grumpyoldmen

I only want to buy an Office Chair for God Sake *!

Some months ago I treated myself to a  handmade desk to fit in my home office space.  The old one had served me for 20 years and was too big when we moved house. Even better was the fact that my new desk was made in the UK! I would highly recommend the company not just for the quality desk but for their delivery and customer service.

Office Chair

Since then I wanted to buy a new office chair to go with the desk, for months, I've been using one of our dining chairs which is not ideal. The space where my desk sits is quite small so I needed to be mindful of the dimensions.  I also wanted a chair that has a decent guarantee and was shocked how many expensive chairs are sold without one or just 12 months (with lots of loopholes).  I also wanted a chair that was comfortable since I spend more time than I should at my PC.

After months of research and debate I bought this one from a company called Chair Office

It was an added bonus that the chair was manufactured in the UK! Great I thought lets support a British company and comes with a 5 year guarantee!

Unfortunately, when it arrived the back section was leaning to one side (see photo). 

I did not attach the head rest, I did not see the point as I was returning it but I did notice the headrest was stamped made in Italy! So much for being made in the UK, naive me!

So I looked it up online and this is what I found on a site called mlplaw

"To label your products as being made in the UK, you will need to demonstrate that there is either a ‘substantial transformation’ and/or that at least 50% of the manufacturing of / value added to such products is completed in the UK".

So a product can be labelled made in the UK if only 50% of it is made here, I bet not many UK consumers know that!

So I called up Chair Office and they apologised and arranged a replacement chair, which would take a few days.  They said they would put a rush on the replacement but I just asked them to please make sure the replacement had no problems.

When the second Ergo Sit High Back office Chair arrived it was full of problems. First of the cardboard box was beat up both inside and out, "That doesn't bode well" I thought to myself.  My next impression was the plastic bags the chair componants were in were dusty as if the pieces of this replacement chair had been lying around a warehouse. Rather than trying to explain the condition here are a few of the photos I took of chair number 2.

It is obvious that the replacement chair from MDK office seating was even worse than the lopsided one. Chair Office the company I had bought the chair from were "most apologetic" but as far as I was concerned both they and the manufacturer should have made sure the replacement was what I paid for, a brand new functional chair.  Chair Office offered me various solutions but by now my faith in both them and MDK were zero so I got a refund.

 

Long Story Short

Eventually, I bought an office chair that is comfortable and not too expensive but even that took two more attempts which left me with spare parts (predrilled screw holes not lining up with the bolts).

Buying any big ticket item on the internet is a roll of the dice. It takes research, tenacity and sometimes sure bloodymindedness to get what you pay for.

I always look to buy from a physical shop when I can but those choices are shrinking as we sleepwalk into mediocrity heaven where measurements and quality don't fit the description on the website. 

 

Copyright Theft has become Rampant on WordPress

I often have to defend my food blogs from Copyright infringement (people taking and using my photographs and or text without seeking my permission even though I clearly claim copyright on my photographs and text, but it has become Rampant on WordPress.  

Why does this matter?

My blog traffic and sometimes work is generated by the posts (recipes and articles I write). So I defend my property, because when I don’t it costs me money or opportunities to do a travelogues (I have done in Croatia, Austria, Spain and Canada amongst others or be a chef judge at a food show in the UK, Ireland, Spain and France.

Google Rankings

Your rankings on google and other search engines are closely connected to the posts you write and publish, in simple terms the more they are seen the the higher they will climb the rankings. But if you allow someone else to post your work it may help them, but hurt you.  For example if they are better at SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) their version of your post could rank higher in search engine results than the original. Over the years blogging since 2006 I have learnt if i don’t defend my intellectual property then not only could it hurt my Search Engine ranking but others can make money on my work.

WordPress 

In recent years I have notice more and more occasions when my copyrighted  images and text have been used without my permission. Usually, in the past when I fill in a DMCA take down notice then WordPress will make the blogger remove the post.

But every day I am finding more and more anonymous blogs with no one  named as the owner, no information as to where they live and much of their content re-blogged posts from other WordPress bloggers.   

June 15th 2021

For example I found a blogger called Cheflytical who had copied and posted a photo on their blog without the owners permission, this is theft. https://cheflytical.wordpress.com/2021/03/02/grilled-steak-tacos-foodie-crush/

Original post here https://www.foodiecrush.com/grilled-steak-tacos/

Reblog Button

The reblog button at the bottom of many bloggers posts compounds the problem if then others unknowingly reblog a stolen photo, and the poor author has to chase WordPress and hope in time their stolen property does not end up on multiple sites.  

Choice 

Whether a person is blogging as a hobby, creating a diary or trying to make money their posts should be protected by the blog platform, especially since they are already making money on our content by selling adverts. It adds insult to injury when the WordPress system allows theft to happen so easily. 

When I set up my main food blog in 2015, I removed the reblog button and expressly claimed copyright all of my posts in the hope readers will respect my wishes and not repost my images and text without seeking permission.

But then I found that if people only see and like my posts in the WordPress Reader they can share my work without knowing I have claimed copyright! This is outrageous and I have sought help from Automattic (the company that deals with copyright infringement for WordPress and is infact the global distributor of WordPress.  The CEO  Matt Mullenweg was the lead developer in the open source WordPress. So far neither Matt  or his assistants have bothered to reply to my plea for help.

