Category: Social

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How Many Bottles?

The latest Robinson’s Juice promotion involves handing over some profit to transform playgrounds around the country.

Transform your patch

Here’s what it says on the back of a large juice bottle:
From the back of a squash bottle
Sometimes people get caught up on this sort of thing and don’t think about the numbers involved.

Let’s consider a small playground of size 6 metres by 4 metres, which might just be enough for a set of swings. To pay for the transformation of this mediocre patch of land Robinson’s would have to sell 600 x 400 = 240 000 bottles of juice. SERIOUSLY?
If Robinson’s sell nearly a quarter of a million bottles then they would have to cough up for the transformation of a patch on land into some swings and soft surface. I reckon this conversion would cost about £6000 (a severe guess but probably about right) and this represents a cost per bottle of 2.5p and given a profit margin of, say 40%, this means Robinson’s are laughing all the way to the shareholders’ meeting.

Essentially this is an ingenious piece of marketing and I think they should be congratulated. Well done Robinson’s. It looks like they are doing wonders for the community but in reality they are doing little.

A similar scam, sorry marketing ploy, was run by Pampers when they said that for each pack of nappies sold they would donate a single vaccination to UNICEF. This is marketing at its worst. Trying to make companies seem like they care when in reality they are just doing it to make more money (the basics of capitalism I know!).

If these companies were truly serious about changing playgrounds or helping vaccinate the world they would publish something along the following lines:

We have decided to turn ALL profits for one year over to XXXX charity so that they are able to further our combined missions to improve the health and well-being of the children of this fragile Earth.

If a company did volunteer ALL the profits from one product line then I would happily buy them over another but when it’s just part of the marketing campaign then be cynical.

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Published

In November 2009 I was moved to write a letter to the editor of Private Eye after the architecture critic, Piloti, suggested that living near electricity transformers was dangerous to human health. The letter was published and I have kept that copy of Private Eye for the future. Looking back through my emails it would appear that I have written to Private Eye 5 times. So that’s a 20% hit rate so far.

Sir,

I was disappointed to read that Piloti (Eye 1249) has reinforced the incorrect view that magnetic fields from electricity substations are a danger to health. There is no scientific evidence to link electricity substations with an increase of ill health. Piloti’s use of the specific term “radiation” only reinforces peoples’ prejudices against such structures. EM radiation covers everything from radio waves to X-Rays and beyond and does nothing to describe what is actually emitted. Should your excellent staff of humanities graduates want to further their knowledge I point you in the direction of: http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/magnetic-fields

I shall, however, not be cancelling my subscription for this minor transgression.



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Skeptical Pat

Just watched an episode of Postman Pat, or rather, just turned over and caught the last little bit. I was feeding son #2 rather than enjoying the stop-motion for myself. The episode was called Postman Pat and the Magic Lamp.
Now I’m going to have to guess what the story was about but I think the kids (all with ginger hair, Pat’s hair is ginger, you figure it out) found a lamp that they considered magic. I think they made wishes and then waited for them to come true. When Pat spoke to them he said:

Wishes only come true like that in books and stories. If you want something to come true then you have to work yourself to make it come true.

This is surely an excellent lesson, not only for children but also for every person on the planet. What a skeptical chap.

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Knowing your market

Getting together with companies who have the same customer base is a bonus for big business but needs careful arrangement. Never a clearer example:

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Possibly this photo also clearly shows an example of standard Scottish weather. Snow tonight!
I think this post clearly shows my growing snobbery towards certain things. Will have to reign that in, it doesn’t do good for a so called liberal to be a bit of a snob (except for universities).

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Twitter

I finally figured out that I miss all my friend’s tweets because I follow too many people. So, quite brilliantly, I created another twitter account and use that one to follow the less important things in my life.
So my main (friends) account is @iparish
The account I use to follow lots of everyone is @iparish_gen
This is a list of people I consider important enough to be on my main account:

  • Daryl Walshe
  • My Wife
  • Andy Pom
  • Kate
  • Dafydd Morse
  • Ryan Palmer
  • Richard O
  • William Shatner
  • George Takai
  • Tim Minchin

Added as of 29 March 2012

  • Leonard Nimoy
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There Are Four Things

There are four things I say to my son as I put him to bed. It’s just a routine that has developed over the last year or so. WW puts #2 to bed and I do the eldest. It’ll change when they are both in the same room but for now:

Have a nice sleep.

I’ll see you in the morning.

Love you loads.

Night night.

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Quality Parking

Watched this guy park, get out, check his parking and then walk away. What a knob! He might as well have parked right in the middle of the two spaces.

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Just a Sunday afternoon

What a lovely afternoon! Spent time in Whitstable, Kent. Lunch, play, skipping stones and an ice cream. It doesn’t get much better than that. My children were a delight! And I skimmed an 8er.

The Union flag through the orangery roof:
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Castle turrets:
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More of the castle and a lovely sky:
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No real sea movement. Reminds me of Flatford Mill or it would if it was raining!
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And here’s the beach 3D style! From Photosynth:

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End of the Walnut Tree

The end of one of the pubs in the Kent village of Eccles. It’s a bit of a shame really. They are going to build some houses on the ground because at least they’ll make money for the land-owners. We do have one pub left in the village and I guess I can’t complain as I went into the Walnut Tree just once in the 6 years it was open and I lived in the village.

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Avoidance

This week I shall be mostly trying to avoid the Super Bowl result. I recorded it last night but will take a few days to watch it.
Kids, you see. They don’t get it. Gone are the days of missing lectures because I stayed up until x o’clock watching the Super Bowl and getting a bit drunk. Now I have kids I have the issue that they don’t seem to want to get out of bed late or have a lazy day. They always wake up by 06:30 and just rush, rush all day. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
So I’ll be watching the NFL final game over a few nights, trying to make the next play before falling asleep and getting up with the kids. I guess it beats my college days of not really seeing past the first quarter while playing Chase The Ace and making far too much noise in the hall’s tv room!

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Range Rover Drivers

It has taken a long time but I think it is now the time to relegate BMW drivers from the much coveted top spot of the Charts of Arrogance. They have been surpassed by a more irritating and rude bunch of gits. I speak, of course, of Range Rover drivers.
This collection of people who drive the huge, gas guzzling, aero-dynamically inefficient, four wheel drive vehicles are quickly turning out to be a bunch of BMWankers.

It used to be that BMW drivers failed to realise that their car had indicators or that to drive too close to another car was dangerous. Everyone knew that if there was a car doing dangerous stuff (and it wasn’t a Citroen Saxo driven by a baseball cap wearing, pierced youth) then it was going to be a BMW. Their reputation was awful. If you were being cut up on a motorway, or cut up at a junction or a car just braked infront of you and turned without warning then it was a BMW. It was just their right to do that.

Now, I find (spot the confirmation bias) that it is Range Rover drivers who do all the nasty stuff on the roads and endanger my life. They don’t indicate. They pull infront of you. They drive too close to you. They are the NEW and CROWNED arrogant arses of the tarmac. Whether it is the height that these drivers have to sit or just the money they must have to own one of these behemoths they really don’t seem to care about any other drivers. Roadcraft to them is just doing what you want, selfishly ignoring the safety of the rest of us.

What would the roads be like if everyone drove Range Rovers? Perhaps, because BMWs are rather ubiquitous and affordable it means that they have regressed back to the norm? Or it could be an economic thing. The type of person who thought that BMWs were cool and nice 15 years ago has now morphed into the type of middle aged man who thinks that owning a Range Rover means that they “own” the road and the right to endanger my safety. If they really used these cars for off-road and risked their own safety then good for them. But, they don’t.

I would like to appeal to these drivers’ sense of community and social responsibility in an attempt to make them see the error of their ways but it is clear they have none. So I won’t.

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Who To Support?

With two weeks to go before the NFL Super Bowl I have to decide who to support. My teams didn’t get there, New Orleans Saints and the Miami Dolphins. I cheered on the 49ers in the AFC championship as they beat the Saints and so were suitable of my support.
Now the choice is either the New York Giants or the New England Patriots. Too many support the Patriots, they are ridiculously popular in the UK. The Giants have Eli Manning as a quarterback and any Manning is irritating.
So I’ve decided to make my relationships more fun. My sister and her husband like the Patriots and Ades (one of the Fulham Five) likes the Patriots. That settles it. My cheers will go to the New York Giants.
Altogether now: D-Fense!

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Socks on Hands

A long time ago in a college not that far from London, pretty much in the middle actually, there were a bunch of students in their first year at University. “Let’s enter the Field Cup”, someone suggested. “OK”, was the response.
The Field Cup was essentially a pub crawl for teams with challenges and forfeits in each pub. We were rookies and unfortunately for the older entrants we were doing quite well. We had taken some loot and even a Hall Of Residence Warden to the final judgement but, because we were up against a group of girls from the CGCU, we were docked just enough points to ensure we came second. Good try for a bunch of Fresher’s though!
We were in one pub, possibly The Queen’s Arms, and our challenge was to sing on the karaoke machine. Chrissy was lead vocals on “Let It Be” by The Beatles and we were backing singers. However, for some reason we were wearing our socks on our hands! That must have been a forfeit somewhere but precise details elude me, 20 years later. The precise details probably eluded me the next day too. We shall all remember Karl’s backing vocal calls of “socks on hands” to the rest of the pub! Hilarious!
You had to be there, really.

