Sim-O

Well, suck my stump and call me Susan, I agree with a Tory*!

(*update: may not actually be a Tory)

A senior government official has sparked anger by advising internet users to give fake details to websites to protect their security.

Andy Smith, an internet security chief at the Cabinet Office, said people should only give accurate details to trusted sites such as government ones.

He said names and addresses posted on social networking sites “can be used against you” by criminals.

Quite fucking right too. Who the fuck needs to know anything about you, unless you decide they should know?

There’s commercial sites that need genuine information, but it isn’t going to be plastered all over the place for everyone to see, there’s government sites, like ones for tax returns as Smith suggests later in the article, and er, that’s about it.

Every other one can fuck the fuck off if they’re going to make all your details public without your consent.

Shadow MP Helen Goodman is shocked. Shocked, I tell you…

His advice was described by Labour MP Helen Goodman as “totally outrageous”.

Ms Goodman, shadow culture minister, told BBC News: “This is the kind of behaviour that, in the end, promotes crime.

“It is exactly what we don’t want. We want more security online. It’s anonymity which facilitates cyber-bullying, the abuse of children.

“I was genuinely shocked that a public official could say such a thing.”

The problem isn’t the use of pseudonyms or anonymity that lead to bullying abuse of children. It’s being a cunt that leads to that. What does she expect? Does she want every website that you have to log in to see you’re passport or two recent utility bills?

To turn things the otherway round, it’s the use of anonymity and pseudonyms that prevents even more crime. A cyber bully might have a go at User123, but it’s the very fact that User123 is using a pseudonym that makes it harder for his cyber-bully to ‘take it offline’.

Mrs Goodman, MP for Bishop Auckland, in the North-East of England, said she had been contacted by constituents who have been the victims of cyber-bullying on major social networking sites by people hiding behind fake names.

By ‘major social networking sites’ I’m guessing Goodman means Facebook and Twitter. Well, Facebook can do a fuck of a lot to help there by making its’ privacy setting a fuck of a lot simpler. Even just easier to find would be fucking start.

There is more to cyber-bullying than just privacy settings and pseudonyms, but the squeal of “totally outrageous” is over the top and needs to be kicked into touch straight away. The balance between the need for people to know who you are, your traceability, and your ability to be anonymous is a much more nuanced issue than Goodman would have you believe.

If you have proof of something and you want me to see it, you have to get it to me.

I had an exchange on Twitter with a christian that said he had indirect proof that god exists.

source

Vincent says he has proof the devil exists, which would prove the bible is true, which in turn would mean that god really does exist.

This, naturally, piqued my curiosity. If there is proof that god exists, then it’d be interesting to see. Vincent may turn out to be a crackpot, in which case it’d be amusing to shatter his delusional bubble, or he could be right and this could be massive. I’m not going to make any judgements until I see this proof. I’m still waiting though.

This is because Vincent has the proof in on his (locked down) facebook page and I don’t do facebook. Vincent has offered to create and send me a facebook login, but I don’t really want to use a login from someone off the internet I’v never met, for anything, not just facebook. I’ve offered to send him my email address so he can email this prrof for me to see, but it has illustrations and other spurious reason why it’d be too hard to do.

This refusal to use facebook makes me biased and closed minded. Err, Ok then. (btw, I do feel a little superior as I never insulted the guy and was perfectly civil)

Anyway, the point is, if you have proof of something it is upto you to show it. i am not going to go chasing around the place to go and fetch it. I am happy to click a link or send my email address, but I shoudln’t have to login to anywhere I don’t already have an account, or give any details to anybody to see your proof.

You have to give it to me. If you don’t then, I shall presume you’re not what you say you are or your proof isn’t as watertight as you say it is. Either way, you lose.

Everyone that starts on Twitter can take a little time to find their feet and get into their own groove with it. This also applies to companies. So to help all those companies that have just decided to dip their toe in the water and feel the Fail Whale nibble on their pinkies, here are some of my pet hates all dressed up as tips on how to get into your groove quicker and get more out of Twitter.

