So.. despite the BBC telling us the Sir Alan Michael Sugar is Britain's most famous entrepreneur, fingers in pies and all that, he's selling his fledgling company Amstrad.

Now I've commented in the past on the alleged success of Amstrad previously. It was nothing personal, Sir Alan. It was just that the BBC tried to portray Amstrad as a real force within the technology market in the UK. With offices in Canary Wharf. None of which was actually true. Mind you, Sir Alan didn't exactly ingratiate himself to me when he criticised the 'Disney' approach to customer care; "This isn't a Mickey Mouse company!" he shouted. No. They are VERY successful and Amstrad ISN'T.

Anyway, he's sold Amstrad for £125 million to BSkyB. This is rather interesting, because Sky is Amstrad's main client and equated to 80% - 90% of their income. Now in the period year ending 2005 Amstrad made £100 million pounds (with just £19 million profit) the majority of which was from Sky.

In 2006 Sky has increased in customer base and obviously as a result Amstrad made more money. So I presume that Sky would have paid Amstrad approximately £120 million year ending 2006.

So, if you were Sky and wanted to cut costs... wouldn't YOU buy the supplier for your set top boxes for the same amount of money it costs you to buy the equipment from them? Sky have paired their costs down per customer.

Quite why the BBC would imagine this is a good deal for Sir Alan Sugar and a not so good deal for Sky is confusing.

Tags: Alan Sugar, Amstrad, Disney

In what can only be described as a real life imitating art. The little boats off the South coast if Britain have all dashed out and caught the 'big shark' that was caught on film. Tonight's 10.30pm news has put something of a heroic slant of things.

But lets put this context. Nobody has been attacked. The shark was posing a danger and lets face it.. given the rough seas the likelihood of people and shark ever coming together seem pretty slim.

So what's been achieved? Well. Once again a member of the endangered species of the world has been put under just a little bit more pressure because of a knee jerk reaction, a popular 70's film (coincidentally shown this weekend) and presumably somebody has made a bit of cash.

Tags: shark

I know, 2.30am is a seriously odd time to suddenly decide to put keyboard to blog. But I've had inspiration from a (I'll leave it anonymous) podcast I had on soothingly in the background.

Today's (or is that tonight's) subject is the use of inappropriate music in the background of news items and/or tv programs.

Now to be honest, I'm not sure if it's UK only phenomenon or whether or not other nations have the same issue. But the theory goes in the head of TV executives that a news item about a particular subject or a feature in a TV show can be transcended to the audience by the use of a tenuously linked piece of popular music.

Most famous of which is the BBC music promo.

Perfect day

Perfect day was meant to represent all that was good about BBC music to the UK listening audience. Moving lyrics like

What a perfect day
You made me forget myself
I thought I was someone
Some good
Yeah

Help convey the idea of a life enhancing experience provided by the BBC.

Only one problem. Lou Reed's song is actually a homage to heroin. Which is a fact that couldn't have escaped the BBC given he sings the opening lines in person and I'm sure might have mentioned it to them. It also didn't miss the attention of rival ITV; "Satirical comedians on standby."

Actually, smack connection or not, "Perfect Day" remains one of the BBC's most successful self publicity campaigns and sold several million copies when released on CD. I link to the YouTube video for your delight.

..And the background music for nearly ALL reports of China is....

A spate of news reports carried out by my local BBC news channel BBC North West on China re-introduced the world to Suzi and Banshees seminal 1983 hit "Hong Kong Garden".

This catchy little ditty from the age of punk mixes Suzi Sue's hard fast singing voice with distinctly oriental in nature musical background. The major force behind it's very choice.

However, I'm not sure how impressed the local Chinese community would be if they had realised the background music to their;

• Chinese New Year celebrations
• Anniversary of the establishment of Manchester's / Liverpool's "China Town"
• Opening of a major new Chinese theme event

Was actually a stark and rather disturbing critic of child prostitution within the Asian sub-continent. The subtle give away being the line regarding;
"Sell your daughter"

Or the suggestion that you could pick up the girls (I presume) with just a few Yen.

Ain't gonna work....

So... a person is retiring after a very long time in a job. They make the local news and... from the speakers come Hue and Cry's top hit "I ain't gonna work (for you no more)". Which is fine... very nice. So long as the person is actually leaving the service of Margaret Thatcher. Because the song is specifically about her... and famously so.


