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The Weekly Round-Up: 05.11.04
For Fawkes' sake!

By silicon.com

Published: Monday 08 November 2004

"Remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot."

(Not to be confused with: 'Remember, remember the fire brigade members, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub... for all you 'Trumpton' fans out there and O2 marketing types who recently included the trio in their latest advertising campaign - no doubt causing a terrible rift with the Pugh brothers and Barney McGrew who, rumour has it, have now sacked their agent.)

That's right - it's that time of the year again when we start firing highly charged explosives into the air, burn a man in effigy and celebrate a failed attempt to murder hundreds of people in their workplace.

(And to think some people say the British are a strange nation, with outdated customs and traditions.)

Of course this whole celebration dates back to 1605 when a group of conspirators, led by Robert Gatesby, attempted to blow-up the Houses of Parliament.

The man now synonymous with the plot, Guido Fawkes, or Guy to his friends and schoolchildren worldwide, was found on the night of 5 November in the cellars of the government building with 36 barrels of gunpowder by UN weapons inspector Hans Blix (OK, so it wasn't Blix - the Round-Up lied about that last detail).

Now a little-known but apparently true fact - subsequent investigations revealed the gunpowder the plotters had was so old it would have been next to useless but by this time Fawkes, Gatesby and co. had been 'hung, drawn and quartered' for treason - with a judge deciding that, as with present-shopping, it is unfortunately the thought that counts.

(The Round-Up is aware it - the phrase, NOT the Round-Up - should be 'hanged, drawn and quartered' but take that grammatical point up with the chief executioner.)

And as with any seasonal occasion, many high-tech companies have this week seized upon the festivities to create some buzz around their technology.

For example, the silicon.com virtual postbag received an email from a firm called The Ideal Marketing Company - which is a bold name to live up to. And unfortunately in this instance it didn't quite.

The very subject line of the email read: "Text messaging and voice mail used to combat rouge firework traders."

"Rouge" firework traders? Did they perhaps mean 'rogue'? The fact 'rouge' wasn't repeated in the body of the release suggests perhaps so.

Although it does create an interesting image of unscrupulous traders with cosmetically-reddened cheeks selling explosives to kids, the Round-Up is willing to believe it is just a typo (which it could be argued is a little way off "Ideal").

Of course, on a serious note, this week more than any other, it goes without saying that those with a childish mind do need to be protected from themselves, as others need to be protected from them. Nobody wants to see somebody foolishly or maliciously injure others through the misguided and reckless use of dangerous explosives...

...so why did the American people vote Bush in for another four years?

The Round-Up apologises - a little bit of politics there.

As the saying goes, the problem with political jokes is they tend to get elected... so moving on.

(But not that far.) George W Bush is of course a 'rogue fireworks trader', of sorts, without equal.

After all selling a knock-off Catherine Wheel, Roman Candle or box of rockets to kids down the market is nothing compared to Bush's record in the trade of weapons to overseas governments.

But there appears to be a new arms dealer on the block. Step forward eBay which was this week criticised in the UK over the ease with which consumers can buy guns online - particularly potentially lethal air rifles and the kind of realistic replicas favoured by armed robbers.

In a report which he put together on the matter, Labour MP Steve McCabe this week told Home Secretary David Blunkett: "eBay promotes itself as a 'community' of family friendly individuals, yet it is allowing dealers to sell weapons without any check on whether they are active or not, and with no control over the age of people buying them.

"It is one of the richest companies in the world, yet it is failing to police its own site properly, and contributing to the crime on our streets by allowing the sale of absolutely lethal weapons."

Cue much awkward shuffling on the front bench and lots of 'I'll keep schtum if you do' looks between Jack Straw and Tony Blair, who themselves have made not unimpressive amounts of money from the sale of far more harmful weapons than replica handguns during their time in charge.

Also causing a stir online is a Russian student, known only as Andrei (for legal reasons) who has hit the news this week after he was fined the princely sum of £10 - which for a student in any country, let alone Russia, is quite a penalty - for driving without a licence.