Only use a clearly corporate account. Don’t have ‘personal’ accounts that are purely corporate. By all means have multiple accounts, but keep the branding across them and have clearly defined roles for each.

Also, if you put your company name in your bio and you’re always on duty. “My views are my own” is not a get out clause. If you were going to say something controversial you either wouldn’t put your company name in the bio or you’re a twat. “My Views are my own” do not excuse a slip or a misunderstanding. An Apology does. If you’re worried that anything you say might impact negatively on the business, keep work and personal separate. If it’s a personal account that is only used for work related stuff, remove the ‘own views’ line from the bio.
(I’m not entirely sure I’ve explained that one properly, but hey-ho)

Step away from the hashtag. Don’t hashtag your company name or what will become your company Twitter for example, if Company A uses the name @BusinessA, don’t stick the hashtag #BusinessA in every tweet for no reason. If you’re tagging a username, tag the fucking username. Overloading on hashtags gets you nowhere. Hashtag for a reason, when it adds something.

Make sure links go somewhere. Don’t post “We’re really rock n roll now” followed by a link to the front page of your website when the minor press release you’re alluding to is in the “News” section. People will click the link, find nothing however tenuously linked to rock n roll, wonder what the fuck you’re on about and not bother next time. They won’t go digging about for some vague bit of news, no matter how clever the tweet was. People will be less likely to (re)tweet even the most interesting news if they have to sort out copying & pasting and shortening links for themselves.

Have fun. Twitter is a ‘social network’, relax and loosen up, stop tweeting in the style of a press release. Don’t just tweet about stuff your own company is doing, tweet stuff from around the industry, non-controversial funny stuff, and if you can pull it off, like Waterstones and Betfair Poker, just plain weird.

Reply to people, don’t rely on the masses to come to you. You could even let people within the company, not just the boss or the PR guy, take charge of the account for a time. You never know, some of them might be Twitter gods and really get you’re follower count up.

An email plopped through my inbox today. From a sales bod hoping to get a lead and make some sales. Had he done some research futher than “ooh, they’re a big company, I could make a few quid outta them” he might’ve found out who he should’ve emailed. I gotta give him some due though, he did get my name, spelt correctly, even though I’m not an outward member of staff and should be quite hard to just pick out of nowhere.

I drafted an email in response and just as I was about to click the send button, I remembered, it’s my work email, so must be professional. So I got a second opinion. Unfortunately, that opinion enjoyed the sentiment but advised against sending it. So, rather than waste it, my email can sit here. Unsent and unloved. Languishing in this desolate place until er, this blog disappears.

Good Morning [my actual real name],

I hope you get a chance to read this short email.

I was hoping to arrange a brief meeting with you over the next few weeks in relation to cisco refurbished equipment.

To explain briefly, ****** are a Cisco Authorised Partner, offering businesses a broad range of New, Cisco Certified Refurbished Equipment, and Cisco SMARTnet support management services. ****** help organisations save between 15-20% off your Cisco purchase through the Cisco Certified Refurbished Equipment (CCRE) program.

We already provide equipment to customers in the most demanding environments such as the ****** ***** ********, and the intensive care unit at ******** ***** and ***** NHS Trust.
Cisco Certified Refurbished Equipment is also used in the telecommunications networks of BT and Cable & Wireless.

Some key points on ******:

• Have confidence in your network. All products are certified and refurbished to Cisco specifications, supported and warranted same as new product.
• Protect your budget. Competitive pricing, no hidden costs, and financing available to overcome your budget constraints.
• Protect and maintain your network. Support your legacy network needs from our comprehensive inventory of current and discontinued Cisco products.
• Protect your business. Same-as-new warranty protection plus hardware and software support options for 24-hour support enable you to focus on your business, not your network.
• Fulfilment. Same day PO shipping possible.
• Financing. Available through Cisco Capital.