My exit from WordPress

WordPress say they have no plans to remove the reblog button and its ability to steal my copyright material without my knowledge in the Reader.

Of course to move my well established blogs to another platform is a very large, time consuming undertaking, which in the short term will hurt my google rankings and obviously loose me followers, but I feel I have no option unless WordPress the now imperious juggernaut recognises that whether a bloggers chose to share their content or not…that choice should be theirs and theirs alone.

Update October 2023

Finally, Wordpress acted and took down Cheflytical for multiple copyright infringements, to mine and other sites, but Wordpress still refuse to acknowledge that their reblog button encourages copyright infringement.

 

The Slow Motion Decline of the BBC

British Broadcasting Company

Things like Sky, fast internet and the arrival of streaming services have helped to speed up the glacial decline of the BBC,

but it is also true to say that the British Broadcasting Corporation has played a key roll in its own shrinking fortunes.

From unnecessarily over paying its "talent" to turning a blind eye to scandals until the scandal overtook them as was the case of Jimmy Saville.

Or wasting money sending an helicopter and camera over Cliff Richard's house and getting ultimately sued once the star was cleared of all scurrilous accusations.

Programming   

Of course BBC can not compete with the the likes of Netflix spending power, but they keep making bad decisions that make their situation and viewer numbers shrink ever further.

BBC News

Once upon a time the reputation for honesty, fairness and objective reporting the news was the envy of the world, but now as the mandarins cower behind their leather chairs

the decision making when it comes to choice of stories, and number of stories has fallen to former Sky News employees.  People who resent and deflect complaints by going through the motions no matter how sustained and numerous those complaints are.

Hard to tell whom within the organisation decides to go softly softly in their reporting of recent Conservative governments and extremely harsh when interviewing Labour or other opposition politicians.  To the point of hand picking a Tory biased audience for Thursday's Question Time, the current affairs show, or more recently shouting down former Question Time presenter David Dimbleby on the One Show BBC   

Watch yourself  https://t.co/4yCB1KSpBf

The delicious irony of course is that at the same time Auntie Beeb is pleading UK viewers to support it and help fend of the plans by some Tory MP's to remove the licence fee (we play) that keeps it afloat.

BBC24 hour News

In the past 4 years the BBC News organisation seems to have become obsessed with the America President  often at the exclusion of British news. I'm unsure whether this is a deliberate tactic to deflect from the continuous screw-up and U-turns made by UK's Conservative government, after all we'd all prefer to laugh at someone else's inept leader wouldn't we? 

These days if I want to know what is going in News, both in all parts of the UK and the world I go to the BBC website, which still at the moment (October 2020) for the most parts an excellent source for factual news. The website too still avoids any in-depth criticism of the Conservative government, but it too seems to be tainted by bias against the Labour party, which after all gave us the NHS and many other things we now take for granted. The bias got so bad by some of their reporters in the run up the last December election they were taken to task by Ofcom (UK's communications regulator). 

PBC

In the future the UK, what is left of it after the selfish supposed Conservative & Unionist party have finally left office, we need a completely revamped BBC, but even the name is now sullied.  So I suggest the name should be Public Broadcast Company owned by the public, funded directly by the taxpayer that the sole remit is to report the news without fear or favour. This would include investigative documentaries and current affairs programs that have a live audience.  

The news department would have no Washington junkets or similar that allow large numbers of reporters and crews to spend weeks in a place reporting things like the US elections. Things like beyond 100 days is not needed when their is far more important issues that need reporting from the UK. By all means report the result of the US election, the day after the vote (as it used to be).  There are lots of meaningful UK wide stories you can find on the BBC News website that never see the light of day on the rolling 24 hour News program. 

The BBC has totally lost its way and ignores its own charter and we the people should press the big Red Button for a complete reset.

The Internet of Stings

Like it or not I have a namesake, another Kevin Ashton, he too was born in Birmingham, England and he is the person who coined the phrase "The Internet of Things". With the imminent arrival of 5th  generation wi-fi this phrase will become known more widely, as cars, fridges, lighting and heating in your home, washing machines and even toasters can all be connected to the internet.

Me, on the other hand, would like to draw your attention to the "The Internet of Stings", where people are crying out for governments to protect us when we are using the internet.

Protect us from fake news, because internet giants like Facebook see no profit in it. We keep expecting  social media companies to show compassion, to have a moral compass and do the right thing; we haven't quite grasped the idea that Facebook, Google and others are businesses, and just like bricks and mortar businesses, they will only do the "right thing" when governments make laws to curb their excesses and lack of responsibility.  If you are not familiar with the term sting, I have helpfully added a dictionary definition below.

 

Shopping Experience

Am I the only person in the world who's frustrated at the total crapshoot that making a purchase on the internet can be? Wasn't the internet supposed to make our lives easier?

Like it or not,  much of the stuff we buy these days is made in China.  Sometimes you can buy something inexpensive and you find over time it was a bargain because it lasted longer than you expected given the price you paid.  But equally other times you have to deal with wrong sizes, poor quality, poor communication, inaccurate descriptions, so sometimes you need tenacity and dogged determination to get your money back.  To me, this is not just about the waste of money it is about being cheated!

If Amazon or eBay were physical high street shops they would face far tougher scrutiny and more stringent laws than they currently do, and this must change.

Because  Amazon and eBay operate around the world they manipulate out of date tax laws to pay as little tax as they can. For example, in 2016, eBay in the UK paid £1.6million in corporation tax, even though the US parent company took in £1 billion in revenue from its UK operation. This avoidance of tax on a massive scale, deprives governments of much-needed revenue to help fix the crumbling infrastructure in the UK and elsewhere.  This tax dodging by multinational companies put the shops on our high streets at a great disadvantage, which is one of the reasons our high streets are under threat of disappearing altogether.

There are times when you are buying a big ticket item where it is preferable to go and physically see before you buy, but in 2019 that is getting harder, because bricks and mortar shops cannot compete on price. People even look at the item at a shop and then purchase online. You can't blame people for wanting the lowest price, but governments need to do more to create a level playing field.

Idiot manufacturers don't help the situation because they produce too many different models, making it virtually impossible to see all of your potential choices in one shop, again discouraging consumers from physically going to a store to buy their electronic goods. Some manufacturers in the UK will make a model specifically for one company and then tweak it ever so slightly for the competing company, which makes it hard to comparison shop.  

 

Poor quality photographs and the wrong information 

How many times have you shopped around for something expensive, only to find you might have to make your decision based on one grainy photo. You know the type of Ad where you click on the option to enlarge and the new larger photo is about the same size! Or you find the same item in two places but find the measurements different?  And details like that can be critical when choosing a fridge or a piece of furniture.

Barmy Times on eBay UK

Today a teenager with a PayPal account, or their parent's credit card, can buy packs of Sterilised Scalpel Blades - currently there are 2,301 listings.

I first heard about this from a young British adult 6 years ago, who used to buy sterilised scalpels to self-harm and told me that is where young people get their blades.

About the same time, eBay had told me that I could not sell an antique carving knife and fork because it was too dangerous and against their policy?

If you think I'm making this up then check my links, and here is a GB YouTube video on "How to make a Paypal account if you are 18 or under for free" 

Because eBay is selling other people's products they love to distance themselves from the untruths told in product descriptions

In my opinion, sterilised scalpels should only be sold to medical facilities (hospitals, surgeries and veterinary practices) under strict control.  Often eBay hides behind its vast size when things are listed on their sites that common sense says should not be allowed.

Lack of competition

Neither the USA  or the UK would allow one person to own all the newspapers, television stations or for one company to make all the cars, monopoly commissions would get involved and prevent a dominant company from buying up all the competition, but so far this has been allowed to happen on the internet. Google dominants search engines, to the point were even Bing is offering people rewards to use it. Facebook owns Instagram and Whatsapp. Even eBay hoovered up various companies included Gumtree, LoQUo, and Opusforum (all classified sites) where people could buy and sell new and used goods. Ebay also bought Qoo10.jp, to expand into the Asian market.  

Not that I'm giving Amazon a free ride!

Two areas Amazon need to focus on and improve are, getting rid of sellers who buy fake reviews and stopping sellers from relisting an item, once it has received a series of bad reviews.  Fake reviews not only misinform the buying public, but this bad practice also hurts Amazon's reputation.  Some sellers try to cheat customers in other ways by relisting an item so that potential buyers don't see the existing bad reviews. Roomy Khan wrote a great article about this subject for Forbes in April...see link .  Like eBay, Amazon needs to be shamed by us users into policing its sellers better, for the common good. Both companies make billions of dollars each year but try to distance themselves from criticism, rather than properly resource and solve them. 

GDPR, what a bad joke

In 2018 the EU passed a law called GDPR, (General Data Protection Regulation) that was supposed to protect European Union citizens and the use of their data. But so far this law has been a bad joke. For example, in the UK, if I go to a read an online newspaper I have to untick a lot of boxes to prevent data on me and my choices from being gathered, and in some cases sold. But the reality is that sometimes I have time to untick these boxes and sometimes I don't, so instead of protecting my privacy lawmakers have made the new rules so cumbersome people won't get the protection they need.

Sleepwalking to our dystopian future?

We can complain about our individual governments, we can lampoon the current US president, but no one thing until now stood to hold so much power over humans. The power that comes from larger annual revenues than many countries, the power to communicate with such a large segment of the earth's population and sway their choices. So far the abuse of this has allowed elections in various countries to be influenced, often from outside of those countries, and terrible crimes have been shared, even broadcasted live, thanks to social media.

Outside the realm of the world-wide-web people and businesses are held to certain standards, and when they break those laws and standards they are held to account, but so far internet companies have mostly done whatever they wanted.  To me this issue is as important as climate change!! And we need to protest about it. 

A wake-up call is needed and soon before our freedom and privacy are a distant memory and we live in a Dystopian world, for real.

Crazy Footnote-Toaster Madness

The other day one of the plastic knobs on my 20-month-old Russell Hobbs toaster broke, the knob that covers the slider control. This knob doesn't prevent the toaster from working but it does make more challenging to use. Since the toaster was guaranteed for three years I was hoping Russell Hobs could send us a new plastic knob and solve the problem, but no, that would be too easy, too environmentally friendly. Russell Hobbs didn't offer me a replacement knob instead they offered a replacement brand new toaster up to the value of £45.  Most people might think their offer great, but is it great for the planet???? So I'm supposed to take the brand new toaster, and take my current toaster down to the local landfill because it is missing a plastic knob? This, in a nutshell, is a prime example of how bad our throwaway society has become.  Companies who disrespect our planet and are happy for working devices to be thrown away, all for the sake of ordering a batch of spare plastic knobs when the toasters are manufactured.

