Catchy Title

Does anyone else think that Labour are almost guaranteed to win the next election?

David Cameron and his travelling circus almost seemed a viable alternative.   Right up until the moment they started revealing their policies.

The latest of which is a promise to cut, cut, cut within days of coming to power.  What they fail to realise is that every cut that gets made will have a knock-on effect to services being purchased from the private sector.  Unemployment will rise, interest rates will fall, and we’ll be back into decline along with our Italian, German, and Spanish friends.

Where-as Labours policy seems rather more sensible to me.  Let the Government take the strain, wait until the country has it’s own momentum in the direction of growth (lets say a year – well, actually the boffins said ‘a year’ as that’s when they’ve forecast the economy will be strong enough), THEN cut the deficit over a very reasonable 4 years to a tune of 50%.

We seem to have a party that will say what it thinks people want to hear, wihtout actually using relevant data to inform themselves.  I want my economic policy decided by a trained economist, who is being fed with all the latest data and opinions from across the globe, to then create a steady, conservative approach to deficit reduction, growth, and job creation.  What I don’t want is a party lurching around, changing it’s policies based on Daily Mail headlines regarding the state of our finances.

Economies go into recession when people stop spending, so the very last thing we need is the Government to lead the charge.  Four years is ample time to clear the deficit in my book.

The only thing that worries me about a Labour win is the effort their ministers and think-tanks put into social engineering policies.  Things like raising the minimum price of alcohol; what a crock!  Government should concentrate on the big things.  Over the past 13 years Labour have succeeded in a lot of ‘big’ areas;  things like Independence to the Bank Of England, Stopping genocide in Kosovo, The Northern Ireland Peace Treaty, repealing Section 28, creating Civil Partnerships and equal rights for same-sex couples, leading the charge to whip off African Debt, the smoking ban creating the amazing entertainment space which is the O2 Arena and surrounding area (which is already making more money than it cost), the successful Olympic bid which is creating Billion of Pounds worth of regeneration to hundreds of acres of land across the country, and we have led the world on climate change, 3rd world debt, resolving the financial ‘crisis’ amongst other things.  But all of these things have been mired by other things like ASBO’s, and those crazy children’s savings account things!

I may update this later,  but it’s Valentine’s day and I have preparations to make for my Valentine!

This is the only reason to pay money to see Twilight Saga: New Moon

The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Michael Sheen

In the second installment of Stephanie Meyer’s phenomenally successful Twilight series, the romance between mortal and vampire soars to a new level as Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) delves deeper into the mysteries of the supernatural world she yearns to become part of – only to find herself in greater peril than ever before.

I am extremely disappointed. The acting was good, especially considering what they had to work with. The screenplay was either badly written, or a reasonable screenplay may have been massacred by the bad director. Either way, the direction definitely was terrible.

I think Chris Weitz spent so much time making sure the imagery (and boys) were pretty, that he completely forgot to make sure the story and editing worked.

An example of what I mean:

The scene where the Cullens are gathered for Bella’s birthday, and things go wrong where she has a papercut. Edward has to step in to save her, and emotions are obviously running high, and the scene is ended by a ‘look’ from Edward that says he is not happy with the situation and something is going to be done about it.

The next day, he sees her at school, they laugh, smile, and tell each other how much they are in love. Great! Situation avoided it seems. End scene.

The next day Edward pops over to Bella’s, meets her in the garden, takes her to the woods (what the hell was wrong with her place?), and proceeds to tell her that the Cullens are leaving and he doesn’t want her with him, obviously having made the decision that being around him isn’t safe, after the incident 2 days previous.

So where did the scene in the middle come from?? Why on earth put it there? Why not the day before the troubles at the Cullen’s place or leave it out altogether?

A second example:

In the scene at the Voltare Palace. Aro had demanded that Bella accompany Edward to meet Aro, initially they refused, but then a short blond vamp turns up, and suddenly they are all petrified of her, as if we are supposed to know who she is. I’m informed I would have known if I had read the book. So I’m guessing the director assumed that we all should have done that first.

Then when they meet Aro, he is surprised that Bella is there also, yet 5 minutes previously, they were told Aro specifically wanted to see her also.

The film is full of sloppy gaps, and errors. Bella is a whiny little tramp who isn’t happy with simply dating an uber-fit Vampire for a few years as a human, or the prospect of settling down with an uberuberuber fit Jacob (OH MY GOD!), and going on the way she treats both of them (and everyone else in her life), she deserves a slap more than eternal happiness….or to be forced to marry somebody ugly.   Whatever happens, Edward doesn’t need to worry about ‘taking’ Bella’s soul if he turns her.  Her character is bereft of a soul already.

