Scotland the Brand

Scotland: a proud nation with an international reputation. You would be hard pressed to find a country with such a wide spectrum of achievement globally and such a strong identity for a country of only 5 million people. Besides the global traditional appeal of tartan, The Highlands, bagpipes, the kilt and many other unique selling features, we have a proud record in education, the Scottish enlightenment, economics, inventions, medicine, engineering and right up to the modern day the quality of Scottish graduates and talent is just one reason why Amazon.com chose Scotland as its first engineering centre outside the US. We have a parliament that most people accept should have more powers, a renewed national pride and talk of sportsmen and women competing under a Scottish flag for the first time in the Olympics. On many fronts, Scotland has achieved much and still achieves much. Scotland the brand is strong and growing.

Having now covered the sales pitch, can anyone with half an ounce of common sense in PR explain to me why major international companies think it is trendy to ditch the word "Scotland" from their name.

We had the rather excellently named "Scottish Telecom" rebrand itself as "Thus" (snigger)
We had the very descriptive "Bank of Scotland" partially rebrand itself as "HBOS".
and to cap it all the biggest success story of recent years, The Royal Bank of Scotland is now the non descript "RBS". Yes, one of the world's biggest banks with not only "Royal" in its title but also the nation of its founding and headquarters now looks like an abbreviation of "ROBS".

In May 2005 I received a new bank card from them which had "The Royal Bank of Scotland" on it.
In August 2006 my other account had a new card and on it was RBS (big letters) and in minuscule font was "The Royal Bank of Scotland".
and in May 2007 the anonymisation was complete with the replacement of the first card and nothing more than just "RBS" on it. No mention of the valued Royal title, no mention of the country where it has its origins and headquarters.

I see no movement from the Bank of England to rebrand itself as TBOE or BOE nor Bank of America to rebrand as BOA. With the notable exception of BA who thought it was trendy to ditch the British flag for a while from their planes (a PR disaster) most other national airlines have their country's name on them - they are proud to fly the flag and promote their country abroad rather than be an anonymous 2 or 3 letter acronym (TLA for the few who like them).

When as a country we spend millions of pounds each year promoting Scotland the brand and how proud we are of what the last executive called "The best small country in the world" should we not be making more of our nation's name in major brands and companies rather than silently subsuming it within letter combinations that mean so much less.

One of the most famous Scots of all time, and once the world's richest man, Andrew Carnegie also became known as a great philanthropist founding 2,800 libraries around the world and giving away much of his vast fortune. These days the Carnegie brand is still strong. Nearly 100 years after his death, his name is still used because it means so much to so many people and is such a respected brand.

If only the same could be said about how some companies treat the name of our country.

Yours For Scotland,

Craig

Firefox useragent - changing the string manually

I appreciate there are tools to change the useragent in Firefox, however the plugin needs to be compatible with the version of Firefox you are running and if you have the latest alpha / nightly build etc the plug in might not work.

I had this situation recently where I couldn't get Firefox 2.0.0.3 to run reliably, so I downloaded Firefox 3.0 (Gran Paradiso). All was well, except I was barred from banking sites because my browser ident string wasn't on their authorised list. Silly banks, surely they know that checking the browser user agent via Javascript is more reliable?

Anyway, even if I did have a compatible user agent switcher plug in, very few of them include the latest released version of the browser in the pre-programmed list which again makes it hard to convince the banks that you are running the latest stable software.

So here are the instructions on how to set the user agent string yourself on Firefox

Goto the browser address bar:
Enter
About:config

Right mouse click to get the context menu and choose New->String from the menu.
Enter

general.useragent.override

As the preference name.

Then enter this as the value

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070309 Firefox/2.0.0.3

For the average user running Windows XP, this should be fine to get past the pedantic banking sites who don't have a robust way of checking the browser version.

Why it's important to prepare a Digital Will

Many of us can't be bothered to prepare a real Will, with the resultant tax confusion and uncertainty that this causes especially in the event of premature death. However, we live in the first age where our digital possessions matter and important emails, contacts, music collections, online accounts, photos, domain names and online financial details may be difficult or even impossible to obtain after our death especially if they are encrypted.

Living in the age of the birth of the machine, I suggested last August to Cambrian House the idea of how to access files after the owner dies. With a strong interest in genealogy, I imagine a future where the online assets of the people of today will be of interest to the genealogists of tomorrow. My grandfather was born in the 1870s and lived to old age, yet despite living in the era of photography only 2 pictures of him remain. In this modern age where we have thousands of digital pictures, our grandchildren will surely appreciate access to these historic pictures rather than having them wiped out by bureacracy.

Consider this. A close friend dies, but like many people nowadays their contact details for their friends are electronic, many held online. The funeral is in 5 days. You have approximately 3 days to get access to their account and contact people and they need to pick up the e-mail or instant message in time to be able to make travel arrangements for the funeral. In many cases, with the complexity of bureaucracy surrounding getting access to a person's account, faxing death certificates (often sending them overseas) and dealing with ISPs and organisations many of whom might not have an "after death" procedure or policy, you probably wouldn't be able to contact these people in time. As the digital age progresses, our dependency on hard copy letters from friends, address books and so on will diminish and the problem will get worse. Encrypted and password protected data (including accessing paypal balances) is another matter entirely.

Take just one element of this puzzle - accessing the deceased person's webmail to contact people is at the whim of the webmail provider, some might not provide access at all - as was discovered last year in the case of families trying to access the accounts of Iraq war victims, If you're not successful in gaining access, within a few months it will be deleted forever. Law.com covers this story in further detail. On the other hand, trying to cancel an AOL account is difficult enough when you're alive - if someone else tries to do it on behalf of a deceased person it's only going to be much more difficult.

Another popular email provider, Gmail, doesn't publicise their terms, I looked for death in the Gmail help centre and got this:

Your search - death - did not match any answers in this Help Center.

For the level of complexity regarding access to digital data you need only look at this article which details the Gmail procedure as follows:

Google needs your full name and contact information, a verifiable email address, the full header and content of an email you have received from this person's account, a copy of the death certificate and a copy of the document that gives you power of attorney over the email account.

"If you are the parent of the Gmail account owner and she or he was under the age of 18, you must submit a copy of the birth certificate as well, and power of attorney is not required," he says. But keep in mind that after nine consecutive months of inactivity, Google is likely to delete the email account.

It is all very well for online providers to uphold user's privacy, but as detailed in this zdnet article that on death, privacy rights cease yet this is often what is cited when trying to access the deceased's data.

In summary, I would suggest these things.

1. That you list your important accounts in your Will
2. Your Will references a file where the passwords are kept. Don't put the passwords in the Will itself, they change too frequently for this to be practical. The file should be in a location that is secure, but ideally not online.
3. That collectively, online service providers agree a common procedure for dealing with the accounts of deceased people which is secure yet still allows efficient and
straightforward access to the account once a death certificate is produced and allows the account contents to be retrieved and closed under the control of the deceased person's estate in a way which is no more complex than closing their bank accounts.

Please help to promote this important campaign. One day you, or future genealogists, may need it.

Craig

UK Phone Roam

With the recent news that EU wide phone roaming charges are to come down, I would like to ask why the major networks in the UK can't get their collective acts together for UK phone roaming. This would mean that in areas covered by one network and not another, my phone would switch networks to ensure I remained in coverage. The alternative is to muck about with multiple sim cards, which is hardly a solution.

Why is this apparantly so difficult?

Craig

Scottish Executive News Online - Latest

Scottish Government News. Point your news reader / browser at the link to get a feed of the latest stories from the historic new Scottish government.

Free 3D first person shooter in your web browser

Visit Rasterwerks for a great, free, multiplayer, first person shooter game all running in your browser. Amazing!

BBC NEWS | Have Your Say | User Profile: Craig Cockburn

This is no longer available due to a BBC site redesign.

VAT receipt please

When I buy a 60p newspaper in a supermarket, I get a VAT receipt by default. Same when I buy a modest meal in a pub or from Boots, or a toy from Argos.

Yet, if you fill up with £40 of petrol at the petrol station (something you might actually need a VAT receipt FOR), you specifically have to ask for one. Doesn't matter if it's Tesco or Sainsburys petrol, or one of the smaller chains. You still have to specifically ask for a VAT receipt, adding to undue delay in the queue.