 

*eBay logo was downloaded from www.freeiconspng.com

A Rogue Food Site Called Recipeler

A few posts back it seems I could both make a point and be humorous, but at the moment it is hard to raise even a rye smile particularly when talking about the internet.

The internet has brought the possibility of worldwide communication, the chance for an oppressed people to tell their story to the world, for small businesses to sell their products/ services around the globe and for wrongdoers to be exposed.

For most of us the workings of the internet is a mystery, but just like owning a car we shouldn't have to be a mechanic to take advantage of the benefits.  But unfortunately at the moment, unscrupulous people are stealing from us left right and centre and we need to fight back!

 

Rogue sites

Continue to steal my photos and recipes and post it on their own sites; they do this first and foremost because it boosts their own search engine rankings, and because they think you won't notice.  In September 2017 I wrote about the theft I suffered from a website called The Black Pudding Club http://grumpyoldmen.typepad.com/grumpyoldmen/2017/09/the-black-pudding-club-theft.html  Currently, I am fighting with a rogue food site called recipeler.com

As far as I can tell all of the content on the food site called recipeler.com is content they have stolen from search engine results.  I'm not talking a few dozen recipes but a few hundred recipes, taken from sites like All Recipes without their knowledge or permission. A few of my high ranking photos were also taken and posted on this rogue site without my permission.

Although theft like this has now happened to me many times, it still doesn't make it any easier to take, I feel violated as if someone has robbed my house.  My copyrighted recipes and photos help me to get work, as such I defend them fiercely. 

I don't just blame the individuals that steal my stuff, I also blame the big players like Google and other search engines that make it so easy to illegally copy other people's property. Both Google and Facebook make billions of dollars selling adverts, but this is only possible because of the content we (all of us) create.  Without that daily tide of content, the world would not be watching and reading those ads.  Google and Facebook should be protecting our content against theft, if for no other reason than to protect its own financial interests, but that is not the case at the moment, so lawmakers need to step in and force them to do the right thing.

Worse still...

I found out the other day that Google+ Tumblr and Twitter are selling access to our data to third party companies such as compute.info

Haven't any lessons been learnt from the Cambridge Analytical scandal?   The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable said, "People should be "empowered" to sell their own

data if they want to, to share in the profits of technological advances." He continued to say "data was "the new oil" yet people were happy to give it up for free."

 

 

Back to the Recipeler story.......

As the internet has grown up and become more sophisticated so have the tools and methods to aid the theft.  In complicated situations, you can have several different companies that host a site or a conduit in the process.  Like other shady websites, recipeler.com do all they can to hide who owns them and what company has been used to host the site.

 

Telltale signs of dishonest intent

Recipeler has no contact information on their site, none whatsoever, which is always a bad sign about the honesty and intent of a website or blog.  So I'm forced to spend time trying to track that information down.  At the moment I am still sending emails off to verify which hosting company Recipeler uses, but I am close very close.

Here are a couple of Screenshots of my stolen photos on Recipeler.com

Here are links to my original recipes

Roast Belly of Pork with Apple Cabbage

Green Tomato Soup with Roasted Chillies

As part of my fightback, I have begun to contact other websites that have had recipes stolen to make them aware of the illegal behaviour of recipeler.com 

I will update this post as I uncover who is the host company and their response to the outrageous theft by recipeler.com

The Black Pudding Club Theft

It seems that every year I have to fight hard to defend my recipes and photos from unscrupulous bloggers that think it is fine to cut and paste one of my recipes onto their site.  

The Why

Climbing up the Google rankings is a slow process if you are a new site; however, if you are unscrupulous you can copy and paste say 20-30 of the top black pudding recipes, and suddenly your site is now in the nosebleed section of Google page1. Having gotten onto google page 1 using other people's work, the site can now get organic traffic because most people will click on a link from page 1.  Which of course helps to keep them on page 1 and makes the selling of adverts possible.  

Copyright

If a piece of work has been copyrighted then it should NOT be used without the owner's permission, period!!

Making lame excuses saying that they credited me as the author and my blog as the source, is not good enough by a country mile.

Why should they gain google ranking benefit and possibly money (by selling Google Ads) from stealing my work? Just because a recipe on the internet is less physical than a car doesn't make it okay, in fact, it's worse because at the moment too much theft like this goes on, and perpetrators are shocked when you call them thieves.

The Culprit is a site called Blackpudding.club

They have lots of black pudding recipes from popular sites, some without permission, including one of mine they posted in January 2017.

Here is the recipe that was taken without my permission:  Chicken Stuffed with Black Pudding © Kevin Ashton 2005 

I did not realise this theft until September, so they benefitted from my high Google ranking for 8 months!  I wrote to the site. also to the facebook page and here is what I said and their reply:

Dealing the faceless perpetrators

It has often been my experience (when plagiarised) that the perpetrators hide their identity, as was the case with the blackpudding.club.

Even when they wrote to me via email they signed it  'Club Secretary', which just shows their desire to stay in the shadows.

