VinceH's Miscellany

Some of my family and their friends are currently on holiday in Spain and their return flight is – or, rather, was – scheduled for tonight. That return flight is with Easyjet – they always fly with Easyjet because Easyjet flies to where they always go. It’s a no-brainer.

Obviously, though, there is a bit of a problem at the moment – the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, which has been erupting, leading to an ash cloud which is disrupting flights. The flight my family and their friends were booked on, like many thousands of other flights, has been cancelled. And that’s fair enough – it’s far better to keep people grounded, albeit stranded overseas, than to take them up into the air when there is a risk that their aeroplane could be brought unceremoniously down.

However, being stranded overseas, they need to be accommodated until further notice, and that costs money, and not only that, at least one of the people in the group I’m talking about is self-employed, so he’s losing money while he’s stuck over there. (Again, quite probably like a great many people who are stranded overseas).

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I wondered how long it would take – and the answer is one and a half to two months.

One and a half to two months, that is, before spammers found a new potential outlet for their rubbish: the comments section on this blog. (Not that there are very many people reading it!)

No spammer has actually tried using the comments to spread their garbage as yet, but today I received a user registration from a very spammy looking address.

Well, I have news for you Mr Potential-Spammer – any user’s first comment, and ALL comments including URLs have to be approved by me. Don’t bother.

I received the following invoice a few days ago from TeleBilling Ltd, showing a total amount payable of £39.50.

Scan of TeleBilling invoice

I didn’t recognise the name TeleBilling Ltd. I didn’t recognise the number supposedly called. I didn’t recognise the service that I was apparently being charged for. And I also didn’t recognise the number given as “my” telephone number: (more…)

It was only a really, really trivial thing – but that’s what it looks like: My local paper have removed a comment I made on their website, and I can only imagine that it was removed because I shamed them.

The news report I commented on is this story about the son of a recent lottery winner. When I read it I noticed the comment that the chap in question wasn’t happy that his “personal life had come out” – the fifth paragraph in the article, which reveals where he lives, and his wife and son’s names and ages. The paragraph before gives his age and what he does. Indeed, later in the article, it points out that he originally claimed to do something else, in order to keep his real job a secret – I imagine most, if not all of the rest of the details I’ve mentioned were also included in what he didn’t want revealed.

The Bristol Evening Post published that information on their website in the very story in which they quote the man as saying he was unhappy about those details being published. Ironic, I thought.

And that’s pretty much what my comment said. I quote from memory, but it was something like:

‘[He] said he was “not happy” that his personal life had come out’ – quotes the Evening Post, while publishing those very details. How ironic.

Today, that comment is gone.

Removed.

Deleted.

Censored.