What is this bollocks all about? If a supermarket prints VAT receipts by default when you buy a pair of jeams, a DVD or a bottle of whisky, surely it isn't much to ask for the same supermarket's petrol station and indeed every other petrol station to print a VAT receipt by default as well?

Craig

BBC political bias revisited

I have blogged in the past about a strange political bias in BBC reporting. Yesterday, the BBC reported that political history was made when they covered Alex Salmond's victory speech to MSPs.

Why was this history?

1. The outcome of the Scottish General Election was finalised. Yet, this final outcome plays as a sideshow to the Labour party electing a new leader, even though there is no real news to report on that story most of the time.

2. For the first time in the Scottish Parliament's 8 year history, there is a change of government.

3. For the first time in 50 years, Labour is no longer the dominant party in Scotland

4. For the first time in the SNP's 73 year history, it is in power in government.

5. For the first time in over 300 years, Scotland has a government that is advocating independence.

Pretty momentous events, and ones that have wide ranging effects not only across Scotland's 5 million population but the future of the UK including devolution in Northern Ireland and Wales.

Yet, what was the BBC's lead story on the evening news? Prince Harry (the 'spare' in the 'heir and the spare') is disappointed that he is no longer going to be sent to fight in the illegal Iraq war. A war that the SNP has consistently argued against. In what way does Prince Harry's next assignment merit top billing over the constitutional future of the UK? Does "celebrity news" somehow qualify as more important now?

What Scotland needs is a Scottish News service that covers Scottish and International news and brings in stories from the rest of the UK as appropriate. To reciprocate, the rest of the UK deserves heavyweight news and not celebrity dumbing down.

Shut down vista via the keyboard

In a breathtaking act of complete user ignorance, the so called new user experience of Windows Vista is now significantly harder to shut down via the keyboard than good old Windows XP. Gone is the really useful Windows+U, U, Return. No, in all the extensive development and testing and usability studies it didn't seem to occur to Microsoft that people might find a keyboard shutdown in Windows Vista useful. Never mind disability access issues and people prefering not to use a mouse because of an impairment. Never mind also the logistical difficulty of trying to use a mouse when using the laptop on a train or other moving environment. In all the studies that Microsoft did and the millions of dollars spent did noone point this out?

So here's how you do it without the mouse in Vista. Windows Vista (because we know you like things complicated)

1. Press the Windows button
2. Press the left arrow key
3. Press the right arrow key (bizarrely this does not put you back to step 1!)
4. Press return

Here's a longer alternative:

1. Press Windows+D
2. Press Alt+F4
3. Press down arrow
4. Press down arrow (3 and 4 may be combined depending on your setup depending on the options in the drop list, press down arrow until Shut Down appears).
5. Press return

Why make life so difficult for the user for something they might do several times a day?

Royal Bank of Scotland closing branches

The Royal Bank of Scotland (I loathe their silly new name RBS) makes big claims about "at a time when some organisations are closing branches" to make us think they are not, check out the Google search results for royal bank "closing branches".

OK, enough of the spin. This is what happened to me.

In 1984 I lived on Heriot Row in Edinburgh's New Town and moved my branch from Dunblane to Edinburgh to make it more convenient to pay in money. The most convenient branch based on the route I walked most often was at 83 Princes Street, Edinburgh. That branch closed a few years later and my account automatically transferred to the George Street International Office. Separately to this, I also opened an account at the branch physically closest to where I was living and this was the Castle Street Branch. That branch is also now closed. My account was at the George Street International Office before it too was closed and became the dome. By 1993 when I returned to live in Scotland my account had been automatically moved again to the next nearest branch, the bank's headquarters and the former Dundas Mansion, a building they had owned since 1825. That branch is now going to be a hotel. So that's Castle Street shut, Princes Street shut, George Street office shut and St Andrews Square office shut.

The Royal Bank of Scotland, "at a time when some organisations are closing branches", including yourselves then?

ID card fiasco, yet again

I have blogged in the past about the UK government's appalling record on IT systems yet that earlier article was only about a £141m system going tits up and tax payers' money getting toileted. Today we have the news that the ID system "may" be out of control and that MPs must act on runaway ID project.

What is laughable about this is the government IT systems are run via a project management system called PRINCE2, which was written by the Office of Government Commerce and generally regarded as heavy on the project management side of things is supposed to control this sort of failure. PRINCE stands for Projects in Controlled Environments. When the London School of Economics is calling to see whether the ID system is getting out of control after the costs have risen by nearly 1 BILLION pounds, can I make a few suggestions:

1. You are supposed to be running a controlled project. Where is the control?

2. When a project over runs by nearly a billion pounds, you don't need one of the foremost centres of learning in the world to ask you to see if it might be out of control. It is, deal with it.

3. I posted in June 2006 about wasting money on the ID card system and July 2006 and other IT projects in September 2006. Since these faults with the ID card system were well known nearly a year ago, why has the government apparently done nothing about it?

Labour and the Lib Dems have lost the plot in Scotland

Iain MacWhirter writes an excellent article in The Guardian about Labour and the Lib Dems have lost the plot in Scotland. Perhaps the SNP will call another general election in 2 years and consign the squabbling Labour party and the LibDems in a huff even more to the political wilderness. The infighting over Jack McConnell's successor has already started.

Regardless of mere party politics, one paragraph written in this London based newspaper stood out.

After Wednesday, Alex Salmond First Minister "..will be off to see the Queen to inform Her Majesty that the United Kingdom has changed forever".

At Westminster, Tony Blair has to ask for permission to dissolve Parliament. In Scotland, we just go down to London and tell the Queen how it's going to be.

No longer New Labour, New Britain but New Democracy, New Scotland.

Welcome to "A new time" for Scotland, the day that the UK has its first Nationalist leading a UK country.

Dell, Paypal and Google. Business rules that annoy

Dell 2.0 faces an uphill struggle details problems with Dell and especially the Dell website. I have also found exactly the same problems when using the site to buy a laptop earlier in the year and more recently when looking at getting a new monitor. The site is a real candidate for a pants website award now, once a site famed for allowing the customer to choose what they want, now it is driven by "business rules" that simply annoy.

Paypal has the same problem. Try setting up a bank account and then paying for something on paypal using a credit card. Paypal really wants you to use that bank account and you have to go through various "are you sure" screens and "let us show you the benefits of paying from your bank account" which become rather tiresome when you have seen them a few dozon times. Dear Paypal, I use my bank account to withdraw money. I use my credit card to make payments. That's the way I work, deal with it. I don't use my bank account to make payments because not only do I lose the interest free period but I also get charged for withdrawls on my bank account as it's a business bank out and therefore a target for ripoff bank charges.

I like the philisophy of Google apart from removing the BlogThis button, a fix for which is described in my BlogThis article, Google's philisophy is "Focus on the user and all else will follow" and "Great just isn't good enough".

A few lessons that Paypal, Dell and the people who removed the BlogThis button should learn.

BlogThis and the Google Toolbar

For some unknown reason Google has removed the very useful BlogThis feature from the Google toolbar. However if you want the BlogThis functionality you can get BlogThis! instead.

I'm using it to post this. Just install the extension, restart Firefox and then BlogThis is available from the right click context menu.

You'll see a few more posts using BlogThis, just to prove it works!

Craig

Scottish General Election: SNP has won

SNP wins Scottish General Election. "Scotland has changed for good and forever".

The SNP have won the Scottish General Election, the result was posted at 17:30 on 4th May, thus ending 300 years of the dominant Scottish party wanting to be part of the UK.

The final results are

SNP 47 seats (up 20 from 2003)
Labour 46 seats (down 4)
Conservative 17 seats (down 1)
Liberal Democrat 16 seats (down 1)
Others 3 (down 14)

The others comprise 2 Green candidates (Glasgow list and Lothians List) plus the independent Margo MacDonald (Lothians List).


The total MSPs for independence is 50.

The great credit card rip off

I am growing increasingly tired of paying increasingly high "credit card surcharges" which are little more than a front for certain companies to make extra money at the consumer's expense.

Although it is as a consumer faced with notices such as "use a credit card and you will be charged a minimum £4.95 surcharge" which prompts me to write this, let me give some background in my experience.

During the height of the dot com boom I was an e-commerce consultant. When the market peaked in early 2000 I was in the middle of gaining e-commerce accreditation for the Scottish Tourist Board's project Ossian. Scottish Tourism employs about 8% of the Scottish workforce, and the industry is worth approx £4.5 billion to the Scottish economy. Following my stint there, through three separate e-commerce platforms I went on to be Project Manager for the tesco.com grocery site, the world's most successful online grocer. I won't bore you with further figures, you can read them here. So I have a bit of an inside perspective on the whole credit card transaction fee nonsense. These days, I'm currently self employed and doing quite well.

visitscotland.com when I was there only took 10% of the value of a booking for automated sales (via the web). Therefore for a typical £40 online booking for a night in a cheap hotel, the actual value visitscotland.com would process would be £4. The remainder was paid direct to the establishment. No credit card fee was charged by visitscotland.com. Indeed if you compare this £4 charge it isn't that far off the core price of some Easyjet flights if you book far enough ahead. Yet, Easyjet charge a minimum credit card fee of £4.95 for an online booking - a fee that visitscotland.com, also in the travel business, managed to do entirely without. If it wasn't for the government taxes, the credit card fee would be pretty much doubling the cost of some Easyjet flights. Visitscotland.com incidentally did charge a 2.5% credit card fee for self catering bookings via the contact centre after pressure from the industry, however for serviced accommodation bookings there was no fee yet both bookings were going through the same payment gateway (SecureTrading). Apart from putting the Self Catering industry in a bad light (see bank of Self Catering Ltd), it is inconsistent that a £500 hotel booking should have no charge but a £500 self catering booking had a 2.5% fee, yet the payment for the latter was often taken several months in advance.

When I was in Skye last year, the local shop Ragamuffin had a £50 minimum for a credit card transaction. This would have been bad enough in the middle of Edinburgh where their other shop is, surrounded by banks and cashpoint machines and alternative methods of payment. However, in my case I was in Armadale, Skye. Approximately 40 minutes round trip by car (if you have one) to the nearest town (Broadford) where there is a cash machine. So cash was at a premium as I didn't fancy spending my holiday driving up and down taking money out and clearly there were some things such as ice creams that I genuinely needed cash for. Like many people, I don't ordinarily carry a cheque book either as so few places accept them now, however you can see from this list (PDF) that for a business paying in more than one cheque at a time, the additional cost is a mere 25p per cheque. This 25p is a charge I would happily pay if the alternative is a 40 minute car journey. 25p is also a lot more reasonable than the £4.95 easyjet credit card charge - bearing in mind that cheques are a manual payment and credit cards are automated it certainly makes me question how reasonable a credit card charge should be. I also don't accept the concept of a "minimum fee" for a credit card transaction as the fees for credit cards are usually either a flat fee per month or a fixed percentage per transaction, meaning that 100 £1 transactions would cost the merchant the same as 1 £100 transaction in fees.


Let's now look at the actual charges merchants pay that they use to justify these "minimum transaction amounts", "credit card fees" and so on.

Here is a selection of popular e-commerce payment solutions. At the high end, it's 3.8% per transaction but 1.5%-2.5% is more typical and as the article shows, for a flat fee of £20 per month you can get away with no transaction charges at all. Indeed this can be as low as £10 for a lower volume mail order set up. For the top end, Tesco uses Commidea. Commidea also caters for the smaller retailer and like Protx charges no fees per transaction, just a low monthly fee. So with either system it doesn't matter how much the customer spends. Indeed, I would like to put small amounts on my card to keep all my business spending in one place. JD Wetherspoon's in Belfast however wouldn't let me put £4.99 for a meal on my business card due to their £5 minimum card fee. Perhaps they are with the wrong payment system?

Clearly there is a lot of variation in card charges to retailers (merchants) but a simple bit of shopping around can round these up into one simple, fixed fee. Nowhere have I seen any card processing company that charges a minimum card fee of £4.95, so there appears to be no justification for Easyjet's excessive charges.

So consumers, if you feel that "minimum credit card transaction value" or "credit card surcharge" or the like are annoying you, just vote with your feet and shop elsewhere and give the retailer a copy of this posting. After all, if the retailer chooses a more cost effective payment method, not only will we hopefully see minimum fees and surcharges disappear but retailers themselves will move to more cost effective solutions and make more money generally.

Craig

Bank of Self Catering Ltd

Can anyone explain this?

When I stay in a hotel, guest house, B&B etc I can book ahead of time and pay no credit card fee. A small deposit (typically 10%) may be payable in advance, but not usually. Then you pay the balance once you have had your stay. Typically my bill would come to a few hundred pounds.

When I stay in a self catering establishment however, they demand 20% non returnable deposit immediately (even though my stay might not be for another 12 months), then take the entire balance approx 3 weeks before I begin my stay. Then after having had the nerve to take all my money up front, in advance and sit on the deposit for nearly a year (earning interest on it) they then have the nerve to charge me a credit card fee as well! It's like "bank of Self Catering Ltd". This is if you are lucky enough to find somewhere to stay and don't mind the 7 night minimum stay either.... (hint: CenterParcs do 3 and 4 night stays self catering, try offering that to a self catering place. Not!)


Am I the only one who thinks this is a total rip off?

Credit card charges. Just say NO.

SNP pulls 7% clear of Labour

SNP pulls 7% clear of Labour-News-Politics-TimesOnline: "THE Scottish National party is on course for a decisive victory in the Holyrood election, according to the most comprehensive survey of public opinion since the campaign began."

Which is great news for the SNP, but lousy news for the BBC. So lousy, they don't cover it.

The main story on the BBC Scotland election site is "Labour attacks SNP". Well so what, they do that every day. Is that news?

Meanwhile, the most comprehensive poll since the start of the campaign gets no mention whatsoever.

Why?

The month that changed the UK

30th April: Northern Ireland gets smoking ban. The island of Ireland is smoke free and England remains the last part of the UK without a smoking ban in place, highlighting the democratic deficit in England.

2nd May: the 10th anniversary of Labour coming to power. This will intentionally be a low key affair given their unpopularity in the polls.

3rd May: Scotland goes to the polls. The SNP are widely tipped to win and significant steps towards Scotland becoming an independent country, ending 300 years of union will ensue. Like Wales, the SNP are proposing abolishing prescription charges. How long will England remain socially and politically behind the rest of the former UK?

Labour are expected to lose control of the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and do badly in the English council elections, all on 3rd May with their support approaching a 20 year low.

Tony Blair is expected to resign shortly after the polls, realising that the disastrous showing of Labour UK wide and the loss of devolved control in Scotland and Wales is largely down to continued resentment over Iraq, cash for honours sleaze and it is time for a fresh start. Sources indicate 31st May as the favoured date, but in practice a poor showing in the polls would bring this forward significantly.

Prime minister in waiting Gordon Brown has his own problems to deal with though. On 10th May, the Bank of England raises interest rates again. Normally set on the first
Thursday of the month, the Bank of England which was allegedly set free from political control is curiously meeting on the 10th, rather than the day most of the UK goes to the polls. Higher than expected inflation and a strong pound will hit the manufacturing sector and the balance of payments. The economic joy ride that Gordon Brown has enjoyed is coming to an end and the Tories are riding high in the English polls. Whilst the Dow Jones is now at an all time high, the FTSE100 is still some way off the level reached in 1999.


8th May: The devolution picture completes. With the Scottish and Welsh results in a few days ago, today see the Northern Ireland assembly assumes full powers and a nationalist party, Sinn Fein, sharing power. A struggling Labour government has at most three years to recover from a disastrous showing in the polls. Behind the scenes the Labour government has to discourage prominent Labour MPs from Scotland for seeking election to English constituencies as the SNP seeks to hold an independence poll in 2010 and remove Scottish MPs from Westminster. The UK looks to be on course for a SNP government in Scotland confronting a Conservative government in Westminster from 2010 elected almost entirely from English constituencies.
Such a prospect not only favours the SNP but also sees Plaid Cymru and Sinn Fein increase in popularity.

The UK, heading for part of one island (England and Wales) and part of another island (Northern Ireland) needs a clear rethink of its structure as the nationalist movements in Northern Ireland and Wales look to Scotland and the previous negative arguments levelled at Scottish independence fail to hold much ground as Scotland heads towards being a sovereign nation.

From the end of April to the end of May, it will be an interesting month with reprocussions for years to come.

It's time for the SNP

Scotland says no.

Scotland says no to ID cards (an unwanted, expensive invasion of privacy)

Scotland says no to Trident

Scotland says no to the Iraq war

Scotland says no to people who deny this country the opportunity to express in a single issue referendum how we should govern ourselves.

Scotland says no to prescription charges, a tax on the sick

Scotland says no to the council tax, apart from a concession system for certain groups, it has no element of ability to pay.

Scotland says no to the negative culture of "Scotland isn't good enough to make it as a country"

Don't give Scotland another 4 years' Labour and ignoring Scotland's wishes.

It's time to say yes.

SNP. It's time.

This'll make it better

From the department of the very obvious but why haven't they done it already.

Why don't they attach medicine spoons to medicine bottles (e.g. Calpol, Nurofen for children etc) via some sort of line so the two are permanently connected.

That way when your children wake up at 3am needing medicine you won't have to search every nook and cranny in the house for those small but ever so essential spoons ever again.

Craig

Independence March. Edinburgh 31st March

Independence First March. A chance to remind the Labour party about the UN Charter and the right of a people to have self-determination. Why are they not allowing the Scots to exercise that right and express their opinion on Independence in a single issue referendum?

It's also a chance to hear the great singer songwriter Dick Gaughan.

Craig

Microsoft Flight Simulator

I came across an article documenting problems with installing Microsoft Flight Simulator. Under the new "universal" CD format, Microsoft is saying the work around is to uninstall legitimate 3rd party software. Wow! If only they had thought about that for Internet Explorer versus Netscape just think of the market share they would have now. "In order to install IE, please uninstall all other browsers first". The department of justice would have a field day.

CrowdSpirit (Web 2.0.crowdsourcing startup) is hiring

If you are looking for a Web2.0 position that you can do based from anywhere in the world, then follow the link and look for a job within CrowdSpirit.

Craig (Information lead, CrowdSpirit)

Freebase to organise world's information

This is cool, unless it achieves consciousness and kills us all. Freebase is the product of Metaweb and intends to actually organise information on the web, as opposed to Google which doesn't really organise very much but just allows us to search it.

Is this the first step towards Web 3.0?

(disclosure: I know some of the people behind it)

Sue the spammer

Scotch Spam: Make the spammers pay!. Another successful legal action against a UK spammer. Please visit the site above (I know the person who won the legal action) and use it to sue anyone else in Europe who spams you.

The same law can also be used to sue people who send text messages, especially those offering to upgrade your phone contract and give you a "free" phone if you pay an absurd line rental for several months, and I'm keen to see one of those spammers sued and made an example of.

Craig

Short software licence that people actually read

Bored with excessively long software licences that just get in the way when you want to install something in a hurry? Not got a lawyer handy when presented with War And Peace when installing an application? Here's a software licence agreement that is actually short enough that people will read it and are more likely to follow the terms therein.

1. You have purchased 1 one licence for the ABC software from xyz Co. XYZ Co retains all intellectual ownership of the software and you aren't allowed to copy the software in any way or to resell it. Reverse engineering is not permitted

2. We have tested ABC software and if it causes problems on your computer after you install it, XYZ Co isn't liable for any damages or loss that may arise as a consequence of using ABC software.

3. If you want support please mail us at <support@example.com> or call <insert a number here that actually works for people outside the US>. Call/Support charges may apply.

p.s. If you speak American English, it's license.

Agile Scotland event

Another worthwhile event especially for those interested in Agile Software development, please see ScotlandIS Events for details of the event in Glasgow on 8th of March with speakers from Amazon.com

Craig

Bar Camp Scotland

Definitely an event work promoting - BarCampScotland. Hopefully will meet up with a few people there, now that I'm back in Scotland following my work as Project Manager with Tesco.com Grocery, one of Europe's top e-commerce sites.

Craig

Campaign for fair WiFi

Following the news story Hotel guests revolting over wi-fi, I would encourage readers here to sign the petition for fair WiFi.

Having stayed in hotels which have free, open WiFi and other (cheap) hotels which have free, restricted WiFi, I see no justification at all for the £17 a day rip off charged by places mentioned in the silicon.com survey and as charged by the Holiday Inn, Luton, M1 J9 where I stayed recently.

Free WiFi is readily available in the US and the costs of providing it are nothing like £17 a day. The business benefits to the hotel of additional guests attracted to free WiFi as a facility outweigh the cost of the hotel of providing it.

Please support the petition

thanks

Craig

(the author first did something like this in 1992 to promote cheap Internet access in the UK, the first such list to reveal cheap and low cost Internet providers).

Revolution in UK hotels

As a contractor living away from home Mon-Thu in hotels, I am now experiencing the joys and delights of living in hotel rooms for up to 200 nights a year and gaining a completely different perspective of what does and doesn't work from a business traveller point of view. This experience also relates to using Wi-Fi on trains and at airports.

In much the same spirit of when I launched Britain's first guide to getting online with a view to publicising how different services work and driving down price I thought it would be useful to do a wish list for hotels to improve quality and mean that I don't have to negotiate special terms whenever I turn up somewhere and use the "I'd like to stay in your hotel for 200 nights what can you do for me" card.

First off Internet access. For me this is a #1. Yet, can someone find me an accommodation search engine that mentions it? It needs to be available in the bedroom so that I can make free VOIP calls, as there is no privacy in the public areas if Wi-Fi is public areas only. Secondly it absolutely must be free from logins, this means that it is either free or included in the room price. The cost is not the issue here, the login screens are the issue. I would quite happily pay £5 a day for a service that was free of login screens because frankly I waste about 30 minutes a day logging in to do stuff between the PDA, the laptop, getting login details, typing them in over and over again.

The other important point is that PDAs with Wi-Fi just don't work the same way as login screens on a laptop. On a laptop, if you want to surf the web, you connect to the wireless network, open the browser and then some magic happens that instead of going to your homepage there's a redirect to a page for the WiFi network you are using so that you can log in and use it. Great. On a Symbian PDA that doesn't happen. You open your browser, connect to the WiFi network and then all you get is a timeout because you haven't been authorised. Hotels, trains, and airports take note! If I want to set up a connection string to allow the WiFi to work on the PDA, I actually need you to publish the web page I have to go to in order to get authorisation.

Without that info, I can't use the service. Doh! You should maybe try it on a PDA sometime just to experience the irritation factor of the login screen.

What happens when it is set up simply:

1. Open email client on PDA

2. Connect

3. Smile, that's it.

What happens when you have a login to the Wi-Fi set up on a PDA:

1. Open email client on PDA

2. Attempt to connect

3. Experience timeout

4. Read instructions on how to use connection. Note point about the login screen hasn't been published.

5. Borrow someone's laptop and get them to try it.

6. Note down the web address.

7. Park your email client and open your web browser

8. Manually enter the web address making sure it is 100% correct. Book mark it.

9. Wait for browser to display web page

10. Navigate to the username box, click in it and type the username in manually (no facility to save usernames). Some extreme panning and scrolling may be required to locate it because the developers won't have developed it for a PDA browser.

11. Navigate to the password box, click in it and type the password in manually

12. Navigate to the "accept terms and conditions" box, click it.

13. Navigate to the "submit" button, pray that the version of JavaScript is compatible with your browser and click submit

14. I have been thrown out at this point by sites that didn't support Symbian browsers, so if you reach this far then well done. You may need to close your browser down at this point if the connection offered is only single channel.

15. Go back to the mail client, possibly restarting it and try again.

Pain in the neck compared to the simple solution. Repeat steps 9-15 ad nauseum several times a day whenever you want to collect email. Get thoroughly fed up with the whole affair, noting point above that Internet access is #1 priority. Annoy guests even more if you decide to change their password unannounced every day (yes, some places actually do this).

Providing free Wi-Fi access probably costs less than the cost of the two free biscuits I find beside the kettle in my room each night. Now I know the pain that hotels must be feeling as the techno savvy traveller using Skype no longer has to pay the glorious rip off telephone rates that have been the mainstay of hotel income for decades (at least 5 times the cost of a domestic phone rate is not unusual) but Wi-Fi should not be viewed as a telephony income replacement. It is dirt cheap to provide and free Wi-Fi that is simple to use will actually bring in business rather than cost the hotel money.

Indeed if you're in the city centre, you might get free Wi-Fi through the hotel window, which certainly puts paid to any plans the hotel might have to make life difficult.

Next, let me talk about breakfast, my total cholesterol level hasn't changed for over 10 years and is still around 2.5mmol/l, well under the 4.0mmol/l recommended under European guidelines. However, despite this I feel no particular need to over indulge on the heart attack on a plate which commonly passes for the typical fry up British breakfast. Continental breakfast is fine for me. When I have a coffee I choose not to put sugar in it. The hotel very thoughtfully leaves the sugar separate such that those who want sugar in their early morning hot beverage can choose to add as much or as little as they like. Why then don't they do the same for supposedly healthy breakfast cereal? The standard options that all hotels seem to have bought into generally have sugar as one of the top 5 ingredients, even on so called healthy options such as muesli. Rather than spend most of the year in a hotel and end up putting on the pounds, why not just buy sugar free varieties of muesli etc and then leave out the sugar for the tea/coffee such that guests can have sugar on their cereal if the want and as much or as little as they like. Besides the obvious weight gain factors, there is also a clear advantage in catering for diabetics etc.

Moving onto showers. If you are lucky enough to have chosen one of the minority of UK establishments that actually has a decent water pressure rather than the pathetic dribble that sometimes passes for a shower you need to look out for the attack of the dirty shower curtain. Yes indeed, many 3-4 star hotels think that a plastic shower curtain is good enough. However the problem with this is that if the water pressure is anything above a pathetic dribble you find the draught from the water pressure makes the shower curtain flap inwards and you end up having a fight with it for anything more than 2 square inches of foot space. In this case, I find hanging the shower curtain outside the bath is the best way to guarantee being free from curtain attack, however the ensuing flood on the floor is something I am still trying to resolve. A rigid shower partition in sections would be a major improvement. Another major improvement would be a mixer tap with separate volume and temperature controls so that I can set the temperature and not have to fiddle around with it every morning. While I am on the subject of bathrooms, it may be a legal requirement to have an extractor fan if there is no external window but I wasn't aware that it was a legal requirement for the fan in the adjacent room to sound like a noisy hoover being on while the person in the next room takes a 30 minute bath and I'm try to watch TV.

And so to room rates. You can tell how much money a hotel is making by looking up the town's biggest employer (let's call them Acme Big corp) and turning up to a hotel in the same town and saying "What's the corporate rate for employees of Acme Big Corp then?). Typically discounts of 30% off the rack rate will be offered and you can bet that the hotel is still making money on that, not to mention the additionals such as the evening meal. If I’m staying more than a week there’s also the additional cost of laundry which at £2 per pair of socks or £6 for a pair of shorts after a trip to the gym is not a cost to be taken lightly for a week’s washing. £30 a week for washing – it’s almost cheaper to parcel it up an post it home and have a clean set ready to post back.

The evening meal. Back in the 80s you often struggled to find vegetarian options in hotels and had to specifically ask for them and get a separate menu. These days, such options are included on the menu and marked as such. How helpful for vegetarians. However anyone wanting a healthy, dare I say it, low fat menu option in 2007 is in much the same position as the vegetarians were 20-30 years ago. Menus typically dominated by steak might have a potentially healthy fish dish but the opportunity is lost when it comes pre-drowned in cream sauce or similar. Trying to discover the healthy option involves some careful choosing and if you have stayed in the hotel for a week without eating the same healthy dish twice then you've discovered a place that is very much in the minority.

For a slight digression, let us look at Tesco.com, the world's most successful online grocer with over 60% of the UK online food market. For a charge as low as £3.99 they will shop for me, pack the goods into a van, drive the van to my address to arrive within a 2 hour delivery window and carry the shopping into my kitchen. So why is it that the hotel charges me pretty much the same room service fee to bring a sandwich the 5 minutes’ walk from the kitchen to my room? I don't indulge in room service personally but if I did, the option of having Tesco supply my "room service" is one that isn't that far fetched. Whether they could deliver an entire box of cereal plus milk, cutlery and a dish for less than the price of a room service breakfast from the hotel for a fraction the amount of food is well an exercise in arithmetic for the bored. I could also order a brand new 5 pack of socks by post each week and it would be cheaper than having the hotel wash the ones I've had on (£2 a pair!) - what sort of message does that send out for Green Tourism?

Let us now consider the ideal hotel, for it is not as far fetched as it seems. The pub group JD Wetherspoon has been a huge success has a turnover of approx £400 million, profits approx 10% of that, is listed on the FTSE250 and was only founded in 1979. Their basis has been cheap, high quality beer and food. With a no-music policy and aiming for entirely smoke free they are not far from being something that most hotels should aspire to. At a JD Wetherspoon on steak night I can get a 10oz steak and a pint of real ale for £6.99. On curry night it's a good sized curry with rice, nan bread and poppadums and a pint of real ale for £5.49. Similar deal in a hotel round the corner is £12.50 or so for the steak and £3 or so for keg beer and the hotel bill can easily be three times the Wetherspoon's bill and it isn't even as good.

UK accommodation hasn't had much of a shake up since TravelInn and TravelLodge came and introduced basic hotel accommodation priced by the room, a real bargain price for couples and families. However in the slightly more upmarket mainstream hotel line nothing much seems to have changed price wise for decades. So let me propose the following as the ideal hotel:

1. Free Wi-Fi (costs the hotel pennies, subsidised by doing away with the free biscuits in my room). Result, more high spending business travellers. More members of the general public.

2. Flexible breakfast. Costs the hotel the price of a bowl of sugar. Result, more people who find the breakfast appealing. More people staying who need special diets.

3. Decent showers. Costs less than the price of a one night stay per room as a one off fee. Result: Less mess in the bathroom, happier guests.

4. Competitively priced meals. Result: More non-guests eat in the hotel. Sales rise. Long stay guests less tempted to try alternative eateries in the evening.

5. More healthy options. Result: as 4.

6. With increased volume of food and customers from the above then cask ale may become more practical, result: Even more customers.

Easyjet shook up the airline business. Wetherspoons shook up the pub business. Who will shake up the hotel business? Could Wetherspoons move into the bed market and revolutionise serviced accommodation?

Background info: The author worked for VisitScotland/visitscotland.com between 2000 and 2006. These are his personal opinions however.

The hot 100 beta products

Nice to be involved with CrowdSpirit who are 18th on this list, ahead of Google and the second highest new entry.

CrowdSpirit also got a mention by Businessweek recently. Why not read the CrowdSpirit blog for the latest news?

New Year, New Job

I'm pleased to say that on the first working day of the year in Scotland, I received a job offer which I've accepted and I start work there next week. It was less than three weeks between seeing the job advert and starting work, which is pretty good going considering the Christmas/New Year break.

It's a project management position for a major "dot com" and I'm looking forward to it.

Best wishes to all the other job seekers out there and I hope that the New Year for you brings similar success, it's a frustrating market when you are dealing with companies that take months to make a decision one way or the other.

Craig

Auld Lang Syne

Anyone looking for the lyrics and the original tune to which Burns set the lyrics for tonight can find them at this minimalist page on auld lang syne I put together many years ago.

Happy new year. Bliadhna mhath ùr!

Good Honest Coffee

I was out for a coffee in Edinburgh last week and as usual was presented with the now mandatory bewildering range on offer. It's gone from being a "would you like milk or sugar" to "please take a look at the menu that resembles something from a Chinese restaurant".

I like cold milk in my coffee otherwise it's far too hot to drink and takes too long.
Like my wine and whisky, I don't feel much of a need to add froth or other flavourings such as chocolate, vanilla etc.

So all I want is a bog standard black filter coffee with cold milk in it. I'm sure that in amongst the range of fancy names of coffee on offer, that there must be a name for this particular brew. Traditional coffee? Regular coffee? But how do you make sure that it doesn't get warm frothy milk in it (warm milk is what I feed a baby and is nice to send them to sleep rather than wake you up!)

How about an Honest Coffee (tm) anyone?

The person I was meeting to discuss jobs had the same preference in coffee. Maybe I'm not the only one that needs more Honest Coffee?