A quote from one of our customers – “Two years on and we have received hundreds of units from ******, and we haven’t had a single faulty unit or live failure. The savings we have made combined with the shorter lead time between signing a customer and getting their services live has really propelled our business. ****** always go the extra mile to deliver on their promises, so we can on ours.”

Would Thursday, the 14th of June or Wednesday the 20th of May suit to meet for an introductory meeting? If June would be more suitable, just let me know and we can schedule to suit your diary.

I look forward to hearing from you and thanks in advance.

Kind regards,

Sales Bod

——————-

Hi Sales Bod,

Thank you for your email and the brief outline of your company.

Unfortunately we have just entered into a contract to replace our aging IT system. The Commodore 64’s we currently employ are frankly, just not up to the job in this modern world and the sound of the programs loading from the cassette doesn’t do Ethel, the tea lady, any good at all. Nothing gets done between 10.15 and 10.30 as that is when Ethel does her round and we have to stop what we’re doing. The high pitched “beeee. burrrrrrrrrr. Weeewoooweeewoooo” sound completely incapacitates her and Geofrey, our cleaner, struggles to remove the stains from the carpet. It has been suggested ear plugs may solve the problem, but we can’t work out where on the computer or cassete player we would put them.

We are very excited about our new hardware as the Commodore Amiga 1000 will finally allow us to ‘go cyber’ at last. I hear there are dozens of pages on this new World Wide Web. I am looking foward to seeing the art of one of these modern performance artists that goes by the name of Goatse. You should look him up, it’s all very surreal and cutting edge and not too dissimilar to sword swallowing, I’m told.

I would like to meet you for a cup of tea and introduce you to Ethels’ belgian buns, but I am out of the country on 14th June. I am visiting Columbia to see how we can help some very nice chaps expand their business within the UK. It’s a very unusual product – white snuff. I don’t use it myself, but I’m told it’s very good so should go down well here where I’m told there is a bit of a revival in the snuff market, especially in ‘The City’.

A meeting on 20th May sounds ideal as I cleared my calendar of all appointments very recently but alas, our time and relative dimension in space machine has developed an unexpected fault and will only work in a horizontal plane, through dimensions, and refuses to traverse through time. We have called America Onlines’ support desk numerous times but all they suggest is to shut it down and reboot it and to check that the tesla machines’ polarity is correct. Goerge, our maintanence man, has had a look and says he doesn’t know if it is correctly wired or not, on account of being colour blind. I’m sure he isn’t, I think he’s just lazy. We only keep him on because he came with the building and for someone with only one arm, he’s surprisingly nibble at playing the accordian which always goes down a scream at the company Christmas parties.

We’re hoping to have our time and relative dimesion in space machine working soon though, as only this morning we sent Janet, the YTS lad, down to our local computer shop to pick up a copy of Windows 95 as the problem really started when we upgraded the Flux capacitor and I don’t think Windows 3.1 is compatible. What a marvellous company this Microsoft is. Just imagine what that Bill Gates chap could do if he really knuckled down and applied his mind to something useful, eh?

Chin Chin

Mike Hunt

You’ve probably heard of Klout. It measures social media influence, using Twitter, Facebook, linkdin as other social media site. For select people with big Klout scores brands can give ‘perks’ like laptops, cinema preview screenings, flights and other stuff.

There’s also a down side that affects people negatively, even people that have never heard of Klout and what it’s about…

Last spring Sam Fiorella was recruited for a VP position at a large Toronto marketing agency. With 15 years of experience consulting for major brands like AOL, Ford, and Kraft, Fiorella felt confident in his qualifications. But midway through the interview, he was caught off guard when his interviewer asked him for his Klout score. Fiorella hesitated awkwardly before confessing that he had no idea what a Klout score was.
The interviewer pulled up the web page for Klout.com—a service that purports to measure users’ online influence on a scale from 1 to 100—and angled the monitor so that Fiorella could see the humbling result for himself: His score was 34. “He cut the interview short pretty soon after that,” Fiorella says. Later he learned that he’d been eliminated as a candidate specifically because his Klout score was too low. “They hired a guy whose score was 67.”

