What the fuck is all the hoo-haa about with this mobile phone directory, then? Eh?
Several times this week I ‘ve had people email me with a rather urgent tone telling me I have up until this week to opt-out…
This has come from our legal department, please see below!
Early next week all UK mobiles will be on a directory which will mean that anyone will be able to access your numbers. It’s easy to unsubscribe but it must be done before the beginning of next week to make sure that you are ex-directory. You may want to suggest it to all your friends and family who have UK mobiles or they could be swamped by unsolicited messages and calls. Removal is recommended by the BBC – see link below.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/8091621.stm
(That particular quote was from a friend, I don’t know if that was his ‘telephone voice’ or not but it doesn’t sound like he’d written it. Too alarmist.)
First , lets just deal with the email message then, the directory itself.
The email says anyone will be able to access our numbers. Anyone can at the moment. You’ve seen the little boxes in the small print that you’ve either got to tick or leave blank? Well, that ticking or leaving blank gives the company you’re dealing with permission to take your phone number (or postal address or emaill address, depending on what the form/company/product) and pass it onto ‘partner companies’ or ‘companies we think you may be interested in’. To translate, they can sell your numbers. Your number is in the public domain. It can be bought and sold. You are no longer Ex-Directory as far as direct marketing is concerned.
The email also states that you must unsubscribe (which is also wrong, you need to be ‘removed’ from the directory) by the end of next week to be sure of that you are ex-directory.
Well, the end of next week could be any time depending on when the email was sent. Considering the BBC article is date 9 June 2009 and in it, it states that the directory site is going live ‘next week’, I would say 9th July is a bit late and we’re all buggered.
It sounds like if you weren’t ex-directory by 16th-ish june that’s it, you’re in for life. But you’re not.
It may be a nice thing to do to make family and friends aware of this directory, but a month after it going live, I’m not drowning in window sales men, pollsters and heavy breathers. Are you?
I fucking hate these fucking circular emails that are just wrong in the first place and have an unneccesarily alarming tone to them.
Removal is recommended by the BBC – see link below
Um. No it’s not.
I doubt my buddy wrote that. I hope he didn’t.
Apart from the issues surrounding where 118800 got the 15 million or so numbers it claims to have, what is the problem with an opt-out directory? I’m normally of the opinion that opt-in is the best thing, but for some reason, I don’t have a problem with this. No more than the landline directory, and infact I’m a little surprised it’s taken so long to come about.
Where the numbers have come from, although not stated specifically which brokers and lists these numbers were on, somewhere there is a little box that signifies that the numbers can be used for commercial purposes. If there isn’t, there is a problem with the data controllers of a company somewhere and not with the idea of a directory.
Remember, this directory and the company behind it are no different to any other direct marketing organisation. If you have a problem with this directory then you should also have a problem with the whole way data is bought and sold.
This directory is probably more accurately reflects peoples’ wishes than the landline directory, which the phone companies have to give their numbers to.
The issue of privacy is also dealt with rather simply and admirably.
They directory contacts you and tells you someone is trying to get in touch. If you are contacted by phone, you tell them no, if you don’t want to accept the call. If you get sent a text, ignore it. That has to be better than just being listed in a book ready for anyone, including teenagers skyving off school and finding people with funny names to abuse down the phone. Again and again… and again…
The opt-out is also still there, with no time limit on it. Apparently, the first time the directory contact you, they also give you an option to become ex-directory. And of course you could got to 118800 and opt-out there. Anytime.
Four weeks to get off their list is a bit much though.
Whether this directory actually works in practice and are as ethical as they reckon they are will remain to be seen, but the idea itself a mobile phone number directory, should be a cause for concern and they way they are doing it to try and ally peoples’ privacy concerns, should be should be welcomed. It could’ve been so different.
BA are asking 40,000 staff to work for sod all for a month. Just like the the boss, Willie Walsh and his Chief Financial Officer, Keith Williams…
The call for unpaid work is set out in individual letters to staff, and in the BA in-house newspaper British Airways News under the headline Action Time.
It says bluntly: ‘Colleagues are being urged to help the airline’s cash-saving drive by signing up for unpaid leave or unpaid work.
