Happy Christmas from Orange

Santa has come early this year at casa del Michael, courtesy of a very thoughtful people at Orange.




Usually, the opening of the mobile phone bill is yet another reminder of how much of my earnings are already spoken for before my pay-packet even shows up. But today was different.

Instead of expecting a £30 direct debit to jump out of my account any time soon, I'm now the happy recipient of a £267 credit!

At first confusion sets in so I read and re-read the said bill but I still come to the same conclusion - I'm £267 up for absolutely no apparent reason. A credit is stated next to a "Replacement Phone", a handset that was replaced under warranty but how that equates to a £300 credit (which becomes £267 after my other charges) I don't know and the call center operator at Orange didn't seem to know either.

After checking with Orange, they confirm I am in credit and that my next bills will cost me nothing until the credit runs out.

Happy Christmas Orange!

UPDATE:

Bastards. I should never have called them back! I did though, because the last thing that I want is a letter 3 months later asking for their £200 back.
Turns out that it was an administrative error caused by "confusion" over my replacement handset.

Still, I can take soluce and have a nice glow inside me that my honesty has saved £267 for a big, multinational telecommunications provider to whom, without my honesty, £267 might have had an adverse impact on their parent company's €49bn annual turnover.




Fuckers

Just the Job

Society is crumbling, young people are running amok and TV is decaying morality as we know it.





Apparently.

Some boffins at the Learning and Skills Council, the people that are responsible for making sure we all have qualifications and skills to get better jobs, claim that soap operas are not performing some fictitious social obligation that they have just invented.
The LSC are not happy that many of the younger characters in Britain's two most popular soaps are depicted in occupations such as market trading, pint-pulling, or knicker manufacturing.

In Eastenders, the BBC soap is based in a London market square and so, logically, some of the characters work on the local market. In ITV's Coronation Street, the largest employer is a factory called "Underworld" and so most of the residents work there.

But according to the Learning Skills Council, seeing actors "in dead-end jobs is shattering young viewers' career dreams". As a result, the LSC believe that because these "role models" are in these "dead-end jobs", the youth of today will just accept that as the norm and to combat that, they suggest what qualifications these characters should be working towards.
They just happen to ignore that in real life, the sort of jobs that might be classed as 'bad jobs', such as retail or bar work are usually done by young people, be it to pay their way through higher education (like myself) or to make a start on the career ladder.
They also ignore the fact that if a character did achieve a 'Level 2 Diploma in retail fashion' and went on to own a 'successful designer fashion boutique', they'd be living in a nice detached house in an upmarket leafy suburb, not a terraced estate in Salford.

Interestingly, this comes not that long ago since the government wanted to keep young people who don't want to be in school in school for another two years to stop them going into these so called "dead-end jobs".

Firstly, lets remember that a properly functioning society will always need people to empty the bins, stack supermarket shelves and drive buses and so it's both impractical and impossible to keep people out of such jobs.
The simple fact is that we can't all be rocket scientists or brain surgeons. A bin-man (or as they are now called, a "Refuse Technician"), isn't a bin-man because he likes looking through other people's rubbish, he's a bin-man because he doesn't know much about rocket science or brain surgery.

Secondly, lets go back to the LSC's dig at soaps and the claim that "Young people in soaps are role models, and if they remain in dead end jobs there is a danger that young people will accept this as the norm."
These soaps also happen to be the same programmes that Ofcom recently made exempt from the new legislation on junk food advertising because only 9% of the audience were under the age of sixteen and so to claim that soap stars are 'role models' to young people or that young people are affected by seeing people working in an underwear factory is entirely inaccurate.

Did I just hear the sound of a buck being passed?

Keep on Running

I like to keep in shape now and again like a lot of people. I'll try to hit the gym twice a week at least and head off on a walk most days.





I'll even do a bit of running from time to time. The only difference is that when I run, I don't bring the whole of Leeds to a standstill.

Today was the Leeds "Abbey Dash". A race where competitors pay £15 to 'Help the Aged' to run from Leeds City Centre to Kirkstall Abbey and back again, about 10km or so. So today, after leaving for work at about 9:30, I'm met with various road closures and Lycra clad runners heading in the opposite direction.

That was inconvenience number one. After I'd dropped my brother off for work at a large cinema complex at Kirkstall, I then ventured into the City Centre. As I approached the outskirts, I expected the cones, but I also expected signs advising me where I could and couldn't go. The latter, not surprisingly given Leeds City Council's record when it comes to traffic and event management, didn't materialise.