All their data comes, not only from the accounts that have actively signed up to Klout, but from everyone using social media. If you haven’t signed up to Klout they will still trawl all your public data. It’s public. That’s fine. They need that data to put together their scores. It’s public, anyone can see that data and use it how ever they want.

The problem comes because everyone has a Klout profile. Even if you’ve never heard of Klout, you still have a Klout profile and so a Klout score. If you’ve not signed up to them and they only have your public data to go by, your score is going to be pretty low and so are potentially risking what happened to the guy in the quote above. And that’s pretty shitty.

You’re basically in a competing in something when you didn’t know you’re in a competition.

I say everyone has a Kluot profile, but that’s not strictly true. You can, of course opt-out of Klout, but how can you opt-out of something you’ve never heard of? The obvious answer is, you can’t.

Here’s what Klout say about why people that have never registered for Klout have a profile…

I have never registered for Klout, why do I have a Klout profile?

Klout collects public data in order to accurately measure influence. Users can control the data available to Klout by changing the privacy setting on individual networks. Klout will never access your private data unless we have explicit permission.

That doesn’t really answer the question, does it? That ‘answer’ explains why data is collected and how a user can control what data is collected, but the question is asking about a non-user. A non-user shouldn’t have a profile. All sorts of websites collects data from non-user, for various reasons, but non of them creates a profile, or the one or two that I can think of do not do so for the explicit reason of rating you in a popularity contest you want nothing to do with or know nothing about.

Oh, I nearly forgot, there is that opt-out option, if you know about Klout.

Opting-out is an option, but as Klout is all about collecting as much data as possible, the link to opt-out is hidden amongst they privacy statement. It would be nice to have it on their front page. Nothing to big, just a link down the bottom with their T’s & C’s and their other links to thier blog and ‘about’ page.

And of course to opt-out you need to tell them who you are and what profiles on what networks are yours. To opt-out, you have to give them the information they want if you were signing up to them.

Do I opt-out, giving them what they want, or do I carry on ignoring them and hope I’m not one of the unlucky suckers? I reckon, I’ll keep my head down and not actively put myself on their radar one way or another. After all, It won’t happen to me. Will it?

To the solution.

Klout collects data on everyone. That’s fine as all their data is from public sources, but why does everyone (unless opted-out) have to have a Klout profile? Surely a better way of going about things would be to only give people that have actively signed up to the what-ever-it-is-Klout-is (Service? Network? Popularity contest?) a profile? for everyone else, when their name, profile is checked by another user, give a ‘profile not known’ or ‘this user doesn’t seem to have registered’ message. That way people that aren’t aware of or don’t want to take part in the contest aren’t unfairly judged by doing badly in it.

It would also give Klout a boost by not getting bad press for fucking people over in the style above. Everyone really would be a winner.

You can opt-out of Klout here.

Eh?

Can I just congratulate Paul Staines on a recent-ish appointment.

The alter ego (and what a fucking ego) of Guido Fawkes is running Messagespace…

Staines is founder of the Guido Fawkes blog Order-Order and also runs the MessageSpace network which sells ads across around 30 political blogs.

It wasn’t too long ago that Messagespace were denying any connection between them and Paul…

The official line is that; “Paul Staines is neither a shareholder, director or employee of MessageSpace and never has been.”

But for some reason they both had access to each others sites. It was alleged that Paul was hosting stolen images on the Messagespace site and Jag Singh of Messagespace offered to remove alleged lies and smears from order-order.com …

Read that bit again; Jag Singh offered to log into the order-order.com website and delete these comments himself!

