Sim-O

What’s going on with the BBC, then?

I was under the impression that it was a leftist propaganda machine that was run by the UK arm of some international communist organisation.
That’s the impression given by some on the web, anyway.

But now, not only does it hate Jews, it is a big business/capitalist apologist and nazi sympathiser.

If the BBC keeps going in the way it is at the moment, it’s gonna end up making Fux News look like Socialist Worker.

You probably all knew it anyway, but here is a fine example of the hypocrasy of capitalism [click to enlarge]

£5 for 15 cans of cider. 34 pence a can.
£5 for 18 bottles of lager. 28 pence a bottle.

A pack of 10 cans of Coke will cost, from Tesco, £3.65. 37 pence a can.

The drinkaware.co.uk website says about themselves…

Drinkaware aims to change the UK’s drinking habits for the better. We promote responsible drinking and find innovative ways to challenge the national drinking culture to help reduce alcohol misuse and minimise alcohol-related harm.

Wow. Now that really is innovative. Selling alcohol cheaper than non-alcohol. I see, minimize the impact of drinking on the wallet. Very good.

N.B.
It’s not the selling of cheap beer that’s irked me, it’s the hypocrasy of pretending to care, saying one thing and doing the opposite.

The London Eye (my emphasis)…

As you rise to an incredible 135 metres above the River Thames, the 30 minute rotation on the London Eye provides stunning panoramic views of the city and reveals parts of London which are simply not visible from the ground.

There’s not really a lot of London that is visible from the ground due to all the fucking big buildings. *shakes head*

British Airways are fucking with the people again…

The cash-strapped airline will… take control of another £330m in bank guarantees which had previously been set aside for its pensioners in the event of BA falling into insolvency. This comes just three days after BA warned it might not have enough liquidity to survive the economic downturn.

So BA may go to the wall, and to try and stop it, with no guarantees that it will, they have raided the very pot of money that their ex-workers will need if things do turn to poo.

Maybe BA should concentrate on turning a profit rather than trying to maintain their “position as a leading global premium airline”. It’s no good being a premium airline if you ain’t making money.

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.

Are the BNP left wing or are they on the right?

There’s people on both sides claiming that the BNP is not on their side. To some, the idea that a party so abhorrent as these racist fucknuts can be on the same side as ‘them’ is just something that they cannot comprehend. It just doesn’t compute.

Some of the BNPs’ policies at first glance seem left wing, socialistic. Policies like rebuilding the countrys’ council housing stock, improving the NHS and renationalising national monopoly industries. Others seem conservative or right wing: the ‘restoration’ of discipline in schools (including corporal punishment) & basically taking the school system back to the 1940’s*; ending the ‘fixation on the rights of criminals’; pretty much the whole of their crime and punishment agenda.

*I might be a little out with the decade, but you get the idea.

Look a bit deeper into the policy at the wording, though and it all comes at the expense of non-white people. For any of their policies to work they have to get rid of whole swathes of people who they designate are not truly British.

The BNP are both left and right wing. They’re also neither. They take what they think is popular policies and feelings and adopt them adding their own racist spin on them.

Isn’t that enough to be going on with? Do you really need anything else to distance yourself from them? Are you such a complete twat that you need to keep repeating the fact that they are left/right wing hoping that people will take it in and equate all people of that stripe a fascists?

Are they big enough cunts that you’re comfortable with your differences to them, or are you a little insecure that people might not know you from them?

Our friendly local power station, nPower owned Didcot Power Station, was going to fill in some old gravel pits with ash.
The trouble is those lakes have become established lakes with lots of wildlife.

But now those lakes are secure.

(photo shamelessly stolen from This Abingdon. His post, with a couple more pictures is here)

How beautiful is that lake? Look how established the greenery is around it. Can you believe it they were gonna just fill them with ash?

At present, GM rice is not grown commercially anywhere in the world. But Bayer, the German chemical giant, has genetically manipulated rice to withstand higher doses of a toxic pesticide called glufosinate, which is considered to be so dangerous to humans and the environment that it will soon be banned from Europe.

In just a few weeks, the European Union will decide whether or not this GM rice can enter EU countries, appear on supermarket shelves and end up on our dinner plates. If the EU approves the import of Bayer GM rice, farmers in the US and elsewhere may soon start planting it.

Sign the petition to urge governments to reject Bayers’ rice and stop trials.

Via Tim

More on Newsquest taking BNP money for banner ads across the top of they’re local newspaper websites.

Apparently newsquest were only doing it because they were under duress…

A salesman at Newsquest who said his name was James, said that Newsquest was obliged to carry advertising from the BNP as it was a “legitimate political party” and that not taking any money would be against “democratic rules of party political advertising” or some rubbish like that. He said, at any rate, that Newsquest was obliged to take money from the BNP and carry their ads because it was a political party. He referred me to the Advertising Standards Authority, who he said had codes that they had to follow.

When Sunny asked the ASA about this, he was told that no codes like that existed and the press (politics?) are exempt anyway. On Sunny went the electoral commission who stated…

“Under electoral law there is no obligation for a newspaper to carry any party political advertising. They are free to reject them if they wish to.”

So, Newsquest. Happy to take the Fascist schill.