Yesterday’s newstands were a damning indictment of impartiality in the British press. Most of the tabloids, and one or two broadsheets, were openly commanding their readers to vote for David Cameron. Let’s not pretend that they devoted their front pages to the Conservatives because their staff are convinced it’s what’s best for the country. They did so because the owners of the newspapers are Conservative voters. Despite all their claims of lost revenue due to swathes of people reading news online, the printed newspapers still command the power to sway enormous amounts of public opinion. The real power to swing public support doesn’t lie with politicians at all, but with the people running the presses.

What you’re saying is that you have no problem at all manipulating photos by professional PA photographers to make them seem like they were sent in by readers, but when lifting photos of hospitalised crime victims from Bebo, you won’t even edit out the poor woman’s red-eye? Seriously?

Also, just because the Bebo logo is entirely in lowercase doesn’t mean you write the citation in lowercase. The company name is quite clear on their about page. Learn to read. Or at least, learn to copy & paste.

The pane itself had collected a number of dead bugs above it, so today I took it down to clean it. When I did, I discovered the reason both for the low light, and the bugs.

It seems there is something stuck to the glass…

Yes, yes there is.

It’s the guarantee information for the window, left on for posterity after some moron thought “I’ll just put this window in and take that off later.”

Trouble is, that light well is about 8m high. Taking it off later is not exactly practical. Also, a closer inspection reveals that the window is not fully closed, which accounts for all the bugs getting in, as well as the cold draft I noticed after taking the bottom pane out.

How the hell does someone whose job (presumably) regularly involves putting in windows find this so hard to figure out?

The problem here is firstly that the bill is far from uncontroversial – a 20,000 strong email campaign opposing it took place only this week, while industry bodies on both sides took out adverts in the national press to press their points. The BBC story about the “stitch-up” that allowed it to pass is currently the third most popular story in their Election 2010 section; no mean feat given that all eyes are now on the freshly-launched election campaigns.

Most damning however, is the lack of attendance in the Commons on the debate itself. As you can see from the BBC coverage, the House was hardly what one would call ‘bustling’. On a local note, here’s how MPs in my area performed:

• Rob Wilson (Conservative, Reading East): No show.
• John Redwood (Conservative, Wokingham): No show.
• Martin Salter (Labour, Reading West): Did actually attend, so some credit there, but voted in favour along party lines.

John Redwood did express his opposition to the Bill on his blog today, but it wasn’t until later in the comments that he explained he was in fact absent for both divisions of the debate, having given up any further opposition as a lost cause. He was present (and quite vocal) for the immediately preceding debate on the Finance Bill.

All of which reminds me of another Internet-related bill passed with very little fanfare almost a decade ago: The Regulation of Investigatory Powers bill, which passed with a mere 30 MPs present. Of course, the resulting law certainly hasn’t made headlines at all… has it?

Glee is a show that hates women.

Almost every principal female character is a scheming, manipulative, deceptive bitch. The male characters, however, are almost the polar opposite: decent, upstanding men, valiantly overcoming the problems besetting them; problems created largely by the bitchy women in their lives. There are exceptions, but they are thin on the ground. The only half-bitchy guy in the show is Gay Cliché, while the token non-bitchy woman is OCD Redhead, who appears to have been rewarded for her niceness by a lack of screen time.

What’s more, the writers seemed to only be able to create a single male lead character – so they made two of him. Both the teacher and his protégé have significant others who are deceiving them about their child, have other women on the side that they want to get into the panties of, and boast unwanted admirers willing to do patently ridiculous things in pursuit of them.

Lastly, the show hates musicians. As I said, I’ve only heard bits of the show via Elizabeth’s mid-range computer speakers, but I can tell even from across the room that every performance is Autotuned to within an inch of its life. I’m not even a musician and it sounds offensive.

And that’s what you missed by Not Watching Glee!

Get it right, you philistines!