 

The Damage caused by the theft

Even after the plagiarised (stolen) work is taken down, it takes weeks, sometimes months for the original recipe and photograph to regain the search engine ranking it had.

This sort of illegal behaviour goes on a lot but at the moment; the internet stakeholders (internet providers, search engines and social media) don't do enough to remind users what a breach of copyright is and remind them that using other people's property without permission is theft, plain and simple. 

 Links from my plagiarised recipe and photo were still linked back to this wretched blackpudding.club 7 days later on Bing, AOL, DuckDuckGo, MetaCrawler, Yahoo, here are just 2 examples. 

 

Right now, on the internet, you have to be ready and able to defend yourself and make them wish they had never plagiarised your work.

Tools To Defend Yourself

• Plan of attack: Although it is tempting to send an angry email to the site that has stolen your work immediately.  You are better off to take screenshots of the stolen work on their blog, also take screenshots of the results in Google and Google images, to prove not only the theft but the dates it occurred and show if it damaged your own search engine ranking.
• DMCA Takedown Notice: If the site ignores your messages then you need to send them DMCA takedown notice ( you can google blank forms you can use as a template). Once you have sent them a takedown notice, you should also send another to the company that hosts the site.
• Host Site: Often the host company 's initial response is they can't  be held responsible for what is done on the site, which is true in the first instance. But once you have sent them a DMCA takedown notice with the details of the plagiarism, which is a legal document, they are then also liable if the stolen material isn't completely removed from their servers.
• Shout & Blog about it: If your copyrighted work has genuinely been used without your permission then blog about it and let the world know. You have to be factual, but if you stick to the facts, then you are only telling the truth.  Of course, the people behind the rogue site will be angry about the world knowing of their dirty little secrets, but it might make them think twice before that they do this to any other site.
• Their Advertisers: If they are selling Google Ads or some other scheme, send them copies of the takedown notice to let them know the kind illegal behaviour they are being associated with.

Tumbling on Tumblr and other Useless stuff

As any blogger will tell you, getting your efforts read is harder than you think.

With ever increasing number of blogs worldwide that create an ever increasing number of blog posts per day, you can easily spend more time promoting your blog through social media sites than actually being creative.  Worse still is many of these so-called, must belong to sites, bring very little traffic (people) back to your blog. 

Instagram is a site that brings very little traffic.  I have 403 posts 847 followers but I'm lucky if I get one visitor a week, even though I include the URLs of any recipe and photograph in the post.  The biggest shortcoming of this site is it does not allow the user to add a live link to the post, I guess the money people figure they want to keep you on Instagram, not having you wondering off following interesting links.

This is short-sighted because it would add to the overall usefulness of Instagram and ensure it's long-term future if it was more connected to the rest of the Web.   Let's be frank, along with all the breathtaking pictures of vistas, photo-shopped buildings, stunning food or gorgeous models, there is an awful lot of rubbish.  All that said, it most certainly it can amuse and delight but bring people to your blog, no.

Facebook For a time it seemed lots of people couldn't live their lives without it and would share every minute detail with the world (whether the world wanted it or not).  I do get some traffic from sharing my blog posts on my own pages and with groups, I belong to, but it is only a tiny fraction compared to the number of likes and comments I get inside of Facebook, which of course does my blog no good at all.

Never the less compared to the rest Facebook is easy to use, easy to understand and keeps you in touch with people you care about and has even helped me find a few long lost friends.

Google+ The Jekyll and Hyde of social media. I guess google wanted to set up a rival social media platform but in its attempt to be different, at the moment, it is just not as good.  In fact, it is pretty damn hard to figure out.  Unlike Facebook, every time you share a post it makes a replica on your own google+ page, so you can end up with numerous copies cluttering up your home page.  It is hard to fathom how a company worth billions can not come up with a better, easier to use design....Go figure???? Though I must definitely add google+ is extremely good at getting your work seen.  Many of my google+ posts are on google page one results, though don't ask me exactly how I did it?

Tumblr For a long time I have had this love hate relationship with Tumblr.

On the one hand, my Tumblr account ranks third in my google page 1 results when I type in Chef Kevin Ashton and in China, it ranks even higher by being second.

So for the last year sporadically, I have tried to share many of my recipes with my Tumblr account. But so far most of my very attractive recipes have not even gotten 1 note (the Tumblr equivalent of a like).  Indeed although many of my posts are tagged according to their own recommendations they don't even show up in Tumblr search results.  I've always had the feeling that renegade Tumblr was poorly organised and had built its name on porn and other fringe elements. But today Tumblr has a much broader type of user and content but unfortunately the inner workings of this platform is still an incomprehensible jumble.  The bottom line is if you can't get your posts seen in Tumblr search results then there is no chance of broadening your audience.

Determined to improve the visibility of my posts I wrote several weeks ago to Tumblr support, spending the time to explain and give examples of what I was talking about.

Their first and second response were about as lazy a piece of support as I have ever experienced from any internet company, anywhere in the world.  They just directed me to links telling me stuff I had already read.  Not to be so easily put off I used my LinkedIn account to locate someone further up the chain of command and pleaded my case again... twice in fact and in essence he did the same thing, just offered suggested links, one of which was partially out of date.  :) 

No one actually went and took a look at my account, that would take too much effort. So the other day I was sent one of those automatic feedback forms from Tumblr so I let them have it with both barrels, telling them their support was as good as a torn jock strap.

