Boss Radio

Robert Plant won a Bafta. He's already been awarded an MBE. To say this more than somewhat miffed me would be an understatement.

As a member of Led Zeppelin Plant was totally involved with the 'writing' of a number of their songs which other people had written first. When the original writers sued their publishing company settled out of court, but refused to pay any back royalties, telling at least one of the victims that he could sue for back royalties if he honestly thought he had the legal muscle that the Zeppelin team could run to. About as deserving of an award as a banker and his bonus.

Of course it doesn't begin or end with Plant. F1 driver Lewis Hamilton was also awarded an MBE. He was educated at the British taxpayer's expense, but as soon as he started earning the big money he relocated to Switzerland as a tax exile. Apparently he doesn't feel he should be helping with the education of his future competition. About as deserving of an award as an MP and his payrise.

Then there's every single British Olympic gold medal winner getting some kind of an award in the New Year's Honours list. Why? Isn't winning an Olympic gold enough? One of these lucky athletes was cyclist Chris Hoy who was able to collect his honour in the company of his mother Carol, who was made an MBE for her work as a specialist nurse at the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh. Her son won the rather higher award of a knighthood. So winning us a medal at the olympics is worth more than a lifetime of helping others lead a better life, and maybe even saving one or two of them along the way? About as deserving of an award as Margaret Thatcher...

Ah... She already won one didn't she? Lady Thatcher.

Sounds like a female hair removal product to me.

In all the years I've been here there has been little to no media interest in me, heck, the entire street has never been on TV, in fact the whole village has escaped the attention of the gentlemen of the media.

Yesterday the news was on and I was discussing one of the news stories with my mother when I saw something very familiar to me on the screen. It was the housing estate that they've built where the old school used to be, right outside my front door. In fact one of the pictures looked like it had been taken from the roof of my Land Rover. It appears that a teenager-in-care had been burned to death and an investigation was going on to find out how it happened.

They've not been there for a year yet and already they're on national TV.

OK, who can I set fire to?



I shall probably be ashamed of this post when more details come to light (You should be ashamed of yourself right now you miserable toerag - The Man with the Big Hat).

Amazingly, 'Ofcom' isn't a website dedicated to getting us all to switch off everything to save the planet, it's the organisation that controls the radio waves in the UK, although why they didn't just call it TOTCTRWITUK, or maybe an anagram of that, I don't really know. What does 'Ofcom' mean? Please tell me it's not 'Office of Communications', I'd much rather it stood for 'Obstinate fargling creatures on methadone' or something else more appropriate.

According to their website "The radio spectrum (the frequencies on which services are broadcast) is a scarce resource; therefore, the government has empowered the Radio Authority to plan and manage its use for the commercial radio sector. This is to ensure that the relevant frequencies are used efficiently and effectively."

I don't quite see the connection between 'Commercial sector' and 'Scarce resource'. Why exactly should scarce resources which by rights should belong to everyone, be given to the commercial sector? And since when has the commercial sector used anything efficiently and effectively? I think there are a couple of tribes about to be thrown out of their rainforest who don't quite see things that way. Maybe it depends upon what you actually regard as being 'effective' or 'efficient'.

Having money does not make you an expert, it makes you rich. There is no evidence to suggest that just because you could afford to bid more for your bit of the radio spectrum you have a better plan for it, it simply means that you're going to have to make a lot more money to pay for it, and that means heading straight for the lowest common denominator with money in its pockets.

Adult orientated pop with loads of flashbacks to a better time then.

It's long been proven that pop radio makes money, so the pop radio people can afford to bid big and win the national licences, thereby giving us national pop stations. Niche markets like jazz, country, soul, or Himalayan throat music can only afford, at best, regional, and more often, local licences. Now c'mon, is that really efficiency in action? It's obviously not effective because it means that huge swathes of the country aren't covered by a station playing their kind of music.

To make niche market radio viable it needs a national licence, that way it may just drag in enough listeners overall to pull in enough advertisers to pay for it. Pop radio can survive quite happily on a local licence, any city in the country has enough pop fans to drag in the ads and pay the bills for at least two stations.

So why are the licences being handed out in the opposite direction?

Answers, on a postcard, to Ofcom, please.