Now it is true that for some part the lyrics or meanings behind a song can be misleading. "Perfect Day" 'could' be about a person (come on.. this is Lou 'What decade are we in' Reed we are talking about).

But when the meaning is clear or the chorus CLEARLY has another meaning... I give you

.. if the subject is about Japan

Do I need say it. Have you already guessed?

You know it already. "Turning Japanese" by XXXXX is background fodder for so many stories about Japan it's untrue.

But if the production staff would just spend 20 seconds listening to the lyrics they would clearly see the lyrics don't even suggest Japan.

No wine, no fun, no sin, no women
No you no wonder it's dark
Everyone around me is a total stranger
Everyone around me is a pycho-ranger
Everyone

What are they about? Well... at the risk of giving my blog an adult rating. The lyrics are about the 'loneliness' of being in a prison cell. The 'turning Japanese' phrase relates to a facial expression during a given moment of happy distraction.

Which, in a similar way to "Hong Kong Garden" can only go to further divide links between world cultures.

Golden Brown

Beaches? Sun tans? Dusky maidens. No. None of the above. The Stranglers were singing about heroine. Raw heroine.

Ooops.

Tags: news song, bad background music

A couple of months ago.... No, I'll start from the top. In the UK we have something called the Sales of Goods act. Part of which basically, in legal mumbo jumbo, says you cannot give a misleading description to items.

So it's with this in mind that I'd like to talk about the sort of hire cars I've had to drive while on holiday in Florida.

First up...

The Dodge Charger
This aggressively design four door (but in the style of a coupe) car from the giant Daimler Chrysler organisation, in hire car form, is powered by either the 2.7 litre DOHC V6 or 3.5 litre SOHC V6 engines. Putting out approximately 190 bhp and 250 bhp respectfully.

Sounds good. Until you realise the that the Dodge Charger weights in at 2 (imperial) tons and nearly 2 (metric) tonnes! Making the bhp per tonne a considerably less impressive 95 bhp and 125 bhp. Compare this to a Saab 93 Aero Auto that weights in at 1.6 imperial tons or 1.49 metric tonnes. You can see what I talking about here. The Dodge needs to go on a diet.

Actual performance figures for the Dodge Charger concentrate purely on the HEMI powered car. With good reason. The 3.5 litre just about manages 0-60 in 8.9 seconds and a top speed of 120 mph. And just manages a terrible 19 mpg around town and 27 mpg top!!

Plus the 2.7 litre car has a measly four speed auto transmission. That's 11 seconds for 0-60 and actually worse fuel economy than that 3.5 litre. Which confirms my suspicion that my 1.3 litre turbo diesel car was in fact FASTER than the Dodge Charger.

Which brings me back to the Trades Description act. The car couldn't 'charge' and it's dodging ability left a lot to be desired!

Mercury Grand Marquis
Wow.. I mean where to start..

The 1970's 'box on wheels' styling?
The suspension powered by jelly (jello to you Americans)
The asthmatic 4.6 litre V8 that barely pushes out 224 bhp in a car that weighs in at a staggering 4,094 lbs.
The 'change in my own time' four speed automatic with amusing 'increase engine noise' button... that doesn't actually make the car go faster.
The less than funny 17 - 25 mpg

None. It's the completely pretentious Grand Marquis name. Grand Marquees would be more appropriate. Tent metaphor aside, this is the first US car I've driven where it actually felt like I was a sea captain and the only car where all three of my kids got motion (or potentially 'sea') sick when I drove.

Well done Ford motor company. For a car that should have been forgotten about in the 1970's and never repeated.

So what do we get in Europe by comparison?
Well, here is the 2007 Ford Mondeo. It's shorter than the Mercury Grand Marquis on the outside. But it's actually bigger on the inside. Not to mention it handles, performs and has massive gas mileage by comparison.

Think it's time to start importing from Europe?

Tags: USA, cars

At the risk of sounding like a consumer rank blog. After quite a bit of provocation we have decided to ditch Sky.

Sky, the satellite TV provider... to you home.

