Posterous theme by Cory Watilo as adapted by Jamie Graham

More Hattie porn

written on Monday 1 August 2011 and filed under [advert] [asda] [hattie jacques] [porn]

What better way to start the week than with the übersexy Hattie Jacques? This advert is from 1980 and would be one of the last things she recorded before she died, stupidly young at 58, in October of that year.

The advert is for Asda Superstores and, whilst everything else in the entire world has changed in the intervening 31 years, it's really odd but comforting to find that Asda is still using a version of the same music in its ads even now. Some jingle-writer is living on their own island in the Caribbean from the PRS fees alone. 

Also present is Asda's "price punch", already by 1980 becoming divorced from its original meaning -- it was women patting their front pockets and making the change rattle; you know, because they got a lot more change from an Asda shop and had collectively forgotten their purses. Here it's already turning into the tap-tap, bleep-bleep, pat-pat meaninglessness of the current adverts. The worse thing about the price punch thing is how they've incorporated it into their "team cheer" (no, really) that they even make suppliers bloody do at meetings. When I sold toys for Tiger Electronics, they were one of my customers and I had to go there for briefings; they'd make us all stand up and do this ridiculous team cheer: give me an A! "A!" Give me an S! "S!" Give me a D! "D!" Give me another A! "A!" Whose the king? "The customer!" Do the price punch! Etc! I tended to stand there thinking, I'm sorry, I'm British and don't do this sort of thing.

Still, never mind Asda and its Walmartian nonsense. Let's sit back and just gaze at Hattie's lovely, smiley face and cheeky glances. This week's getting better already!

BBC trust

written on Saturday 30 July 2011 and filed under [bbc] [lying liars] [std codes] [television]

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Previously on 'Another Damn Blog': I wrote to the BBC to complain about a minor matter of them getting telephone numbers deliberately wrong on-screen.


I know this is a petty point, but it's one that annoys me. And, as I said at the time, "[i]f the BBC can get its own telephone number wrong, can they be trusted to make a documentary without cutting such basic corners?"

The reply came from BBC Complaints and seemed to be deliberately trying to prove my point. It said that they put numbers up on screen incorrectly because they were easier to remember that way. Bollocks. What a load of cobblers. I wrote back, saying that I didn't mind the brush-off, but did mind them actually lying to me. If they weren't lying, then they would produce the research that the BBC had done that showed people could remember telephone numbers more easily when they were wrong than when they were right. After all, they must've have done that research to come up with that answer.

But, I warned darkly, if they'd done no research and this reply was just a lie, it was time for them to 'fess up or I would prove the lie by requesting a copy of the research myself. BBC Complaints never replied. So I had to carry through with my threat and I made a formal Freedom of Information Act request to see the research -- warning the FoI department that they wouldn't find any but that two could play at the timewasting game.

BBC FoI came back to me: they could find no evidence whatsoever that the BBC had commissioned or received any research on the formatting of telephone numbers on screen or elsewhere. In other words, the guy at BBC Complaints had lied his little socks off to make me go away. As I say, I wouldn't mind a brush-off, but this default that now exists in the UK of telling a lie, no matter how implausible, rather than just telling the truth has to stop.

I first had an organisation tell me an obvious and implausible lie a few years ago. After being very ill and having the NHS strangely reluctant to treat me (indeed, receiving open hostility from some staff) I sought a copy of my hospital notes. Lovely: as correspondance was passed between departments, I was referred to on multiple occasions as "this homosexual". As in "this homosexual first presented to me on..." and "I would like to refer this homosexual to you for further tests" and the like. This, clearly, would not do. So I complained to the chief executive of the hospital. Here comes the whopping great porker: he wrote back and said this was normal practice for all patients and they were all referred to that way in notes. Yeah, right. Do you even believe for a moment that your notes, assuming you're straight, say anywhere, anywhere at all, "this heterosexual presented to me on..."? Uh huh.

I went to the then-Healthcare Commission about this and they gave the hospital a mighty slapping down because of it. The chief executive had to write to apologise to me personally, the writers of "this homosexual" had to attend special courses in not writing "this homosexual" in notes, and the Trust had to employ a 'Diversity Officer' (no, me neither) to make sure this never happened again. But nobody had to apologise for the great fat lie the chief exec told me in his first reply. It was seen as entirely acceptable to try to make me go away by lying to me. It isn't.

A similar, if less outrageous in its detail, thing happened last month when a WHSmith employee told me a barefaced lie to my face rather than admit a mistake had been made. As I say, it seems to have become the default in British society, at least in larger organisations, to tell lies rather than deal with consequences.

For the BBC, this initial lie isn't going to go away. Today I've written to the BBC Trust, what was the governors, to ask them if they agree with me that trust in the BBC is important and lying to stakeholders undermines that trust. I'm expecting the BBC Trust to give me the brush-off and I won't mind that. I just hope they don't take the opportunity to lie to me at the same time.

Friday morning Public Information Film porn

written on Friday 29 July 2011 and filed under [1970s] [pif] [porn]

For younger readers, let me explain what's happening here: those fitted carpets and laminate floors you live with are new things. For most of my life, houses had linoleum or tiles on the floor and, in more important rooms, a nice rug that, if you were barefoot, you'd aim to land on quickly on winter mornings. Rugs of the time didn't come with anti-slip rubber underneath, even doormats. Instead, they were hessian-backed, just like the mats on a helter-skelter. You see where this is going.

In the 1970s, if advertising is anything to go by, women were all lazy cows who did nothing at all during the day, so men with voices that implied gravitas would call through and give them pointless make-work to do. Things like sewing torn clothes and scrubbing the bath with Vim, anything to make the ladies less indolent between the husband leaving for work and them putting the dinner on while wearing their best clothes. Included in the list of Things Women Must Do was polishing the linoleum and/or the tiles to get them sparkling, so that the children, dog and husband could then immediately get them dirty again and the woman could look vexed but then smile knowingly and reach for the Flash.

This leads to this PIF, and the state doing battle with SC Johnson and other purveyors of floor polish to idle females. The poor loves: one minute a man from capitalism with a deep voice was telling women to get down on their knees and polish the floor until it shines (with a 'Ziiiing!' noise), the next a man from the state with a deep voice was telling women that if they did so, the next person to walk into their hall would die horribly and it would be all their fault because they'd been warned and hadn't listened because they were waiting for part two of 'Crown Court' to start.

So this is why we did away with lino and tiles and got fitted carpets and laminate floors and the like: capitalism could stop selling floor polish to women and switch to selling more profitable things like gin to them instead, and the state could stop warning women about the horrors of floor polishing and instead print posters warning women they should be drinking less gin. The upside, of course, is that women can now spend the day completely rat-arsed, so that's win-win.