Craig

London Underground overheating

This will be my first blog post from the PDA and as I type this I am on a very warm London underground in the middle of December. I can well believe the horror stories of overheating in the summer, especially during rush hour and three trainloads of people queuing ahead of you before you can get on a train,

The problem is caused by hotter air in the Tube failing to rise (as hot air does) quickly enough, coupled with insufficient cooler air from outside replacing it, and insufficient air circulation generally, especially within the trains when the doors are closed. I offer the following as a possible solution and welcome comments on it.

1. Have a system which derives at least part of its power from solar energy.

2. Pump cooler air from outside (possibly augmented by air conditioning) into the gaps between stations such that it flows along the lines, pushed by the trains, into stations. Said air could be sucked in from the street level drainage system.

3. Complete the air cycle by using fans to suck the air out of stations by installing such vans in escalator shafts.

4. Dramatically improve the circulation in trains by having air scoops at the front of the train (where there is high pressure) and feeding this into each carraige separately via units in the carriage ceiling - there is currently a fair bit of spare headroom there that could be put to better use.

5. Install ceiling fans with mesh guards in carriages.

My 2p worth anyway, Ken Livingston are you listening?

Search for accommodation in London?

When attempting to use the Internet to search for accommodation in London, it seems that despite 10+ years of e-commerce no-one appears to have a usable website to do this basic activity adequately. Perhaps I'm missing something here but I tried the popular sites, I tried various terms on Google, I tried various types of searches but nothing was adequate.

What I was looking for:

1. An en-suite double room in Greater London, ideally within about 5 miles of the City of London.

2. Less than £60 a night, including breakfast. This appears to be too complicated for some sites since some quote you without breakfast and then add it on as a surcharge.

3. Available on the night I want to stay. This is again a problem for some sites that do a cursory search then only check availability when you actually go to book the room only to find there isn't a room available to book. Other sites tell you they will get back to you by email in one business day, which is no use at short notice.

4. Wi-fi access would be a bonus but no-one seems to have invented a way of searching for it yet.

5. A place which has been favourably reviewed would obviously be good as many of the cheaper hotels are reviewed as dirty and substandard. Being able to filter for positively reviewed places rather than getting Fawlty Towers would be great. It would be even better if I could filter out the comments that were in languages I don't speak.

6. Searching by star grading would be a bonus, but isn't essential

7. A check in time of 1pm or earlier is a bonus, but isn't essential

8. Clearly the capability of quoting you an entire price, including any applicable credit card booking fee, is beyond the capability of any website in the year 2006 so I gave up on that one.

9. Being able to look at the matching results and see where they all were on a map is a very big usability bonus.

10. Being able to search for somewhere that has a shower. Saying there are en-suite facilities is not enough as some places are bath only.


Having spent ages wasting my time searching the various sites, the only one that even came remotely close to doing 1-3 and actually had available accommodation within my price range (and it has feature 9 too) was priceline. So there you go. Maybe there is a better search out there that can look for cheap availability but I couldn't find it. If anyone knows of one, please let me know.

I eventually found somewhere that was £40 for a double room including breakfast but some of the reviews are rather mixed so we'll see how it goes. I would have paid a bit more if I could have actually found somewhere suitable.

One positive thing from all of this is it's given me a really great idea for a Web2.0 start-up and no, it isn't an accommodation search.

Craig

Crowdsourcing for consumer products - Web 2.0 hits manufacturing?

Crowdspirit launch on Techcrunch. Using Web 2.0 collaboration for inventing and improving consumer electronic products.

read more | digg story

CrowdSpirit - crowdsourcing for consumer products

CrowdSpirit: Using Web 2.0 to transform product creation and distribution

Today sees the launch of the first public beta of the CrowdSpirit site, an international venture based in Scotland (Edinburgh) and France (Paris and Grenoble), which couples the power of crowds and the collaboration of Web 2.0 to reinvent the supply chain and product development cycle.

CrowdSpirit has been created to resolve the problem of popular consumer products taking too long to reach the market place, not always being in tune with the public's needs and being unduly held up trying to find a route to market. Even The Beatles, JK Rowling and the inventor of the wind up radio all had significant problems setting up a supply chain to get their market leading products in front of an adoring public. It is not in the inventor's or the public's interest for it to be so difficult.

CrowdSpirit believes that the general public and not commercial interests are the best advisers on novel product creation and are targeting the field of electronic products to turn their revolutionary manufacturing vision into reality.

A joint venture between veterans of the IT and electronics business in the UK and France and Grenoble EM, CrowdSpirit is harnessing the "power of crowds" to allow inventors and adapters of technology to take their products to market via a collaborative distribution channel which overcomes many of the difficulties that inventors have faced in the past. Furthermore this distribution channel provides opportunities for inventors, developers, distributors and manufacturers to contribute at different stages to enable the supply chain.

This is Crowdsourcing taken to the marketplace and has been hailed by Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com, as "The next wave". Analysts believe the concept of product creation by companies that dynamically build the supply chain could be set to change the world of business. Sometimes labelled as 'prosumerism', Web 2.0 allows it to happen.

Web 2.0 has seen a massive generation of on-line content from blogs and video challenging traditional media companies. With the recent YouTube sale and the rapid movement of TV companies putting content on-line, Web 2.0 has only just begun. The media is, however, just one consumer space. CrowdSpirit is targeting the electronics sector initially and other sectors could follow as the Web 2.0 revolution extends outwards from on-line content through one consumer market after another.

Further Details

Business Model and the
team profile

Contact: the team by email on team@crowdspirit.org, or
Tel+[33] 6 86 87 25 49

Lost

I am fed up with complaining about Multimap having incorrect data and failing to do anything about it. Five years of complaining about street names being wrong and no action. A public name and shame would seem to be in order and details of their SLA would be appreciated so that I can set a recurring reminder at the appropriate interval to kick their collective butts again.

Is it beyond the capabilities of an industry leading site to at least check the street names against the post office database?

Craig

Biggart Baillie Innovation Award 2007

Calling all innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs in Scotland - the Biggart Baillie Innovation Award 2007 launches today.

Brief terms and conditions:

There is no limit to the number of entries an individual can submit but each entry can only be submitted for one category.

All entrants must:

• Have an idea which is a first or an innovative twist on an old idea


• Clearly demonstrate how it is unique


• Be resident in Scotland


• Be over 18 years of age


• Be willing to participate in publicity around their ideas and the award

See the link for more details.

Craig

Is "too experienced" the new ageism?

I applied for a job recently which would have been a slight step up the career ladder. The job was excellent and I was really excited about applying. I tailored my CV accordingly the agent liked it and thought I was a great match and after 2 weeks the company reported back that despite my impression that it was a step up the career ladder and it was a bigger package than I am currently on that they rejected me because they felt I was "too experienced".

Is this a euphemism for "too old" I wonder? I don't feel too experienced when shovelling horse shit each night when I clean the stable. I don't feel too experienced when I do the manual work around the house. I also don't feel too experienced being versatile enough to step in and do all sort of work that comes my way so long as it gets the job done for the company?

Too experienced? Is there such a thing? If I think I'm a good match for the job, the agency thinks I'm a good match for the job is it not better for a discussion to happen regarding whether the employer feels I'm too experienced or not rather than a flat rejection? After all, what some women prefer when returning from having a baby is an easier job with more flexible hours, less stress and a better work-life balance. Are they also rejected for taking a step back because they are "too experienced" ?

Well if the company wants me to run a multi billion pound company then fair enough I'll take the job, but really being a project manager would be just fine for me thanks. It would be a great job, would be a career move for me and would allow me to balance the day job and doing an MBA. Perhaps after 2 years I might be too experienced then, but 2 years is a long time to look around for a promotion.

My experience, as well as feedback from agencies and the experiences of other candidates indicate that recruitment is easily the most inefficient process when running a business. How can it be made to work more smoothly?

Crowdsourcing

The crowdsourcing revolution is coming. Read the blog. Official website launching shortly.

The great business rip off

My bank wrote to me this week offering me a deal - a credit card in the name of my Ltd company and with no annual charge. Shock horror I thought to myself, has the world gone mad? On further reading I found the card was only free for the first year but there would be a £25 charge each year after that.

Lets do a few comparisons

Personal credit card with the bank: Free
Business credit card with the bank: £25.
Perhaps they don't appreciate that most people will get get another personal credit card for free and use that if they want to keep their business transactions separate?

