Brief notes
Some that slipped through the net yesterday:
1. New Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, seems to be picking up where his predecessor left off, at least as far as expenses are concerned. It has just been announced that he’ll be charging around £20,000 of “refurbishments” to his grace-and-favour flat to the British taxpayer. Mr Bercow, though, is “happy that this information is in the public domain, that the public know how this money has been spent”.
Would the public be quite so happy about it, I wonder? The £20,000 includes over £6,000 for a new sofa, £3,600 on planters for the terrace and over £1,000 to redecorate one room. Given that former Speaker Michael Martin spent nearly £725,000 of taxpayers money on the flat between 2000 and 2008, some might say that enough is enough and if Mr Bercow wants to redecorate he should do so from his own pocket (he is, after all, paid over £140,000 a year).
2. Lloyds / HBOS have announced losses of £4 billion, in the same week that both Barclays and HSBC announced profits of £3 billion. Lloyds / HBOS, of course, is the only one of the three to have been bailed out with taxpayer’s money, so it looks like we got value for money doesn’t it?
Brief Notes
Another quick batch of stuff that I can’t help commenting on:
1. An E.coli outbreak in Wrexham that has left a woman and a three year old girl seriously ill has been traced to one particular fish and chip shop. And it turns out that this establishment had “poor hygiene conditions and major non-compliance with food legislation” in a Council inspection a year ago.
Which rather begs the question, why was it allowed to stay open? Why was it only recommended for annual checks, rather than being immediately shut down and not allowed to re-open until all problems had been addressed?
2. An American woman is suing her college because she has been unable to find work since graduating. She says they didn’t give her enough career development advice.
It may be just me, but haven’t the college completed their obligation by giving her the education she paid for? She graduated – a bachelor’s in information technology – so surely they’d done their bit? Isn’t the rest up to her?
Of course, the fact that she’s suing them has nothing to do with the fact that she’s got $70,000 of student loans to repay.
3. Apparently, UK consumers are being tricked into buying shoddy goods, by fake UK websites – according to a report by Trading Standards. It seems that a number of websites that end in .co.uk are not, in fact, based in the UK but China and rather than selling real merchandise, they sell cheap knock-off rubbish. UK consumers are, according to Trading Standards, being lulled into a false sense of security by the .co.uk suffix and think they are dealing with a British company.
Which just goes to show what a bunch of idiots UK shoppers can be sometimes. If you can’t be bothered to take some elementary precautions when shopping online – like finding out who you’re buying from – then you deserve everything you get. And let’s face it, these sites are only popular because they’re cheap – if the consumer wasn’t trying to get something for nothing, then we wouldn’t even be talking about this. Let’s be clear – these people got what they paid for.
I said it recently but I’ll say it again – it’s the internet; have some common sense.
Brief Notes
Couple of things that I’ve noticed recently:
1. Apparently, from tomorrow Sainsbury’s will be asking anyone who looks as if they’re under 25 to prove their age before they can buy age restricted products. The sign I saw didn’t specify which age restricted products they were talking about, but according to the Trading Standards website all the restricted products such as knives, alcohol, tobacco and so on can be sold to anyone over 18.
Which leads me to wonder why anyone that looks under 25 is being carded? Surely you only need to prove your age if you are over 18 but don’t look it? It’s a ridiculous policy and should be outlawed.
2. Mobile phone directory 118 800 is getting a lot of coverage at the moment, unfortunately (for them) none of it positive. In case you haven’t heard, they’ve attempted to launch a directory enquiries service that enables people to ring up and get connected to your mobile phone. The directory has, apparently, been put together from lists already in the public domain and covers approximately a third of all mobile numbers
As described by 118 800, the service they operate won’t actually reveal your mobile number to anyone and you won’t receive any calls that you don’t agree to. What you will get, though, is a text from 118 800 to tell you that someone wants to speak to you; you then decide if you want to take the call and, if you do, they get put through.
When the 118 800 service is back online (they are having “teething” problems at the moment and have taken themselves offline), you’ll be able to ask for your number to go ex-directory and it’s this that seems to have got everyone worked up. For some reason, people have assumed that their mobile number is somehow uniquely private and that no-one should be able to know what it is. This, of course, is patently not the case; none of the mobile operators (as far as I know) promise to keep your number secret and every time you give your mobile number to a third party, you’re risking that data being sold on.
I think the idea does have merits; so many people now have their mobile as their only phone number that it seems a good idea to have mobile numbers in the directory alongside landline numbers. But in these days where around 50% of landline customers are ex-directory, it would have been a much better idea for the mobile operators to get their customers to opt-in to a directory and then make that information available to services like 118 800.
Brief notes
After a long break, just a few things to comment on:
1. Apparently, Michael Jackson was somewhat in debt at the time of his death – perhaps as much as half a billion dollars – which makes me wonder if he’s done a John Stonehouse?
Perhaps he’s gone to live with Elvis….
2. Ok, so he was the King of Pop, but why does EVERYONE have to pay tribute to him? Watching the Wimbledon coverage today, the first thing Tim Henman and Tracy Austin had to do was to tell the world what a loss it was. Exactly what does it have to do with tennis coverage? Is the tennis so boring that you need to talk about something else?
3. After much (tedious) arguing, the Formula One Teams Association and the FIA have reached an accord. Despite everyone saying all the way through that it wasn’t about personalities, that accord includes Max Moseley’s retirement as chairman of the FIA when his current term expires in October. This is a Good Thing.
But, as he did once before, Max is now claiming that he doesn’t have to keep to the terms of the agreement because FOTA have already breached them. Basically, he’s wriggling out from under because he doesn’t want to give up control of the FIA. This is a Bad Thing, because it’s Max and his co-conspirator Bernie Ecclestone that have caused Formula One to become the sad joke that it currently is.
Brief notes
Just a couple of items to highlight for you, in my ongoing series of things that don’t warrant a whole post to themselves.
1. As you can’t have failed to notice, Apple have announced today at MacWorld that iTunes is going DRM free. No longer will music purchased through the iTunes store be restricted-use; you’ll be able to do what you like with it – just like you can with downloads from Amazon.
The problem comes in that any music you’ve already purchased (unless it was an iTunes Plus track) will still have DRM attached, and if you want to upgrade it – which you may have to, if the DRM servers get switched off, because it seems that will make your music non-functional – you’ll have to pay some more money for the privilege. Not the full cost, but 20p per music track.
That doesn’t sound like much, but if you’ve bought a lot of tracks it could soon add up. It would have been better if Apple and the record labels could have found it in their hearts to let you upgrade for free. Especially seeing as how by the end of March, all iTunes tracks are planned to be DRM free.
2. Something else you’ve probably seen over the last few days is the announcement of the new Doctor Who, to replace David Tennant from 2010 onwards. Matt Smith has apparently had quite an illustrious theatre career and has been in a few TV things (many of them with Billie Piper) but for me, he’s a complete unknown. Not sure if he’s a good choice or not.
Of course, my preference would have been for the return of Tom Baker.
Wolfs Helpers
