Shut Katie Hopkins Down

Enough is Enough.

Katie Hopkins has had more than her fair share of the limelight and it's time to stop lining her pockets by giving her the media oxygen to spout her obscene views.

She says she stands by everything she says and that she has "integrity", but there's a huge difference between speaking 'honestly' (suggesting she never takes a contrary view just to raise her profile) and insulting or hurting people.  Regardless of your darkest private thoughts, some things are best not said, but she CHOOSES to disregard people's feelings.

Yesterday's appearance on Loose Women was the final straw and provided a perfect example of her twisted logic.

Not only did she fail to apologise to Coleen Nolan and her family for the cruel trolling of Coleen's sister Linda, by making hurtful references to her appearance when she was battling breast cancer, but she felt this was justified because she was defending Linda's CBB nemesis Jim Davidson.

So it's OK to wade in and say unspeakable things about someone on the one hand while claiming virtuous qualities like loyalty on the other.

Except Jim apologised and Katie won't.

We need to make it clear to TV producers and newspaper editors that we see through this controversy magnet and implore them to stop giving her a platform - everyone might have a right to free speech, but this doesn't make our media any less culpable for magnifying the views of a sociopath to attract their own audiences.

SHUT HER DOWN

#ShutHopkinsDown

 * UPDATE BELOW*   -   *UPDATE BELOW*   -   *UPDATE BELOW*

Unsurprisingly, I was attacked on Twitter almost immediately after publishing this for not upholding the principles - indeed, not understanding the concept - of the free speech I claim to embrace.  It's usually defined as: "The right to speak without censorship or restraint by the government" but this has also been expanded by the Offense Principle.

My opinion (to which I am entitled!) is that there is no reason to sink to personal insults or to abandon civility, decency and respect when expressing a view.  The Free Speech lobby want it 'no holds barred' but, I'm sorry, this paves the way for people to go up to a child with a learning difficulty and call them a retard without fear of retribution - or allows hate preachers to publicly poison people's minds or incite murder.  We all want to live in a society like that, right?? 

Someone pointed out that there are bigger problems in the world like ISIS - my point exactly.  People like Katie are at the very root of driving a wedge in society through lack of tolerance and inflaming hate.

(Not) Box Clever

A lesson in how to do business inefficiently ...

This morning Mr Courier delivered this:

Even the cat was 'excited'

(Helped to demonstrate size perspective, anyhow)

We were expecting a couple of deliveries for exchanged Christmas presents (boots for my son in a smaller size, a dress for my wife - also smaller, happily!), but why was this so light?  Opening the box initially revealed nothing except seemingly a lot of giant bubble wrap:

But what lay beneath?

Wait ... all that to send this?:

It was a pack of decorations from Tesco to replace ones that had been sent incorrectly in the first place.  The first lot had arrived with two similar sized products, but in the same sized box - which already had us angered at the time by the environmental wastage (Amazon are also guilty of this).

* * * * *

So, let's also look at the transaction from an economical perspective and you might get some clues as to why Tesco's profits and market share have been on the slide ...

- The item itself cost £7.99, to help you calculate the likely profit margin.

- The postage we paid on the original item was part of a £3.95 minimum (albeit sent with two other items), so this would have been incurred by Tesco themselves for the re-despatch.

- In the event, the goods that arrived were the same as the first lot.  The problem was in the product description, so they've incurred the additional postage cost as a result of someone's original input error.

- Not only have their resource costs doubled as a result of having to re-process this item, but they also had to pay the person in the call centre who arranged for the second despatch and someone else will presumably have to go in and alter the product description - if they can even bother to try to prevent an expensive recurrence.

- They could clearly have saved on packaging costs (but it's the waste and impact on the planet's resources that upsets us the most).

- They told us to keep the item sent to us in error, which is possibly enough on its own to go into negative profit on this transaction.

* * * * *

Now, we could go back to them and repeat the whole fiasco over again but we can make do with the items we've been sent - and we'd rather save another tree from being sacrificed as a result of corporate incompetency.

I'm posting links to this on Twitter, Facebook and to Tesco themselves - possibly BBC Watchdog - and would urge you to take similar action the next time a delivery contains more air than substance.

But at least the cat's happy!