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On Demand

So, I’m sitting with #1 watching some episodes of Dipdap on BBC iPlayer using the PS3. Just thinking how lucky the youth of today are! No waiting for tv shows, films or fast forwarding video cassettes!
When I was a child in the 1970s and 80s there were only 3 channels on tv although that didn’t matter because tv started at 3 in the afternoon. Breakfast tv hadn’t begun and the day wasn’t filled with shows about buying and selling houses because daytime tv didn’t exist. We also had a black and white valve tv which you had to turn on 10 minutes before you wanted to watch it to allow it to warm up.
I remember watching the start of Channel 4 and seeing the first episode of Countdown. I also remember the start of breakfast tv which was pretty rubbish. Also, the start of channel 5, which I saw in Manchester, was pretty rubbish. Now I have Sky and about 500 channels that I don’t watch and about 8 channels that I do.
These days I can watch tv on my PS3 and see catch up tv streamed over the Internet. I can watch live tv on my iPhone and all the catch up services on that too.
All this means my sons will never have to wait for a tv show or worry that they’ve missed the latest episode of their favourite show. Quite stunning the changes that have occurred really. 3 channels on part time to hundreds of channels and on demand. Utter brilliance!

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A Gift

A gift from a submariner uncle to his nephew. A set of Royal Navy Submariner Dolphins. I’m sure #1 will love it.

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A Conversation

No, this is not my classic 1994 poem “A Conversation with Myself” this is a text conversation I had over a few days with a friend.

With you on that. Thinking of getting 2 or 3 classical CDs. For when I’m marking books. Any ideas?

Carmina Burana (omen). Planets suite (am I evil). Ride of the valkerys (apocalypse now). There is cd call heavy classics which is not bad.

There’s a particularly ominous jingle played on freethought radio that I’m humming to people to work out what it is. Got Planets already, how is it I am evil?

The opening of am I evil is Mars from the planets done on guitars. Other good ones: night on Bear Mountain and Danse Macabre.

What! How did I not know that? Over 20 years of listening to it and only now I find out it’s clever!

Haha! I read it somewhere and then it clicked!

Fuck me. Just done the same. Utter brilliance. Btw have you heard S&M by Metallica?

S&M? I’ve heard some: didn’t like it. I can see how the two could complement each other, but not how they had done it  The strings seemed too high pitched and detracted from the deep guitars. Sounded like a gimmick and a throw back to 70s prog rock! Also a lot of was new stuff that is crap!

Agree. I heard snippets and thought it was shit. Also, not impressed with Metallica as possibly cancelling tour next summer because of currency worries! Wankers.

How far have they gone from being alternative?  And Megadeth getting all religous? And Slayer apparently. Seems only Anthrax remain unchanged from the big 4.

You have to change to survive if you don’t have tons of money. We work to survive. It’s politicians who need to act on principles for the better of all. We are shall cogs! They have the chance to change things but won’t because of compromise.

Capitalism is dying?

Politicians are only there to look after their own and them selves. Look at them on Question Time! Full of shit and we vote for them. Don’t see a decent one there. Is capitalism dying? No, it’s evolving. I expect companies to take over from countries as the next step.

Interesting idea about companies. I hope not. Companies responsible to shareholders are essentially immoral. Maybe Jamie not voting is right? Should always be able to vote for “none of the above”. Mind you Belgium has coped without a government. Civil service just keeps grinding on. Perhaps I should invent moral economics. Governments as proper partnerships like John Lewis?

I agree with companies not being moral, but then through funding they control politics anyway. I think there should be a new politics, less weasel words. Or at least someone with vision. Your idea sounds good though.

Revolution time then? I’ll get my flag out. Perhaps the next wars will be over economics (or have they all been that recently anyway?). Quite like the aims of UK Uncut. Secrecy is a big factor in wealth. Perhaps we should have politicians who go after that. Going to need a beer in a bit! Blood pressure going up and my rant might last days! Can start influencing the next generation at work.

This economic crisis will change things. And I think for the worse. Companies and the rich will escape while the rest suffer. If only China really believed in socialism!

Agree with you there, and on pretty much everything else. Mind you we are establishment so how do we kick start the “evolving” process? Perhaps the youth will kick off as unemployment gets worse.

On a brighter side: are you going to see Dragon Tattoo?

Want to see Dragon Tattoo: David Fincher and Trent Reznor?! Of course. But don’t think I’ll get the chance.

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Perfect Dessert

Today I come in praise of the humble Tunnock’s Tea Cake.

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I have decided it is probably the perfect dessert. For me food must be chewy (soup is a no no) and have a range of textures. A dessert should be sweet, contain chocolate and satisfy the cravings after savoury food.

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The Tunnock’s Tea Cake combines marshmallow, biscuit and chocolate. It is also mouth sized and so eatable whole. The textures are perfect. Just enough crunch and chew to make the whole experience uniquely fulfilling. The fact that it can be chomped whole makes it better and gets over the occasional problem of flakes of chocolate dropping from the tea cake as you bite into it. Of course, quite brilliantly it can be eaten as part of a calorie controlled diet and is low in radioactive particles and high in energy (food marketing is pure BS).
The world should give thanks (in a secular way just like Obama on Thanksgiving) for the Tunnock’s Tea Cake. It’s exactly what made Britain Great!

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