The Weekly Round-Up: 27.01.06

Sinister goings on this week have made the headlines, with everybody's favourite internet search giant Google controversially getting into bed with the Chinese government and agreeing to filter any searches the authorities don't want their people to see.

So, it's like search, only different... and by 'different', of course, we mean it reeks of propaganda which really should have been left in the last century, not endorsed in this century by one of the world's most recognised and popular brand names.

But what did we expect really?

Money and the very compelling opportunities presented by a billion-plus person market in China very quickly help to overcome any troublesome issues such as ethics or morality, we're sure.

And let's not forget most major multinationals have made their fair share of controversial decisions where ethics took a back seat, so Google is just graduating to the top table where there is little place for sentiment or idealism. Not when there's money to be made and history books to be rewritten.

Understandably Google has annoyed a great many people with its decision.

Kate Allen, UK director of Amnesty International, said: "Google and other companies must stop colluding with the Chinese government in restricting people's rights to freedoms of opinion, expression and information.

"Google must conduct its business in China in a way that respects human rights."

Indeed.

Moving on, though sticking with China and the Chinese, there are some red faces all round at the UK Treasury this week after one hapless employee accidentally sent a very inappropriate email to some of the most important names in journalism.

Its content, which you might file loosely in the drawer marked 'racist' – in the cheapest, tackiest Bernard Manning sense of the word – encouraged the recipient to pull the corners of their eyes in order to make themselves squint 'as if you were Chinese'. By so doing, an optical illusion would unfold making them able to read a distorted sentence attached to the email.

The email had the subject line 'Advantage of being Chinese' and the endorsement 'This is brilliant' in the body of the email.

Robbie Browse, the half-witted young man in question, intended the email to reach his clearly quite progressive-minded friends but instead the hapless fool, who works (or should that be 'worked', we wonder) in the Treasury press office, sent it to an email list which included the editors of the Observer and Sunday Telegraph as well as senior journalists from the Mirror and Daily Mail.

Browse then immediately followed up that email with a grovelling apology to the same list... clearly unaware that most journalists probably don't read a fraction of emails sent to generic email lists and he was probably only drawing attention to his crass blunder.

The apology (or appeal for clemency) read: "Dear All, Please disregard the earlier email, sent to the standard Treasury press list in error, and please accept my sincere apologies for any offence it has inadvertently caused.

"My job is to email out press notices and I regret that I have accidentally sent a personal email to you. Please accept my apologies again. Robbie Browse."

Still, you have to admire the young man's optimism for using the present tense '"My job is" rather than something a little more past tense – like 'was'.

Sure enough a Treasury spokesman told the BBC: "Appropriate action is being taken."

Though quite what that means we're not too sure. However, a secret squirrel inside the UK's corridors of power told the Round-Up: "This represents the ultimate nightmare for a civil servant. I can just imagine the pure terror this would have instilled, not just in the man, but his seniors, directors and ministers. It takes a lot to be sacked from the civil service but this guy might just be able to pull it off."

Still, the woman at the Daily Mail probably found it funny.

Speaking of terribly ill-considered 'humour', the comedy masterminds behind critically acclaimed series such as The Office and Father Ted have turned their chuckle-guns on the IT industry, with a new sit-com set to debut on UK screens this week.

And it's bad.

Really bad.

The IT Crowd will be available to download from today (Friday... in case you're not sure) on the Channel 4 website and will air on the channel the next week.

The Round-Up has already seen the first episode and in doing so has given up 30 minutes of its life which will never come around again.

Because The IT crowd is to the advancement of British comedy what office parties are to the advancement of contemporary dance as an art form.

The laughter track is the first real giveaway, for starters.

A good comedy doesn't need a laughter track to tell you when something was meant to be funny. The artless and clumsy build-up to predictable, laboured and lazy gags culminates in a staccato blast of laughter, which leaves the poor put-upon viewer to either wonder where that laughter is coming from (surely it's not from the TV?) or they're left to mull over the notion that what they've just seen was actually intended to be funny.

It seems as out of place as canned laughter during random moments at a funeral.

The real crime here isn't that it's a woeful programme (the Round-Up physically can't bring itself to use the word 'comedy', even in a sarcastic manner) but that everything about the team behind it suggested it might be great. However, even the presence of Chris Morris, of Brass Eye fame, couldn't save it.

The Round-Up can only hope it might be a slow burner... and let's face it, somebody out there has commissioned several series of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps so there's hope for even the lamest series.

However, if The IT Crowd was a horse, they'd be pulling the screens around it about now and the vet would be reaching for the shotgun in the back of his Land Rover.

And speaking – albeit on a contrived level – of putting lame beasts out of their misery, the Round-Up couldn't write anything this week without mentioning the poor old whale who swam into trouble in the River Thames and reminded us that for all the troubles in the world you can't beat a story about animal welfare for uniting the nation.

Wars are second, natural disasters third – but always animals in trouble first

And of course it is a shame that Wally – as she was known (possibly because of her sense of direction) - won't get the chance to live forever and ever like all the other whales in the ocean.

One technology PR company even ran a blog from their offices overlooking the Thames and went out on an around-the-clock whale watch.

They know who they are and the irony here is that they actually run perhaps the least regularly updated blog in the history of lapsed blogging... and then a whale swims past their offices and it's all hands on deck.

Did somebody say 'motivation issues'?

And now there is a new Wally-related drama unfolding on eBay where an auction by the British Divers Marine Life Rescue charity is expected to raise funds to cover the £5,000 cost of the sadly failed rescue operation.

For a minute the Round-Up was concerned the lot might be a 17-foot long whale carcass (buyer collects) but fortunately it's just a little red watering can which was used to keep Wally hydrated on her long journey to the Thames estuary.

So in essence it's a watering can, which you could buy for £1 at a pound shop. The difference is this one has been a little closer to a dead whale.

Originally the sale attracted bids of up to £115,000 but the charity expressed concerns that some of these bids may not be genuine. (Really, you think?)

As such it has restarted the auction on eBay and bids are now up to £10,000.

For a watering can, in case you'd forgotten.

Speaking of charities, most of us will be aware that the charity Scope used to be called the Spastics Society until it decided in 1994 that a change of name might not be a bad idea.

They probably had a good point.

However, another organisation has now also taken the name Scope for its own business, though hopefully there won't be too many conflicts here.

Telecoms equipment manufacturers Alcatel, Ericsson, Motorola, NEC, Nokia and Siemens have formed an industry alliance to do something or other and decided upon the name Scope for their little gang-of-six.

The marketing masterminds behind that one might want to have done a little more research, the Round-Up suggests.

And finally, to another example of curious marketing. Intel this week announced the release of its Centrino Duo Technology.

No, we didn't particularly care either but to coincide with this, and to exploit a paper-thin association, the PR company behind the launch released a survey of the UK's favourite duos.

Because it's called Duo, you see.

So in case you're interested, the nation' favourite duo is... wait for it... Ant and Dec.

Seriously. The Round-Up kids you not.

The pair beat off stiff competition from the Two Ronnies and Morecambe and Wise to scoop the honour. The nation's favourite celebrity love duo (what?) was Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne and - really stretching this theme to its most pointless extreme - the groundbreaking research also revealed the nation's favourite film duo is Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

Seriously, what has this load of old pony got to do with Intel?

Apparently Affleck and Damon snatched the honour from under the noses of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and foxtrotted out of sight of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

At this point the Round-Up was losing the will to live, staggering half-comatose through the rest of the release. There was something about Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart in the next paragraph but really by that stage it was all too late to care.

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Like The IT Crowd.

On that note have a fantastic weekend and take care until next Friday when the Round-Up will be back to entertain you (in theory) once more.

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