I'm actually in denial it's the new year. It can't really have passed by that quickly.
They've missed out on some of the months. They must have done. Was there an
April? And what about October, I don't remember there being an October?
I do remember The Rise of the Silver Surfer, the disappearance of Madeline, demolishing the garden shed, and a few other things really got
my goat during the year, but here's my top ten....
- Gordon Brown
Continuing to annoy me. He became Prime Minister, bottled an election, quietly signed the
Lisbon treaty passing further powers away to the EU, promised a government of "all
the talents" then lost the personal details of 25million people, had a
party funding scandal, pledged an end to spin while in the same breath
claiming to have reduced the rate of corporation tax (not quite, there was
an increase for small companies - the so called backbone of the economy).
The Tories say he's the wrong man, but of course they would, wouldn't they!
- Carbon footprint
In 2007 our carbon footprints became big
business. The Chancellor has been rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of being
able to introduce new types of taxes, and companies have been dressing in floral
prints designed by their marketers. This latest fashion of "social
responsibility" is being paraded on the catwalk in front of us mug
consumers. Meanwhile there seems to be a whole body of evidence accumulating
to suggest man-made C02 plays only a minor, insignificant role in climate
change. When trying to finds the facts on Google I found instead near
Freudian hysteria and contributions from people who seem to think they're in
a movie. The consequences of man-made climate change, wrote one budding
actor, will be "worse, much much worse......eventual extinction".
- Nobel Peace Prize
In keeping with "the year of the footprint" this year the Nobel Prize for Peace was shared between an organisation and
Al Gore. They each get half a prize
"
for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge
about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures
that are needed to counteract such change". Why did Al Gore get
a prize for his video? There's even doubts it was actually true, like, get
down to the bookies - there may yet be a chance of Jeremy Clarkson winning
in 2008 for his continued work on Top Gear.
- Virgin Media
Launched on February 14th, V-Day. Steve Burch, CEO of NTL, was quoted at the time
as saying "Virgin Media will shake up the market by bringing the Virgin
traditions of value-for-money, brilliant customer service and innovation to
the world of entertainment and communications." However, a bungled negotiation
with BSkyB led to the loss of popular channels such as Sky 1, Sky News, Sky 2,
Sky Travel, Sky 3.... 40,000 customers fled in the first three months,
perhaps they knew the virgin traditions of "value for money, brilliant
customer service and innovation" are a branding screen thrown up to
hide a normal company. They don't mean anything. Did we see our TV charges
reduce with less channels? No. Did we see phone charges increase? Yes Sir we
did!
- Windows Vista
The biggest technological disappointment of 2007
despite an R&D bill of £10bn, Windows Vista, actually seems to be an operating system designed for
teenagers to help organise their media files. It seems a ridiculous use
of hardware to spend on unnecessarily indexing every file and on fancy
graphics like transparency which don't add anything and, in fact,
hamper the experience. First set of tasks to do if you're a consumer
stuck with Vista and you can't return it - turn off windows sidebar, un-tick all files in Indexing
options, change update settings, change control panel to classic view,
change start menu to classic, and yes, download open
office as you won't be able to use Excel.
- HMRC
It doesn't look like we'll ever see a video podcast or a
YouTube channel explaining the ongoing delays to VAT applications which
continued throughout 2007. The HMRC website, now in 2008, still displays the
same notice since 2006, "Please be aware we are currently experiencing processing delays
with both paper and online applications". Applications can take up to
six months to process, clearly inconveniencing small business. No
practical guidance is given by HMRC on what to do during this lengthy application
period. They just don't care, they're opening premise - "everyone's a
crook" - guides all policy.
- Tesco
What's Tesco becoming? On my last visit of 2007 to Tesco
Express in Port Solent my conclusion was a village. It has it's own
pharmacy, a Costa Coffee, a supermarket, what appears to be an Argos, a
department store, a Krispy Kreme Doughnut, and an opticians. The trouble is
the supermarket is a mess, boxes on the ground, empty shelves, off products
and staff pushing cages everywhere. You have to literally dodge the cages
because they can't see what's in front when they're pushing. And there are plans
to add a dentist practice to this village. I'd actually prefer if they
brought in another supermarket chain, a company that knows how to run a
supermarket, because Tesco seem to have forgotten.
- Celebrity Rehab
Britney Spears, Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty, Lyndsay Lohan
et al, all seemingly gone off the rails. They go into rehab, they come out,
they get drunk or spaced, get pictured without their underwear, get spaced,
go into rehab, and it's all front page news. I'm just not intersted. Why
can't they just get a grip?
- Open Season on the Games
The 2012 logo was launched on Monday
the 4th of June and was almost instantly and unanimously derided
(including by me). The jagged, graffiti design was likened to Lisa Simpson
performing a lewd sex act. Within three days almost 50,000 people signed an
online petition calling for the logo to be scrapped, an animated version had
to be pulled from broadcast over fears the effects cause epileptic seizure.
It was open season on "the Games", all year in fact, the underlying theme being, it's being
run by a bunch of incompetents who don't know what they're doing. It'll be
wrong and over budget. Guffaw! How could they forget the VAT? See point six
above on HMRC, who in the end decided they couldn't register.
- Big Brother
Following the celebrity Big Brother race row, the
ugly bullying of Shilpa Shetty, and Carphone Warehouse withdrawing
sponsorship for the programme, we quietly hoped 2007 would be the last year
of Big Brother. But no, it's continued....
Happy New Year and God bless for 2008
