Author Archives: The Team

A FOUL FROM THE PREMIER LEAGUE

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Those who feel strongly that monopolies are bad for customers, and bad for the image of marketing – and witness the shameful licensed exploitation of millions of Olympic fans by Visa, McDonalds et al, courtesy of wimpy Lord Coe and his team – will be cheered by a recent legal ruling against the powerful football Premier League.

To protect its sale of very lucrative broadcasting rights the bullying League funded a legal action, brought by their puppets at Brent and Harrow trading standards services against a Wembley man, Helidon Vuciterni, accused of importing Albanian satellite decoder cards which allow Premier League matches to be watched at monopoly-free prices, thus potentially saving football-fan customers hundreds of pounds.

Fortunately for fairness the judge was not as beholden to the Premier League as the trading standards poodles, and said so, pointing out that the poodles rendered the warrants against Vuciterni unlawful because they did not disclose a European Court of Justice opinion that our national laws prohibiting the sale of the money-saving cards were contrary to the freedom to provide services.

One would have thought trading standards officers and their puppet-masters at the Premier League would have known that, wouldn’t one?

ANOTHER BLOW FOR MONOPOLY

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Meanwhile readers might want to shed a tear or two for the most unlucky Quatari government, which recently paid £900 million for a 20% stake in BAA, the owners of Stansted and Heathrow airports.

Tragically, shortly after the ink on the sale agreement was dry BAA was ordered to sell Stansted, a confirmation of a legal order laid down three years ago by the UK government’s anti-monopoly regulator, the Competition Commission, and fought by BAA ever since.

So a company that the Quatari government thought was a lucrative monopoly worth a rather large punt is now much less so, and has to sell off a huge asset at a time when, due to greedy bankers, the market is in recession.

Shame.

PROFIT FROM MISERY BOAST FROM GLENCORE

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One character vying with bankers Fred Goodwin and Bob Diamond for the title of most hated in the business sector is the lesser known Christopher Mahoney of very large commodity traders Glencore.

Mahoney, currently Swiss-based Glencore’s director of agricultural products, came across as seriously nasty and did his employer no credit at all when he gloated recently that the world food crisis, which could cause a lot of deaths, was good for his company saying “The environment is a good one. High prices, lots of volatility, a lot of dislocation, tightness”, an incredibly stupid remark that gave the Independent newspaper a front page headline, “We’ll make a killing out of food crisis, trading boss boasts” and the story headline “Unholy trade of making millions out of misery”.

Anyone else remember what happened to Gerald Ratner’s company after he boasted to an appreciative if vacuous audience at the Institute of Directors that he sold “crap”?

WHAT A LIBERTY, JIMMY!

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Those Scottish readers living in Scotland and enjoying the bite, burn and budget price of cheap supermarket alcohols will be shocked to learn that their caring government will be making them pay a lot more for their low-cost tippling than those lucky types south of the border.

From next April the Scottish government are imposing a minimum price of 50 pence per unit on all alcoholic drinks sold in Scotland. This means that a budget priced 2-litre bottle of strong cider that contains 10 -15 units of alcohol and sells for around £2.00-£3.00 down here will be £5.00-£7.00 up there. And a bottle of cheap own-brand French brandy that contains 25 units of alcohol and that we pay under £10 for down here will be costing our Scottish fellow drinkers £12.50. Continue reading →

FULL OF HOLES THEN, ANNIE?

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Amusing, it was to learn from an email that the current White Book directory from the Institute of Promotional Marketing (IPM) is “an extremely valuable and no holes (sic) barred annual guide” to the promotional marketing industry, according to Annie Swift, CEO of the IPM.

Of course the word “holes” should have been “holds” and is an example of the kind of typo that terrifies all top publishers, like wot we is, one that the trusty spellchecker doesn’t pick up. This error should not however put readers off the product, which contains information about regulatory threats, commercial trends, technology, educational resources and social issues, as well as opinion pieces, company profiles and a directory of agencies and service providers.

And prominent figures in the promotional marketing sector are currently being invited by the IPM to register for a free copy……….

A WEAK LINK, THEN?

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One minor TV celebrity getting out of prison soon is Dan Penteado, who helps to exposes workmen on the fiddle on the BBC’s Rogue Traders programme, fronted by consumer and taxpayer champion Ann Robinson.

Penteado was caught doing some rogue trading of his own when fraudulently claiming housing and council tax benefits whilst earning £56,000 from his TV job, a lapse of judgement that got him jailed for 10 weeks by Bournemouth magistrates on July 17.

Wonder if our saintly Ms Robinson knew?

TIME FOR A CHARITY CLEAN UP

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Charity chuggers employed by Tag Campaigns have been the subject of an undercover investigation by the Sunday Telegraph, following a tip-of from a whistleblower.

This found that members of the public stopped in the street were being aggressively intimidated, misled and lied to by chuggers employed by Tag, in order to persuade them to divulge their mobile phone numbers, to facilitate a text donations campaign. Tag were working on behalf of Marie Curie Cancer Care and it was revealed that its two founders, also the sole shareholders, had taken £1.2 million in dividends in the last three years. Continue reading →

LEARNED BEHAVIOUR

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Bullying has been taking centre stage in the media recently.

According to education standards watchdog, Ofsted, nearly half of all pupils have suffered some form of bullying at school, with 58% of those in primary schools and 41% in secondary’s claiming they had been picked on, though how much of this was from teachers and how much from other pupils was not revealed. What was clear was that mostly the abuse concerned the way the abused looked, including hair colour, weight and the wearing of spectacles. Some teachers pointed out that the parents and carers of the children harboured racist, homophobic and aggressive attitudes that were at odds with the values they were trying to instil.

Bullying can have tragic consequences, witness the 12-year old boy from Harrogate who hanged himself in June, reportedly over being bullied. Continue reading →

DO THEY CARE?

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The government is backtracking on plans to cap the amount the elderly have to pay for their own care.

Experts have recommended £25,000 but the figure ministers are considering is £100,000, and they will not now be making a decision until 2015.

This, say Age UK will have a devastating impact on people who need care now.

BLACKBERRY OR CRACKBERRY?

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Charity Anxiety UK has warned that insomnia is hitting increasing numbers of us after getting our fix of social networking sites, dubbed “electronic cocaine”

Apparently half of us access the sites while in bed, 43% use work time for this personal experience and whilst 38% of users believe the sites have improved their lives some 24% of us say they make us anxious, a common symptom of chemical drug use.