Firetop

I popped into Marks and Spencer on Saturday and whilst paying for my goods spotted a leafet on the M&S Ethical Fund. On closer inspection of the leaflet I discovered that Ethical Funds are about as Ethical as unlimited broadband is ‘unlimited’ from many suppliers. On the face of it M&S is offering a rebranded Jupiter Asset Management service which sees investments avoided in companies with a poor environmental record or involved in the arms trade, gambling, animal testing / fur, tobacco and pornography. However, the small print says ‘A company that derives over 10% of its turnover from any one of these activities will not be invested in’. So it should really be called the M&S Almost Ethical Fund - as part of your money could go into those industries. (more…)

It’s official… I’m now an ‘Agent’, I won’t be cloaked in black or sneaking around in dark glasses but instead boldly going about my day to day life telling people what I think of products that I’ve received for testing. Recognising the increasing power of social networking and word of mouth in an Internet age, BzzAgent are a US company bringing a ‘Word of Mouth‘ marketing (WOM) solution across the Atlantic to the UK.  It’s an interesting approach – targeting the social innovators and trend setters (or Mavens as Malcolm Gladwell calls them) in the hope that some of what is trialled catches on and spreads across a network of personal connections. (more…)

Today I was pleased to read that March is ‘Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD) awareness month’ at Eye (the official journal of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists) - not one that made my calendar - and with such a short snappy name I’m really surprised I’ve not heard of it before along with Comic Relief. However, it made me wonder what else March 2007 was the ‘awareness month of’, possibly some more great ‘Have I got News For You’ fodder…

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Last Thursday I watched a documentary on Channel Four which I found to be the most enlightening programme I’ve seen in quite some time. Controversial in it’s topic for even suggesting that global warming might NOT be manmade, ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ covered just why there is no correlation between CO2 increases in the atmosphere and rises in global temperature, apparently quite the opposite is true (albeit with a lag of a few hundred years due to delayed changes in sea temperatures). (more…)

Reading BBC online today I see that “a groundbreaking military satellite system” is being launched by the UK military to help the Navy, RAF and Army to pass data more quickly around the globe - it’s name? Skynet 5A. “Skynet?” I thought to myself… surely not the name of the computer network created by ‘Cyberdyne Systems Corporation’ in the Terminator film series - the one which gets too intelligent and begins to wipe out all of humanity? But yes… somebody at UK Military HQ obviously does have a sense of humour. I can picture it now “General, what shall we call this new military satellite?”, the General spins around in his big leather chair, his eyes glancing past his special edition Terminator DVD tin, his subconscious remembers the name of the fictional network for ’Strategic Air Command-North American Aerospace Defense Command’ and he answers “Skynet has a ring to it”. Those jokers.

Technorati Tags: skynet, satellite, military defense, the terminator

A few weeks back, whilst on a night out in Crawley, I was very concerned about an ID scanning system which seems to have come into force. Called ‘Clubscan’ it seems to have crept into use across the UK at pubs and clubs, to build up a database of UK citizen IDs by scanning driving licenses and passports. These records are associated with unknown details with potential for marketing. More worrying is that this scheme does not seem to have been launched with any proper thought to data security. (more…)

On Saturday evening Suzie_Q and I went for drinks in Crawley to celebrate my cousin’s belated birthday, our destination was the Rat and Parrot pub. We’ve been there before, it’s a bit on the rough side with clientele that probably wouldn’t look out of place at ‘The Jockey’ in TV’s Shameless; it lacks character, the staff seem to deliberately ignore you at the bar and it would be very easy to inadvertently get into a fight. When we arrived at the Rat and Parrot the doormen were checking ID, when we presented them with our driving licenses both sides were scanned into a laptop. “What’s that for?” I asked the bouncer, to which he replied in a deep voice “So if there’s any trouble we can find out”, “Where’s the data stored?” I asked… “Oh it’s just for Crawley you know, to check nobody has been banned.” I was slightly disconcerted by the fact my ID had been scanned and stored without my permission by somebody who didn’t seem to fully understand why. (more…)

London has Big Ben, Paris has the Eiffel Tower and Rome the Colosseum; these easily recognisable symbols have done wonders for their host cities to build brand awareness over hundreds of years. Not to be outdone by these giants of tourism, Dorking Council has now added a monument for all who enter Dorking to gaze open mouthed at. Standing in the middle of the A24 roundabout this morning was a giant Cock (a Cockerel I mean - *thanks Alan*). (more…)

As we sadly come to the end of the Christmas and New Year holidays, I thought I would post some secretly filmed footage of a family argument taking place over a game of Trivial Pursuit (90s edition). In scenes I suspect were repeated all across the country at this time of year, a row broke out over the answer to ’What is a glass of Red Wine a day good for?’ - the official answer ‘The Heart’… the answer given ‘Heart Disease’. As the answer didn’t match what was on the card a row broke out, see the video footage on the links below. They’re taken from my phone so not the best quality but they made it onto youtube anyway. (more…)

I was checking out my new miniature vegetable garden this week (which is a complete failure despite my best efforts with organic compost) - to my amazement, all the Daffodils have sprouted in the borders (and lawn) with stems a good three to five inches high. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were flowering in January - which surely can’t be a good thing as there’ll be very little chance of pollenation! I had a look online to see if my garden was unique, I discovered it’s a UK wide phenomenon (and that Daffodils are deadly).

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