Around three years ago Tumblr got bought up by Yahoo for  $1.1 billion dollars in cash, but despite this Yahoo couldn't figure out how to improve it and start making serious money. So much so that two years later Yahoo admitted that the $1.1 billion was mostly a waste of money.  Founder David Karp, who is now CEO I suspect has mixed feelings about how things have turned out. On the one hand he's set for life with a fortune estimated at $200 million , but on the other hand,  "he's sold out to the man" or woman perhaps in this case.    Either way, lots of people grumble about the quirkiness of Tumblr and unless Mr Karp can find a way to make his baby less dysfunctional, the writing is on the wall.

Several years on, Yahoo, now a failing giant got bought by Verizon the largest telecommunication company in the US.   Perhaps a final irony for Yahoo, is it behaved towards some of  Tumblr's sales staff like the dictionary definition of its name,  "An unrefined and often loud or disruptive person".

The question now is does Verizon have the know how to  make Tumblr work, or it will continue to become less relevant as a social media platform and continue Tumbling towards the exit door?

©Kevin Ashton 2016

 

Mommies Boys (modern day footballers)

"Overpriced, overpaid with egos as fragile as an eggshell!" Are the typical comments you hear more and more about today's footballers. Why is it when a football team does badly repeatedly, the manager is the one who loses his job?

Back in the real world.........when most people perform consistently badly in their job, they are the ones who get fired.

For my own sins, I've been a lifelong Aston Villa fan supporting my team through thick and thin since the early 1970's.   Early on in this love affair the team dropped into the old Third Division (now called Division 1), and eventually climbed two divisions back to the top.  But in the last 25 years, as the player's wages have soared they seemed to have totally lost touch with the sacrifices ordinary people make to support their team.

Supporters are no longer willing to keep paying ever higher prices to watch their team play without passion or effort.  For some reason, players simply don't see the correlation between their rising wages and the raised expectations of fans, nor the shrinking patience when players seemingly don't give maximum effort.

Aston Villa Football club are a prime example of what is wrong, desperately wrong, with the modern game.  For all the millions that have been spent by the past owner and now the current one, it is still down to the efforts, skills, fitness and commitment of the eleven players on the pitch.  Back in the seventies when Villa was down in Division 1 (for two seasons) the team often played in front of 30,000 plus crowds because they were exciting to watch and never gave up.  The old wooden stands made a thunderous sound with stamping feet and equally, the cheering, chanting and applause matched the heroic effort of the team.  Walking back to the bus stop with a hoarse throat as we reminisced the highlights of the game.

For all the money sloshing around in the game, why are so many top prospects not instructed how to behave on the pitch, in public and to appreciate the special position in society they are given?   Instead, like a bad joke stuck in a repeating loop the acts of stupidity, greed, lack of self-control, poor choice of friends are constantly played out in public.  Where are the Academies in all of this? Where are the football authorities clamping down on disrepute brought to a game we gave the world?

Is it beyond the wit of man to teach these kids that the price of fame and success is to learn self-control, not just for the benefit of the clubs but to help prolong their short careers. In recent years my own team has suffered from more than its share of players never reaching their potential, often running out of chances and career before they grow up.

Tenerife Grief

Touted by many in the game to have tremendous talent, Jack Grealish has shown flashes of that talent for both Aston Villa and recently for the England under 21's. But even more memorable is his loutish, out of control, laddish behaviour.  This lack of self-control has already gotten young Mr Grealish into trouble both on and off  the field; but so far no amount of telling off's, fines, or being made to train with the reserves has managed to change this young man's ways.  For the moment, his repetitive bad behaviour is forgiven as long as he still shows such exciting potential. So will he reach that potential, or continue to be an accident waiting to happen? Jack joined Aston Villa at the age of six, so why hasn't anyone at the club taught him that part of being a professional footballer is good behaviour?

 

MacDonald's Man-Flabby Agbonlahor

But Jack Grealish is not on his own when it comes to badly behaved current Villa players. It was local gossip that Gabby Agbonlahor's car could always be seen in the car park at MacDonald's, no wonder he has constantly battled with weight problems. And when he is not scoffing burgers down, he is getting another woman pregnant!

Another product of Aston Villa's Acadamy, Gabby was touted as a future legend but instead of working hard, improving and flourishing after getting the call up from England, he has frittered his talent away. Now when he should be in his prime at the age of 29 he is in danger of being released. And just like many other footballers in the modern era, he is in denial about who is responsible.

This current plague is not just a problem for Villa's homegrown talent, sometimes buying a "star player" can bring the same results

Stan the Man

Ex-Villa Player Stanley Collymore who now hosts a popular football call-in program has several times torn into the current Villa team (this year's and last) for their lack of effort and lack of loyalty to the club.  All of the accusations Stan makes are valid ones, but Stan has a short memory because his own career at Aston Villa was filled with his: lack of effort, egotistical behaviour, and only 7 goals in 47 games as a striker!

He too showed stunning potential earlier in his career by scoring 41 goals in 65 games for Nottingham Forest , which got him a transfer to the big time with Liverpool.  But after several mediocre, seasons they sold him to Villa.  This should have been his dream move after all Villa were the team he supported as a boy, but he has never worked hard enough to get past his demons to become the legend he had the potential to be.

