To Cut a Long Story Short, I lost my Mind!

Spandau Ballet got me thinking.

We really overcomplicate life. It should be easy. All we need is a roof over our head, the means to heat it, enough food to eat and water to drink. The human race has turned that into a convoluted nightmare of education, work and endless responsibility. We end up worrying so much about our worthless lives that I wonder if running around in an animal skin with a spear in my hand mind not have been an altogether happier existence.

I wonder that most when someone tells me they don’t expect to pay for the IT recycling. Deeply illogical positions adopted by apparently sane people flummox me. I mean, if someone sits opposite you and says that the latest X Factor winner is a cross between Jesus and John Lennon, you are bound to be a bit bewildered. It’s not an easy thing to deal with.

We deal in waste. Essentially we are simply offering to remove something you have either replaced or broken. You have no further need of it and in this overly complicated world of ours you are legally required to dispose of it in certain ways, whilst ensuring that your data security is not compromised during the disposal process. Or to cut a long story short, to paraphrase Gary Kemp, you can’t just dump it.

How much is a piece of string? Second hand value is largely arbitrary. Look at eBay and you will get an idea. You might think you are throwing out the business silver, but try and remember why you replaced it in the first place. Do not overcomplicate what should be a simple decision.

You have an environmental responsibility.

You have to manage the risk of losing your data.

And you have to get the kit out of your way.

It’s not a difficult thing to do. Human beings have managed risk since time immemorial. If I run across this clearing after my prey, will something else eat me? If I let Maureen from accounts brother’s mate from the pub collect our old laptops, will my customer database end up in the hands of a master criminal?

As I said before, we have enough to worry about. Do you really have to worry about what happens to your kit after that nice man in the white van took it away for free? You have Ebola, Syria, Iran and North Korea to worry about, let alone the January transfer window, and now Adrian Chiles has been sacked by ITV. Who cares about landfill in Ghana, or child labour in Botswana?

The bloke in the white van sent me some paperwork. It will do, won’t it? I am pretty sure he wiped those hard disks before selling a pallet load of assorted PC’s to Abdul down the road. Maureen said he was a good bloke, always stands his round in The Dodgy Ferret, so he is not going to let me down is he?

Oh and look, he forgot to take those boxes of old keyboards, the three cracked monitors, that broken chair and the racking from the old server room. How am I going to get rid of that?

Face it; isn’t life complicated enough without making it more difficult?

Questions, questions? Give me no answers. That’s all they ever give me. Questions, questions. To cut a long story short, I lost my mind...