Free speech is a very subjective thing and I can’t see how or where you can ever draw the line. At the very least it comes down to taboos, and obviously different people consider different topics to be taboo. Big deal.

It’s a similar issue to alcohol and drugs. Where I live, alcohol is illegal and drinking will get you into a lot of trouble. Westerners may think this is unreasonable and a breach of our human rights or something, but they face the same situation with Cocaine and usually hashish, so what’s the difference? Why do you have a God-given right to get drunk but not to get high?

And don’t free speech activists have children? I don’t want my kids exposed to unbridled human artistic freedom, thank you. Again, where do you draw the line to prevent spoiling and corrupting children?

Anyway, back to the protest. Some people have said things along the line of “it’s not to attack Muslims, it’s to support free speech” but I don’t buy that. I think most people just want to take a pop. And even if it were true, it still betrays a fundamental ignorance of Muslims’ relationship with the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). We love him more than we love anyone else, and having people disrespect him in such a trivial manner really hurts us. Imagine if one day 11,000 idiots got together and decided to draw offensive pictures of your mother, just to prove to themselves that they could. Oh, and your mother was dead and could not defend herself against it. Would you think the boost to free speech is worth the hurt and humiliation you feel? Or imagine you’re French and someone took a picture of themselves wiping their bottom with your flag…

A few days ago my friend was telling me how he somehow got involved with the Salman Rushdie Satanic Verses protests in London years ago. The police there were ‘protecting free speech’ but at the same time threatening with violence anyone making rude remarks about the Queen. You see where you draw the line? It’s a personal thing, but it pits culture against culture, race against race. And whatever happens, it’s not worth it.

I have watched with fascination SpinVox’s growth over the last few years, and I have to admit I never seriously doubted its technology.  Everyone knows that some messages have to be transcribed by humans, but a majority of them?  After all, it’s clever, but not out of the realms of possibility, that a computer can understand free text from any speaker with 90+% accuracy.  I can say ’111 farenheit in celsius’ to my Google Android phone and it has no problem at all in giving me the correct answer 43.8888888889 without any voice training or clues whatsoever. What’s the difference?

So what reasons were there for the retrospective naysayers to doubt the technology?  Well for a start I always thought it strange that the heiress of a family of drinks tycoons could come up with the idea for transcribing voicemails in the back of a taxi and then within two years be punting technology that even speech greats like Nuance couldn’t seem to muster.  Then there are reports from customers (and evidence from reporters) that over the last 12 months the accuracy has declined to such a poor level that it is often not worth using.  Technology rarely gets worse over time, so this would indicate a problem with some other resource, which seems to co-incidentally tally with their recent exponential growth in subscriber numbers.

So, leaving aside the rather dull news that messages are sent outside of the EEA for transcription, why does it matter how it works, so long as it does? Or at least did…

Well I suppose people may be justifiably upset that their messages are being heard by a third party without their knowledge or permission, although I haven’t heard any reports of customers being blackmailed by the call centre staff in question.  Or perhaps it shakes your faith in technology, which is rather pathetic.

But the really puzzling thing is why didn’t SpinVox come clean about this from the start.  According to a tweet by Rory C-J yesterday their PR company is still denying it is true. The investors who have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the company must also be complicit in this deceit because surely SpinVix couldna and wouldna hidden it from them? My company was involved in a fairly major project with SpinVox about 18 months ago, and in discussions with their senior management they never mentioned it once.  They gave us ridiculously long SLAs to return the transcriptions, but insisted that this was due to their processing resources being stretched at that particular time.

So why never mention the human side of their service?  The vanity of a high-profile serial entreprener?  The fear of low adoption due to privacy concerns?  Not wishing to draw attention to the DPA issues?  Whatever the reason(s), and regardless of how ‘obvious’ it has always been, it smacks of deception and now sadly threatens to derail what until recently looked like a potential British success story.  And perhaps this has now been infected by the classic British disease of success-bashing from the media.