I got a call from a friend. She'd downloaded a security program from McAfee and now it wouldn't let her into her computer. The only 'phone numbers she had were either in America or £1 a minute. Mind you, McAfee are nothing if not generous (Note - If there's anyone from McAfee reading this, that means that you're not generous so you must be nothing. Hmmm... I could have been a little cleverer there come to think of it. Which I obviously didn't. Think of it that is. Where was I? Oh yes- ). If you stay on the 'phone for over quarter of an hour someone will ring you back. Right. You've bought their product and then paid them another £16 (Less commission), so then they'd deign to ring you back...

Here's how I see it.

McAfee are an internet security company. They make their money out of people using the internet. This should mean that they want people to use the internet, but in point of fact they'd rather that you didn't, if you don't mind. The internet has this handy little device called 'email', you've probably come across it yourself at some time, it lets you get in touch with people ever so easily over the internet, and that's the problem. They'd rather you didn't. It's far too easy for you little whingers to just whack off a swift letter whenever the fancy takes you, or their software breaks down.

They're not alone in this of course. Boris Johnson, living proof that Tory voters shouldn't have the vote, refused to accept letters from his constituents unless they came through the regular mail with a stamp on them. Fax and email, he said, just made it too easy for people to bother him with trivia and he didn't have time for it. The main difference between Boris and McAfee is that he's a prat who knows no better, whereas McAfee are a major corporation who know exactly how the net runs, it's their business, and they most deicdedly do know better.

So, back to my friend with the recalcitrant McAfee security program.

She wondered if I could go online and find a way of getting in touch with McAfee for her that wouldn't involve taking out a 2nd mortgage. Piece of p!$£ I thought, and came upstairs to turn my mighty machine on.

Finding McAfee was no problem, but that was as far as it went. Although their front page boasted real human beans online and on the 'phone the site had no email addresses or 'phone numbers. It tried to be helpful though. It asked me what software the problem was with. I telephoned my friend back and asked her the actual name of the program. She passed the information on and I went back to the computer. It asked me to choose a problem from this list. The list didn't have 'Stupid computer won't let me in' on it, so I chose 'Install/uninstall problems'. It gave me another list. That didn't have 'Stupid computer won't let me in' on it either, but this time there was nothing on the list even remotely like the problem.

OK. So I tried another tack, clicked on a few obscure buttons, and got taken to online help, which offered to download a diagnostic tool. Incredible. Still, I figured, maybe once that fails it will give me some other method of getting in touch. Go ahead, I told it, download.

It did.

Now I may not have mentioned this but I run on Linux. The stupid program didn't even notice. Instead it tried to run. I was really tempted to load it into Wine and see what happened next but time was a-wasting. It was time to start getting nasty. So I went to the top.

Corporate customers always get a better deal then everyday jerks like you and me. At corporate level someone actually thinks to themselves "What does a customer do if our program locks them out and someone else has to contact us to sort it out?". There is a telephone number.

Ring it. Get told you're ringing the wrong number. Ask politely for a transfer to the right number. Sorry, that's a different area altogether (I don't believe that for a second, but what they hey?) Well can you tell me what the right number is then, please? No, not that number, that one charges a quid an hour. My friend has just paid you for software that's locked her out of her own machine. It's not up to her to pay you to fix it. No, to be honest I really don't believe that there is no other means of getting in touch with tech support.

Finally charm and determination pays off and I get an ordinary 'phone number. The story should end there, but no. I telephone my friend and the impatient little biddy has only managed to get online and has downloaded the diagnostic tool. As it downloads and goes to work she explains that she and her husband just kept switching off and trying again until the stupid computer got tired of it all and let them in. I must try and hack into the Pentagon using that method someday...

For those who like a complete story, the tool diagnosed that the software needed updating and did so. McAfee in one final burst of stupidity had let her download out of date software. I've no idea if the downloads fixed the problem.

And there's another idea I really don't have. I really have no idea why the rest of you put up with this kind of stuff. Windows doesn't work because it can't work. There are too many permutations of hard and software for it to handle, and MS don't help matters by making each new iteration of the system only semi-compatible with its predecesors. Linux doesn't bite. It's just as easy to use as Windows, and it works.

It's also free and doesn't feature any £1 a minute helplines.