Where did I go wrong? Where did they go right?.

About 24 hours ago I got an email from Sydney, with these two pictures.

The writer was the spiv in the white suit, my old partner, Glenmore Trenear-Harvey. The other two old geezers are a pair of ornaments of the Direct Marketing scene in Oz - Ian Kennedy and Eddy Boas.

They were all reminiscing about people they and I knew well.

As Glenmore put it, "From Bill Jayme to Sam Josefowitz, mammoths of direct marketing were de-iced and re-examined by three old codgers as they slurped delicious Australian 'champagne' at the Odyssey Wine Bar, at the Rocks, in Sydney last evening.

Eddy Boas, Ian Kennedy and me had a nostalgia rush as we chortled our way through the pantheons of international direct marketers we've been privileged to have known.

What titans; what rogues and scallywags; visionaries, snake-oil salesmen; comedians, kind, generous people, dumbasses and long-time friends.

You were part of it and would have added more anecdotes to savour."

And what was I doing when I received the email? Revising some copy.

Some mistake, surely.

A heartrendingly brilliant, funny letter. Thanks Andy Owen for sharing. Please read right to the endd

In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdon Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdon — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).

(Source: The Freedmen's Book; Image: A group of escaped slaves in Virginia in 1862, courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson.

The March of Folly continues apace ... and what propels it? Confucius say "fancy language".

Pay attention while I tell you about inflation.

They paid me £340 a year (less tax) in my first job. Less than a Bristol bus driver gets a week now. But enough for me to go out dancing and drinking seven days a week.

Six years later as a copy chief I had a high time on £2,200 year, even with a wife and three kids to support.

Now they wonder whether £26,000 a year is enough for people out of work. And I see there is more "Quantitative Easing" in store.

That is just inflation. We are mortgaging our future to pay for our present.

As Merryn Somerset Webb wrote the other day in Money Week, we are paying interest on the interest on the money we owe.

"Imagine what your grandmother would say if you ran your personal finances like that."

Our leaders are not as smart as our grandmothers; and they are robbing our grandchildren. They are compounding our debt, not reducing it. They "compound for sins they are inclined to by damning those they have no mind to" as Samuel Butler wrote in Hudibras.

And what are they are inclined to? They love to piss away other people's money. India has just refused the aid we have been giving them because they don't need it. Anyhow it could never have gone to the poor in that playground of corrupt politicians.

What are they not inclined to? Tell the truth and upset voters. The last person willing to do that was the much underrated John Major who may have lost an election but retains more honour than the tax dodger and serial liar who followed him.

Confucius observed that "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name." When you give fancy names people don't understand to simple things this is just a way of lying.

Marketers are very good at this, as I shall now explain.

In the first edition of Commonsense Direct Marketing back in 1982 I described a test we had run. We wanted to see which of 12 lists would work best, which of three prices, which of two ways of paying, which of two envelopes, which of two response gimmicks and which of three ways of replying.

We tested all these things simultaneously, using a test matrix. The best combination in theory worked 58 times better than the worst. I say "in theory" because results like this cannibalise each other.

When we analysed the results we discovered some surprising facts. The more initials people had before their surnames the more likely they were to reply; people with ethnic names were more likely to reply than those with English; and people in houses with names were more likely to reply than those with just numbers.

Maybe 20 years after this marketing people started talking about "kaizen" and "multivariate" testing. These sounded very impressive and mysterious - until I asked what they were. They were just what we had been doing all those years earlier - and we were by no means the first: we copied the idea from our clients The Readers' Digest.

As a matter of interest Kaizen eno yon dankai, which means "improvement in four steps" comes from an approach to manufacturing introduced in Japan by American statisticians after World War 2.

It is not at all the same thing. You can improve more than four things simultaneously through the kind of testing I have mentioned, but a fancy name will always do better at extracting money from people than the plain facts.

More British Gas lunacy. Also: False Gods and Groucho Marx: why I laugh at the idea that this marketing leader is a good guide for you or me

Yesterday I spent an insane hour (for the second day running) talking to four different departments at British Gas.

They had broken into my home to install an electricity meter because I hadn't paid a bill they hadn't sent. They had the gall to try and charge me for their ineptitude. I felt sorry for all the poor folk who have to talk to aggrieved souls like me. But not for the overpaid people who run the business.

The person I would most like to see run over by a bus is whoever commissioned and approved the answer-phone messages I spent most of time listening to during this ordeal by gross incompetence.

If you are trying to sort out some phantasmagorical cock-up it is no joy to listen to some patronising out-of-work actress lying to you about how wonderful their service and prices are. Eventually when some buffoon asked me for my details I lost my patience.

Talking of which, while all this was going on I was emailed an invitation to a big Internet Marketing event.

It will do well for three reasons.

First - and most important - because of the subject.

Even the teeming hordes who have yet to understand the basics of any kind of marketing know that online is where much of the action is today.

