Just found on my hard drive: I wrote this let­ter on Janu­ary 22nd 2009, so you can lodge it firmly in the “pro­cras­tin­at­ing” and “bit­ter” cat­egor­ies. I put it in an envel­ope, but I am almost entirely sure I didn’t post it but instead left it by the door, unstamped, and then threw it out when we moved. The issue at hand is the logo below (which, to be fair on myself, I still don’t like) which was unveiled to me atop a huge elec­tri­city bill:

scottish_power_logo

Dear Scot­tish Power,

Thank you very much for my latest bill that arrived this morn­ing. I look for­ward to pay­ing you an extor­tion­ate amount for the pleas­ure of being really quite cold all the time; indeed, I believe I am now in what they call “fuel poverty” and I will take great pride in adding that detail to my CV. Admit­tedly, the cost of heat isn’t entirely all of your fault; my extremely cheap land­lord must also absorb some of the blame for his refusal to have any­thing effect­ive in the flat, like cent­ral heat­ing, gas or a sofa that doesn’t cripple you. But he lives in Aus­tralia, so I sus­pect he has simply for­got­ten what it is to be cold.

Any­way, my real ques­tion is about your lovely new logo. Although the typeface you have chosen makes me a squirm a little, I appre­ci­ate how you have man­aged to use the graph­ics to com­mu­nic­ate your con­cern for the envir­on­ment with the leaf. And I’m tak­ing a leap and assum­ing that the yel­low icon is to rep­res­ent the heat you are sup­posed to sup­ply. How­ever, I’m some­what con­fused about the blue. Is it meant to some­how sym­bol­ise my freez­ing cold fin­gers? Or, as it has some­thing of a teardrop shape, does it rep­res­ent the cry­ing your cus­tom­ers do when they get their bills? I’m being facetious here, but I’m sure you can under­stand my con­fu­sion. Per­haps you now sup­ply water, and it rep­res­ents that? And if you do sup­ply water, didn’t your brand­ing people sug­gest maybe chan­ging your name from Scot­tish Power? Scot­tish Powa­ter has some­thing of a ring about it.

Yours sin­cerely,

Miss Sarah Barrie