Rogers Randomness

To the Amazon

Details: Category: Rants

Action
media

I want to buy a book. Its published by the Aurum press and its retail price is £9.99. The author recommends getting it from Word Power Books, an independent online bookstore set up in 1994 as an alternative to the then growing Amazon behemoth. They have the book discounted to £8.49.

There is also a Kindle edition available which, of course, has to come from Amazon at £4.29, also linked from the author's site. I don't like reading non-fiction, which this book is, on Kindle but whilst considering I notice that Amazon have the physical book for £6.99 - hmmmm. Postage is £2.75, but if I were to spend another £3.01, which I easily could do, then postage would be free - hmmmmm.

Strike against the Strike

Details: Category: Rants

university

Why I have not been on strike today and have resigned from the union (Unison)

Three sets of related reasons:

Firstly locally union membership is very low (well under 50%) despite trying to encourage colleagues to join and I don't see why I should loose a day's pay to benefit the majority who will not or can not take action for themselves.

In addition in our particular circumstances isolated days of strike action have no effect on the employer. Even if membership and support for the strike was a solid 100% there is no work that would not get done because of staff being on strike. Things would just happen a day later. No student or research programme (our customers) would be seriously, or even mildly, inconvenienced by a one day strike, or even a series of isolated one day strikes. In these circumstances a strike is totally ineffective gesture politics.

Reporting the March 2011 Anti-cuts March

Details: Category: Rants

A brief exchange of emails about the BBC reporting of the March 2011 anti-cuts march in London when some people "occupied" Fortnum & Mason's

Ian said:

Excellent Martin Rowson cartoon regarding Saturday's march.
Despite the media scare's the 'violence' was much exaggerated. My family and I had a great time-after watching the BBC for an hour or two the only question I asked was 'was that the same march as we were just on?

Roger replied:

I couldn't agree more - it is time to close down the BBC.

The march was great - the actions beyond the march probably are a true reflection of the feelings of the march taken to their logical conclusion - the mindless violence is being perpetrated by the ConDems and the Rich.

No more government of the people, by the rich, for the rich - its time to take back control of our lives. The simplest step anyone can take is to get rid of their television and start to live life again. What comes out of the tube is mind poison of the most insidious sort, has the effect of keeping people under control (not necessarily by design - that would be a conspiracy theory - but the result is the same)

Reply to a stupid chain email about petrol prices

Details: Category: Rants

con-trick

The original email that was forwarded by Gerry is at the bottom. Its not worth reading.

Hi Gerry

Yes I find this interesting for all sorts of reasons although probably not the ones the authors had in mind!

[this is going to turn into a very long and rambling email so feel free to stop reading now and go and make a cup of tea - but I find things like this (the message you forwarded) quite thought provoking and worth a little effort to work out - what follows is my first thoughts, which are certainly neither correct nor complete, but may help]