Oh and one last thing:  SPOILER ALERT. At the end of the film where Edward proposes to Bella, the last thing we see and hear is a gasp of sheer pleasure and unbridled happiness from Bella. I have just been told she says no to his proposal in the next book. Did the director not read the next book? I’m guessing he didn’t and he has now set the next director up with a little challenge to be starting the next movie with.  Bad show Chris Weitz.

"...just because I choose to share some parts of my life; it doesn't mean that strangers or companies have carte blanche over all of it"

The recent interest in the the T-Mobile story about staffers selling customer data illegally to 3rd parties is of no surprise.  Consumers fight a daily battle against direct marketing, direct mail, cold callers and the like, and there has never been much we can do about it.  Registering with such services as TPS will make a small difference to those marketing companies that respect the law, however there are a lot of companies out there who employ temporary staff who can take the fall if necessary, and who really don’t give a fig if you take exception to their calls.

So, the reason for this blog about it?  How does it affect me?  I’m glad you asked:

I’ve had my iPhone for something like 4 months now.  During that time I have only ever given the number out to friends; NEVER businesses, and I have never received a marketing calls.  That was at least until this morning.  Today I have received four marketing calls.

Three of the numbers were witheld,  but one of them wasn’t.  I Googled the number to try and identify the ‘perp’ (I watch too many American crime dramas).   What I found were dozens of forums discussing this number, and the common theme was that most of these people had received many unwanted calls from this number a short time after registering with the German owned Utility company NPower.

Guess what I did 3 days ago whilst in town?  Thats right! Gold star for you!  I registered with NPower.

3 days!  THREE days!  3 DAYS!   THREE F**&$*G DAYS!!!!

To the compaint:

I gave NPower a call, got straight through to the complaints team, and explained my situation.  I was apologised to, then it was suggested that when I registered my mobile phone, I may have been automatically signed up on 192.com.   I made it clear that I am NOT on 192.com (I have checked), and besides, the calls started within 3 days of registering with them.  I also explained the online activity from all the NPower customers that had had a similar experience, and the girl agreed to raise a complaint to their resolution team.

We will see what will happen, but I really can’t see much being done, and besides, my number is now out there.  I managed to go 12 years without receiving a single sales call on my old number, I suppose in this age of aggressive marketing I should have counted myself lucky.

Is it deserved?

Now, I do put myself ‘out there’ on the internet.  My profile names often include my full name, and you can find a wealth of information about me and my activities with a Google search, but there are boundaries.  A mobile phone should be a device where you have absolute control of what you receive to it, and what gets sent from it.

My mobile phone is a first point of contact (as it is for most people under 40 these days), it is my social networking tool, business tool, phone book, A-Z map, Telephone Directory, web browser, email client, train timetable, ticket vendor, clock, alarm clock, diary, calendar, fridge door, camera, video camera, music player, TV viewer, calculator, online shop, photo album, weather channel, bank teller, home network browser, exercise trainer, iTunes remote, PC mouse, document viewer, tube map, concierge, stock broker, recipe book, and foreign language phrasebook.

So you can see that with all the information it contains, the information I have taken care to secure (password protected and if the password is entered incorrectly too many times, the device is wiped), my mobile can be held as somewhat sacred to me.  So when a complete stranger has access enough to just make an unwarranted phone call to it, then I’m going to get protective.  Yes I share a lot, but just because I choose to share some parts of my life; it doesn’t mean that strangers or companies have carte blanche over all of it.

I say this to any company that try to sell me things via a phone call:

I WILL NOT be buying anything from you whether you are from a charity, or selling a product that I like.

You WILL NOT get me to reveal any further information about myself.

I WILL be polite up until the point I have said NO just once, but beyond that I WILL be rude.

From this moment on, if I already subscribe to your service or product, I WILL find an alternative to it and cancel my subscription and will make every convenient attempt to avoid your product in future.

So, there we go, we shall see what happens with NPower, and if they don’t seem to care enough about my complaint, I will buy my Gas and Electricity somewhere else.  I’ll comment on this post with any updates.

Thanks for reading this far down the page.  If you did make it this far, say  Rich is a mushroom in the comments section.

I have just spent a couple of hours browsing blogs, vlogs and comments. Now usually this activity makes me smile. I love the innovative new ways people all over the world, find to engage and entertain. However the sheer level of shockingly bad grammar, and atrocious spelling on the internet, has got the point that my head exploded.  Seriously, if you check your seismograph (you all have one right?), you will see a rather large blip about 20 minutes ago; THAT was my head exploding.

I’m a consistent user of text/web slang myself, so I’m not talking about that; but as an example, all of the words in the title of this post were in the comment section of just one YouTube video.

Comment sections should have spelling checkers built in, at least that way the user will be informed in advance that they are a grade-A douchebag.

Jeez!

Rupert Murdoch says he will remove stories from Google‘s search index as a way to encourage people to pay for content online.

In an interview with Sky News Australia, the mogul said that newspapers in his media empire – including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal – would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web.

