June 30, 2005
SAS Eurobonus airmiles scam
Some years ago I used to fly backwards and forwards to Stockholm business class. I amassed almost 90000 Eurobonus airmiles. When the time came to use them, I found that this system appears to be a scam.
You go onto the website www.scandinavian.net it lets you book normally if you are paying cash - but if you are trying to use your points, it gives you the following screen.
Error type - 140000 has occurred. Please try again later.
I rang up Internet support who said they had no idea what this error signified. "Maybe the servers are busy". They referred me to a number in London (020 8990 7070) which didn't answer.
Today is the last day of the month and some of my points expire, along with, no doubt, a lot of other people's. Simply keep the error message on the website all day and don't answer the phone and you will save yourselves a lot of money.
Posted by Mark at 8:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 27, 2005
German press on Blair
A broadly positive response to Blair's European parliament speech of last week from the German Press, via Spiegel. One interesting note was the hostile response of Angela Merkel, right-wing German chancellor-apparent, to the proposal of CAP reform. She may not want to alienate farmers in advance of the elections, but if this is really against reform then Blair's project may be unrealisable.
Posted by Mark at 10:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 25, 2005
"Money for jobs, not for cows"
In an article with this headline in German Bild, Blair shewdly aims a barb at the Common Agricultural Policy, and France. German unemployment is particularly bad, and the argument is made over the heads of Schroeder to the German people. And in Figaro, Chirac is left bewailing the "withering away of the European spirit of compromise" and claiming that subsiding agriculture is vital to ensuring that Europe has "green power". Again, Figaro's coverage of Chirac is lukewarm.
Posted by Mark at 10:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 20, 2005
Hooray for Blair
Blair talks more about the reasons for torpedoing the EU summit deal and explicitly links this to the rise of China. Hooray for that.
This should have become the focus for the UK's foreign policy a while back, but it is good to see they are belatedly addressing it now.
Posted by Mark at 5:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
French reaction to summit failure
The French press were not as negative towards Blair as the UK. Chirac is now loathed in France by the left and even the right are queasy with him - Le Figaro reported the summit crisply without endorsing Chirac's stance.
There is a telling note in the Independent coverage:
One Paris official said that Mr Blair seemed to have gone into "messianic mode", believing that he could singlehandedly transform the EU. Any attempt to appeal directly to European "peoples" over the heads of their governments would be a farce, he predicted.
What is significant about this is the sense that, if it was put to a vote, the people of Europe might back a policy which produced jobs, and spread the money a little wider than giving it to a dwindling agricultural sector.
The problem with the EU, highlighted both by the no votes and by the dysfunctional antagonisms of the Council of Ministers, where every policy issue is decided in the adversarial glare of "national interest", is that its structures are undemocratic at every level. The European commission with its appointed officials is only a little less democratic than the Council of Ministers, where the big nations stomp on the smaller ones. The more democratic Europe becomes, the more likely it is to reform itself. Where Tony Blair is taking the EU is precisely not in the direction of "simply a customs union", it is in the direction of increased suffrage.
Posted by Mark at 6:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Napalm in Fallujah
There are reports of the US using napalm - now known as MK77 - in Fallujah. They had earlier confirmed using it during the invasion in 2003, contrary to Adam Ingram's previous House of Commons statement.
Posted by Mark at 6:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 16, 2005
Farewell to Fleet Street
Mark Lawson writes on the service held yesterday at St. Bride's to commemorate the departure of Reuter's from Fleet Street. The lesson was read by Rupert Murdoch.
As Murdoch comes past, an old journalist mutters: "Christ, I'm close enough to kill him."
Posted by Mark at 1:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sony Ericsson P900 and Feedburner
I have installed the Feedburner mobile feed reader on my Sony Ericsson P900, but my UK Vodafone-powered GPRS refuses to find the urls, simply hanging or telling me "your carrier can't find this url".
Vodafone customer services doesn't respond. Feedburner's support is lacking. The Internet has no answers. Help!
Posted by Mark at 8:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 14, 2005
Cabinet briefing paper on Iraq
The Sunday Times released a briefing paper related to the 23rd July 2002 meeting for which the minutes have already been leaked.
The paper could have been written by a Guardian columnist. It sets out the risks to Britain of associating ourselves in a war whose primary (illegal) aim was régime change. It also states that Tony Blair had already made the commitment to Bush that we would support what the paper calls the "US hegemon".
It is worth quoting from the preamble:
"1. The US Government's military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace. But, as yet, it lacks a political framework. In particular, little thought has been given to creating the political conditions for military action, or the aftermath and how to shape it."
This is Whitehall code for: "this is in danger of being the most monumental political fuck-up, both internationally and in post-war Iraq." And again:
"2. When the Prime Minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford in April he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change, provided that certain conditions were met: efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine Crisis was quiescent, and the options for action to eliminate Iraq's WMD through the UN weapons inspectors had been exhausted."
Blair should not have signed up to "régime change" under any cover. It is illegal. The fact that the memo expresses the UK position in these terms shows how little the legal nuances were at this stage appreciated. Worth noting, too, is the somewhat cynical attitude to Palestine. No talk here about getting Bush to make a commitment to a just settlement.
The officials were struggling to catch up, to persuade the US not to act illegally, to create a broad coalition, and to plan for the aftermath of the invasion. They failed comprehensively on all counts, but it is to their credit that they foresaw the key issues.
Posted by Mark at 6:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 10, 2005
EU Budget contributions - the stats
In an attempt to make sense of the various claims and counter-claims about the EU budget I went looking for information about the budget. Surprisingly hard to find.
Here is the net 2005 EU budget, shown on an annualised basis. Note the sly dig at the British rebate. "... This means that the other 24 Member States pay that much less for the UK rebate this year..."