Oh, and by the way spare a thought for poor James Whatley, PR tweeter extraordinaire for SpinVox.  One of his last tweets, written two days before the story broke, was

Right, we’re headed up into the Big Horn Mountains for a few days. Back Friday. Taking the satphone, but no guarantee of updates… Eep!

Bet the poor guy has a ton of voicemails to come back to…

But how many shops and businesses will pass on the cut, and how many will grab the extra profit?  My parents owned a shop in ’91 and I remember them frantically changing all their prices when the new rate came in – but that was an upward price change so it would have hit their pockets if they didn’t do it.  When rates come down, who’s going to be in any hurry?  And will 100% of the price cut be passed on?  The Independent gives an example that a pair of Clarkes shoes, currently £39.99, will become £37.94.  Yeah right.  £37.99 probably, or they might just not bother at all. Oh yeah, and the Independent has this wrong anyway.  The new price will actually be £39.14.  Even less chance of a retail price reduction.

One of my businesses sells Deed Polls online, and our lowest cost product is £12.99 including VAT @ 17.5%.  That’s £11.05 excluding VAT, and if the rate cut goes ahead we should be retailing at £12.71.  No thanks – I’ll keep it at £12.99 and enjoy the extra 30p ta very much.

And really, if every retailer does reduce their prices what impact is it actually going to have on spending?  A 2.5% cut in VAT is actually a 2.1% cut in real prices.  If a pair of shoes does drop 85p, it’s not going to make me more likely to go and buy a pair.

Right then, what’s the next bright idea?

I’ve spent the last 10 minutes in tears browsing this site.  There’s just something absolutely beautifully comic about a sarcastic yet emphatic FAIL verdict stamped on a picture.  Anyone else feeling it?  Anyone want to explain why that is?

My initial reaction was “Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha,” but now I’m not so sure.  I’ve seen the actual data, and it’s pretty rough for the people on it.  Names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, family members’ names, notes and memos (“discretion required re: employment” – oh the irony), there’s loads on there.  Someone even did a Google Maps mashup to show the location of every member on the list.

So what issues have come out of this?

1. Personal security

I can imagine most of the people on the list are a little more fearful for their safety, apart from the knuckle-heads perhaps.  But I can’t help thinking back to the mid-90′s when my comrades in Democratic Left and the Anti-Nazi League (and myself for all I know) found themselves on a hit list from the local NF and Combat 18 thugs.  They weren’t that worried about it, and by definition non-BNP members probably aren’t going to be as militant and vindictive.  I would be surprised if there was any serious trouble from the publication of this list; I suspect the most that its subjects will experience is a bit of embarrassment.  Very clever of the BNP leader Nick Griffin to claim that some non-members’ details were maliciously added to the list before publication, thereby giving people a way out if necessary.

2. The shame of being a BNP member

The rage and indignation of some of those “outed” by the leak was an interesting phenomenon.  Aside from the potential safety and employment concerns, this would indicate that they’re rather ashamed of being a member.  If, as the BNP claims, they are a mainstream and inclusive party who have ditched their old racist and militant ways, why would there be so many red faces amongst the membership this week?  Have pride in what you believe dammit!  One contributor to a radio show I heard said that humiliating these people would just send them underground.  The presenter made the point that they in their shame they’ve proved they’re already underground.

But of course, imagine the shame if the Tories’ or Labour’s membership lists were published!

3. Employment

No-one on the list employed in the private sector is likely to suffer – apart from being instantly alienated by those of their colleagues pilloried by the BNP – but this episode has reignited the debate about whether a BNP member can be part of the public sector.  The classic argument is the fear that their prejudices will interfere with their public duty – perhaps with fatal consequences.  But I don’t buy that.  Basic Sets Theory would show that not all racists are BNP members (but all BNP members are racist haha) so how do you then weed out the non-members?  No, I think that the ban on membership from some public sector agencies is more to do with the PR crisis that would emerge if something did go wrong.  I’m pretty sure anyone applying for an affected job would just ditch their membership – but they can still continue to donate time and money to their cause.