Long story short, a 10 minute cut through the Leeds Tourist Trap (sorry, Leeds Loop Road) took some 25 minutes.

Next year I suggest the event take place along the Leeds Liverpool canal towpath. Should make it more interesting as the leading runners turn around and head towards the oncoming stragglers!

The Forbidden Towels

Sometimes, I just don't understand women. Sometimes, I don't think we're supposed to, esspecially when it involves parents.









In our bathroom, we have a towel rail with three towels permanantly resting upon it. We've also got various others on radiators around the house.
So when I've finished in the bath / shower, I grab the nearest towels on this rail and do what I need to do.

Except I'm not allowed to do that. Apparently, these towels are for "display purposes" and they are not to be used under any circumstances whatsoever.
Instead, all users of these facilities are to walk to the front of the house and get towels from the bedroom, making wet footprints all across the house.
When it is pointed out that such an idea is stupid, we're all told that we don't know what we're talking about and that we should stop questioning my mother's methods.

So anyway, I'm still considering why we have a set of towels that we can't use, yet we still have them connected to a heated towel rail.

Answers on a postcard please.

Look How Far We've Come!

Technology's great isn't it? Computers, mobile phones, the Internet, digital TV, you name it. Technology has, in most cases, made life safer, faster, cleaner and generally a bit more bearable.








It's not only in electronics though. Materials is another area that has seen progress over recent years. You only have to watch an episode of Top Gear when Jeremy Clarkson tests super cars made of various composites and space-age materials that can withstand gigantic forces, despite weighing as much as a bag of peanuts. It's just an example of how human ingenuity meets engineering progress.

Today I happened to stumble upon another example of human intrigue combined with technological sophistication. Whilst engineering graduates are wasting their time developing a Skoda Fabia that can run on potpourri or a TV set that is powered by sand so it can be used in some remote African shanty town, some crazy engineers in Canada have developed something we can all use.

It's a toilet seat. Nothing spectacular about that, you've probably already got one at home, but this is no ordinary toilet seat. In fact, this particular seat is made of hand-layed carbon fibre. The advantage? It can withstand 550,000 psi of pressure.
Where a toilet seat would encounter that sort of pressure is a mystery to me, but it's nice to know that if I did decide I wanted to 'pig-out' for a few years, there is a toilet seat that will suit my needs.

Isn't progress brilliant?!

We're Sorry, No Really

The latest book from OJ Simpson, If I Did It, has caused public outrage in the US, so much so that Rupert Murdoch has decided to pull a televised interview based on it from the Fox network.




After being acquitted of the murder of his ex-wife and her friend in 1995 in a controversial and compelling trial, the book details how Simpson would have carried out the Los Angeles killings "if he were the one responsible".
The book has viewed by some as Simpson's "confession" and has drawn further criticism from the victims families.
Fox and Newscorp have also come under fire from an ethical view for proposing a televised interview with the former NFL star.

But for all the ethical issues, Fox are onto a winner here. The fact that their affiliates across the US have refused to screen the interview and then Fox's decision to pull the interview altogether has got people talking. Now the mystique around the book has intensified greatly and that is sure to equate to increased sales, good news for Simpson and the books publisher Reganbooks.

I'll give you three guesses who owns them.

Jack the Ripper Revealed

When they're not working hard frightening us all into think we're going to die and shooting Brazilian commuters in the back of the head, the Met Police are busy investigating into crimes committed 118 years ago.







Today an e-fit was released depicting what Jack the Ripper may or may not have looked like. The man who evaded police in the 1880's and is thought to have murdered at least five prostitutes in the capital has even had his 118 year old address tracked down by our 'on the ball' police force.

Apparently, Jack the Ripper "was between the ages of 25 and 35, between 5ft 5ins and 5ft 7ins tall" although the Scotland Yard spokesman also added "at the time the police were probably searching for the wrong kind of man." Some things never change.

Anyway, I've figured out why the didn't catch Jack the Ripper way back then. Just look at the e-fit:


That face looks familiar doesn't it? Now quickly, who does that remind you of........?



I mean, any police force that was looking for Freddie Mercury way back in the 1880's was surely on a hiding to nothing from the beginning weren't they?