Why would Jag do that on order-order and how would Paul be able to host stuff on messagespace if they have nothing to do with each other?

I know peoples’ circumstances change, and Paul may have joined the top team at Messagespace in the last two years, but after that, would you trust them?

So, Huffington Post or Messagespace? Would you rather be fucked in the arse or the eye?

ht Tim

I have previously written about Istyosty.com and with it being one of my more active posts, I thought I would write about it again, thanks to a Patrick Hayes at Huffington Post UK.

Up until recently, the liberal Twitterati have been faced with a dilemma. By tweeting links of Daily Mail and Sun articles to their followers in order to engage in a collective two minute hate against the idiocy of the tabloid press (and their millions of gullible, easily manipulated readers), they end up sending traffic to the despised article and boosting the tabloid’s web traffic and potentially aiding its advertising revenue.

First off, ‘the Liberal Twitterati’. Who’s that then? I’m presuming Patrick means anyone that doesn’t like the bullshit the tabloids come out with. The dilemma, though, is a very real one not just for Twitterers, but for bloggers and anyone that shares links, like bloggers. Bloggers, or good bloggers, link to the source of their information they are sharing or the subject of their posts. This is so that the reader can either check the facts the blogger puts forward or see what the blogger is writing about so that the reader can go and make their own mind up, even if the content of the source is erm, not very savoury. This is something that newspaper websites very rarely do which enables them to put forward articles that can twist the truth or not tell the whole truth or take things out of context. What’s a blogger to do, eh? Link or not link? Let the reader decide for themselves the validity of their facts and opinions or behave like a tabloid?

It’s even argued that the Mail is intentionally using what’s termed ‘flame bait’ to lure liberals to its site, helping it get 10 million hits more than the Guardian’s website each month. This has led to some claiming they’d rather remain in the dark about the content of Daily Mail articles being discussed, because reading them online could make a small contribution to the Mail’s swelling coffers.

That argument about flame bait is not a hard argument to win.

The choice to remain in the dark and hope the Mail withered away is ok for some, but it obviously isn’t doing anything to diminish the Mail in anyway. Others, though, want to call out the lies and the spin and the abusiveness and so in steps the dilemma.

Now a solution has been found. IstyOsty allows you to link to a cached version of a Daily Mail article (alongside other tabloids) that doesn’t display advertising and won’t register as a hit on the website or appear on search engines. IstyOsty claims this process is ‘entirely legal’.

Yay, Istyosty! What a beautiful, elegant solution it is, too.

The website has also been an immediate hit among the Twitterati, who are beginning to childe one another if they link to the actual Daily Mail website. Times columnist Caitlin Moran, for example, was ticked off by TV presenter Lauren Laverne for giving them [the Daily Mail] the ‘click through’ to an article, prompting Moran to respond: ‘Must. Remember. @istyosty.’

I’m presuming Patrick means ‘chide’ as in to scold or express disapproval, as opposed to ‘childe’ which is a disused term for a child of noble birth, and quite right too. I would hardly say it has been an immediate hit, though (no offence Istyosty). I regularly see bloggers and Twitterers not using it, including ones I presume Patrick would include as a Twitterati, like media bloggers. But then how do I know, I have never seen Istyostys’ stats.

When a Twitch Hunt began against Melanie Phillips on Monday for a Mail article she’d penned attacking the BBC, IstyOsty links were widely used with Twitter users imploring others to deprive the ‘Daily Fail’ of ad revenue. As one Tweet said: ‘Dear Twitter, If Melanie Phillips must be linked to, please could it be through the @istyosty safe link? http://is.gd/fQplZD Thanks. :)’ Another suggested, ‘someone needs to design a WW2-style poster reminding people to use istyosty & not direct-link to the Mail.’

Did you read that Phillips article? No? Well, Angry Mob tears it to pieces as it is a proper piece of WTF-ery, and yes, he links to it via istyosty, so I’m guessing he is a Twitterati too.

