Enough is enough.

I have drafted a new Act of Parliament to save us all from any more imbecility of the part of banks, local authorities, airports and other such organisations who seem to regard our time as theirs to waste.

 Administrative lunacy seems to have become a defining national characteristic and its got to stop.

Welcome to the Administrative and Banking Services(Unreasonable Requests and Delays)Act 2010…or ABSURDA 2010 for short.

Time is very precious. Mine is. Yours is. It’s illegal to waste someone’s time with unsolicited mail and spam. So what about absurd telephone loops, crazy administrative requests, unnecessary forms that take hours read and days to complete, inexplicable airport delays, bureaucratic imbecility of Daliesque proportions?

Enough is enough…it has to stop now before we all go totally mad.

It was last Monday morning that I realised that what we need is a new Citizens Charter to stop the rot.

On my way out of the house at 7.30am, I opened a letter from WetNast Bank. It was a long, official-looking letter asking me to verify my bank account and direct debit details for a charge card, the sixteen digit number of which I didn’t recognise.

I spent the next 15 minutes checking the numbers on all my cards that could possibly be relevant. Not mine. I ran the gauntlet of my wife’s handbag(with her express permission, of course) and after another 10 minutes concluded that it wasn’t any of her cards either.

Alarm bells started to ring. I inspected the letter closely. What a great scam it could be to get people to confirm their account details to some fraudster just waiting at the end of the line with notebook and pencil to the ready.

I had already missed my slot in the rush-hour traffic so I decided to ring my bank using a number different to that given in the letter to verify that the letter was genuine. I listened to the inevitable 5 options, none of which applied so a plumped for Option 5 (”For any other questions choose 5″). You just know that this is the least important option for the bank and that the call will now be routed to a mizzen hut in the back end of beyond and will only be answered when the occupant has come in from feeding the chickens, washed her hands and made a cup of tea. So I was forcibly ‘held in a queue’( this will be illegal under ABSURDA 2010) and, after about 10 minutes, I was rescued fom my solitary dangle by a voice recognisably of the human species that agreed that the letter “was a bit fishy” and that I should call the fraud line the number of which I was then given.

I called. 

By now, I was now about 35 minutes into Hell.

I could only keep going.

I traversed the inevitable ‘options’ offered by the fraud line, none of which was remotely relevant. I opted for Option 4(”For any other question please press 4″). I meekly joined the end of the queue as the call was patched through to the mizzen hut at the end of Stella Gibbon’s garden.

Eventually, a brusque Scot asked me how he could help. I explained about the letter. He went through the usual security checks – mother’s maiden name, what toothpaste did your Great Aunt May use etc. The card number, it transpired, after some lengthy silences and key-board tapping, had indeed been issued in my name. “Well, I haven’t received it, so what do I do now”, I enquired. I would have to be put through to ‘Customer Services’ (lots of laughs) who would be able to advise me.

Another interminable wait. I again explained about the letter asking me to verify my private bank details for a card which had apparently been issued in my name but which I hadn’t received. “Oh no”, said the Voice, “You won’t have received it yet because we haven’t sent the card out yet.” Stunned silence. “Now just let me get this right. You have written to me asking me to verify my bank account and direct debit details for a card number that I do not recognise..because you haven’t issued it yet. Isn’t that a bit…well, daft?”

“Yes, I know”, said the Voice.

“And aren’t you going to get thousands of calls from confused and suspicious customers up and down the land?”

“Yes, I know”, said the Voice.

It was Monday morning and I had wasted over an hour of my time on an imbecilic wild goose chase dreamt up by WetNast Bank.

I have sent them a bill for £265 plus VAT. I expect it to be paid.

….and I have drafted the Administrative and Banking Services(Unreasonable Requests and Delays)Act 2010  that will not only make this kind of institutional inanity illegal, but will also confer upon the individual an automatic right to compensation for the time wasted by such corporate and administrative idiocy. We will all make a bomb out of this.

Section 1 reads:

“If a designated person makes of any relevant addressee a qualifying request and by reason of any act or omission of the designated person:

(i)  the relevant addressee does not have the information reasonably necessary to answer such qualifying request,or

(ii) the time necessary to answer such qualifying request is unreasonable, unconscionable or disproportionate, or

(iii) the designated person does not, at the time of making the qualifying request, provide an adequate explanation of the reason for the request and an estimate of the time expected to be necessary to answer such request and demonstrate that it is reasonable and proportionate, or

(iv) the time estimate provided by the designated person, or the reasonable time if shorter, is exceeded,

the designated person shall have committed an offence and the relevant addressee shall be entitled upon application in writing to the designated person to receive financial compensation.”