Second, because entry is free if you reply now - but £30 if you pay at the door.

Third because of a testimonial from the Head of Online Customer Marketing at 02, who gushed:

"This is really the only event worth attending for me. It's the only barometer on what's really going on with the development at the Internet."

Now this may impress many people, but I instantly recalled Groucho Marx's line: "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." Except I would change me to him.

You see, you and I live in a different world to this person. His is the corporate world. Ours is the real world. He is probably brilliant at climbing the corporate ladder. But that's no use to me; I'm unemployable.

What I wonder (and doubt) is: has he ever read Claude Hopkins or John Caples? Has he ever risked his own money on anything? Those are the only people whose views interest me.

That was what made Steve Jobs so fascinating. That is why Richard Branson something of a hero. They are entrepreneurs. In the world of phones I can only know one such person: James Dunstone, of Carphone Warehouse.

Dunstone saw an opportunity and grasped it. The corporate drones in that field are just fortunate enough to be in an industry with insanely high margins. Few are anywhere long enough to do much anyhow. The average length of tenure as a marketing director is 14 months: just long enough to screw everything up and get found out.

At random I just looked at the CV of one of these high flyers. Average length in his last six jobs: 16 months. His current employer (one of the world's biggest brands) has been losing market share ever since he got there. I doubt if he can be blamed. He probably spends his time in meetings rather than doing anything useful.

One problem is simple but much overlooked. Titles. How can you (or anyone else) know what the hell you do when your title is Head of Online Channel Insight?

Of course, there are advantages. I know someone who was given a new title he did not understand during one of those "let's rearrange the deckchairs" sessions companies love. I asked him what he thought he was supposed to do. "Anything I like", he replied.

"Lifestyles of the Not-So-Rich-and-Famous". And more political B.S. we will pay for - with out money or our lives

Did you ever watch Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous? It was a TV show quite beyond parody run by Robin Leach, an Englishman with the strangest accent.

An eerie parade of boundless vulgarity, mostly in Hollywood, it was one of those things you just couldn't stop watching. Anyhow this not so rich and famous person had his flat broken into yesterday by British Gas who installed a meter because they said he hadn't paid his bill.

This was not impossible, as neither I nor my beloved read our post that carefully. But it was pretty strange because I paid them in January. But I wish they'd told me where they put the damn meter. No doubt all will be revealed when I ring them today. I have a ghastly feeling it's something to do with the credit card I used to pay them.

Europe has about as much idea about prudent management as me, but on a rather larger scale. In December The European Central Bank pumped €489 billion into the eurozone.

It is part of the longer term refinancing operation (LTRO) which gives banks cash at a low interest rate of 1% for three years..

The idea is that the European Central Bank gives banks cheap money, allegedly so they can help small businesses, but really to buy all the sovereign bonds nobody wants.

This is pouring bad money after worse.

John Bennett, who manages the Henderson European Focus Trust simply calls it "a bit of a Ponzi scheme". Bennett says 'What it has not removed is the chronic lack of growth in many parts of Europe.

'Economic policy in the developed world has followed one overriding principle and that is the avoidance of recession at all costs. Politicians hate them because they're scared of losing votes and jobs.
'The ECB and Merkozy may say one thing but all along they've been doing another thing. Just look at LTRO. If that's not quantitative easing, I don't know what is.'

Meanwhile Greece – in worse trouble than anyone - is the world's fourth-largest arms importer. Who are they at war with?  Nobody.  Who sells them most?  Germany, the U.S. and France.

Who, one way or another will pay for this criminal activity? Taxpayers like you and me. But arms bring out the insanity everywhere, as noted in a splendid rant by Bill Bonner in The Daily Reckoning.

“We simply cannot continue to cut our defense budget if we are to remain the hope of the Earth,” says Mitt Romney.


Where do candidates get this sort of stuff? Who writes lines like that? Who takes them seriously?


According to Romney, the Earth itself longs for more US military spending.


His adversary, Newt Gingrich, says he thinks that Obama's Pentagon cuts will make the US as vulnerable to attack as it was before World War II.


But the Pentagon won't really have less money to spend. They're not really talking about cutting defense spending; they're talking about cutting projected military spending increases. Even after the 'cuts,' the US military will still be spending more than the next 10 biggest spenders put together.


All the candidates think the American people want war. Or...what?


Actually, Americans don't want war. The latest Pew Research polls show them more opposed to foreign military adventures than at any time in the last 15 years. They're more interested in getting a job...and protecting their retirements. Given the choice, they would probably want to see military spending cut back and the money put into their own pockets.


But they won't be given the choice. The system is rigged. Between them and the outcomes are 10,000 lobbyists and millions of zombies. This is why representative democracy doesn't work.


Decent people will generally have decent responses to decent questions. Put to a ballot, how would Americans vote?