At least someone in the audience likes him....maybe a little too much.

I know the story is a couple of days old now, but it is such a good’n’ I feel the need to commit something to writing so that I to may basque in the glory of I-WAS-RIGHT-AND-HE-WAS-SO-VERY-WRONG that will inevitably come in the near future.

This glorious day has a 80% chance of arriving in one of two ways:

1. Because his advisors (who MUST be better at running a company than Rupert, otherwise News Corp would no longer be trading) have managed to convince the old crone that he may as well start giving away free anthrax samples with every newspaper for all the good blocking his sites from search engines will do.

or

2. The guy would have stamped his feet enough that News Corp actually go through with his ‘evil’ plan (no, I don’t ACTUALLY think his plan is evil….it just sounded good), that traffic to his sites drops dramatically, he fails to reach existing visit targets for advertisers and loses gazillions of dollars, and the lack of traffic/negative press deter future advertisers from his sites.

So why only 80% chance you ask?  Well…..he’s not a spring chicken any more.  I’m just sayin’!  Even I won’t gloat over the body of a dead man.  I wish him many more happy years,  cause I REALLY, REALLY want to gloat.

So, I must tell you now that I am actually a large customer of Mr Murdoch (no, I’m not fat, I meant financially).  That is, not a small sum of money leaves my account each month in exchange for a Sky+ HD Multiroom subscription.  I also pay for all the TV packages, the Movies and the Sports, the telephone line, telephone calls, and broadband.  I also work away from home a lot, so having access to SKY Player to watch movies and current TV is a real bonus.

I find that technically, the service is sound.  It very rarely goes wrong.  Financially, it is a good deal.  If I were to piece together the same package from separate providers it would cost much more.  Other than Virgin of course, but cable isn’t available in the area for that apartment.   However, the customer service, the engineers, the call centres, and the billing system sucks.  It is a close 2nd for suckiness behind BT.  But, if the technology itself never goes wrong, then I should never have to speak with them.  I will continue to keep my fingers crossed, but if it was to start breaking down and I actually had to start dealing with these people (the people that took 4 hours and 6 phone conversations to understand that I wanted to upgrade to HD), then I would most certainly go elsewhere.  I’m lucky enough to be in a position where my time is more valuable than money, and if Sky start stealing that, then I really would get mad (with steam out of the ears and everything).

My point being that I and I’m sure most other consumers are savvy.  We weigh up what we want, we estimate what we think something is worth.  We will sometimes pay a little more than something is worth, but we will weigh up the benefits of having that item or service against how much it will dent our pockets (the only exception to this general rule of thumb is drugs;  drugs put a whole new spin on ‘reasoned’ analysis, so we’ll quietly ignore THOSE purchases for now). Oh, and by the way, DON’T DO DRUGS!!   So, back to my point; if I get a better, more comprehensive, FREE news/tabloid service from many other companies, there is no way in heck that I’ll be paying any extra for it.

I downloaded a new Sky Mobile App on the iPhone yesterday.  Wow! Does this mean I get the same functionality of SKY Player on my iPhone??  No. Does it mean I get the SKY news channel coupled with a few Sports Channels? Yes; I feel I’m starting to lose you. So I get this free because I’m a SKY customer, already paying for this content with a full SKY subscription? No. What the F%*k?  So how much is it? £6 per month. £6 a month to access something I can already access on my laptop, PC, or at home at no extra cost? Yes. That blows! Yes, yes Mr Stakounis, it does indeed…blow.

The app will most certainly be useful for all those Premierball, ship thing match fans who don’t have a Sky subscription, and I’m sure it’ll make Murdoch a few more quids to line his coffin with, however I resent being asked to pay for the same thing twice.  Just like I resent being asked for money to access something which others are providing for free.

Even before the internet I got all my news from Reuters. I ‘browse’ Reuters for news, if I overhear a snipet or want to lookup a news story, I will Google it, and I will usually pick a selection of sites to read about the subject.  Once on those sites, I almost always start clicking links in the sidebar to other potentially interesting content, whether it be commercial or not.  I have asked a few friends and colleagues whether this is normal surfing behavior (because lets face it, I’m not to know what is normal), and shock of all shocks, a unanimous “yeah, we’re with you Rich, that’s exactly how we ‘do’ the internet too”.  So, I believe that when Mr M said that “readers who randomly reach a page via an internet search hold little value to advertisers.”, he was talking from a point of very little understanding of his readership, the internet, or the modern e-marketplace.  Thank goodness for News Corp that they employ intelligent people to, you know, actually RUN the company.  But as far as pretty-boy, air-headed, company poster-boys go; I don’t rate him.  He doesn’t turn me on to the company, doesn’t turn me on (perish the thought), and doesn’t make me want to buy anything.  In fact every time he speaks in public I feel kinda dirty.