Sadly, though. Despite the gigantic £47 per month ($94) they haven't been able to provide TV to our home on anything like a consistent basis. In fact, they have been rubbish.

First it started with our multi-room set-up having glitches. Then in anything over a slight drizzle we lost all signal completely. Then we had all the fun of having Sky make umpteen promises to rectify the problem (see my blog). They would send out the high building team, they would not leave until the job was done.

Reality, two blokes turned up. Looked at our NOT EXACTLY gigantic house and decided not to bother!!

So I called up Sky evening and had to do the run around to actually give my 30 days notice. 20 minutes!

Twenty minutes and about half a dozen times with me saying "I'm not interested. You had your chance. I am just calling to cancel.". Only to then be passed onto YET ANOTHER technical person to discuss my problems.

In the end. I was firm but polite and the message sank in. "Why," I argued, "would I take anybody at Skys word that anything will be done.".

So.. we are dropping them and of the two possible options, we are going to go with Top Up TV. Tiscali (Home Choice) have to be kidding when they say you have to sign up for 12 months. With their reputation!

Top Up TV!! Here we come.

Tags: sky

I'm staying away from home at present, in a rather nice Travelodge in Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire. But that's not the real reason for this post.

The point is that the guy on reception, Neville, has had quite a life.

I wanted to send a fax, but you know how it is. You get chatting. Turns out he was a commercial airline pilot. But then he was diagnosed with lung cancel. If there could be a good side it is the fact that it hadn't spread anywhere. But it had affected both lungs.

So five years ago he had to have both lungs removed and spent 11 months on artificial support. Luckily, for him, a donor became available and he had a complete lung replacement operation.

Now the only down side is that the anti-rejection medicine he takes has affected his eyesight. But using glasses corrects this.

The only other problem is that he is not allowed to fly. Not because he is unfit, he regularly does marathons and half marathons. Not because of his eyesight, because there are other pilots with similar eye conditions.

No, the reason he isn't allowed to fly is because he takes a 'drug'; the effects of which are unknown.

So it's OK for a one armed pilot, with bad eyesight and type 1 diabetes to fly. But not him. Surely this is discrimination!

Tags: neville

I caught a little bit of the BBC "How me made Britain" series and I have to say that Craig Armstrong must be expecting the cheque shortly.

But it's really not unexpected. Because I have heard "Escape" from the "Plunkett & Macleane" soundtrack on at least two OTHER programs today. In fact, once you've heard it... you'll recognise it all over the place.

Check it out here. REAL format.

The BBC are especially fond of the track. So far I've heard it on "The Apprentice" and on "Top Gear" at least three times! I think they used it most recently on the Bugatti Veyron race. Or was it the Merc. McLaren? Not sure now.

Of course.. the real heart stopper is watching James (Mr Slow) May maxing it out at 253mph! No wonder his eyes water!

Tags: craig armstrong

If you read my last blog posting, nearly two weeks back now, you'll be aware of the generally terrible service provided to us by View Tek. Where the concept of a 12 month guarantee is at THEIR convenience.

So vexed were we about the whole experience that I decided to get ride of the whole Sky setup. Or rather, sell the Sky kit we had on Ebay and cancel our monthly service agreement. It's been well over a year and we are within our rights.

Now, as an aside, BBC television have been airing a show called "Don't Get Done, Get Dom" in which diminutive Dominic Littlewood gets consumer rights issues made good while showing the best ways to haggle for great bargains.

To be honest it's been more distraction than education on the few days I've been fortunate to work from home. But when I called Sky some of his tips came in VERY HANDY.

I guess another very strong thing in my favour was that Sky is now facing some very serious competition from a couple of previous underdogs made good. These are the Freeview on steroids provider TopUp TV whose £10 ($20) a month price plan provides you with an extra 19 channels over the standard Freeview's 30 or so. But as a father, the best news is that the four channels the kids couldn't live without (Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, Boomerang and Cartoon Network) are all on it.

For me, I'd loose FX (so no more Nash Bridges etc) and of course we would loose Sky One. But as Lost isn't on until January 2008 and it's *ahem* widely available from other sources* then it's not such a big deal.