Good People Unite

Interesting to see ‪#‎WhoIsMuhammad‬ trending on Twitter - a man who would smile if mocked (so presumably would have done so at the Charlie Hebdo cartoons), promoted respect for women and education and purportedly tolerated people of all races and creeds - to the extent that, when asked why he stood at the passing of a coffin for a Jew, he replied "Was he not a human being?". Regardless of where you think he stands in terms of salvation, these look like the marks of a good Teacher at the very least - why don't the extreme Islamists get this? Hoping these positive messages might lead to the unity between religions we've seen in France.

The mistake of the peaceful majority in the past was to remain silent - they're not doing so now and we should all promote peace - loudly!

The Old Boy Network seems Alive and Well

I'm getting mightily tired of the massive fines being imposed on banks (most recently for forex manipulation) not finding their way back to the people who were initially disadvantaged down the line.

I thought the financial regulators were altruistically set up to protect investors and strike a fair deal for them when they were wronged.

But instead it seems the banks continue with their dodgy practices and simply see these fines as a cost of doing business - I doubt that the fines represent more than a small fraction of the gains they actually make from malpractice.

And I can't help noticing what a lucrative industry governance has become in its own right - and how many executives (probably the majority of them ex-bankers themselves) are now doing rather nicely in both the States and here in the UK (despite occasionally having to defer the icing on the cake through bonuses).

In my most cynical moments, I'm convinced there's collusion between the City and its watchdogs*.  While hoodwinking the man in the street by creating the impression that everyone's playing by the rules, it's a perfect ruse for the fat cats to carry on pretty much as they did before - same greed, brighter halo.

They're not alone, of course - charity executives are also capitalising on the plight of those further down the food chain and the likes of Tony Blair are doing alright by picking up on both sides of their meddling as well (I wrote about the latter here).

I live in the hope that God ultimately won't help those who help themselves at other people's expense.

It's since been announced that the Government is allocating £100M from the LIBOR manipulation fines to military and emergency service charities.  Charitable donations by stealth from borrowers and investors to people whose pensions have ironically been decimated by the banks' other dodgy dealings. Blood money?

* If more proof is needed, welcome Attorney General Eric Holder of the SEC to the above club - a classic case of "working" with bad banks like JPMorgan Chase.

UPDATE (4 Jan '16): Another one under Blair's wing - David Miliband pockets big bucks from refugee misery.

Dear Cyclist - "It's Behind You!"

This week a Heathrow car rental firm got itself into hot water for warning its hirers that London cyclists are a "hazard" and "it is always the motorist's fault".

I'm not anti-cyclist, and we know that cars and bikes can exist in harmony in places like the Netherlands, but many London cyclists do seem to have a fairly blase attitude towards self-preservation.

I attribute most of my defensive driving skills to the spacial awareness that years of cycling and motorcycling instilled in me and it frustrates me that motorists and cyclists alike are often guilty of not paying nearly as much attention to what's coming up behind them as what's on the road ahead.

Which brings me to a glaring omission from most of the bicycles I see on London's roads - rear view mirrors.

It's true that motorists often neglect to check their blind spots, but at least their vehicles are equipped with the means to monitor potential developments behind them, whereas too many times I've seen cyclists swerve around obstacles like parked cars without so much as cursory glance over their shoulders beforehand.

Is it a vanity thing?  Do they think that, having spent so much on racing lycra and bikes that have specifications far beyond their needs or capabilities, it simply wouldn't be cool to spoil the effect with mirrors that might be seen as a betrayal of their commitment to shave milliseconds off their performance because of the extra wind drag produced?  This is commuting, guys, not the Olympics.

I have a friend who raced at a professional level, so I sought his opinion before writing this in case I incurred the wrath of those who take their riding seriously and are tired of getting beaten up on because they get placed in the same bag as their amateur counterparts.

His reply?  "I would say it comes simply down to people who don't have a clue how to be safe on bikes ... And there's a lot of them around!"

If you're too cool for school, there are mirror options that can be worn in-helmet or on your wrist etc.

For my part, I was proud of my mirrors as a kid cycling in the somewhat less frantic environment of a sleepy Australian town - although in retrospect I'd probably have lost the handlebar tassels ...