CUNNING WHEEZES

[Stanley]

I see a new cunning wheeze has reared it's head. There are reports of spurious job-seeking sites being set up which encourage applicants to contact them via 070 numbers which look like mobile phone numbers but are in fact premium rate lines. Of course they keep the applicants on the line for as long as possible and when the bill arrives they find they have a bill for about £50 for the initial call.

[Cathy]

Have you heard if the above scheme has been nipped in the bud Stanley, surely no-one would actually pay the bill ??

[Stanley]

I noticed there was a misprint in my original post (Me eyes!) and it should have been £50 not £590! Haven't heard anything further Cathy but as the bill was for the phone service people will have to pay to retain the service. These get-rich-quick scams pop up so frequently and are so hard to stop that I doubt if anything concrete has been done to stop it. There is always someone out there with no conscience who will take advantage of people in need. The perennial one is the offer of work in the home like addressing envelopes where people find that due to the small print they are working for panuts. Those have been about for as long as I can remember (and that's a long time!).
The biggest current wheezes ar the official ones like the use of the outsourced benefit assessment service provided by ATOS under which people are rejected for benefit on very precarious grounds using a tick-box procedure. There is an appeal process and about half of those who use it get their benefit reinstated but then find they are booked for another 'annual assessment'. I have a friend who even though currently being treated for a seriously broken leg was rejected and had to appeal. He got it back but they are still chasing him.

[Stanley]

Accept money for asking questions in Parliament..... When found out, deny everything but resign the Whip.

[Stanley]

Add the three peers caught with their hands in the till....

[Stanley]

I have a feeling that burying unwelcome news may be the current Cunning Wheeze. Eerie silence about 'the shocking love affair'.....

[Nolic]

My bet's on Sam Cam and Boris. Nolic

[Tizer]

Mine's on Boris and Boris!

[Stanley]

Whoever it is, the security clamp-down is working well. I wonder how long it can last?

[Stanley]

I have an idea that the latest pronouncements about the siting of wind farms is a CW to massage Tory voters in the Shires. Surely not!

[EileenDavid]

We have all been duped here into buying 2 breathalyzer kits in our cars to conform with the law only to find that Hollande is on the board of directors and it has now been stopped. Eileen

[Tizer]

So, Hollande has done an `Ernie Marples' on you then!

[Stanley]

Send the government an invoice for the expense plus your time and trouble, you never know, you might get a surprise! I did it to Barclay's Bank once after a dispute caused by their mistake, they rectified it and paid me the £50 I charged them for my time and two letters. I was amazed, but then realised that if it's an invoice and hard copy they are forced to deal with it. This is why banks and similar organisations hate written communication (Especially by Registered Post) because there is an audit trail. That's a Cunning Wheeze open to us all and should be used more often.

[EileenDavid]

Don't think they would pay out knowing how much the French like the English Eileen

[Stanley]

Ah, but I don't think that would come into it Eileen. They are forced to respond to an invoice no matter who sends it in. In effect you're using their system against them, they have to obey the law.

[Stanley]

I hate 'weasel language'! After news that records of an inspection that missed high levels of deaths in a hospital were destroyed 'on the orders of a senior executive', The CQC puts out a press release which states "There has been no systemic cover-up". So it's possible there has been a non-systemic cover up? So do we assume that they are admitting that a 'senior executive' did illegally order records to be destroyed? How can they be allowed to hide behind semantic tricks designed to minimise public reaction?
See this LINK for more detail of this sorry affair.

[Tripps]

I criticised Tesco recently for reducing the quantity of strawberries in a punnet to 300g, whilst keeping the price the same at £2.00. In fairness -I must report that they returned to a full pound yesterday (454g). I guess it's due to supply availability, and the fact that people are reluctant to pay more than £ 2 a punnet.

