3 posts from December 2007

It was fun shopping in Truro City Centre yesterday - most of the small shops were shut all day, and the larger shops opened their doors at 10am but nobody could purchase anything until 10:30am - utterly bizarre, not only that but because of the shorter day and the proximity to christmas it was havoc in pretty much any significant shop that was open.

As a sole trader in the IT Industry, I've had to work 7 day weeks, or weekends at various times for various reasons - you can't really take down business servers or web servers during the working week, so it has to be done on the weekend or bank holiday. Before I graduated I worked in several jobs, all of them meant working sundays, bank holidays and even new years eve - Bar work, Hospital Cleaner, Hospital Porter, Hotel waiter, Hotel Housekeeping, Hotel Porter.

Let me be totally frank - if you don't want to work, or open your business on a sunday, or christmas day, or easter sunday or a bank holiday - that's entirely up to you - but don't demand that everybody else close their business or not shop, or do whatever they heck they want.

So, as a Liberal party - what's the policy on sunday trading - I mean, how many votes do we really expect to get from narrow minded "christians" and stuck-in-the-70s shop owners? Hardly any - stuff them.

... after nearly 18 months of it being noticed and raised as an issue at our local Linux User Group, and numerous complaints since it still doesn't work in anything apart from internet explorer. (http://www.chooseandbook.nhs.uk/patients/faqs/techissue) - what a complete farce. Apparently it's a good thing that a whole two thirds of UK users can actually use the site! idiots!

I keep on saying that the Liberal Democrats need a minister, or at least spokesperson, for ICT - maybe Nick Clegg really will realise that a role considered essential in every boardroom is missing from his cabinet - but I doubt it, the westminister village is still too distant from the real world where we actually have to make things work to pay the mortgage.

There is more than enough work to justify a minister for ICT, the lack of such a minister in the cabinet of any of our national parties is negligent - all three parties have been very poorly briefed on the technical issues of both RFID Passports, and ID Cards and certainly have no idea at all about who nominet are, let alone have any idea of the simple steps needed to enforce the law when it comes to crime on the internet.

Oh telecoms regulators how I hate thee!

We're ex-directory and registered with TPS. You would think that would mean we avoid the worst abuse of the telephone system, but it doesn't - I regularly get scam and cold calls from dodgy companies who should know better.

The worst part is there is nothing you can do - if a UK business breaks the law or pays another company outside the uk to do the same, there is no way to trace them or take action.

OFCOM fails miserably in regulating cold calls via fax, email and telephone - today I got an automated war-dialling (as they can't have got my number legally) call from "The Information Team", who have a UK call centre, use a UK telephone number, and yet I am unable to do anything to prevent them doing it again - I can't even find out where their UK office is and go around and give them a hard time.

This is crazy - people use UK telephone numbers and .uk domains for illegal scams, and are untouchable - the telephone companies, ISPs, registrars, police and OFCOM all have no interest in taking any action. Utterly pitiful.

links for more information on these scamming scum :
* http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/08445592577/2
* http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk.telecom/browse_thread/thread/244be21b7a25f91d

Those useless unhelpful muppets :
* http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints/privacy_and_electronic_communications.aspx
* http://www.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/ioi/nwbnd/prsindex/
* http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/landline/nuisance/silent/?itemid=284845
* http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/tps/

I've tried registering complaints with tps, etc - all of them say upfront they will not confirm anything and probably won't take any action - should you want to bring a civil case you require a private detective and some friends inside the telecoms industry - otherwise you're going to be a victim for as long as it's worthwhile for scammers to cold call and war dial.

It's crazy that I can't find out who these people calling me are and get them to stop, or report them to trading standards (which even when you've done some research is a waste of time).