Scargill

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

I was watching TV recently with interest. In Japanese airports they now have infra-red cameras which spot people with elevated temperatures – so they can single them out and check if they have some kind of infectious disease as they enter the country – I’m assuming they’re looking for bird flu or whatever.

This reminds me of a trip not that many years ago, when the foot and mouth crisis was in it’s peak in the UK, Maureen and I travelled to the states and when we got to Chicago airport they had a sign asking people from foot and mouth areas to go down a separate line – this we did and they wanted to sterilise our shoes.

I remember at the time thinking what a bunch of pillocks they were – because by this time we’d spent several hours wandering around a plane – and if we HAD a disease on our shoes would surely by now have infected the shoes of the OTHER passengers and the people at any intermediate airports etc.

And now I’m thinking the same about the Japs. Would it not be a LOT more sensible to check people BEFORE they get on the plane?

I wondered how long it would be before someone brought up this taboo subject, sadly it seems to be hidden away in a corner of the BBCs website  – maybe it should be on the front page.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7865332.stm

It may be politically incorrect to discuss but the maths is simple – less people means less consumption means less pollution.  I watched a video last night TED – on TV of all places in which a guy discussed the fact that methane as we know comes from livestock – most of which are there so we can eat them – and contributes 18% of greenhouse gases. Bearing in mind that there have always been greenhouse gases and the earth has always kept everything in balance, it seems to me that reducing livestock would make a considerable difference to the effect that greenhouse gases have on our planet. There are two ways to make this happen – if we had less people, we’d need less cattle. Alternatively if we simply ate less meat we’d also need less cattle. Given that the latter, by and large just isn’t going to happen thanks to multinational food giants and our insatiable greed, it seems that a reduced population would be a good second option. After all it’s not as if anyone is going to be hurt by avoiding pregnancies unless you’ve some mystical view of the world.

Of course something as simple as encouraging populations to have no more people than they can actually afford, back in the real world is a non-starter, we’ll probably wait until the population gets so high that a virus does it for us..  but at least now, hopefully the subject is on the discussion table where it should be.

I was reading in the papers about the new Jaguar XFR high performance sports saloon which will, it is claimed exceed 225mph with it’s 510bhp V8 engine.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not an environmentalist, I’m not even a socialist and I most definitely don’t eat any greens… but perhaps my change of attitude over the years is something others increasingly share?

As a teen back in the 70s I’d be drooling over such a car just as I drooled over my first 3-litre, power-bump-equipped Capri! But today somehow, none of that really seems appropriate.

We live in a time when we’ve already seen the effects of fuel shortages, where we are left in no doubt at all about the damaging effects to the environment (climate change) and people (record levels of asthma and allergies) of pollution – and here we have the press celebrating a car that is designed to exceed most legal speed limits by 3 times – and suck in as much fuel as possible in the process, no doubt throwing out proportionate pollution in the process.

By glorifying such designs we send a clear message to the next generation – we don’t give a toss about the environment or law – as it’s much more important that we get our kicks!

I drive a luxury, comfortable car which sounds like it’s idling at 70mph and is ideally suited to faster roads of Europe, yet it’s top speed is more than enough to get me a ticket almost anywhere in Europe, acceleration is good enough to get me out of a jam and it’s fuel consumption exceeds 40mpg – which means in terms of efficiency and environmental factors it competes favourably with most family cars.

Would it not be better if Jaguar and other designers who are very capable of influencing the young, put their skills to moving the car out of the 20th century, not just by producing token hybrids to put up at shows but by mass producing something that will help us reduce our dependency on people who would like to kill us, that would no longer contribute to polluting our air and which would be safe. NONE of that means such a vehicle can’t be exciting. There is no reason at all why hybrid and electric cars have to look like toys as some recent models have shown – and performance can still be well-acceptable… it’s all down to mind-set.

As it stands, the new Jag in the context of today’s issues really to me seems like the height of stupidity.

I thought you might be interested to see this.  If you’ve a mobile Smartphone you’ll know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. I just wrote to the advertising standards agency in the UK to complain about the farcical figures that one particular mobile phone supplier (they’re all the same) quotes for STANDBY times on the phones.  On the website in question – they claim as just ONE EXAMPLE, 7.9 days standby for the Touch Diamond phone.