A few more examples:
Personal banking with the bank: Free
Business banking with the bank: Charge per transaction

And finally:
Cost of filing annual (tax) return with the inland revenue: Free
Cost of filing annual return with companies house: £30 (£15 electronically). Criminal offence if you don't pay.

Why are companies seen as such an easy target for these rip off charges? They only result in costs being passed onto the general public. Is the £4.35bn profit that the bank makes per year not enough?

Veiled confusion

So the biggest story of the last 24 hours has been Jack Straw politely requesting Muslim women not to wear a veil. Certainly Jack Straw got the debate he wanted. However I have a few questions.

1. Despite the apparent controversy raging in the media, many of the Muslims interviewed have been men. Excuse me, but it's not men that are being asked to lower the veil. Would I ask a bunch of men their opinion on whether bras were too tight? Could we ask the BBC for more female opinions please?

2. In all the time that Jack has been asking women, they have been free to refuse and none have done so. Does this not imply that the real people objecting are the men who wish to subjugate women to the status of dressing up according to their ideals rather than what the women want? Is this acceptable in a Western Society which advocates equality?

3. If women are choosing to dress this way, why is it that the toilet on air flights out of strictly Muslim countries is full for the first hour of the flight while women change into normal clothes?

4. If we force people to show their face at passport control, is a polite request in an MPs surgery really so controversial? What if veiled women want to go into a bank which has a big sign saying "Motorcyclists please remove your helmet'. Is it not seen as a security risk that a bloke could dress in a veil to rob a bank? The identity parade could be quite interesting. Also, what is going to happen when ID cards become mandatory?

5. If western, non Muslim, women don't cover their heads in Muslim countries or drive a car in Saudi Arabia, they face arrest. Westerners MUST conform to Muslim ideals in Muslim countries. If we had the same attitude here we'd be forcing Muslim women to go around half naked in summer like most Western women. The fact that we don't is a sign that we are a tolerant society, so why is it so controversial just to ask the question or removing a veil? We enshrine freedom of speech in this country and not being allowed to ask the question or have a debate on it is an attack on this right.

6. If a Muslim woman comes to collect a child from school and is wearing a veil, how do you know it is her and not a kidnapper?

7. Supposing you employ a Muslim woman wearing a veil at work and you employ a deaf person. The deaf person will not be able to work with the Muslim woman as they will be unable to lipread. If the deaf person can't do their job as a result, they could sue under the Disability Discrimination Act. The Muslim woman could sue under Religious Discrimination. Who is right?

8. The Muslim custom of wearing a veil could be considered the Islamic equivalent of men in western countries wearing ties. Neither is in fact prescribed by any religion. Both are long standing customs that allow the wearer to conform to other peoples ideals of dress. When we accept men in this country without ties to be equal to those that do and do not force any man to wear a tie at work then we will be in a much better position to judge the dress codes of other nations and religions when we have learned to accept people for who they are, not how they dress. Is the request for women to show their faces a parallel of expecting male politicians not to hide their mouth behind a beard?

9. Why is it that because an extremely tiny proportion of radical Muslims advocate violence and terrorism that suddenly every story concerning Muslims suddenly becomes a major crisis point? Did we react the same way towards all Irish people and carefully consider their point of view when the IRA was terrorising London. No. You can just imagine the nonsense that would ensue if Irish jokes were banned following an IRA bomb. Double standards?

10. If you look at the BBC debate on this point you'll see that the vast majority of people think on the BBC forum think that Jack Straw is right. If the BBC was reporting this in a balanced way, their TV reports could perhaps give some more objective analysis of this discussion by conducting an opinion poll amongst both the public at large and the people affected, namely Muslim WOMEN. Then we would be able to look at the issue objectively rather than the endless vox pops we've been getting where one person who disagrees with Jack seems to be speaking for the entire Muslim community when clearly the position is likely to be a lot more complex than that. In the struggle for so called balanced reporting, are the views of a small minority being over emphasised?

Can we have faith in more objective discussion on this or will the BBC continue to cover it up?

Scotland and TechCrunch

We were mentioned on TechCrunch UK today. Watch this space for news on relaunching meetings for Scottish entrepreneurs and investors.

Recommended job search site

As someone currently looking for a job, (anyone hiring for Technical Lead / IT Manager or CTO at the moment?) I have been using a wide variety of job search sites with mixed results. Incase anyone else is in the same situation, the site I have found that consistently returns the most relevant results and has the most flexible search (especially for Scotland) is ScotRecruit, the Scottish branded version of Jobsite who brand themselves as "The original, award-winning UK job search and jobs by email service". I guess my computerised job matching service I thought up in 1989 and got an award for in the Shell Livewire competition and my picture in the local paper doesn't count then? :-)

Seriously folks, there are loads of sites out there. Try this one first.

They have even lead the field and created a very useful page on the age discrimination legislation which is about to come into force in the UK.

Worst contact centre award

Having been on hold to the Orange contact centre (I guess that's what you would call it, I might call it a non-contact centre) for approx 2 hours and still not been able to speak to anyone, I would like to nominate Orange wwww.orange.co.uk for the worst contact centre of the year award. I've already been transferred 5 times on the call I'm on and I've comfortably managed to log into blogger, enter this article and post it in between the last two transfers.

Congratulations Orange, by the time you connect me you'll be able to read this article I'm just about to point you to.

So will everyone else on the Internet, including your prospective customers.

My site gets tens of thousands of visitors a month and through this blog is syndicated on many RSS feeds. Enjoy the publicity.

Religious Miracle

In new developments in the Pope Vs Islam story, this breaking news just in.

Muslim leaders, many of whom accepted the Pope's apology, are now concerned that the violence of recent days is now getting out of hand. Certainly the murdering of a nun and the firebombing of churches are against the core message of Islam which is a peaceful religion.

Noone wants to see the good name of Muslims tarnished by a tiny percentage of followers which use their religion as an excuse for violence and illegal acts.

The leaders go on to say that they understand how the West can often find it difficult to understand Muslims when the press pick on events like this and give the impression that Muslims will take to violence and illegal acts despite all that is said in the holy books regarding respect and understanding.

In order that the violence of recent days is put in its proper context, the religious leaders of Muslim groups and nations are today calling for an end to the illegal violence and are organising peaceful marches and protests, filled with the peaceful believers who comprise the majority of the Muslim faith and whose peaceful values and respect for other human beings are being misrepresented by the media focus on a few violent and isolated protests. This mass statement, which will emphasise the peaceful nature of Islam will be a silent protest against the Muslim minority who seek to misrepresent the faith as a whole.


Praise Be This Miracle.

Religious clarification

I was going to write a longish blog about the Vatican braces for Muslim anger reports.

However, I found this quote from the Dilbert Blog sums it up:

My favorite story of the week is about Pope Benedict inadvertently insulting Islam in a speech. He quoted a Byzantine emperor who called Islam “evil and inhuman” but made it clear that it wasn’t his own opinion.

In response to being labeled evil and inhuman by a dead Byzantine emperor, a group of Muslims did what anyone would do in that situation: They firebombed two churches in the West Bank.

This is funny on so many levels that I hardly know where to start.

Maybe we need to breed more atheists?.

Seriously, isn't it great how the Pope can issue a religious text to clarify what he said so that we can understand it better. Just think of the fun that would ensue if we could treat the bible the same way.

How about this for a starter

"Dear faithful. I thought up this religion to impose some order and fairness on early civilisation. Now that you have learnt these rules and adapted your own, you need not be bound by what was written in a dated book 2000 years ago, especially as society has moved on since then. Kindly disregard the stuff about the universe being created in 6 days and women and gays being inferior. Yes, you can have equal rights, that's what I meant really.

I hope you don't meet up with sentient beings from other planets in the future, because I completely ommited that in the bible, sorry everyone makes mistakes even those with complete power over time and space."

We won blog of the day

The author of Blog of the Day came across this site in a search and picked us for the award! If anyone knows of any other blog awards then please feel free to submit the site :-)

View the award

Subsequent to winning that award, we also won this blog of the day award.

Craig

American dates and 11th September

Why do Americans write dates backwards?

This is article the first about writing dates backwards. The one after this will be article the second. If I write eleven, the eleventh one will be article the eleventh.