‘From tomorrow, people will be able to opt for blocks of unpaid leave or unpaid work, with salary deductions spread over three to six months, wherever possible.’
It is a hell of a lot easier to forego a months pay if a months pay is £61,000 than it is if your pay is only a grand or two a month. Should a company that is in that much shite that it’s asking it’s staff to work for nothing really be paying its’ boss more a month than most of its’ staff be paid in 3 years?
Could this be the new mantra for capitalism? Work for nothing or you won’t have a job to go to.
The Today programme on Radio 4 had a short discussion on the retirement age today about whether the compulsorary retirement age should be scrapped or raised or left as it is.
At the moment the complusorary retirement age is 65, although the employee can request to stay on, there is no obligation on behalf of the employing company.
I think that this is totally wrong. Why should there be a time, in this case an arbitrary decided age when someone can legally forced out of emploment?
As we get older bits and bobs start failing or but does that mean someone is not fit for employment?
If a person loses a hand or a leg, an employer cannot dismiss that person without first trying to find an alternative position within the company that a one handed/legged person can do. Why then should an employer be able to dismiss a 65 year old person just because they are 65 years old regardless of their ability to do the job?
A responsible employer would probably not do this, but they have the option. And this can’t be right.
As an aside, why are we talking about raising the retirement age at all? Shouldn’t we be trying to enable people to retire earlier? Don’t we spend spend enough of our lives working, without using the extra years we’re living to squeeze more out of us?
On Radio 4 this morning there was Archbish Williams was talking about some stuff and the credit crunch and bankers cropped up.
Rowan said that many of the bank CEOs he had spoken to were sorry and took responsibility but only in private and have not taken responsibility publicly yet. And then, AND THEN says that in a way we are all responsible!! We all enjoyed the fruits of their empty economy inflating exploits.
WTF!
W T fucking F?
Some of us didn’t know, and are still not quite sure, what happens in those swanky glass offices in London. Some of us wouldn’t have approved of it even if we did know the details of what the spivs were doing. All of had no fucking choice of whether we benefited from those wankers.
That’s the shit of capitalism. You can’t opt out. if you live within a capitalist society you have to play by it’s rules, if you don’t you sink. I am not responsible for what those cunts in ‘The City’ do.
Some people embrace the capitalist ideals more than others, but even the most principled anti-capitalist commie still has to play by capitialisms rules.
If I’m wrong, I will eat Rowan Williams beard. If he’ll let me.
(typo fixed)
They took about £7.8 million fraudulently.
No one has been fired.
“In some instances there has been disciplinary action, but I don’t intend to take a couple of token scalps in expiation. That would not solve the problem.”
Well. OK, then. But wouldn’t obtaining money by deception be a crime? And seeing as it is a crime that has involved the company be considered gross misconduct?
In all companies I have worked for, gross misconduct is a sackable offence.
Not exactly ‘token’ scalps then.
The broadcaster may face further Ofcom fines once the regulator has digested the Deloitte report.
Ofcom? Ofcom? Of-fucking-com? If I’d defrauded people out £7.8 million Dixon of Dock Green would soon be feeling my collar!
Mr Grade lambasted the company he joined earlier this year, saying: “My overall conclusion from the review is that there was a serious cultural failure within ITV.”
Hahahahaha!!!
As part of a package of measures to tighten procedures among staff, Mr Grade added that all production employees will receive “broad compliance training” and will be required to attend “refresher” training on a regular basis.
Well, Mr Grade. If you’re staff need training in the right and wrongs of closing a competition or phone vote, but not telling the viewers, then you must have some stupid fucking monkeys working for you.
“It was not understood that when the audience is invited to make choices within programmes, the producer is effectively ceding part of his/her sovereignty over editorial decisions,” Mr Grade said.
mmm.
I just lurve this quote:
However, he added that that the failings unearthed by Deloitte were not “venal”. “In all cases individuals were motivated by their professional instinct to produce the best show, but they failed to understand that this could come at the expense of keeping faith with participating viewers,” he said.
What Grade is saying there is that his staff wanted to produce the best shows, and but had to defraud the audience to do it.
Says a lot for the shows, doesn’t it.