 

The Enablers 

The success of the Premier League and all the money pumped into the game by Sky has glossed over these problems but they are not going away.   TV Pundits, Sky executives and the media all seem to forget where most of the money for the mega TV contracts comes from....us.   Not just Sky Sports subscribers, but all Sky subscribers (because they spread their cost), and now, of course, BT subscribers too.  Millions of ordinary people, with ordinary wages paying to keep this narcissistic bunch of wastrels in the style they have become accustomed to. The problem of bad boy footballers was around long before the formation of the Premier League and Sky TV, but the huge injection of cash into the game has definitely exacerbated and fuelled it.  It used to be that established, successful footballers would from time to time behave badly, but now the situation has moved on to where the starlets of the game are misbehaving before their career gets going.

This problem is not just with Aston Villa, other teams have their share of bad boys who constantly bite the hand that feeds them.  Yes, there are many decent, hard working footballers who do respect the privileged position they are in. And since they rub elbows with the bad boys at the training ground I wish they would tell these silly Mommies Boys to grow up.

Blogarama-Kings of Plagiarism

 

It seems as the internet gets bigger so does the theft.  People think they can post your articles, recipes and photographs (as if they are the author) without getting caught.  In recent weeks I have spent far, far too long defending my stuff from thieves. Every time, I have done so I have been successful but it is stressful and time-consuming when I would rather spend my time being creative.

The biggest plum of them all without a shadow of a doubt is a site called Blogarama.com

I recently discovered that had imported a feed from my food blog without my permission, they had even created a page Chef Kevin Ashton  (which you can see below) giving the impression I have done this myself. 

Worse still if you look closely Blogarama invite me to claim my own blog???

They claim that taking my RSS feed is driving traffic to my food blog, but that is simply not the case.

Although Blogarama did link the stolen content back to my blog, because they posted the whole of each post there was no need

for readers to leave Blogarama and go to my blog. And my content along with the content of 1000's of other blogs create a site that can sell Advertisements.

I belong to a similar site called BlogCatalog, but BlogCatalog does not take your RSS feed without permission.

Blogarama did not use to be the rogue site it is today, but falling traffic and then a change of ownership they now seem to be prepared to whatever it takes to raise their traffic level and thus earning potential. 

After I sent them several emails, threatening legal action, they put a block on the content, however, this does not stop the links showing up in google results with blogarama.com still labelled ON MY PICTURES
So far I have 26 different screen shots showing their theft and I have posted just a small selection to show you what I mean.

In this process, I have also come across numerous similar complaints by other bloggers saying they too had the copyright breached. If you are a blogger, I strongly and I mean strongly, suggest you google your name together with Blogarama to see if you are also a victim of this mass fraud, here are just two examples. The first is to an article complaining about Blogarama breaching their copyright. http://www.geneabloggers.com/splog-alert-blogarama-violating-copyright/

The second example is from a blogger seeking advice on Reddit and complaining how Blogarama had not only reproduced their blog content (without permission) they wanted to charge them $9 a month for the theft!!!! please take a close look for yourself.

 

 Google, Facebook and Microsoft 
The heavyweights on the internet like google should and could do more to help protect the creative work of others. Whilst this breach of my copyright is not google's fault, it does indirectly make a lot of money from the content posted on the internet; it would show good leadership if google, Microsoft and facebook found a way to make this kind of theft harder to do and harder to get away with. As the internet continues to grow so will crime until the principle players defend the content the Web is built on. Even reporting a breach of copyright is a daunting task filled with gobbledygook that dissuades many casual bloggers from fighting back.

All over the internet, there are people willing to take your creative work, change a few words and call it their own, it is time to stop them. 

Update: Taking a person's RSS feed without permission and then charging them $9 a month to direct traffic back to them is Extortion and I strongly recommend all Blogarama members to file a complaint with the FBI (regardless of your nationality) at this address https://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx 

Not only do Blogarama hide who owns them using a company called WHOISGUARD, INC. who are based in Panama, they also hide where the site is hosted. They use a network service called CloudFlare. But you can fill in an abuse form and they will reveal who hosts Blogarama. https://www.cloudflare.com/abuse/form

©Kevin Ashton 2016

 

Airbrushing British History-The Thatcher Legacy

I don’t normally criticise the dead and this post is much toned down than it started out,never the less too many people in powerful places are trying to AIR BRUSH Margaret Thatcher’s leadership into something it will never be…..Great.

Margaret Thatcher’s Judgement

She was not a great leader because she showed no compassion towards her enemies.   She was not a great parent because look how badly her kids turned out (even for all of their advantages).

She was not a great and astute thinker because her track record is littered with examples such as calling Nelson Mandela a terrorist or supporting General Pinochet the Chilean Fascist Dictator.

Or supporting the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot even though this despotic regime went on to murder  1 million of its own people.  Or perhaps her supporters would call her astute for removing the Naval vessel that guarded the Falklands prior to the invasion to save money?

Ding Dong 

Even in death she has split a nation and reminded us how wide the gulf has become between the Haves and the Have not’s.    And before someone accuses me of jealousy…. I mean Those that  “Have” a moral conscience and those that “Have” not!!