However, I think my distinguishing feature is that I’m not convinced it’s all some deliberate conspiracy. Almost all of my rants about the failings of any particular organisation stem from a belief that I think they’re just not very good at what they do. Examples:

• I regularly find myself talking about how bad BBC News is, but not because I think they’re left-wing or controlled by the government; I just think they’re bad journalists. Especially Rory Cellan-Jones.
• I’m quick to point and laugh whenever Google fall foul of violations of privacy law, not because I think they’re evil and exploiting users, but because I think they rush into things without really thinking them through more often than they should for people who are are supposedly very clever.
• I’m opposed to national ID cards, but not because of a fear of the government knowing too much about me; I just know they’ll bugger it up and all our records will be sent to the Russian Mafia one day by some useless prat who thought that email attachment he opened was going to be naked photos of Maria Sharapova.

In short, I think it’s all too easy to ascribe to malice what can more easily be explained as incompetence. Conspiracy theorists, take note.

13^th February, 2010

Dear Sir,

I writing to make you aware of a complaint I raised with the Post Office earlier today (ref 1-1323626935). I understand that the Post Office and Royal Mail are separate, but hope you will bear with me as the problem I describe affects both companies equally. Specifically, it relates to problems I encountered today while trying to collect a package from a mail order retailer sent using the “Local Collect” service, which I have used before, and without incident until now.

This was the first time I had used the service at this Post Office (252 Shinfield Road, Reading, RG2 8EY). As feared, the staff member I dealt with there (whom I believe to be the postmaster) was utterly confused as to the nature of the service. I was first asked for the address it was delivered to, and she seemed baffled when I informed her it was sent directly to the office and that my home address would not be on the packet. She then neglected to ask for any form of ID, which is required for collection on this service, but did ask for a £1.50 fee after scanning the package into the Post Office till. After pointing out that the label on the packet clearly said NO FEE PAYABLE, she still refused to release the item without taking the fee. I paid, and was issued a receipt which stated “RM Lcl Coll +Fee £1.50”.

On returning home, I called the Post Office help line in what turned out to be the first of three calls to them, and one to Royal Mail’s own help line. I will not bore you with the full details of the polite yet ignorant service given by both the Post Office and Royal Mail staff I spoke to, since their failings were simply down to poor training, for which front line staff are not responsible. However, what I eventually determined is that this entire situation is down to the fact that there are two different (but similar) services called “Local Collect”.

The first is the service that can be used when a customer has missed a package delivery at home, and can re-arrange delivery to their Post Office. This has a £1.50 fee attached, is by far the more commonly used service, and the only one that the majority of Post Office and Royal Mail staff are aware of.

The second is the prepaid service that businesses buy into from Royal Mail, where the package is sent directly to the Post Office for later collection, without a delivery attempt at a home address. This does not attract a fee on collection, and is the service I used. In my experience, very few Post Office or Royal Mail staff even seem to be aware this service exists, and when they are, easily confuse it with the first service due to the identical name.

If I may be frank, having the same name for two different services is a ridiculous situation that is asking for trouble, and failing to properly train both local office and call centre staff is something that only makes matters worse. This is a service that has been offered for several years (I first used it in 2006), and it is inexcusable that retailers using it still warn their customers by email that, and I quote,

“This free service is new to the Post Office and sometimes the branches are not aware of how to deal with these deliveries.”

This warning may have been valid in 2006, but it should not persist today, and so I would like to close with a plea that this problem is addressed thoroughly, and soon. This is not something that needs only the “sticking plaster” approach of a refunded fee. I received various responses today as to whether it was the Post Office or Royal Mail that is responsible for the administration of each type of “Local Collect” service, and so I have forwarded a copy of this letter to the Post Office as well. What is urgently needed here is for the two companies to agree to rename one or the other of these services to prevent the widespread confusion that is present, and the outrageous situation of a Post Office holding packages to ransom for fees that are not applicable, simply because staff do not understand their company’s own services.

Yours faithfully,

Mr James Schlackman

That means I actually have to move the old furniture, then get rid of it later, instead of disposing of it when we move out.

DAMN YOU, IKEA!

A few hours later, when the road was once again empty and quiet, I took another long run up and just made it up in first gear, at far higher revs than my speed would account for, due to the tyres half-slipping all the way up.

The ice rink will only solidify overnight, and we are forecast more heavy snow by tomorrow evening. The car is staying put. I’m walking.