenicus Debticus!

Harry Potter and the Debtly Hallows

What has annoyed me today?

1) People ringing me up at work on press day to tell me how their day is going. I do care, I DO. But I WORK. Send me an email, or call me after 6pm. Is that too much to ask? I WORK
2) Mum insisting on having a text conversation with me WHILE I AM AT WORK. I AM AT WORK. I cannot text or spell correctly when bashing out texts at speed on my BlackBerry Torch (TM)
3) People ringing me up at work on press day to ask me for directions to my mum's house.... WHEN THEY HAVE BEEN THERE FOUR TIMES BEFORE. I am NOT STREETMAP.com. Last time I looked, I was not a search engine, a map, a cartographer, a policeman, a community support officer, a local cabbie or the freaking A-Z. I WORK.
4) Being asked to buy London 2012 Olympic Tickets - not for someone to GO to the olympics, no, no, I have to spend my overdraft for a ticket FOR POSTERITY...

I WORK, people, I WORK. Do you understand the concept of full-time employment?

I also freelance in what passes for SPARE TIME. This means I work at home, too.

When I say I am busy, I am not saying 'I am busy filing the hard corny bits on my feet for a few hours so I cannot talk to you/come for a coffee/have a sleepover at yours despite being a fricking adult whose idea of a sleepover does not consist of staying on the mattress in the spare room of a newly married couple.'

Even if I WERE shaving the corny bits off my feet, I should have the freaking right to do so without being made to feel guilty for not pandering to your ridiculous requests.

So the next person who rings me to whinge or ask a bleeding ridiculous question that even an 11-year old would be ashamed to ask, I will collect my foot shavings, stick them in a freaking home-made cupcake and watch you freaking eat it.

YEAH.

Why I will NEVER eat at Strada again

Strada restaurant

I'd remembered its prawns, you see. Delightful, light, juicily marinaded gambas in a sweet white wine and chilli sauce. I remembered them with fondness, which is why, when we were looking for a decent restaurant to eat at last night, Strada seemed like a good choice.

I don't really know what went wrong last night, other than the restaurant having no professional serving staff and hiring a shipping container of rabid chimps in uniform.

Don't get me wrong, the food was good. But it was just the wrong food at the wrong time, the wrong cutlery and the wrong kind of service. Ie, none. It was like being trapped in a Norman Wisdom spoof.

I'd already lunched well (at The Ivy, no less) so only wanted a light meal and no starter.

But it was a chore to get one of the waiting staff to take our order in the first place. My companion decided to pretend to cry like a baby, which disturbed the Yankee next to us.

Just at the point when I considered standing on the chair and doing a full-on belly dance, waiter One came up. The chap with whom I was dining ordered a plate of cured meats to start and spaghetti for main.

I said: 'Please may I have the prawns and a salad, but can I have these as my main course please?'

Waiter One said: 'You want this as your main?'

Me: 'Yes please, I don't want a starter, so please can I have the prawns and the salad as my main course?'

*DONG* (sound of Pavlovian warning that trained chimps cannot compute when the parameters of their training changes).

We waited.

Waiter TWO brought my companion's cured meats for starter, along with my prawns, without the salad.

I called him back. "Excuse me please, but I ordered these prawns as a main course to eat with my salad. Can they be put to one side please?"

Waiter Two started to take them away, whereupon I had visions of the prawns being left out in the meantime, or microwaved to keep hot.

Now, I don't mind diahorrea, after all, it's a good way to get thin quick without having to diet or throw up. But I don't like the feeling associated with bum curry, to wit, a pain akin to having a small, exoskeletal, fire-breathing animal driving a spiked chariot through your colon before developing into an intense burning sensation in the anus.

So I thought it expedient to eat the prawns there and then.

But I was not happy. And then, on the first prawn, I realised that they'd not brought me a bowl with lemon to clean my fingers. How was I supposed to shell the prawns? Eat them whole like an anaconda and hope that I can crap out the shell? That wouldn't be like the feeling of diahorrea - that would really be the pain of passing a small exoskeletal creature through my duodenum. I'm not ready for that kinda thrill.

I confess that I lost my temper and ranted for a good five mins while my patient dining companion just waited for me and offered me his napkin instead.

When we eventually attracted the waiter's attention - it was back to Waiter One - I explained that I had ordered a salad to eat with the prawns, and that I needed a bowl of water.

He brought me my salad and a bowl for finger-cleansing, and a menu so that I could order a main course as well - I wasn't going to sit there while my date ate by himself. I ordered a pizza from Waiter one.

Waiter Three came up and took away my companion's plate before he had finished eating.

Waiter One came up and put a long, thin jar of chilli oil on our table. I assumed this was for the pizza, because he didn't say anything when he put it there.

Waiter Two came with our main course, and tried to give it to the Yankees next to us, who had just paid their bill and were ready to leave.

WTH????

Waiter Two left the food on our table, but neglected to clear away my dirty napkins or the bowl of water, and didn't give us any cutlery with which to eat our food!

Then we had fun trying to catch the attention of a waiter - it was not that crowded by that time - there were many empty tables - so that we could eat our food without resorting to picking it up with our fists and ramming it into our faces like some retarded ape on amoxycillin.

Waiter Three walked past so we asked him for some cutlery so that my date could eat his spaghetti and I could have clean cutlery for my pizza.

Waiter Three went away.

Waiter Two came to our table. With ANOTHER salad.

I still had the original, untouched, beside me. When I explained that I'd only ordered one salad, he tried to take both away. I had to hold down the original salad. It was very hard to explain in one-syllable words that I only wanted one salad and to take his sticky fingers off my food before I sawed them off with a (dirty) knife.

Waiter Three came back with clean cutlery, which he then proceeded to lay carefully upon a very dirty prawn-sauce encrusted napkin.

He gave my date a knife and fork with which to eat his spaghetti.

Half-way through the meal, when the spaghetti was almost finished, Waiter Four asked him 'Do you want any grated parmesan on that'!!!!

Waiter One returned to ask if everything was fine - given the whole debacle that preceeded this, we just burst out laughing. I don't think he understood why.

Quite frankly, I am pleased that 'service' was optional as there were WAY too many cooks and they would have spoiled our broth, or would have brought us two bowls of it and then forgotten that we needed cutlery.

I mean, four waiters, one simple order and basic knowledge of things like: 'humans need cutlery to eat' and 'give the customer pepper and grated cheese before they start eating'.

Seriously, Strada is supposed to hire staff with basic skills and understanding of how restaurants work. This isn't a Butlin's-style self-serve canteen. Nor is it a tiny one-man band trying to operate on a skeleton staff.

To be honest, the only reason why I didn't complain was because my dining companion is such an affable, laid-back and good-natured person who finds humour in everything.

Otherwise, I would have stabbed waiter four to almost death with the dirty cutlery that waiter two had left behind, poured chilli oil into his still-bleeding, prawn-infused wounds, thrown dirty finger-water over Waiter one while screaming for "Shaved Parmesan, now, or the Yankees get it", and force-fed Waiter Three with all the salads I could find this side of the Southbank.

"Think I like Rocket that much, do you? DO YOU? Choke on that, you imbecile."

And that is why I will NEVER eat at Strada again. Prawns or no Prawns.

I just might not see the funny side next time.

Prawns