No, wait a minute. Won't it be "the first article","the second article" and "the eleventh article"? If it's days of advent, it's the first day of advent not advent the first. In a few days it will be the eleventh day this month. The _eleventh_day_of_the_month. It makes sense, so much more so than reversing it to say day the eleventh. So why will everyone in the US write it backwards as September the 11th rather than something that is consistent with other American English usage, and say the 11th of September?

Let me remind you of an American film. "Born on the fourth of July". Not "Born on July 4th".

Let me remind you of an American song.

I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy, A Yankee Doodle do or die.
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam's Born on the Fourth of July.
George M. Cohan

Despite the fact that July 4th wouldn't rhyme, it seems that Americans can write the day the other way round, when it suits them.

Take a look at numbers

12345. Twelve thousand, three hundred and forty five. The digits go left to right in order of decreasing significance.

Or a UK date

7th September 2006. The elements go left to right in order of increasing significance.


Now a US date

07/09/2006. 7th of September or 9th of July? If the latter, it's the only number I know of that has the least significant element in the middle rather than the end.

It's worrying that this practice is spreading to the UK. After all, if people get mixed up with dates written "best before 08/07/06" on medicine and they think this means August the 7th, they might get a surprise if it really meant the 8th of July.

Especially in the run up to the 11th of September, the UK media is now uniformly calling it "9/11" rather than "11/9". We don't need this confusion in the UK as well, it's bad enough as a programmer trying to deal with US jumbled dates without people in the UK using two date systems at the same time.

That's my grumble anyway. What will I be doing on 11th September? Preparing for my 2nd daughter's 5th birthday the next day. That's daughter the 2nd, birthday the 5th in American format :-)

Gordon Brown: Last prime minister of the UK?

It seems almost a foregone conclusion that Gordon Brown will succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister. Without a vote from the public, without him seeing even lead his own party, the most powerful person in the land will be replaced next year with a process approaching a coronation rather than a meaningful contest. Such is the nature of UK democracy.

I have nothing against Gordon Brown as an individual, and under normal circumstances after the Iraq war I think many would be grateful for some change at the top to draw a line under that episode. I also think that he's done a decent if uninspired job as chancellor and although his Chancellorship has seen the longest period of sustained economic growth in UK history, 4 years of this was under the Tories and there has been general growth worldwide, not just in the UK.

However, there is a big difference between being a capable number cruncher, largely keeping quiet, and an inspired leader.

Recently, the Labour defeat in the Dunfermline and West Fife 2006 by-election, after a campaign largely led by Gordon Brown in a constituency in which he lives, cast doubt on his ability to win elections on his own. As a Westminster politician, he has no authority over issues such as transport which are devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Yet, he became involved in devolved issues by stating these, would be reconsidered and he would build a new bridge. Seven months later, the tolls are still £1 and cause traffic jams as cars build up to queue at the tolls. Tolls which are decades behind other countries, that have long since implemented automatic toll collection schemes.

Since Fife is the only place in Scotland with bridge tolls, why not just remove them?

Here's some more examples of things that need simplified:

Class 2 national insurance contributions. £2.10 a week. Why bother? It probably costs as much to collect it and chase the non payers as any benefit derived from it.

National Insurance. It’s an income tax by any other name. Get rid of it by merging it with Income Tax.

Child Tax rebates. An excuse to spend millions of pounds on an IT system that doesn’t work. An excuse to miscalculate payments and overpay people who can’t afford to pay it back. An idea that was singularly unoriginal and was copied from the US, complete with all the bureaucracy that goes with it. It wastes £1.3 billion per year. The lack of joined up IT means that you have to fill in the figures for your earnings rather than just looking it up on the tax return computer.

Car Tax. What a bureaucratic nightmare that is and how much money is wasted on chasing payment, filling in forms, advertising on TV and paper shuffling. I couldn’t buy my current car because of the car tax nightmare. The previous owner was registered disabled and had registered the car as owned by a disabled person. They don’t pay car tax and so the vehicle was exempt. I go to buy the car, pay for the tax at the post office and can’t because the system won’t accept my full payment as the vehicle is recorded as being exempt. I can’t pay nothing either because I don’t have disabled exemption. So a 100 mile round trip was necessary in another car (remember, mine isn’t taxed) to the regional licensing centre and someone has to stand in a queue and sort it all out. Is this helping Britain to keep moving? Unnecessary journeys and paper shuffling? For goodness sake if you want disabled people to be exempt from paying them to register themselves on the vehicle licensing computer and then they get the exemption, after all it’s the person who is claiming the exemption, not the car.

Inheritance tax. See this article in the Scotsman calling the government's tax changes “grossly unfair”. This is in a country where many middle earners pay 40% income tax + 9% national insurance whilst at the same time the super rich like the Rolling Stones pay a derisory 1.9% tax on income. Surely we should have a fairer tax system than this?

Pensions. We have a pensions crisis but is the £160,000,000,000 hole in pension funds due to taxation helping to fix the problem or making it bigger?

Lets be prudent he says. Not when it comes to splashing out on Iraq. Or the millennium Dome. Or IT fiascos costing hundred of millions of pounds. How many hospitals would that misplaced prudence buy the nation?

The risk here is that unless Labour is inspirational, it will only feed into the hands of their main opposition - namely the Tories in England and the SNP in Scotland. If Labour does not want to lose the Scottish elections in 2007 then now is the time to act.

It could be that Gordon Brown is the one who indirectly delivers independence for Scotland. We live in interesting times.

Government demonstrates IT incompetence yet again

BBC NEWS | Politics | £141m benefits computer shelved: "It is the latest in a long series of computer problems for the government."

Too right. I put this onto Reddit with some rather choice language and it made the front page.

The government even has a Project Management method called PRINCE2 and a site all about it. So was the method at fault for the £140m problem or the people in charge? Why in the light of these overruns is there no accountability? After all, the 2nd First Minister of Scotland was forced to resign over a sum which is a tiny fraction of the above.

Lets not forget the £6.8Bn NHS upgrade overruns, the ID card running into delays and overruns, 1 month after I said it would and of course the gun register unfit for purpose 10 years on.

Clearly the taxpayer should be expecting better value for money in these projects so that instead of funding overruns the money can be spent on schools, hospitals, etc.

Rip off Britain

There are so many examples I could give to illustrate Rip Off Britain. Ever since I first went to the US in the 1970s, many consumer goods are so much cheaper there.

Clearly over priced goods have an effect on the economy as people will buy less of them. I am interested in other examples of rip off Britain and the government's stance on this.

Here's my example from something I was looking to buy:

WN311B PCI card for NetGear router: Typical UK price £113 plus postage

Now compare it with the US: Typical US Price $96

The US price in dollars is cheaper than the UK price in pounds.

Now for a more direct comparison. Convert the US price to pounds £50.67. Add the rip off tax known as VAT (no sales tax applicable on US internet sales remember). This would make the US price with VAT £59.53. Lets call this £60.00

So the UK Rip Off margin is (113-60)/60 * 100 = 88%. 88% markup!!

Alleged cost of importing and postage $53

And of course where there is no importing or postage, the differential is even less excusable. In this BBC article on iTunes pricing, the UK price is 55% higher than the US price and 93% higher than the Canadian price.

Welcome to Rip Off Britain

Early History:
The UK Internet list, 1992, founded to keep UK Internet prices low.
Rip off prices in 1992
Rip off prices in 1993
More rip off prices in 1993
Rip off prices in 1995

Since Labour came to power, we have
Rip off insurance APR, 1999 and
High training prices 2006, because we're worth it?

Who is responsible for ensuring Britain stays competitive?

The VisitScotland connection and jobhunting

Trying a bit of reverse marketing here to see whether posting to Google Groups: uk.jobs.wanted and also to Ebay.co.uk in an unconventional attempt to get me ahead of the crowd and in front of the right people. After all, with so many agencies not even bothering to acknowledge receipt of a CV or follow up, it's one way to get remembered. Many just ignore you. Some respond. One major agency however has contacted me through some third parties and commented "I would like to congratulate you on such a fantastic CV", which is certainly a lot more feedback and effort than others put in. So I'm reciprocating the effort and rather than just emailing the agency to say thanks I'm taking a few hours out of my day to meet them in person.

Maybe if other agencies were as attentive, they might get further. Back to the VisitScotland connection or visitscotland.com where I currently work - if only job searches were as flexible as the accommodation searches we've designed for that site then job hunting would be so much easier.

Craig