ment — a fancy government term
for ‘You don’t have to fill in any sod-
ding forms’.
Likewise, economic models of
free trade set great store on whether
the EU tariff on cheddar after Brexit
will be 3 per cent or 4 per cent. This
is largely irrelevant: trade facilita-
tion matters more than tariff reduc-
tion. A better starting point for UK
trade policy might be to ensure that
a normally sane individual in the UK
can send something overseas without
tearing his frigging hair out.
A few months ago I sent a small
box of British foods to an expat
friend in Canada who was recover-
ing from cancer. They crossed the
Atlantic in ten hours, then spent
three days in a warehouse in Toron-
to. Apparently I needed to appoint
a ‘Customs Broker’. (Naturally I had
a wide selection of Ontarian Customs
Brokers on speed dial. They then
demanded a ‘commercial invoice’
or ‘bill of lading’. I vainly tried to
explain to the maple suckers that I
was happy to pay any duty owed, but
that I’d sent ten packets of Twiglets,
not a bloody doomsday device. It was
yet another week before they were
actually delivered.
Last month in Santa Fe I wanted
to post some of my luggage home.
I put it in a box, paid $100 for Pri-
ority Air (CH022836798US, if you
want to check) and filled out the cus-
toms form in full. By evening it hadY
ou can try to change people’s
minds, but this is difficult.
You can bribe people to change
their behaviour, but it’s expensive. Far
simpler is to make the new behaviour
easy and enjoyable in and of itself.
Recently, colleagues of mine
were asked how to promote the
habit of recycling domestic refuse.
They explained there was no need to
mention the environmental benefits
at all. ‘Just make sure everyone has
two pedal bins, not one.’ Regardless
of people’s attitudes to the environ-
ment, what really matters, as Martin
Luther King might have said, is not
the colour of their politics but the
contents of their kitchen.
To encourage pension saving,
the government spends more than
£20 billion annually in tax rebates.
To swathes of the population, this
enormous and wasteful incentive is
entirely unmotivating. What finally
did persuade eight million people
to join workplace pension schemes
was something called auto enrol-
reached Albuquerque and was at
LAX the following day. It then sat
in customs for three weeks. After a
weekend recovering from the flight
to London, it spent a further week
in Warwick so British customs could
charge me £50 in VAT for re-import-
ing my British-bought clothes. It
arrived a month after I had posted it.
This is an average speed of 6.25 miles
per hour — with customs delays
eradicating any advances in trans-
portation from the past 150 years.
Subtracting the hours it spent in the
air, it averaged 2.3 miles per hour.
On good days the Donner Party did
better than this.
No I’m not totally naive. I real-
ise that when Nissan exports cars it
doesn’t put them in the post. Nev-
ertheless, if you believe in trade,
it should be something available
not only to multinationals but to
small firms and individuals who
can’t afford to employ rooms full of
bureaucrats who know what a ‘bill
of lading’ is.
I refuse to believe here aren’t
technological solutions (Blockchain
may be one) that can reduce the
friction of trade and make it faster,
easier and more trustworthy. The
financial costs of most tariffs are now
small: what we should seek is not so
much free trade as pain-free trade.Rory Sutherland is vice-chairman
of Ogilvy Group UK.Q. Last year my husband and I
stayed with a much-loved, but
slightly airy-fairy friend in her
house in Tuscany. Flights, tips,
presents, a hire car and house-
sitters were already costing us
rather a lot, but she insisted we
went out to (quite expensive)
local restaurants for lunch four
days out of five to experience
the regional cuisine. She let my
husband pay each time.
I felt this was overdoing it,
especially as we had to pay for
her, her husband and her three
adult children, and they have hadplenty of hospitality when staying
with us in England. Mary, can
you rule? Moreover how can we
avoid it happening again when
we join them later this year?
— Name and address withheld.A. Your friends should have
drawn the line at two lunches paid
for by your husband. Next time,
email them in advance to say that
you have become very interested
in Tuscan dishes and would like
to cook a couple of lunches or
dinners for her house party with
ingredients that you’d buy in local
markets. Add that — because you
are on a ‘bit of a budget’ this year
— this would be ‘just as much fun
and more affordable’.Q. I’m approaching a mortifyingly
embarrassing birthday. The big- I am torn between wanting to
keep it under wraps, and a childish
desire to have a fuss made of me.
I’ve sworn friends and family to
secrecy, and warned that if
anyone organises a surprise party,
I will be livid. I’ve considered
deactivating Facebook for the
day, but the thought of my
birthday not being acknowledged
by my wider group of friends
depresses me. What should I do?
— Name and address withheld.A. On your Facebook profile, go
to ‘Settings’, ‘Account Settings’,
‘Timeline and Tagging’, and
change ‘Who can post on my
timeline’ from ‘Friends’ to ‘Only
me’. That way no one can post
embarrassing pictures of you
on your wall with ‘40 today’
emblazoned across them. If they
try, they’ll find they won’t be able
to, and will send a private message
instead. You will therefore receive
a lot of private messages fromfriends making a fuss of you, and
can bask in the glow of attention
and love without worrying the
whole world knows you are 40.Q. Mary, last week you suggested
that some people, wrongly, have
shame issues about hosting rats.
We live between a cover crop of
maize — a terrific food source for
pheasants and partridges — and
the pens from which the birds are
released. The maize also appeals
to rats, who deposit gnawed cobs
round the garden. When a visiting
American family saw a rat running
past the back door, my response
was: ‘Shh! Don’t tell the others, or
they’ll all want to see one.’
— M.W., Welford, Berkshire.A. Thank you for sharing this.Write via the editor or email
[email protected]The Wiki Man
Make life easier and
all else will follow
Rory Sutherland
I explained
I was happy
to pay any duty
owed, but I’d
sent ten packets
of Twiglets,
not a bloody
doomsday
deviceDEAR MARY YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED