Monthly Archives: January 2013

  • More everyday sexism from Asda

    Steve WoodsOddities

    It’s just gone New Year and the sound of breaking resolutions can be heard all around.

    However, that doesn’t stop our major supermarket chains leaping on the keep fit bandwagon following the festive blow-out and Asda is no exception. It also provides Asda with an excuse to indulge in a bit of everyday sexism.

    Apparently, only women are suitable targets for dieting and keeping fit, as the image and copy below from its website reveal.

    image of Asda Fitness Competition - men not welcome.
    Asda Fitness Competition – men not welcome.

    There’s 25% off home fitness equipment on Asda Direct in our Big Sale – including treadmills, rowing machines and exercise bikes.

    To help kickstart your home fitness routine we’re giving away this York Fitness cycle (down from £398.99 to £333 on Asda Direct) and stylish gymwear from George including this crop top, vest top and leggings pictured above.

    For a chance to win simply enter your details below and tell us what your New Year’s resolution is. The winner will be selected at random after the prize draw closes at noon on January 9th 2013.

    Below the quoted text is a form for personal details, including entrants’ clothes sizes: “What size gymwear would you prefer? (eg 12, 14, 16) *.

    In Asda-land men obviously don’t exercise, get fit or wear clothes!

  • Is spring on its way?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities

    Celandines (aka Ranunculus ficaria) are normally one of the first signs of spring, emerging around Easter time when the trees overhead have no leaves and the ground around is clear of competitors. Celandines usually flower between March and May each year.

    However, even I was amazed to find celandines in bloom in Bristol on 3rd January on the Bristol & Bath Railway Path at Clay Bottom while coming back from a shopping trip to Fishponds. Gilbert White, the celebrated naturalist who chronicled the natural history of Selborne in Hampshire in the 1800s, only managed to record them as early as 21st February

    A celandine in bloom on 3rd January 2013
    A celandine in bloom on 3rd January 2013

    Is this unprecedentedly early blossoming yet more evidence of climate change? Comments welcome.

  • Crapita cocks it up again!

    Steve WoodsOddities

    Is there anything that Capita can’t cock up?

    Following on from the courts interpreting fiasco overseen by Crapita Translation and Interpreting (posts passim) and Birmingham City Council’s unusable telephone system (posts passim), the BBC now reports that Capita is making a cock-up of its contract with the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to track down 174,000 illegal immigrants in the UK. The contract’s value is believed to be up to £40 mn. and what the firm will be paid depends on how many actually leave the UK permanently.

    People living legally in the UK have been incorrectly told to leave the country by Crapita by telephone, email and text message.

    Those contacted in these ways included a woman with a UK passport (i.e. a full card-carrying British citizen) and a man with a valid visa who had invested £1 mn. in a UK business.

    The standard text message sent to victims by Crapita reads: “Message from the UK Border Agency. You are required to leave the UK as you no longer have the right to remain.” Recipients are then advised to contact the UKBA.

    When approached to provide a reason for its cock-ups, Crapita blamed the UKBA, stating some of the information with which it had been provided may have been inaccurate.

    However, it seems to me that Crapita has merely applied the skills it has learnt over many years from administering TV Licensing, including the harassment those without a television (and thus those who need no television licence) to suspected illegal immigrants.

    Crapita clearly cares little about the cock-ups as long as the profits keep rolling in from the public sector.

  • Microsoft deal protested by Egyptian openistas

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

    A group of technology activists gathered in front of the Cabinet office in Cairo on Sunday 30th December to protest an Egyptian governmental deal with software giant Microsoft to buy software for the public sector, the English language Egypt Independent news site reports.

    On 26 December, the official Facebook page of Hesham Qandil, the Egyptian Prime Minister, announced that the Cabinet had concluded a deal with Microsoft for the next 4 tax years to buy and maintain licensed software worth nearly $44 mn. for the government.

    “What the government is buying is the licence to use software and not new [software],” says Ali Shaath, co-founder of the Egyptian Association for Free and Open Software and the Arab Digital Expression Foundation.

    The activists’ main contention with the deal is that Microsoft products bought by the government are imported, expensive and their code source is usually closed and protected by rigid copyright rules which do not allow for knowledge sharing and generation. Meanwhile, an alternative lies with locally conceived, less expensive software, whose open code source enables copying, sharing and building more software.

    “We’re talking about the same computers, the same software, no extra development and no extra training,” Shaath said, explaining that the free and open software alternative will cost zero in comparison since its licences are free of charge and its only cost is derived from customisation and training.

    The activists believe that free and open software developers is could readily provide the software the government needs. A case in point was the portal developed with free and open software to provide voters with information ahead of the March 2011 referendum.

    NB: this post was originally published on Bristol Wireless.

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