Best of all, TopUp.tv are packaging in a very nice PVR (or Digital TV Recorder DTR if your prefer) with dual tuners and 160GB of hard drive space. Enough for 120 hours or so. It's actually a nice bit of kit and of course is a direct competitor to Sky+. Plus TopUp TV offer something called "Top Up TV Anytime". I'll let them explain what it is...

What is Top Up TV Anytime? In addition to Freeview**, Top Up TV Anytime brings you over 600 programmes a month from Pay-TV channels (shown below) to watch when you want to. Programmes appear automatically on your box every day to start and stop at your say-so.
Sounds mysterious?

* I should point out that I'm the sort of sad muppet who buys the box sets of each series...

Next up is something of a surprising novelty in the UK. Homechoice for £15 per month provide a broadband service that includes a cheaper phone service as well as a system of providing TV. Now it's difficult to see if this is a video on demand service (although some clearly are HBO on demand for example) or a combination of streamed AND VOD.

But the additional channels that might make it worth your will are all the TopUp.TV plus FX , Sci Fi channel, ABC 1, Film 4 On Demand, National Geographic, Nick Jnr and a service called Direct from sky using a service called 'Sky by Wire'. All of which I presume will mean you'd need a PC (Windows) to access the content.


Anyway, I called Sky and basically asked to be put right into termination's. First stop, customer relations. Is that something wrong with my dish? Yes... it doesn't work well enough... and they fitted it. Plus they charged me £75 to have it fixed and they turned up and said our roof was TOO HIGH* and didn't refund the money.....

CS panics, hits the red button and I'm now into the 'Retention Staff' area. In other words, the 'rather die than loose a customer' section.

So I tell Jeremy all about the problems and how it appears that Sky only want to come fitting if they are going to get more money (like when they managed to get on the roof to fit Sky+ and Multiroom). I tell him all about the £75, crap service.. .etc. etc.

So, here's the deal. We are getting a month off.. because service has been so bad. They are going to send around a specialist team (this Thursday) to put new equipment on the roof and (so he hinted) new boxes in the house. ALL free of charge. Plus, the £75 I was changed, will be credited back within three days.

Now; here is my confession.

I had no intention WHAT SO EVER to leave Sky. None. I just wanted them to fix my dish.

But it sure does have benefits making them jump once in a while. Don't you agree?

Tags: sky, homechoice, top up tv, topup tv

View Tek TV Aerials are rubbish!!

In March we decided we needed to have our Sky (television) dish moved. To be honest, and without our knowledge, it had been placed on a neighbours chimney in error and we needed to have ours rebuilt and the dish relocated.

So we have the chimney work done by a local builder we trust. Who duly turned up, did the work in splendid fashion and left.

So then we needed our Sky dish moved. With the help of the Thomson Local (a business telephone directory) we found a company who would relocate the dish on our oversized (tall) house and guarantee the work for 12 months, all for £100 (currently $200).

The company in question is View-Tek. Or to be precise they are http://www.view-tek.co.uk and to say the service we were receiving was sub-standard is an under statement.

Initially the work was well received. They turned up only slightly late for the job and completed the task of relocating the dish within an hour. But I can't help but look back on one obvious problem to come. At some point one of the engineers said "We might have to come back and put a bigger brace on the dish". And as time would tell, he wasn't wrong.

Following the installation we suffered some pretty impressive weather, both strong winds and hard rain and it was at this point that things started to go wrong. For a lot of the time Sky has been completely loosing signal or at best bouncing around like a mad march hare.

Not a problem, we thought. After all the work was guaranteed for 12 months right?

Well, sort of.

Fact is, we've made six appointments to have the work done and only two occasions did an engineer turn up... and out of the two occasions only once was he able to do anything because the first time he hadn't the right equipment!!

SIX appointments! So somebody has had to have a day off work or stick around for six complete days. This company is based less than 10 miles away! How hard could it be?

My Conclusion

It's obvious. It's yet ANOTHER company that once they have your money they could not give a stuff. The whole experience has soured our opinion so much we plan to drop Sky as well!! It's just not worth the effort trying to keep it.

I'm about to make the Sky call.

But just to save you any further issues, I can sincerely NOT recommend View-Tek

Who are a division of Viewteknology Ltd based at:
First Floor Laurel House Ransomwood Business Park Mansfield Nottinghamshire NG21 0HJ

You've been warned.

Tags: View-tek, viewtek