 

The Funeral Costs

How come the Queen of Privatisation couldn’t arrange free enterprise to pay for her funeral? 

After all, surely a private company could do it more efficiently? Not to mention more cost effective.    

Worse than the wasting of £10 million pounds of public money and the unnecessary recalling of parliament is the continuing Airbrushing of history.  Making Mrs Thatcher out to be some kind of moral hero of Great Britain when she was anything but…..

 

Privatisation

The Tories often tout how wonderful companies become after being privatised, but under closer scrutiny are they?

School Dinners - She helped give birth to the Turkey Twizzler by her education act 1980 which made it possible to sell off school dinner contracts and remove a law protecting the nutritional value of school dinners that dated back to 1905. This brought about the sell-off of catering contracts, the firing of many dinner ladies to lower costs, the use of more, junk ingredients, the introduction of vending machines and the junk food sold from them and was one of the tenets along with the advent fast food restaurants and the invention of the "kiddie menu" which help fuel the obesity crisis in the UK we are still fighting today.

 

British Coal – Destroyed an industry in areas of the UK without offering any alternative for thousands of workers.

Railways- Many of these national assets were sold off cheaply particularly the railways.  And now the UK rail network is back to its dislocated state it suffered during the Second World War.  So if you want to make a journey from say Kidderminster to Bodmin Parkway in Cornwall it involves a lot of changes and waiting. But are rail fares any cheaper? Are the trains cleaner and do they now run mostly on time, absolutely not but they are still subsidised by the British taxpayer and the cost of rail travel is the highest in Europe. 

North Sea Oil- When she sold off the North Sea oil fields the British public were told it would benefit us all, but I only see the benefit to the shareholders.

Utilities-When she sold off the gas companies, water and electric companies who has benefitted the most shareholders or taxpayers?  In relative terms would your bills have risen this steeply? If there were no Millionaire bosses or mis-selling (and subsequent fines) to pay for?

 Loosening of regulations

Banks-Perhaps Mrs Thatcher’s crowning glory was to deregulate the financial industry and set them on the path to their excesses, thievery and mis-selling which put us all in Hock for years!!! The financial crash of 2008 could not have happened without Margaret Thatcher.

 

Insurance Industry

Let’s not forget before the bank fiasco her loosening of regulations helped all kinds of mis-selling sprout up in the Insurance industry. Again we the gullible were told lighter regulation would mean cheaper insurance. Even today in 2013 and beyond the mis-selling scandals continue to pay out millions, which of course raises the cost of insurance.

Maggie and the Press

She invited Rupert Murdock to buy up some of the failing British Newspapers and look how that turned out.

During her premiership, Thatcher had the second-lowest average approval rating, at 40 percent, of any post-war Prime Minister. At yet the government is honouring her akin to Winston Churchhill.

Let us not forget

Husband Denis bought the waste disposal company Industrial Waste Service who did business with the American Mafia according to the documentary aired on British Television Channel 4 in July 1989.   http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19890704&id=PQ01AAAAIBAJ&sjid=oKULAAAAIBAJ&pg=4471,640808

At the time the story got more coverage in the USA and it is rumoured it took the intervention of President Reagan to save Denis from further embarrassing revelations. Funny how it seems almost impossible to google the details (because they’ve been airbrushed).

 

Like Father Like Son?

In 1998 South African authorities investigated a company owned by Mark Thatcher for allegedly running loan shark operations. According to the Star of Johannesburg', the company had offered unofficial small loans to hundreds of police officers, military personnel and civil servants and then pursued them with debt collectors.   He claimed that officers had defrauded him and charges were dropped.  It was also suggested that he had profited from contracts to supply aviation fuel in various African countries. In 2004 he was arrested in South Africa in connection with the 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt), and pleaded guilty in January 2005 to breaking anti-mercenary legislation.   At the time the Sunday Times suggested that he had personal assets of £60 million, most of which was in offshore accounts.

For his role in an attempted coup, he was fined R3,000,000 rand (approximately £313,000 or $500,000) and received a four-year suspended jail sentence.

Following his guilty plea he left South Africa and lived in Monaco for one year on a temporary residency permit; this was not renewed as Sir Mark was said to be on a list of 'undesirables' who would not be allowed further residency and he was required to leave by mid-2006.   His wife and children moved back to the USA, but he was refused an entry visa due to his conviction in South Africa. Do children learn this from loving, normal, decent and moral parents?

 The Delusions of later life

Margaret Thatcher awarded herself the hereditary title of Baroness which was extremely unusual. By now deluded by her own power and spoke just like Queen Elizabeth does using the royal “WE”   “we are now a grandmother” as if she was royalty.   But unlike the royal family she had spent a lot of her leadership serving her toff friends rather than the country as a whole.

 

Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead

So should we mourn her passing?..............Absolutely not.

Should we denounce the greedy sinners her policies encouraged absolutely YES!!!!

But unfortunately, there is still greed and arrogance aplenty in the leadership of our country.  

As for Tony Blair, he should be kicked out of the Labour party for speaking recently kindly about a woman who should have been his nemesis if he wasn’t so much of a Maggie Thatcher Wannabe,

I can't wait until someone suggests Tony should be made up to hereditary Baron Blair on the New Years honours list.

Another article worth reading

http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/04/14/thatchers-last-wish-another-clunker-from-the-iron-lady/