The cartoonist who did the picture at the top wasn't far off mind.

Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children!

If only Jamie Oliver had realised just what he'd started. Today nanny has decided that we can no longer be trusted to watch chocolate and burgers on TV.





TV regulator Ofcom has decided that foods that are "high in fat, salt and sugar" will be banned from children's TV and programmes that attract "a high proportion of under-16's". The idea is to reduce childhood obesity by preventing advertisers from raising the profile of unhealthy food.

But the simple fact is, the new legislation won't make the blindest difference to childhood obesity.

Lets use the example of McDonald's, an organisation often mentioned when the issue of unhealthy eating comes up.
Five years ago, this legislation would have meant a firm like McDonald's would be banished from our screens with their Big Mac & chips offerings.
But today, it's slightly different. You see Ronald McDonald now offers such delights as 'Fruit bags', carrot sticks and fresh salads. When you consider that, it's easy to see how a firm like McDonald's is going to side-step this legislation.
Instead of showing of their Big Mac, they'll just show off how healthy they now are. They'll still get people in the Restaurant and from there on in, the customer is free to chose what he/she wants.

Lets look at chocolate as well. I would hazard a guess that few chocolate bars are sold as a direct result of TV advertising. Most advertisers realise that television is not the most effective form of advertising, in fact I'm sure I read that the 'sales rate' is less than two percent, but companies do it because it makes their brand name seem more prestigious if they are attached to a popular soap opera.
The majority of chocolate sales, above what would be expected as the norm, come from impulse buys whilst stood in the queue at the supermarket check-out or the petrol station counter.
So now, Ofcom are effectively encouraging the likes of Cadbury's to spend their multi-million pound budget in supermarkets, petrol stations and corner shops. In short, it's probably making the problem worse.

As for the TV industry, broadcasters such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Disney will see their advertising revenues plummet. Some advertisers will focus their budgets elsewhere whilst others will refuse to pay full price if they can't advertise the products they want. That will invariably lead to poorer programme quality, shorter broadcasting hours and lost jobs.

All the new legislation will do is encourage advertisers to be a little bit more creative. They'll change the way they advertise or the places they advertise and as a result, the only gain will be on the 13 year-old's waistline.

The Power of Radio

Some of you who have read my other blog The One Pointer might have noticed the news that Featherstone Rovers have agreed naming rights deal for their stadium with Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles.




Well thanks to Mr Moyles, The One Pointer has seen it's hit's jump like never before.

Already as of the 16th, November hits have almost reached double the number of hits the same site got for the whole of October - and the numbers are still ticking over.

Chris Moyles: The Saviour of Radio One and the kick-start for The One Pointer

London is Rubbish

Way back in January, I told you that London was crap at doing anything. You name it and London would find a way to muck it up. It just wouldn't be a 'London project' if it wasn't late and grossly over-budget.


So today we read that the former president of the Olympic Committee is starting to sweat on London 2012. Sixteen months has passed and Juan Antonio Samaranch has reminded Ken Livingston and Coe (geddit!) that time is running out.

Work on the site of the Olympic stadium isn't due to start until 2008, a contractor has yet to sign on the dotted line and already it looks like the accountants have got their sums wrong.

First the Aquatics Centre plans were rejected after going twice over it's £75m budget, less than five months after London was awarded the Olympic contract and then it seems that the overall costs have risen from £3.5bn to £5bn. (Apparently someone didn't factor in that they'd have to pay VAT.)

Of course, this isn't the first thing that London has managed to make a mess of. Where the Portugese could build or refurbish ten stadiums in time for the Euro 2004 Championships, London couldn't even muster one ground to host the FA Cup Final, the Rugby League Cup Final and a few rock concerts.

Then there was the Millennium Dome. 12m people were expected, 6m people came. As for funding, an additional £204m of lottery funding was needed to keep it running and as of yet, it's still nothing more than an empty tent.
And lets not forget the British Library, five years late and £341m over it's £170m budget.

Maybe it's just a southern thing? The National Air Traffic Control Centre in Hampshire, The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, The Channel Tunnel - those three projects combined equate to 7 years of delays and £5.3bn in extra costs.

And it looks like the Olympic organisers haven't learnt from the mistakes of those before them. The smart money is certainly on the 'revised' £5bn budget being increased again before the starting gun fires.

Enjoy London 2013 folks - if you're lucky!

What's the Point?

