Rather than taking responsibility for a botched up negotiation, Virgin Media, who sucked up Telewest and NTL, are broadcasting a message on Sky One in which they blame Sky for the channel being unavailable. "Thanks to Sky", they say, "the Sky One channel is no longer available. They've picked up their ball and gone home.  Foul play? We think so." 

The viewer is then invited to visit their website, virginmedia.com/fairplay, in which they ask a clearly biased question "What do you think of Sky withdrawing its non-premium channels like Sky One, Sky News and Sky Sports News from Virgin Media's TV service?".

Here's another question. Isn't it about time that Virgin stopped acting like a teenager and grew up?  I can hardly believe reading a comment on one message board where someone says "well done for standing up to the big guys". 

Are you serious? The Virgin Group employs over 35,000 people in 200 companies worldwide and has a turnover in excess of over £4billion. They're hardly the little guy or the underdog they like to portray themselves as - if you think otherwise you've been seduced by the Marketeers. This is big business.

Virgin claims to put consumers first, well, what about all the viewers who are now paying the same price for a reduced service? I would say this is really annoying shit dot com.

You've got to pick a pocket or two

Tesco are set to issue hard hats and high visibility jackets to shoppers who visit their stores after 9pm. At this time the stores are effectively transformed into workplaces rather than customer friendly supermarkets. 

The stores remain open to grab late night shoppers even though the aisles are cluttered with cages and access is blocked to the majority of the shelves. Shoppers have been seen to get footholds in the cages to reach items like bottled water which are now beyond access.

The cages are being rolled out of stockrooms, pushed from behind by one person with limited visibility of shoppers who might be dithering or just plain confused in the aisles. However, stores profitability is up as the stores can lock up earlier thereby reducing overheads like staff costs.

..... Okay so I made the headline up, partly, everything is true other than the hard hats and high visibility jackets, but I am beginning to think I should bring my own. This trend seems to be another example of Tesco putting margin first, customer second.

"Is road pricing the right answer? I'm not saying it is - I'm saying lets look at it", responded Tony Blair to the 1.8million people who signed a petition on the number 10 Downing Street website opposing plans to introduce a mileage based road tax. 

In an interview with the Daily Mirror Mr Blair is also quoted to say "I don't think this is an issue you railroad through against massive public objection.... I wouldn't personally .... engage in that type of Kamikaze politics."

So that will be unlike the Iraq war?