SilentCallsVictim wrote on May 4^th, 2009 at 4:18pm:


Good old SCV.  As usual trying to butter up the decisions of those who he sees as being in a position of power.

It beats me why he is against 084/7 numbers at all, since he clearly likes to support everything else that the establishment does.

SilentCallsVictim wrote on May 4^th, 2009 at 10:10pm:


I tried engaging with the regulator for several years.  All it proved was that they tacictly condoned all the scams and thought we were bunch of dangerous fanatics they could safely ignore.

OK you may be Mr slow patient and work within the system but on the whole that is not the personality type that causes someone to develop a sense of injustice and anger when they see an 084 or 087 prefixed number.  Also you previously even said you saw no objection in principal to their use by the private sector.  Which is why I have never trusted your own motivations for being involved in this campaign from Day One.

It is quite clear that you want to personally actually become the campaign (having previously had your own one man campaign) rather than simply assisting existing campaigners to conduct their campaigning more effectively.

SilentCallsVictim wrote on May 4^th, 2009 at 11:43pm:


Then what on earth are you doing wasting so many hours of your time on what you now say you see as being this petty matter only involving the cost of calls to a few telephone numbers?

I can assure you that most other long term activists in this campaign do have a very strong emotional reaction indeed against the abusive mentality towards the public that lies behind using these hidden revenue share numbers.  If you do not share that reaction then I cannot imagine precisely what persuades you to devote so many hours of your free time to patiently writing and sending briefing notes on this subject to your large circulation lists.

Also my emotion is not directed toward the telephone number but to the fact that the organisations purveying them feel they can impose a secret charge for accessing their services that is deliberately hidden from the users of the service and hence this distorts competetive consumer choices.

So far as this notion of something called "consumerism" is concerned this seems to be primarily an SCV invented word.  I never see it used by almost anyone else but clearly it appeals to your semantic sensibilities.  There is no consistency at all to Ofcom's policy positions as in the broadcasting sphere they spend most of their time obstructing the free market by preventing children from seeing adverts for the high calories foods they would much prefer to eat and they also devote great levels of resource to fining broadcasters for inadvertently transmitting unencrypted freeview periods of hard core pornography on dedicated erotic movie channels late at night when the same material is already available without any let or hindrance at all on the internet.    But then New Labour's prurient feminist strand objects to all forms of pornography as being a form of degradation of women, even though it does not object at all to the merciless exploitation of UK telecoms consumers (presumably on the basis that the level of exploitation of men and women that is involved is considered to be equal and not biased against one sex or the other).

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumerism

Quote:


Forgive me if I have missed something but Consumerism sounds to me more like Thatcherism than New Labourism and I cannot see how any free choice by consumers is involved in being forced to call covert premium rate numbers that the majority of consumers are not even aware that they are paying a premium rate to call at the time they are making the calls?

Surely the actual driving forces in the activities of Ofcom are not Consumerism at all but are in fact those far more well known New Labour phenomenons of Croneyism and Careerism.

The reality is that Ofcom does actually receive large numbers of complaints from the public about both Silent Calls and the hidden extra cost of calls to 084/7 numbers, especially when made from mobile phones.  But Ofcom are past masters in manipulating the complaints they receive from the public (largely on the phone) so as to only record as being serious complaints that are worthy of further investigation those matters that its political masters have indicated are important to it.  The matters that are important to its political masters (New Labour) are an amalgum of issues which are important to New Labour's main business Croneys such as BSkyB and Capita (both massive benefcators of 084/7 revenue share deals) in order to ensure continued support for the New Labour regime in the media and/or large financial donations to it and also New Labour's principal political obsessions such as the perceived exploitation of women or the ethnic minorities and/or a failure of any individual to live a so called "healthy lifestyle".  Ofcom's manipulation of its complaints logs to only investigate matters important to New Labour and its croneys ensures success in the principal objective of careerism pursued by senior Ofcom staff who are selected in such a manner that this ensures they will not be individuals who are in any way issue or principle driven but instead are driven only by a desire to rise to the highest position of pay and authority that they can achieve during their careers with the organisation.

Cruz wrote on May 5^th, 2009 at 10:37am:
That is probably a fair accusation, which applies also to those who take the time to read postings that are clearly off-topic. If perhaps we entertain or inspire, then our time is not being wasted.

Cruz wrote on May 5^th, 2009 at 10:37am:



I always enjoy reading the 'spats' between  SilentCallsVictim and NGMsGhost. Infact if you read them properly you can learn quite a lot from these two guys, whether you agree with them or not

May I put in a plea that we should not neglect the concept of a spherical earth, albeit with displaced poles?