What on earth is the point in the San Marino national football team?









No seriously, was someone at Uefa / FIFA having a laugh when they decided to put a European micro state with a population not yet big enough to fill Craven Cottage against the superpowers of world football?

Presumably the FIFA representatives went along the lines of "Well, it's in Italy, Italy are a good team, what could possibly go wrong?"
OK, so they might have scored against England after 20 seconds back in 1993, but apart from that, there is little to brag about.

Euro 2008 qualification is just three rounds old and already San Marino, ranked 194th in the world, already "boast" a current record of Played 3, Won 0, Lost 3, Goals scored 0, Goals conceded 26.

A 13-0 hiding at home to Germany, a 7-0 battering against the Czech Republic and a 5-0 hiding tonight against Ireland suggest that, if anything, they are getting better but for the San Marians it couldn't really have got much lower.

The players are on a hiding to nothing. They have no local infrastructure, a virtually non-existent talent pool and a shoestring budget. The problem lies with Uefa who insist on asking players to jump straight into the deep-end with a concrete block strapped around their waist.
Not only do the players miss out, the supporters are hit as well. Just 34,000 turned up at Lansdowne Road, hardly ready to embrace the prospect of a double-digit hiding.

And Uefa's solution to the current spate of mismatches? They've granted a Euro 2012 qualification place to the footballing might of Gibraltar.

First Direct: Playing with Fire?

This morning's news that First Direct is to "end free banking" has quite understandably, caused a bit of a stir.






The bank, which operates primarily by phone and online, is to start levying a charge of £10 per month to current account holders, unless they can deposit £1,500 per month or take out further products, such as loans or insurance.

First Direct claim that the move will eliminate some 40,000 dormant accounts as well as around 250,000 accounts that see less that ten transactions a month and at the same time, allow the bank to "focus its efforts" on their "most important customers."

And that's the crux of the issue.

Banks are businesses like any other. They are in the industry to make money, not to fulfill some social responsibility that so many people think businesses should aspire to.
With the current slump in consumer spending as well as rising operating costs, many businesses have had to make a choice; do they want 'more' customers or do they want 'better' customers. It's not merely a case of following many people's simplistic view of more customers = more profit.
Such a decision is made in various industries, particularly n retail and product offerings and prices are decided to suit.

First Direct have clearly decided that they want 'better' customers. The customers that bring in more revenue and require them, as a business to spend less. As a result, they can maintain a reputation for customer service by better looking after the customers that remain.

Some people will claim that First Direct have shot themselves in the foot with this morning's announcement and a raft of account closures might initially show that the defectors are right.
But on the flip side, they'll be keeping the customers they want whilst lowering their costs significantly.

Expect First Direct's announced profits to be as high as ever.

A Shameless Plug

As well as enjoying or enduring my thoughts and ramblings on A View from the Bar and The One Pointer, you've now got a third place to read my work you lucky devils.

As part of one of our college modules at Leeds Trinity & All Saints College, the third year Sports Journalism students have to maintain a local sports website which will from here on be known as Sported.

I think you should all read it. The site is in its infancy at the minute (it only went live on Friday) and so there are still plenty of bugs in it, but I think you should look at it none the less.

Oh and tell them you came from here, just to give me another plug ;)

Enjoy (and by the way, mine is the Farsley Celtic piece.)

It's All My Fault

Apparently.
A few months back I wrote about how the customer is rarely right and even longer ago, I wrote about how rubbish Chip & Pin was.




It's amazing how two things collide sometimes.

Today we arrive at work, 10:00am start for a 11:00am opening. At 10:20 the phone rings. Some dopey cow had left her card in the chip & pin reader yesterday and I was to be treated to the rendition of how it is everybody's fault except hers.

"I left my card in you machine yesterday, it's an absolute disgrace....this has ruined my weekend.....why don't you tell people to take their card out?.....I want some compensation.....I'm not buying things from somewhere with this attitude towards customer service......I'm not the one who's stupid.......blah blah rant rant"

I've said it before, but people's brains stop functioning when they are in a shop. They become mesmerised by the array of shiny things and they lose all train of thought.

So when a shop assistant says to them "Please put your card in the reader and follow the onscreen instructions." and then later says "please remove your card" at the same time an onscreen message says "REMOVE CARD" in block capitals with an audible alarm, what would any sane, normal, intelligent person do?

That's right, you'd leave your card in the reader and then phone up the next day to complain that it's the shop assistant's fault that your weekend was ruined.

Thankfully I leave Uni in June. Then it's the end for me in the world of retail and off on another adventure to encounter a different breed of ignoramus.

Rubbish Inventions of the Modern World: Gillette Fusion

Allegedly, the "best a man can get" has just been made better.









The new "Gillette Fusion" offers "the best shave yet" because of it's "five-blade Shaving Surface technology" and, if you believe the marketing slogans, will completely revolutionise the way we shave.

Rubbish.

Why the hell does a razor need five blades, as well as a sixth on the top for those "hard to reach" areas? Further still, why does a razor need five blades, a sixth on the top for those "hard to reach" areas and a battery to make the thing shake like a shitting dog?

Like most blokes, I fail to see what six blades do that three blades can't, except making you twice as likely to cut yourself.

I'd love to see the Gillette MD when that idea was pitched to him. Perhaps he thought he'd be better off slitting his wrists with the extra three blades?

Rubbish Inventions of the Modern World: Deal or No Deal

Not so much an invention, more of a creation but rubbish none-the-less.







The current "daytime TV show of the year" in Britain happens to be the above titled programme, the very same game show that has relaunched the career of Noel Edmonds.

After Noel's House Party was axed by the BBC in 1999, Edmonds had found himself attending the local job club until last year.

After applying for the presenting role on Countdown, he was then snapped up by Channel Four to present a new game show called "Deal or No Deal."

The show involves 22 contestants, one of which is picked to play the game. Each contestant has a box with a cash value inside ranging from 1p to £250,000. The player then selects boxes at random to reveal a cash amount. That amount is then taken away. At various intervals, a "banker" makes an offer based on what cash values are left. The player then decides if they want to accept this offer or play on to earn a greater offer.

The problem is, it is perhaps the only TV gameshow I can remember where contestants have the opportunity of winning a live-changing sum on money through no skill whatsoever.

It's like Russian roulette except instead of a gun, you've got piles of cash. Any idiot can reel off random numbers and win big. This is made better by the fact that the contestants are usually whacko's and nut-jobs who believe that they have psychic abilities or that the £250,000 "has to be" in the box which happens to be their guinea pig's birthday or something equally stupid.

Why then, is the programme so successful? Well, it makes good TV. It creates suspense and is a typical example of 'car crash TV,' where a member of the public has their weaknesses exposed live on National television and if you want to look at it from a psychological perspective, it is a perfect demonstration of human greed.

Oh, and it's a daytime TV programme and so more than likely, the lack of any form of skill or intelligence involved in the game is perhaps an indication that Channel Four know their audience well.

Why am I saying this in my Christmas advice section? Well, C4 are cashing in big-time. It's that time of year when you get the various board game, DVD game, PC game, Playstation / Xbox game, handheld game, pen and paper game and so on.

Please, stop fuelling this endless production line of lazy TV.

Rubbish Inventions of the Modern World: Playstation Portable

The chances are, if you are buying Christmas presents for a 10 year old boy, a Sony PSP will be high on the list.




But before you head into Currys and give the 17-year-old counter assistant £150+ of your hard-earned, read on.

As a portable games console, the PSP does a job and certainly rivals the competition but it's not just a games console, meaning that the PSP files perfecty well under 'P' for 'Pointless'. Don't believe me? Here's a run-down of the so-called 'features' that the PSP has to offer:
MP3 Player:
OK, but why carry around a big clunky games console when you have a mobile phone, iPod or other mp3 player that will do exactly the same?
WiFi:
Why? How many 10-year olds know how to set up a wireless network? More to the point, why would a 10-year old want to download mp3's through a wireless network onto a MS Pro Duo card? Your average 10-year old just wants to play Grand Theft Auto, regardless of the fact he's not 18 yet.
Movie Player:
Why again? Firstly, UMD discs are like hen's teeth to find and they are a darn'd sight more expensive than your standard DVD's.
Even why you can find one you can afford, the chances are that the battery will cut out half-way through the film.
A wrist strap:
The day you start listing a 'wrist strap' as a feature is the day you know you've made a product that can't live up to the hype.

There you have it, yet more consumer advice for the unaware Christmas shopper.

By The Way......

I don't know why my blog keeps going offline, it just does, OK?

This is what happens when you use beta programmes!