Not such an interesting news story in itself but the student, so outraged by his treatment, took it upon himself to launch an online smear campaign against the policemen who brought him to justice.

For starters he cast them as gay lovers in an 'adult' story which he published online, including their full names, ranks and details of the police station where they work - lest anybody who knew the men should fail to recognise them in his pornographic prose.

But to make matters worse the story became something of an overnight hit and got picked up and reprinted in a number of gay magazines as well as the mainstream media - making the crime-fighters something of an unwitting sensation among Russia's homosexual community.

Also discovering that trouble can spread and multiply rather rapidly online - though possibly to less-red faced (rouged?) effect - was UK supermarket giant Sainsbury's.

The problem? The company has been forced to drop an online discount it was offering to shoppers after a voucher code was shared with hundreds of users of an online forum.

Sainsbury's had offered a £10 discount to any shopper whose goods arrived late, but according to website MoneySavingExpert.com one such recipient of a £10 voucher shared the code with others on its message board so they too could redeem it.

The code then spread online as hundreds of shoppers shaved £10 off their Jamie Oliver endorsed products.

In fact, it's not been a great week for Sainsbury's with news that it has once again been accused of sending out spam. And the Round-Up isn't talking about the spiced-ham product once enjoyed by... well, somebody, somewhere... probably.

Back in 2001 the company was accused of sending spam email but denied all the allegations, promising to investigate any future instances of alleged unsolicited email.

However, one silicon.com reader has alerted us to a marketing email from the supermarket chain which appears to have been sent to addresses which had not signed up for such mailings - including at least one address which did not even exist at our reader's domain.

Our reader, who also reported the alleged abuse to SpamCop, wrote: "At the end of last week Sainsbury's sent a marketing email to a non-existent name at my domain."

He said of the intended recipient's address: "We have never had anyone of that name, or anything similar, working here."

Oh dear.

At the time of writing Sainsbury's had twice, that's TWICE, failed to respond to requests for comment on this latest email marketing campaign.

As such we can only hazard a guess at the no-doubt totally reasonable explanation for these errant emails being sent out in error but the fresh allegations (to be found between the fresh fruit and fresh vegetables sections) will doubtless serve as an embarrassment to the company chairman Lord Sainsbury who, as part of the DTI, has long campaigned against the problem of unsolicited email and recently made it into silicon.com's Agenda Setters on the back of such efforts.

D'oh!

Of course, the phenomenon of spam email is lost on nobody these days but few are as angry about it as Hormel, the originator of spam 'proper', the spiced-ham meat product which has been around a lot longer than cheap generic pharmaceuticals, fake luxury watches and dodgy get-rich-quick schemes.

In an attempt to wrestle back its brand name from the negative associations with unsolicited email, Hormel this week announced a £2m British advertising campaign which will feature lots of 'every-day' Brits, such as builders, campers and... erm... pantomime actors...?

Nice to see the company has its finger on the pulse of British culture.

Perhaps this labelling us as a nation of builders, campers and even camper actors is revenge for our nation's part in naming the email menace and forever sullying its brand name. Or more accurately it was those jolly-spiffing Monty Python fellows (and Terry Gilliam) whose Viking sketch gave rise to the word 'spam' as being synonymous with anything that drowns out all other communication.

Or perhaps this is the result of some detailed and lengthy 'key demographic' study. After all the UK does consumer £13.3m worth of spam each year.

Perhaps builders, with a tendency towards packed lunches and sandwich fillers, campers, with a tendency towards canned foods, for storage and preservation purposes and pantomime actors with... erm... OK, the Round-Up genuinely cannot fathom why pantomime actors might eat spam more than any other seasonal cross-dressers, but it might make for a slightly more accurate advert, in some people's opinion.

"SPAM is lovely..."

"Oh no it isn't!"

And finally, speaking of adverts...

"The kid's got Cahoot!" ...apparently.

...which means for the past 12 days literally anybody could have been rifling through his online bank account.

Until next week, seriously, take care out there. Check your bonfires for hedgehogs, and always follow the fireworks code.