Google’s stupidity in accepting extremist content on YouTube and placing ads alongside it has resulted in more than 250 concerned advertisers withdrawing their support, including Audi, the BBC, BT, Coca-Cola, the Co-op, Dominos, HSBC, Lloyds, Marks and Spencer, McDonalds, Mercedes Benz, L’Oreal, O2, RBS and Waitrose.

A commission of £6.15 for every 1,000 views is paid by Google from the advertising revenue to the suppliers of the content. This means that the firms advertising have been unintentionally funding neo-Nazi organisations and terrorist groups. According to marketing experts these groups have made £250,000 from Google’s advertisers. Continue reading →

Press revelations of low ethical standards at Capita, the outsourcing firm the BBC pay to collect TV licenses have resulted in damage to the image of the BBC an undermining of public confidence and calls for the outdated fee to be abolished.

It is not known whether the BBC were aware that TV Licensing inspectors employed by Capita targeted elderly and vulnerable people to hit targets and earn substantial commissions. Director General Lord Hall was quick to distance his employer from Capita’s grubby ethos when the revelations that the BBC’s choice of outsourcing firm had hounded an ex-RAF officer with dementia and a young woman in a refuge.

Capita chief executive, Andy Parker will be leaving his employer this summer but denies that his moving on from his £2.7 million a year job is connected to the scandal.

It is said that those working on the editorial, as opposed to the advertising side of newspapers and magazines should not have any financial links with those they write about, and that this is to ensure editorial integrity.

On this basis the appointment of George Osborne as editor of London’s Evening Standard newspaper comes across as a ludicrous folly, given the former chancellor’s considerable income from speaking engagements with banks, income he has received because of his grooming of himself as the banker’s friend. Osborne sacked the head of the Financial Services Authority Martin Wheatley, reviled by the banks but admired by the public for his welcome and over-due tough stance, and Osborne has watered down a tough new legal responsibility regime that frightened senior bankers as well as altering the annual bank levy to make it more palatable for his good friends. Continue reading →

BT have been ordered to cut at least £5 a month off the £18.99 a month it charges customers who only buy a land line from them.

The cut, ordered by telephone watchdog Ofcom, will affect more than 2 million BT customers, who will see their bills drop by at least £60 a year. Ofcom say that many of these are elderly or vulnerable people who have remained loyal to BT for decades. Continue reading →