[Tripps]

This CQC business is really disturbing. I heard the current Chairman on R4 this morning say that inspections were done by "for example firemen or policemen" , and that Morecambe maternity unit had been inspected for just one day. He had weasel words for what happened to those responsible - he just kept saying "they have left" and would not be drawn on detail.
He defended the redaction of names in the report - saying it would have contravened the Data Protection Act, and resulted in legal action.
This from wikipedia....
On 1 October 2010 Dame Jo Williams was confirmed as the Chair of CQC. She resigned on 7 September 2012 after it emerged that she asked the then Health Secretary Andrew Lansley to remove 'whistleblower' Kay Sheldon from the CQC board amid allegations surrounding Sheldon's mental health.[7] Sheldon had tried to raise concerns .......

[Stanley]

Too right Tripps. Just one example: they have an email that is obviously criminal behaviour and have refused to give the person's name citing Data Protection. I don't buy this approach. If someone does something criminal they should lose any such protection. As I've said elsewhere, I will believe all the rhetoric about making executives responsible when I see them being led out in handcuffs. Don't hold your breath!
Most unfortunate that the chairman seemed to be smiling when making his piece to camera, gave the wrong impression. It's high time we went after these people who seem to think they are immune to normal modes of behaviour and retribution for misdeeds.
(Remember the old song? "It's the rich what gets the money. It's the poor what gets the blame")

[Tizer]

Later this morning the Data Commissioner was on the Today programme saying they were wrong to cite the Data Protection Act as preventing them from giving names.

[Stanley]

I heard that as well Tiz and it seems this morning that reality may have dawned on them. Will they sack the lawyer who gave the advice? Or name him/her?
I was asking the other day about the Candy Crush 'free' download because I knew from the money being spent on advertising that it was a Cunning Wheeze to make money. Grand daughter Laura called in yesterday and so I asked her. I was right, it is a scam (sorry, a clever app) that relies on addiction. You have so many 'lives' and if you lose them all the app is disabled so you have to buy more lives. They sell other tweaks as well and of course if someone is hooked on the game they pay up. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch!

[Stanley]

I am struck time and time again by the cunning way advertisers use words. I always try to analyse the language they use and the Bertoli advert struck me yesterday. They make a spread and their description in the advert is "a delicious blend with butter and olive oil'. I suspect that the majority of viewers would interpret this as being a statement saying that the spread is a mixture of butter and olive oil but if you think about it, a mixture of axle grease and tiny proportions of butter and olive oil could equally well be described as containing butter and olive oil.
As Stafford Beer once told me when I asked him for one sentence describing communication, "It isn't what is said, how it is transmitted or how it is received. It is what is understood'. In this case the understanding is not likely to be an accurate impression of what is in the spread. This is dangerous when selling a basic food. (Or am I just being a pedant?) Either way, this qualifies as a Cunning Wheeze!

[Tizer]

That's a wheeze with a long history. I don't know if it's still the same but in the 1950s Palmolive soap benefited from the word `olive' in the name although it was made mostly from palm oil (cheap) with a little bit of olive oil (expensive). In fact that wheeze is even craftier than it seems because the soap doesn't contain either oil - like all traditional soap, the oil is hydrolysed with caustic soda to release the fatty acids and it's these that make up the soap, not the oil itself. Another wheeze is the labelling of wine bottles. They often state two grape varieties but the wine will be mostly the cheaper variety with a smidgeon of the expensive one. Understanding cunning wheezes should be on every school curriculum.

[Tripps]

This has to be a 'cunning wheeze'.

I have just had an email from my car insurance company which says I can get an 'up to 10% discount' on next renewal, if I download an App to my mobile phone, and put it in my car every time I go out in the future. A quick look at the T&C's shows they can do what they want with the resulting data, including selling it on to third parties.

They say it monitors my driving style - acceleration, braking, routes, journey lengths etc.

Do you think I should tell them that I bought an Android mobile, but it's so complicated that I couldn't be bothered so I put it in a drawer, and went back to my previous phone?

[Stanley]

I like that! Just the sort of thing I would do if someone gave me one... Well done David. As for the insurance company, tell them as little as possible!
Tiz, I have the 'History of Unilever' and 'Enterprise in soap and chemicals' by A E Musson and have read them both. You will never eat margarine again.....