Germany contributes €21.3bn
France contributes €16.9bn
Italy contributes €14bn
UK contributes €12.3bn (after rebate)
Netherlands contributes €5.4bn
Sweden contributes €2.8bn
A detailed account of how the budget works is to be found in Terry Wynn MEP's website, here. Showing who gets most and who pays most.
To cut a long story short the Irish are the huge winners ... The French do well (agricultural and structural spending), the Belgians do well on administrative spending, the Germans do well on "Internal policies" including training. The British do not do too badly, but have tended to contribute more than the "core" countries. (They have perhaps done too little to take their share of the gravy in a more structural way than as a "cheque" as the French put it). The Swedes have as strong a case to be ticked off as the Brits.
Posted by Mark at 5:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 8, 2005
Enronic
Researchers at Berkeley in the US have used the vast mass of email released by Enron after bankruptcy to analyse the social networks in the company (Link via Boing Boing). This kind of work is very interesting, as it reveals possible ways of using mathematical and statistical methods to track authorities, and the circulation of ideas.
Posted by Mark at 11:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 7, 2005
Googleflage
At the New Media Knowledge In the City event ran into Dave Green, who I haven't seen since 1997.
He wondered what we on Market Sentinel did about words that were very common. On search engines, very common words disappear. Try looking for The The in Amazon music. Dave said he had a friend called Will Head who disappeared on Google. I admitted it was a problem.
"3" is ridiculous. "More than" horrendous. You just have to add keywords to get results. Hutchison, or Insurance.
It raises an interesting idea, about names that disappear in Google, that have the quality of Googleflage - names and brands that disappear in Google like zebras or giraffes in the Savannah.
I saw a new company yesterday called Kijiji eBay's version of Craig's List. Apparently it means "Village" in Swahili. I forecast that brand-builders will choose more words which are:
a) meaningless (at least in English)
b) easy to pronounce in any language
as they struggle to avoid the Googleflage effect.
Posted by Mark at 5:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 3, 2005
Why the French said no
The French said no because they genuinely believe there is another way.
The French said no because they believe in "socialism in one country".
The French said no because they really believe that International Capitalism is evil.
The French said no in the accents of Arthur Scargill talking about jobs and communities.
The French said no because they are worried about America.
The French said no because they are grumpy.
The French said no because they have been having digestive problems.
The French said no because they are worried about Polish plumbers.
The French said no because in Perpignan the gypsies are already at war with the Maghrebins.
The French said no because Luxembourg will have fewer votes than Poland.
The French said no because no one had really asked them about a lot of this.
The French said no because they started thinking about it.
The French said no because they are contrarian and revolutionary.
The French said no because they are timid and love conformity.
The French said no because like a day off in the week "pour jouer au tennis".
The French said no because the state is losing its grip.
The French said no because Chirac is a bug-eyed crook.
The French said no because to say yes is "anglo-saxon".
The French said no because they are sulking.
The French said no to say yes in their own time, on their own terms.
The French have left their phone number on a pad in the hall.
Posted by Mark at 5:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 2, 2005
Right bad books
Here are the Top Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th centuries as chosen by a panel of conservative scholars. Fairly dreary stuff mainly.
I remember ploughing through Georges Sorel (Reflections on violence) in a vain attempt to understand Mussolini (who cited him as a big influence). Betty Friedan seems a bit dull nowadays, but is that a crime? (There's a better Amazon link here) The Communist Manifesto can't still be number one, can it? Hitler's there for balance, I guess. But what's Darwin's The Origin of Species doing there? Are they all fundamentalists? And why is Unsafe At Any Speed such a bugbear? Surely these guys aren't rooting for the Ford Pinto, with its famous exploding gas tank? Surely Keynes has lost his power to shock? And Foucault's Madness and Civilization is a jeu d'esprit, surely, hardly worthy of casting on the fire in front of the Humboldt University.
I guess their targets are: communism (still!), relativism, atheism, feminism, and anything bien-pensant (that sweeps up old Ralph Nader, with his bushy-tailed assaults on automotive decapitation). I generally think of myself as right wing, but when I read lists like this I really wonder.
Posted by Mark at 9:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Airbus A380 delayed
The Airbus A380 super jumbo will be six months late, reports the Seattle Post Intelligencer. Considering Seattle is the original home of Boeing, you have to say it's a pretty fair piece.
Posted by Mark at 6:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 1, 2005
Anti-war orthodoxy attacked
In a thoughtful piece focussed on the cult of George Galloway, Brendan O'Neill gives the anti-war lobby a kicking, pointing out that "Not in my name" is a lame and self-centred objection to a policy. The principle is one of self-exculpation rather than moral abhorrence.
I think he is wrong - marching against a decision taken on our behalf is the only recourse of citizens in a democracy - but his is the best-written attack on the anti-war lobby I have yet read. Why were we against the war? Is it just because we are anti-American? Anti-Blair? Are we afraid to take military action of any kind because we are too soft to stand up for what we believe in? They are questions worth asking.
My objection to the war was based on legitimacy. I strongly felt that the war on Iraq smacked of bait-and-switch. The response to 9/11 was to attack Afghanistan. The fight against Saddam was another piece of business entirely, and to use the 9/11 attacks to justify it was illegitimate under international law. I am not a pacifist, but I look for military action to be undertaken:
a) as a last resort;
b) with legal cause;
c) multi-laterally.
The war on Iraq failed on points a) and b).
Posted by Mark at 4:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
BBC uses Skype for interviews
According to Jeff Jarvis (in conversation with producer Kevin Anderson) the BBC is using Skype for interviews - it is higher quality than POTS and harder to block. (via Constantin Basturea)
Posted by Mark at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack