Rob’s Blog

Do assassins often send out prior warning, along with adverts for Viagra?

OK, I know I only finished reading 1984 a short while ago, but I didn’t expect it to be so relevant so quickly:

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/115736/Sin-bins-for-worst-families

I’m not quite sure what sort of catastrophic series of failures must have occurred for this to happen. And surely a PR team or spin doctor must have pointed out how utterly ridiculous this idea is, and how it will be hated by the public.

The parallels to the novel (I’m wondering if ‘novel’ is actually appropriate any more…) are uncanny: video monitoring in private homes, ‘private security guards’ checking up on families, state-controlled daily activities and diets.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, there are two further causes for concern. Firstly, the Sunday Express, which reported this story, gives many lines of text to support this idea, but only one single sentence against it. Secondly, we don’t actually get any sort of vote on this, or any say at all.

On the plus side, I could re-read the book, pop down the bookies and start making bets on the future - I’d make a fortune.

For those of you who don’t know, Vittorio Colao is currently CEO of Vodafone. See where this is going now?

You’ve had a month to fix the “temporary” problems with topping up. You’ve failed. Clearly, Mr Colao, the people in your organisation don’t want my money. And that’s fine. I’ll happily give it to someone else.

It’s not just this one incident. Many things over a period of years have made me grow to hate your company more and more. And I’ve had enough. I think the final straw was spotting your £6700 million profit each year. I’m sure some of that invested wisely in making your website work, and making your network work, would be money well spent. But then again, I’m just a customer. It’s not like my opinion is valuable or matters one iota.

See ya Vodafone. Hope the recession hits you badly.

On a completely random note, I have just seen a McDonalds advert on TV and I’m sure the McDonalds they drive into at the end is the one on the A41…

Sorry, just caught my eye Weird how I can spot that sort of thing too…

The likes of QVC, Ideal World and Kleeneze have bought us thousands of things we would never need. But this was just… weird…

It’s a downward slope from here to the shoe event horizon.