Monthly Archives: March 2002

Criminal Waste

Tuesday March 19th 2002

Last night I checked out my bank statement online. On Friday of last week a ?399 transaction was made in payment to BT Cellnet/Internet.

My mobile is a vodafone one, and although my internet service is provided by BT it costs ?385 a month less than the amount withdrawn. So I called BT this morning, then BT internet – both of whom denied taking the money from my account. So I called my bank and asked them to investigate the transaction.

At just after four pm they called me back and explained that my details had been used to purchase a couple of mobile phones from a BT Cellnet shop in Leeds.

I have never been to Leeds and I was freaked at this point.

Turns out that something in my rubbish was used – like a bill or a statement that has accidentally been thrown out. The fraudster called the shop and arranged payment over the phone, then turned up with the bill on them to prove their identity when they collected the purchase.

Pick holes in this plot if you like, but that’s the way my bank pieced it together.

Aside from being quite a cool crime, it’s something that could have gone undetected for almost a month if I did not have internet banking set up.

So, just to let you know, this is obviously a new-ish type of crime… get shredding your paper rubbish.

R269-653

Monday March 18th 2002

I hate that.

I hate that I can remember that one letter, six digit combination almost eight years after it ceased to be relevant to me.

Let me explain. I used to be in the Ministry of Defense. Or rather, I used to be a civilian working for the ministry of defense, as an electrician. The number above was my reference number to the MoD, my code, my tag, my unique ID in the sea of bodies that work for the great lumbering organization that makes up the MoD. We needed it for everything you can think of; call in sick and you need your number, ask for leave and you need to quote it – miss a college class and your number gets taken down. Then it all goes in your file. File R269-653.

At the time it was pretty useful, I suppose – I don’t remember feeling any opinion either way on the fact I was just a number to the personnel people. There’s another funny thing – most companies have an HR department. The MoD has a personnel department – they deal in persons, or numbers, not humans which are not.

But in later years it irks me somewhat. Knowing that in some filing cabinet somewhere, under a tab marked R269-653, there’s a whole load of information documenting my every move for five years. Which days I was late, which days I was sick and the reasons for them. Every time I wanted to take holiday, except that it was called “leave” in the MoD, I filled in a form which is now in that filing cabinet, where ever it is.

I didn’t leave the MoD in the best of ways. I was stabbed in the back by men I respected – my boss and his boss, two people I really thought I could count on. When it came to the crunch they closed ranks and hung me out to dry – even lieing in front of a panel of people who were judging my future. And for what? To keep the “integrity” of the MoD? To save their own faces?

Hey, it didn’t matter anyway – I’ve moved on and made a success of my life, to a point far beyond I could ever have gone with the MoD. So I don’t really want to dwell on what went wrong, how I carried the blame, how my entire family used to talk about me at family gatherings, saying I’d screwed up my life because a job with the MoD was a job for life. I mean, why dwell on that? It would only make me bitter in a way that frightens me.

To forget completely, though, I would need to forget that number. And that’s the difficult part.

Outatime

Sunday March 17th 2002

I’m suffering from a lack of time at the moment. Weekends seem to disappear in a blur, and the working week is almost over by the time I get a handle on things. Not sure what I’m doing wrong, but I need to slam the brakes on somehow and spare some time for stuff I want to do.

I have never been a genius at time-management, even getting a Palm personal organizer for my birthday last year has failed to cure what is a fairly seat of the pants life style. Not that I do much on a daily basis that I’d consider to be frantic. I just seem to run out of time and I cant quite explain why.

I’m thinking that a lot of it hinges on how tired I am. I spent most of last week in a daze due to insomnia, so even when I did have a couple of spare hours in the evening, I didn’t feel motivated to do anything other than sit in front of the TV. This week I’m going to try and take control by making myself go to bed at a sensible time. Perhaps a routine would help too, like, if I decide that Monday night was jogging night, Wednesday night is five-a-side night and Friday night is pub night, I can do the other stuff on the spare days in between.

Hmmm… but what about computer night, games night, skateboarding night… and other stuff. Wow – this is harder than it first seems.