And if someone’s political membership precludes them from a job, where does it end?  One of the guys in my office asked “would a Christian be barred from working in a hospital because she believes that abortion is wrong?”  I think the bottom line is, judge people and their performance on their actions, not their political affiliations.

So in conclusion, I think that the BNP is a vile and unfortunate by-product of democracy and something we sadly have to live with (until we can get rid of democracy).  I hope that the worst that happens to those on the list is that they get struck by a few rotten tomatoes as they walk through town, but I pray that they and their families are safe.  And I hope that no-one loses their livelihood or liberty if they genuinely deserve not to.

But I think I’ll leave the last word to the BBC News website:

Now I’m back to “ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha.”

Thanks for reading.

A pig and a chicken are walking down a road. The chicken looks at the pig and says, “Hey, why don’t we open a restaurant?” The pig looks back at the chicken and says, “Good idea, what do you want to call it?” The chicken thinks about it and says, “Why don’t we call it ‘Ham and Eggs’?” “I don’t think so,” says the pig, “I’d be committed but you’d only be involved.”

To put it in perspective, my company spends about £25,000 per year on Adwords.  So I agreed, and within a couple of weeks they had delivered their promise and for our chosen phrase we shot up the rankings.

Impressed, I convinced my wife to use them for our joint business, and that’s where it all started going wrong.  But this story is about their terms and conditions, not their service.  So let’s just say we sat out our minimum contract politely and quietly (almost!) and waited to leave.  Our minimum contract period ended at the end of October, and I sent notice of termination emails on 10th July, and then again on 28th August.  We didn’t hear anything back from them, so after the final payment I cancelled the Direct Debit.

That got their attention and when they got in touch to find out why I told them it was because no-one responded to our cancellation notice.  ”Oh no no no,” they said, “according to our terms and conditions you must cancel on the final day of the contract.”  Apparantly, failure to do this means that you are automatically committed to another year of service.  Well, we said, someone really should have reminded us of this when we sent our cancellation notice in early.  Then they claimed that they sent us a reminder on 28th July but short of “cut’n'pasting” this into another email they have no evidence to substantiate this claim.   We certainly received no correspondance from them on the matter.

So we are contesting the contract on the basis that we had made our intention to cancel clear long before the contract was due for renewal, and that their clause stipulating that notice must be served on a particular day is nonsense.   However, they are standing by their Ts&Cs and we have said they must take us to court to resolve this dispute.

FirstFound say that they have “thousands of customers”, and a quick search on the web reveals there to be several disgruntled ones.  I cannot believe that we are the only people tripped up by their ridiculous terms and conditions (which as far as I can see are solely designed to make it as difficult as possible to leave them), and I would love to hear from anyone else in the same position, and what the outcome of their experience was.  Ideally, we would like to challenge their terms in the courts and free as many companies as possible from their unreasonable contracts.  If this is you, or anyone you know, please leave a comment.

The moral of the story is, read the small print thorougly and make sure you spot any idiotic terms before signing.  Oh, and if you do find a weird one, remember it – especially if it relates to a specific day which may or may not be important.  Why not put a reminder in Outlook?  What a joke; hands up who’s too busy for all that nonsense?

Anyway, I’ve finally decided to start a blog because my good friend Shelleyftr has inspired me to do so with her new blog.  Also, as I get older I find myself reluctantly getting more irked by things and my psychiatrist thinks it might be good to get some things off my chest.

This may or may not turn out to be a good read, but I might also get bored in a few months and just fizzle out (like playing the flute, Sea Cadets, canoeing lessons, French A-level, Czech evening classes, going to the gym…)

So let’s see what happens.  Thanks for reading!