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Every Little Helps!... For want of a nail... and... Mighty Oaks...
Still not Convinced? Are you partial to long-winded written explanations?
Read on! A few personal reasons. What are yours?
Every Little Helps!
peu ayde, descoit le formy, pissant en mer en plein midy - Meurier, 1590
("every little helps", said the ant, pissing into the sea at midday)
Some Tesco Value products sell for 7 pence or less. I'd guess that there's not a great deal of profit per unit sale. According to the BBC 17% of all money in the UK is spent in Tesco's... and it's GROWING! An ant with an uncommonly large bladder? Or many ants?
Major banks encourage us to open accounts for babies. They all pursue "broke" students, wooing them with ever better deals and offers. Madness? Of course not. They are after our kids future business - their car loans, mortgages and business accounts. Law firms rely on similar tactics. If you use a solicitor to buy your first home and they do an acceptable job (filling in a few forms) then the chances are that years later when you start a business, need a divorce or someone to sort out your inheritance you'll choose the same firm. Bad move! Times change, firms change, Partners change... and in any case it will probably be a different person or (heaven forbid) "department" this time around. Expertise in one field does not necessarily carry over into others and every case is different. We need to be more like the student that takes the free rail card and then banks with whoever offers the best service, the lowest interest rate or whatever is required at the time. These "little protests" are good for all of us - they help to keep all the banks competitive.
The Legal eXchange can make use of this human trait too. If you can dissuade even one person from using a firm or an individual who has given poor service there is a very good chance that person will NEVER use the firm or individual. The bad guy looses not just today's business but the future business too - a reasonable result for a few minutes "work"? The legal eXchange pulls as well as pushes. The "lost business" goes somewhere. Recommendations by Members pull UP the good guys at the expense of the bad. Little becomes BIG... and changes become significant. With luck and in time there may be 1000's of us... One ant in the midday sun may not achieve much... a veritable army, all pissing in the same direction can bring about a flood of change.
If the Legal Services Ombudsman and Sir David Clementi can talk of Tesco Law and most people understand what they mean, then Tesco are big enough to influence our everyday language. When they adopted the buy-line "Every Little Helps" I doubt they were thinking of Meurier's ant of 1590. More likely they were thinking of a much older truism that it is often the little things that add up to make a BIG difference. When the little thing is information then it is certainly true. All of these BIG institutions buy the most trivial facts and information. They invest £Millions in that quest and reap far bigger returns. You may indeed feel that Big Brother is watching you. Well... Little Brothers have eyes too - many eyes in many places - and they can TALK. At very least they can be a nuisance which Big Brother can't ignore... at best Little Brothers can make Big Brother behave. Little scraps of pooled information... Every Little does indeed help!
For want of a nail...
I started this site because of the appalling treatment I received from a greedy and self-serving solicitor acting in a Family case. When I complained to the Law Society I found they ignored all evidence of serious (almost certainly criminal) behaviour, ignored their own rules and the law and even colluded and conspired with the solicitor to cover up for her. The Legal Services Ombudsman seems little better, or at least ineffectual. The police are little help - they will probably tell you that the Law Society has the powers to investigate... and leave it at that. Is this because when they have built cases in the past the CPS has refused to prosecute them? If you return (as I did) to the Civil Courts to get them to enforce the rules and the law you may find that some judges are ok whilst others are so biased in favour of "the profession" that they will ignore the rules and the law and any sense of natural justice to boot. If I had had proper information up-front then none of this would have happened.
Mighty Oaks...
Once you have identified the problems and begin looking around, you will find that you are not alone. Similar problems affect tens of thousands of people each year. To me this is intolerable. There are now dozens of websites started by people who have exhausted all other avenues. Many folks have suffered a far worse fate than I have (for example... or, if you prefer the parliamentary website) and yet the problem is not a new one (BBC 1999). It seems talk is cheap and action is slow - the Willing Blindness Report dates from research in 1998... and yet, if anything, things in 2006 seem even worse.
I am 45 years old and I have seen matters deteriorate. Doing nothing is intolerable, but to make a REAL difference I need help, and LOTS of it. I have planted an acorn but to grow then it needs every drop of water it can get.