If you’re going to say that tweeters are scolding each other for not using Istyosty links, the example Patrick gives is a pretty weak one: ‘Dear Twitter’; ‘Please could’; ‘Thanks’. Ooh! Scary. That’s a serious telling off that is.

The embracing of IstyOsty on Twitter reveals much about the mindset of the liberals that use it. As one Twitterer put it, ‘may I commend istyosty to you? A proxy that enables us to point furiously at evil papers without them getting page hits.’

Yeah, great. Someone’s a bit sarcastic but they’ve hit the nail on the head.

At first glance, you might think that the IstyOsty strategy is for the ‘evil’ Daily Mail website and the like to be starved of advertising revenue and being forced to wither away. It would also be understandable to think that in the eyes IstyOsty enthusiasts, the world would be a better place if the Mail and other ‘nasty’ papers ceased to exist and everyone was forced to read the Guardian by default. (Tellingly a request on its website that IstyOsty also covers the Guardian has so far gone unanswered).

I have no idea what Istyostys’ strategy is. You’d have to ask him (he’s @istyosty, if you couldn’t guess). I think it would be a shame if the Mail and the Sun disappeared. Most people don’t want that. Most people realise that a plethora of opinion in the media is A Good Thing, they just want All. The. Bullshit. to stop. There’s nothing wrong with saying that Britain is going to be over run with foreigners in ten years time, or that eating 0.5grams of cheese a week raised your chances of cancer by 35 times or whatever, as long as it is true, or the studies actually suggest it. If you’re gonna write bullshit, or a spiteful column about someone less than a week after their death, then people are gonna call you on it.

But, here’s the rub: In such a world, who would liberals have to ‘point furiously’ at? Their lives would become dull and empty if there weren’t columnists like Melanie Phillips to Twitch Hunt. Even IstyOsty recognises that the Mail plays an important service in allowing liberal Guardian-reading types to feel smug by ‘point[ing] out how ignorant they are’.

Yeah, yeah. Nice one. People are all one dimensional and don’t have other shit to be getting on with except to be outraged by what ever the right wing press are saying. That is so humourous, oh, hang on. That’s not link bait I’ve fallen for is it? Damn.

And what’s wrong with pointing out how ignorant someone is when they’re spewing bile and bullshit?

Of course, their finger-pointing doesn’t just stop at the ‘ignorance’ of writers such as ‘Mad Mel’, Jan Moir and colleagues. It’s also, by extension, aimed at the Mail’s 4.7 million readers. The brainwashed, ill-educated, Beta minus drones who inhabit Middle England and read papers such as the Mail not to feel superior, but to actually get news.

Yes, fingers get pointed at the Mail. Why shouldn’t someone be called out when they’re being ignorant and spewing bullshit? The ‘brainwashed, ill-educated, beta minus drones’ are not a big part of the mails readership though.

As you can see in the screen shot from the Newspaper Marketing Agency…

(Key:
A upper middle class Higher managerial, administrative or professional
B middle class Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1 lower middle class Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2 skilled working class Skilled manual workers
D working class Semi and unskilled manual workers
E Those at the lowest levels of subsistence Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners and others who depend on the welfare state for their income

The column on the right is percent of readers.)

As you can see, the Mails readership isn’t really the ill-educated, supposedly easily led, or beta minus folk, is it? And is it news if it’s not actually true, or presented truthfully? No, it’s bullshit.

When, for example, IstyOsty says those who advertise in the Mail are ‘companies who should know better’, it is implicitly saying that companies shouldn’t be spending their cash trying to raise awareness of their products among the poor thickies that read it.

But the vast majority aren’t ‘poor thickies’, are they? The companies should know better. They should know better than to associate themselves and help pay for the poisonous, divisive, hateful output of these papers.