The reality of course is that these phones rarely last more than a single day without a charge. All of the suppliers are the same – they simply copy the manufacturer’s farcical claims – and repeat them on their websites and literature.  To me this was a clear case of misleading the public – but apparently not.

Here is the reply from the ASA – verbatim…

Dear Mr Scargill

Thank you for your recent complaint about the specifications of a mobile phone on the [providers] website.

I’m sorry to tell you that we are unable to deal with your complaint because our Code only applies to certain kinds of material on websites.  They are:      

• online ads in space sold by the website owner to a third party e.g. banner and pop-up ads
• sponsored search results (i.e. the links advertisers pay search engines to offer when you enter particular search terms)
• sales promotions such as free gifts and prize competitions

The Code does not apply to other parts of an organisation’s website because either they are forms of editorial material or they carry material that consumers have chosen to access in much the same way as they would walk into a shop and ask for information.  The ASA does not regulate either of these areas. 

I would suggest in the first instance that you contact the mobile phone manufacturer for their response to your query, as it appears that all the companies selling the phone simply reproduce the phone specifications given by the manufacturer.  If they cannot help, you may wish to contact your local Trading Standards Department whose details can be obtained from your local area phone book or at www.tradingstandards.gov.uk.

Our website, www.asa.org.uk, contains more information about the ASA and the work we do.  I hope you find this useful and are able to pursue your complaint.

Yours sincerely

Laura Edwards

Complaints Executive

According to the British Chamber of Commerce website, a report published by the University of Durham revealed that students may be more likely to choose to study ‘easier’ subjects, and not opt to study science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects that are desperately needed by employers.

Surely the answer is simple? Why on EARTH are we stupid enough to finance courses that this country doesn’t need? Microsoft technology courses cost the earth and I’m sure many courses in science and technology do also (unless of course you’re a no-hoper in which case they’re likely to be free). Surely the solution is to make science, technology, engineering and math courses extremely cheap or free (after all Britain PLC will benefit in the end) and charge the earth for courses that people take out of personal preference and which we don’t actually need.

Technology books are very expensive and yet I don’t ever recall seeing ways to get subsidies for these.

As far as I’m concerned we screwed our educational system the minute we went comprehensive back in the 70s and we’ve been going downhill ever since. Our position in the world stage pretty much reflects this.

In the future, with permanently rising fuel prices and intense competition from overseas, we will increasingly need people who can innovate, manage and sell hi-tech, advanced solutions to the many problems facing us. Less talk, more action and a desperate need for the left to stop trying to smother our potential best at birth.

• The idea that the government would remove tax from Petrol and Diesel and fairly charge according to conjection is laughable. Their assumption is that we trust them to do this whereas in fact we all know the charges would creep up over time to pay for the social services. There is no way this government would be able to resist the option and they know we’d have no real way to monitor increases. £1.34 in the centre of a conjested city might not sound TOO bad – but what if they decided the M6 was overcrowded or the A1 or the M25? Some people (often those who generate wealth in business which often requires speedy and diverse travel unsuited to public transport) could find their travel costs multiplying several-fold.
• Does anyone in goverment who has any kind of life really believe for one minute that the British public would accept their every move, their every stop-off being tracked – I don’t even think George Orwell envisaged control of quite this magnitude. Does anyone think that such tracking information would be used solely for the purposes of road charging? Come off it, with the current state of terrorism the government would be unable to resist the tempation to use this to track citizens – in the beginning only known terrorists but eventually as computer power increases they’d find the idea of keeping tabs on everyone irresistable and computers will soon be easily up to this challenge.
• What about the cost of the tracking devices – if they charged motorists for this, there’s ANOTHER tax, if they don’t then the public (including motorists) would STILL end up paying for them – having seen the ridiculous suggested charges for identity cards, I have no doubt that the goverment would procure such devices by methods which would ensure charges to us which would be WAY above typical commercial cost

This is a VERY dangerous idea that should be fought with our last breath. It is nothing more than another attempt to kill the motor car and reduce us all to using the rather pathetic (and in some places non-existant) public transport system by a government that has no understanding of business and little understanding of the needs and desires of it’s own people. Big Brother? How about ENORMOUS Brother!