Richard Littledale's
Views on the News: October 2008

You rang, my Lord?
             

Last month Barclaycard were fined the sum of £50,000 for an excessive number of so-called silent calls (see BBC website report). These calls are dialled automatically by a computer, but when the connection is made the computer finds there is no operator to speak and breaks the call. The result is that the recipient is left holding a silent phone in their hand, and wondering who rung them.

Perhaps Views might suggest an alternative for dealing with this annoyance? If we allowed computers to answer our phones, we could program some computers to offer all the products and services we don't want, and others to decline them on our behalf. With clever programming, the computers doing the buying could become ever more devious in their offer, and the answer computers ever more fulsome in their rejection. The two parties could slug it out quite happily in their computerised conversations without any need for human annoyance or punitive fines.

The disadvantage of this system is that it would tie up both phones and computers for the foreseeable future. We would all have to ensure that we never divulged our 'personal' phone numbers, lest the computers on either side of the battle were to encroach on them in their marketing war!

Interestingly, Ofcom cited 'mental distress' of those receiving the calls as the reason for their hefty fines. When we expect a conversation, but get only an anonymous silence, we experience a number of emotions. These might range from mild annoyance through to fear and paranoia. At the very least we feel that the rules of human conversation have been broken. The phone rings, signalling an intent to speak. The caller picks it up, signalling an intent to listen - but in the end nothing happens.

Sadly, many people feel that this is what happened when they first took a step of faith in God's direction. They entered a church, signalling an intent to believe. The church opened their doors, signalling an intent to help them. After that, however, the rules of the engagement were broken, and only silence prevailed. Habit, or tradition or resentment got in the way - and neither God nor enquirer got what they wanted. Last month's Back to Church initiative offered thousands the opportunity to try again in looking for a conversation with God. Did it succeed? Only time will tell - but talking is generally better than silence - whether you are trying to sell a product or mend a fence.