IstyOsty, realistically, is unlikely to make much of dent to the massive number of hits the Daily Mail gets each month. Even if the whole of Islington, Hackney, Haringey and the small handful of other liberal bastions (i.e. the places that voted ‘Yes’ in the AV referendum), decided to switch to IstyOsty en masse. It’s more a way the chattering classes can ensure that the continued success of these ‘evil’ publications is not done in their name. As well as being a convenient way to differentiate themselves from the dunderheaded tabloid-reading masses.

And?

Using an IstyOsty link is like a 21st century Twitter version of a Masonic handshake. It makes it clear you’re one of the Enlightened Ones and not one of them. On the flip side, however, it is an remarkably accurate identifier of members of the contemptuous, intolerant, masses-hating, clique of illiberal liberals who are – worryingly – becoming increasingly influential in shaping British political life today.

That metaphor doesn’t quite work. The Masonic handshake is supposed to be secret. Istyosty works better the more people know of it and use it.

Oh, what a wit Patrick is. ‘Illiberal liberals’ ho ho. Masses hating, heh. Yeah, of course.

Hackers have hit The Sun newspaper, and not the sort of hackers to hack your phone.

The URL http://thesun.co.uk redirects to http://new-times.co.uk/sun/ with a fake story about Rupert Murdoch being found dead. At the end of the story there is a cartoon which explains it.

h/t to @scaryduck, who I first head if from.

Update: TechCrunch has a little more.

And Again (23.18): The admins at new-times.co.uk have revoked access, but Lulzsec still have control of the Suns’ site and have redirected it to their Twitterfeed.

And another (23.45) Lulzsec just tweeted that News Internationals’ site, containing a statement about the hack, has been hacked to direct back to Lulzsecs Twitterfeed too. http://newsint.co.uk/statement_regarding_the_sun.html

I said earlier I was going to write a post but now it actually comes to it, like it seems so many other times lately, what do I write a post about?

The News International/News Corp./News of the World hacking scandal (I fucking hate the the term ‘hackgate’)? Well, I don’t have any news that you can’t anywhere else, and be more accurate and more recent too. An incisive bit of opinion that’ll make you think? Not that either.

So what do I have instead? Not a fucking lot. To give my mind some time to think while I type go and check out Septicisles’ musings on the Murdoch situation and Tim is doing his own digging in the archives to give the FBI somewhere to start looking to help bring the Murdoch empire down. Give him some support, would you. (See? even the first two links I have for you aren’t exactly original, are they? What hope have I got of writing an interesting blog post?)

Oh, and Unity at the Ministry of Truth has been kicking the absolute shit out of Nadine Dorries too, which is always a joy.

The PCC are running scared. Uponnothing hits the PCC bang on the head with just why, exactly, they are a bag of shit and are less than pointless and irrelevant using the example of a couple of women, who were raped, that had had their anonymity revealed by a paper. The PCC condemned the actions of the paper and adjudicated against them in, for the PCC, the strongest terms. What was the strongest punishment that could be handed to the offending paper?

[The PCC} contacted the owners so that they could ensure it never happened again. All well and good you might think, but imagine of this kind of adjudication happened in any other walk of life. Would the tabloids be happy if a teenager found guilty of doing something ‘exceedingly serious’ was not punished in any way, instead the judge just passed on his thoughts to the parents in the hope that they could take the appropriate action?

What if the Chief Executive of Trinity Mirror doesn’t do anything? What would the PCC do in that case? What could they do in that case?

And that is the problem with the PCC. It can do fuck all else except point a finger and that doesn’t seem to be stopping the usual suspects and transgressing the code, as the more prominent media bloggers highlight on a daily basis.

Anyway, this post about bugger all has taken me far, far longer to write than it’ll take you to read, and I’m sorry to have wasted your time waffling on about fuck all, so I’ll leave you with a link to a site that should’ve gone on my blogroll ages ago, but you know what sort of waste of space I am. It’s called Stuff and Nonsense, written by jdc325. Enjoy.