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Most would be of the view that there are four stages of competency in any task.

First, the unconscious incompetent - the three-year-old who really does believe they are driving the car. Then the conscious incompetent - the 17-year-old who stalls their car outside the school gates and now knows they cannot drive - followed by the conscious competent - the 19-year-old who drives and goes through all the motions as per the handbook - and lastly the unconscious competent - you get there and cannot remember how you got there as it is second nature.

The expense in business is when you have people who are in the earlier stages who are not yet adding value but carry the risk. That is fine as they are an investment and time will take them to the point where they are adding value without the risk. But what of that collective of individuals who sit in the first quadrant and never leave it. They will never know what they do not know, but firmly believe like the three year old they are really driving the car.

I did a report on the seriousness of treating customers fairly under investment bonds. I had highlighted all the facts explaining why investment bonds were all but dead. In particular, I pointed out the complete rip off of mirror funds.

The response from most including those I chat to at the FSA was shock in terms of how much these arrangements mislead customers. Two IFAs surprisingly wrote in defending the attacks I had on the facts, with an array of emotion and reiteration of fluffy marketing.

All they did was repeat the old ‘but a bond has 5 per cent deferred income’ twaddle, a point I blew out of the water by explaining there is no tax break where you give your money to someone and they give it back to you tax free. I will not repeat why collectives offer true tax free income if managed correctly through the use of capital gains allowances as they clearly are not going to get it.

The letters fluffed on with no factual defence of bonds until Mr BGW Jamieson arrived in full support of Ian Tandy's letter, himself a keen bond lover from his responses to articles I have seen on the subject.

Mr Jamieson attacked my comment on mirror funds stating that: "The majority of us use companies such as Winterthur and Skandia which have a wide range of external funds and we would no more dream of using internal funds than going to the moon".

Well I really hope you like cheese, sir. It is precisely this lack of understanding that concerns me. You will see that my comments always related to onshore bonds and showed that investments into such, typically used mirror funds rather than the real collective.

I explained that the real collective was outperforming the mirror version by over 36 per cent over three years and I had a concern that customers were not explained that this was the case. I was of the view that many advisers did not understand this.

Perhaps when Mr Jamieson is on his way to the cheese farm in the sky he may drop a satellite email to Winterthur and Skandia to find that they do not do true retail funds in their onshore bond and their offerings are a range of mirror funds only. They confirmed this to me yesterday.

I would suggest under treating customers fairly Mr Jamieson will be writing to all his customers and explaining that they do not have what he said they have. If advisers do not know, customers have no chance. Say hi to Wallace and Grommet for me.