I used to buy the Times on an occasional Sunday morning and spend the day reading at a street cafe in London, just to pass the time, but I have never bought a tabloid, I don’t care for gutter journalism, I like to keep my ‘news’ completely separate from my ‘editorials, opinions, and commentaries’, and I certainly will not be paying anymore money the Sky/News Corp or Mr M in any guise unless absolutely necessary.  My Sky subscription has increased by 25% in 2 years as it is.

The plain truth is, that Murdoch has too much influence on the social and political leanings of his press, his opinions and ideals are separated by a whole world’s worth of space from mine, and I simply won’t pay to be fed it, unless it is done with reason, education, information, and intelligence.

Related articles.

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“Fair Usage policy of 750MB applies. Usage above this amount will constitute abuse and Orange may monitor usage, apply Network protection controls which may result in reduced speed of transmission and/or withdraw the Offer from your account if the fair usage policy is abused. Not to be used for other activities (e.g. using your handset as a modem, non-Orange internet based streaming services, voice or video over the internet, instant messaging, peer to peer file sharing, non-Orange internet based video).“

Quoted from the Orange iPhone terms and conditions.

Well, there it is.  I feel like having a rant, but what would be the point.  It is all there in black and white.  The mistake they have made is obvious, the result of it is obvious, the inevitable backlash is obvious, and the stupity is of course obvious.

There are a couple of points I would like to mention though:

1)  My O2 iPhone came with YouTube pre-installed.  Was that an Apple thing or an O2 thing?  I would guess it was Apple, which would suggest the Orange one would be the same.  Hardly fair to dangle it in front of your nose. ‘Hey valued customer, look what EVERY other iPhone user in the world can do! ….What?  No, silly!  Of course you can’t!!  You have to use OrangeTube, there are only a few vids at the moment, but I’m sure you’ll love it!’

2) Will they put a restriction on the App Store?  This is only a guess, but I’d think approx 70% of the App Store applications would fall into the “streaming services, voice or video over the internet, instant messaging, peer to peer file sharing, non-Orange internet based video” categories.

3) Finally, these fair usage policies only apply when on BT Openzone and 3G.  So stay at home and use your new Orange iPhone….or you could just….you know….use your computer.  Orange haven’t grasped the full meaning of ‘mobile’ yet it seems.

I can’t speak for anyone else but I can sometimes be found guilty of acting like a spoiled child.  If I see something shiny (like a whizzy new iPhone app), I want it, and if I can’t have it when others can, then the people around me suffer (imagine a ‘toys out of the pram’ scenario).

I’m guessing that the powers-that-be at Orange copy and pasted that text from a previous Terms & Conditions file and forgot to edit it, and that we’ll find that after a few days of media attention they’ll skulk away and have a re-jigg of the rules.

Until then, the likes of FB, Twitter and YouTube will find a small increase in their traffic as Orange is lambasted, further tarnishing its reputation.

I am also an Orange customer, I have been for 12 years (or there abouts).  I went to O2 just for the iPhone.  I was originally irritated when Orange announced that they were buying the iPhone.  Now I’m pleased I took the plunge.  Ever since France Telecom bought Orange I have suffered a loss in Service reliability and Customer Service.  I am also paying more, for less features.   This is a shame, because before the company was bought, Orange was by far the best customer oriented company I had ever experienced.   Leave it to the French to balls things up for me again….

Aurevoir.

Related Articles:

Orange iPhone Terms & Conditions: http://www1.orange.co.uk/mobileterms/pay-monthly-iPhone-terms.html
BBC Article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/11/oranges_unlimited_iphone.html

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The US is to end its 22-year ban on people with HIV entering the country, President Barack Obama has confirmed.

Originally read on the BBC News site, but it is true, you can read it here, or watch it here.

Mr Obama made the announcement as he extended funding for an act that provides HIV/Aids related health care.

“If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/Aids, we need to act like it,” Mr Obama said

A bold statement indeed, and one he could only get away with in the early part of his first term as POTUS. Despite America electing a left-wing, black President, that President is sadly not truly representative of the vast majority of Americans.  I can only imagine the media storm that is brewing.  Obama will have this Policy decision played back to him ad-infinitum, through every argument where it serves to paint Obama as a lefty-communist-leaning-gay-hugging son-of-a-bitch in order to frighten Americas grass roots into thinking ‘Well I’ll be! Cleatus, get yo ass in here.  That there Osama basterd wants us all drinking vodka and dancing round with tea-towels on our heads, I’m gonna shoot that n***** mother f****r’.

It is a decision that will be profoundly difficult to sell to the American public, difficult to move on from, and defending it for years to come will take its toll on President Obama.   I am glad to say, it is a decision that makes me proud to be a ‘Westerner’, reaffirms my faith in humanity, and gives me immense hope for the future, you see ladies and gentleman;  Obama just stepped into the ring.