Designated persons will include banks and other financial institutions, local authorities, NHS trusts, airport authorities, schools and universities, the Police and all government authorities.

Simple.

Such an Act of Parliament will save millions of hours of wasted time in this country, will help dig us out of recession, will lead to an immediate improvement in telephone service, will stop compulsory,mindless queuing and telephone loops and act as a much-needed restraint on administrative and corporate imbecility and incompetence.

And I commend this Bill to the House.

A question for you:

“Would you sell your right to vote for £750?’

No? I thought not.

Nor would I.

Nor, I suspect would the thousands of British voters who, on Thursday night, had the doors to the Polling Stations slammed in their faces up and down the country, after using best efforts, for most of the day, to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

Their extreme outrage and noble indignation was piteous to behold.

It seems fairly clear that these unfortunate Britons, disenfanchised by administrative incompetence, in more than 14 constituencies and in 8 major cities including, London, Sheffield and Birmingham, do have a legal right to claim compensation.

Article 3 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights records the individual’s right to participate in fair and free elections ‘under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature’.

That would at least seem to presuppose that you get let into the Polling Station before closing time and handed a ballot paper.

This principle is enshrined as a ‘Convention right’ by section 1 of the Human Rights Act 1998 , section 6 of which provides that ‘it is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way which is incompatible with a Convention right’.

An electoral law that dictates that people can only vote at a single location, and only before 10pm, presupposes that the public authorities whose job it is to ensure the system works will provide enough staff and resources to ensure that all who wish to vote can do so. If, as on this occasion, they fail so miserably to do so, they are liable for infringing the ‘Convention right’ of thousands of would-be voters who, in spite of their best efforts, were unable to vote.

So far, so good.

The question is what level of compensation would it be proper and appropriate to award to those voters for the flagrant breach of their rights that they have thus suffered?

It would have been interesting, if not instructive, to put this question to the drenched and serried ranks of anguished voters whose right to exercise their vote on Thursday was so effectively thwarted by grievous maladministration

…I doubt that ‘up to £750′ would have been a typical answer!

(Incidentally, the annual budget of the Electoral Commission is about £25 million. What do you think they spend it on?).

Eminent, if informal, legal opinion (eg Geoffrey Robertson QC, Lord Pannick), has apparently, upon journalistic enquiry, put it variously at ‘up to £750′ or ‘at least £750′.

Surely, the loss of the right to vote is worth more than that, if it is worth anything?

The opportunity to vote, once stolen, is irretrievable. Surely, one’s vote is priceless.

People have died for the right to vote. People still are dying in Iraq.

That a British voter should be prevented from voting in any election is unacceptable. That it should happen in 2010 during the most momentous election in living memory, in a country described by John Bright, in 1865, as ‘the Mother of Parliaments’, and at a time when the British military is fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq to uphold the principle of democratic rule, is a bitter irony of the kind to which it seems Britain has now become almost impervious.

The impromptu witterings of the Returning Officers button-holed for ‘News and Ten’ and the embarrassed excuses of the Electoral Commission only served to intensify the outrage.

If these voters decide to pursue claims for compensation, as surely they must, the question ‘what price the vote?’ will soon fall to be judicially decided.

I, for one, hope that the judges will err on the side of outrageous and punitive generosity. Perhaps in this way the message that certain things like the right to vote are sacrosanct will be clearly heard, as will the message that a half-hearted and complacent approach to discharging one’s public duty is no longer acceptable and, anyway, does not pay.

Section 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998 provides that compensation for breach of a Convention right should be decided using the approach established by Article 41 of the Convention itself, namely the principle of ‘just satisfaction’.

The problem is that the European Court of Human Rights is surprising mean in awarding damages for ‘non-pecuniary’ loss such as the mental anguish suffered by those voters who were so rudely disenfranchised last Thursday.

In its Practice Direction it declares that assessing  ’non-pecuniary damages’ for ‘non-material harm’ does not lend itself to precise calculation.

However, it does go on to invite applicants who wish to be compensated for non-pecuniary damage ‘to specify a sum which in their view would be equitable’.

Okay. Right.

I have to say that if, on Election Day, I had tried, throughout the day, to cast my vote and had thereafter joined the queue at 7pm and queued in the pouring rain for a further 3 hours only to have the Polling Station doors slammed in my face at 10pm, or told that I could not vote becuase they had run out of ballot papers, I would not be thinking in terms of £750. More like £750,000!

If any court had the gall to award ‘up to £750′ I would be filing appeal papers with the European Court that same hour.

For shame, England! For shame!

As I was dancing an idle fly across my corruscating Twitterstream a few days ago, I hooked a tweet from @idealawg on mindfulness for lawyers. It struck a chord. I RT’d it immediately with a deft roll-cast, thus:

The University of Miami Law School is teaching law students the art of mindfulness for lawyers  offering its students what it calls ‘a robust contemplative practices offering’ and, a few days ago, The Florida Bar News publicised a Mindfulness Program designed to help lawyers to ‘live in the moment’ on the thesis that contemplative practices for lawyers are key for the effective study and practice of the law.

The originator of this tweet, Stephanie West Allen, JD a US lawyer an advocate of the practice of mindfulness for lawyers, asserts that in the law, as in ‘any field in which it is important to understand, predict or influence human behaviour, neuroscience will play an increasing role’.

This should not be a surprise. The pressures of legal practice are huge and teaching lawyers to wake up and smell the coffee in terms of developing the necessary mental,emotional and psychic resources to succeed (indeed, to survive) appears to be becoming a burgeoning new industry in the US with progams such as The Mindful Lawyer and recent publications like The Six-minute Solution: A Mindfulness Primer for Lawyers(apparently sold out!). This development echoes, in the sphere of legal practice, the more populist philosophy of Eckhart Tolle in books like The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment and Practising the Power of Now.  I expect we will be seeing more of this kind of thing shortly in the UK. We certainly need it.

Mindfulness or an ability to concentrate is the single, most effective life-skill of any practising lawyer. However, the depth and quality of concentration demanded by modern-day legal practice goes far beyond the commonplace. It does, I think, demand a special kind of mental training.

Lawyers are required to define and re-define complex goals, both for themselves and for their clients; they must, steadfastly and continuously, avoid distraction in spite of a constant plethora of interruption; they must set and re-set work priorities, often on an hourly basis; they must, instantly and constantly, identify relevance and eschew irrelevance; they must be able, often and at short notice, to draw deep on their mental and emotional reserves. Legal practice in the 21st century requires a very high level of mental acuity indeed.

These abilities, referred to, in part,in the Mindfulness for Lawyers program as ‘Jurisight’ and verging on the Siddhis of occult Vedanta, are not the natural fruit of traditional legal training. Indeed, the development of these abilities demands incredible mental stamina, a high degree of emotional intelligence, acute insight bordering on the visionary and a depth of awareness that is characteristic rather of the Zen warrior, the religious ascetic or the contemplative devotee, than of the work-a-day, jobbing lawyer.

Whilst the lawyer coaching industry gathers pace, ultimately it falls to individual practitioners to equip themselves for the exigences of professional life. A good start is to become acquainted with techniques of basic time management as expounded in books by Mark Forster such as Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play and Do it Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management and, if up for the elephantine battle that it entails, wrestling with some more esoteric works on developing the power of concentration such as Concentration and Concentration: A Guide to Mental Mastery by the Hindu acsetic, Mouni Sadhu. For de-stressing New York style Meditation in A New York Minute: Super Calm for the Super Busy.  And see Mindfulness Meditations for Management The Mindful Leader: Ten Principles for Bringing Out the Best in Ourselves and Others.

It is really not surprising that the profession should be turning to the annals of neuroscience and religious asceticism for urgent help, for urgent and inspired help is certainly needed.

Not for nothing is mindfulness and an ability to concentrate a corner-stone of personal and spiritual development in all the great religions. ‘If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light,’ advocates the Apostle Matthew (Matt 6:11) and, in the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, the warrior archer Arjuna is taught by his guru Dronacharya that, to hit the distant bird with his arrow, he must see, not the sky, not the tree, not the branch, not the bird, but only the minute scintilla of sunlight reflected in the black centre of the very eye of the bird.

Such is the degree of intensity of concentration demanded by modern legal practice and those who lack it simply flounder.

Finally, for those who do find it difficult to concentrate on one thing at a time - remember the Ancient Chinese Proverb:

 ’ If you chase two rabbits, both will escape’ …..or go hungry.