American extremists seek history re-write

Who would have thought it? Web search engine giant Google rightly marked 50 years of spaceflight with a terrific Sputnik-decorated version of their logo last week, but now it seems right wing commentators in the US feel this is the start of a slippery descent into Communist takeover for the successful company.

In an article picked up by the Los Angeles Times, WorldNetDaily described the re-design as "celebrating communism", blithely ignoring the fact that it was the 'Communists' who were the first into space and the Americans a measly second.

If America had got a satellite into orbit first, I'm sure Google would have put that on the logo, and I bet that come 21 July 2009 they may well do something to mark the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing (that was by Americans, in case anyone from WorldNetDaily ever reads this).

Sadly, it seems the criticism is simply part of a much wider agenda on the part of some narrow minded factions within the US who seem hell-bent on trying to ensure Americans only think about certain things and return to the kind of blinkered isolationism it revelled in before the First World War. It was a naive view then, and highly dangerous now.

Tin Tin under fire again

I don't understand why there's all this sudden fuss about Tin Tin in the Congo from the Commission for Racial Equality. I'm all for racial equality, but it's not as if this book has just gone on sale, and it's usually been published with warnings about its content, so why all the fuss now?

I do agree with Borders decision to move it out of its children's section (where it should not have been placed in the first place, as reported by the BBC and other media today) but has some bigwig at the CRE (described by Lesley Thomas in the Daily Telegraph has described as "The Commission for Racial Idiocy" in her latest column) just discovered some comics aren't published for kids?

The versions of Tin Tin in the Congo I've seen in print are clearly prefaced with warnings about the content, warning of its naive depiction of colonialism and racism, as well as casual violence towards animals. Which is more than can be said for Doctor Dolittle (also available from Borders and Amazon), in which, at least in the versions I read as a child but have now I gather been edited, "Prince Bumpo" seeks to be white and the good Doctor helps him -- a concept deservedly to be condemned today, but in the context of its original publication back in 1920, part and parcel of the fabric and mores of that time.

Reuters reports the Hergé foundation has hit back at the CRE's complaint , saying the 1931 story-- one of 23 books which track the adventures of the fictional young journalist and his trusty dog Snowy -- should be read in the context of the period when it was published.

I agree.

"The context is outdated ... what's left are the jokes," Marcel Wilmet, a spokesman for the Hergé foundation said in reply to a recommendation from Britain's Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) that the book be removed from bookshops. It's also well known to those that really know about comics (clearly, no-one at the CRE!) that Herge later distanced himself from the sentiments of the story. "I portrayed these Africans according to … this purely paternalistic spirit of the time," he is reported as commenting. It's one of the reasons its took so long for a collection to be published in English in the first place.

What next? Peter Pan, for its portrayal of 'Red Indians'? Tarzan for its portrayal of a white man in Africa? (If you ever find early editions of some of the books, I guarantee you'll be shocked by Burroughs treatment of the Germans).

This is a silly campaign and the CRE has better things it could be campaigning on, in my opinon. Slapping the Evening Standard for spreading the fiction that Ken Livingstone has given huge amounts of money to build a mosque in London's East End for example, a story that is completely erroneous (Livingstone issued a little-reported denial way back in April) but has inspired someone to petition the government to stop it which has been doing the e-mail rounds for weeks.

Addendum: for more on the 'mega mosque' myth, see this blog item by Doris Marsh, which offers a couple of media sources for the story.

Its not It's

Everyone who knows me also knows I am one of the world's worst typists and probably semi-legendary for minor typos. But that doesn't mean I can't spot one, and one that constantly annoys me is the misuse of its and it's.

I've been guilty of it myself, to the extent that in exasperation, the difference was drummed into me by Sheila Cranna and Louise Cassell at Marvel UK. (They even pinned a large note to my wall about "Its NOT It's!" above my desk while editor of Doctor Who Magazine).

It's is a contraction of two words: it is. Its is possessive, like whose and his and hers. But so many people get it wrong...


Trust me, it's not just BT that makes this error in advertising. I've seen it on hight street store advertising from Ethel Austins and others. Even on A-Boards, which aren't exactly cheap to make...

(Found on the GSE English site)

Does it really matter? After all, English is an evolving language. We don't use English the same way as Chaucer or Shakespeare, or Dickens.

Well yes, because this isn't a spelling error. It's a basic grammatical error that big companies cannot seem to get their head around, and my feeling is always that if they can make such a basic error as this, then what other basic mistakes are they making?

Grr. Let the Grammar Wars begin... although I've just discovered the often controversial BadGas started it ages ago, and the creator of Bob the Angry Flower is of a similar mind on this one...

You can buy a poster noting other misuses of the apostrophe from the Angry Flower web site.

Yes to the Olympics - No to Arts cuts

Please forgive me. I'm having a rant.

On the Number 10 Downing Street website there's a petition up and running right now, which aims to stop the Chancellor using Arts and Heritage Lottery money to plug the funding gap in the 2012 Olympics.

The Chancellor proposes to plug the funding gap with a 35% reduction in Grants in Arts funding and reallocating the money - some £675 million - to the Olympics. Please submit your name to the petition and oppose the cuts to Arts Grants (Here's a link about recent developments as reported by The Guardian).

Any way, the petition is at: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/lotteryolympics

It has already gathered over 18,000 signatures – If it gets to 40,000, it would make it into the top five most popular petitions on the site.

I've no objection to the Olympics and Paralympics themselves. It's great that it's coming to Britain. But I take exception to arts and heritage groups losing out because of it. And I'm not alone: the National Council for Voluntary Organisations has spoken out and remains unsatisfied by the Government's response to the concerns they've raised. The Stage reported just this week that leaders of Britain’s largest performing arts unions, trade associations and lobby groups have taken the unprecedented step of drawing up a joint letter to chancellor Gordon Brown warning of the dire consequences of the Olympics Lottery raid for the cultural sector.

If you're as annoyed about this as I was, and I hope you are, I hope you'll sign the petition... and maybe you'll consider adding this banner I knocked up to your web site or blog:

Update: Whew! The power of the web. I e-mailed this out late on a Friday evening and within an hour, Liam Sharp had the item up as a news story on MySpace, Tim Perkins had re-blogged my message and the likes of David Baillie, John McCrea, Hunt Emerson, Simon Fraser and Sean Phillips had all signed the petition. Smart.

The Madness of Corporate America

I imagine this doesn't really need publicity here, but right after a revealing longer piece by comics creator Steven Grant which is more about the misery of being a comics creator trying to get a project off the ground, is a non-comics item of utter corporate madness:

Here's a good one: The Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA) has decided that even if you create your own music you can't play it on your own website without paying them. They talked the US Copyright Office into designating their subsidiary Soundexchange the collector of Internet radio royalty payments for all music played on the Internet, not just music controlled by the RIAA.

Why? Pretty much just so they can enforce their will on Internet radio. What this means is that if you compose your own symphony and want to podcast it, you have to pay Soundexchange the royalties that you owe yourself. Then Soundexchange will pay the royalties back to you, if you pay Soundexchange for the service. If you don't want to join Soundexchange - and if your music doesn't fall under RIAA jurisdiction, why would you? - they don't have any obligation to give you the money you're owed. Because, apparently, nonmembers simply aren't owed any, even though they're required to pay.

It's basically racketeering, and like most such schemes various companies and organizations are now trying to impose on the Internet, I can't wait to see how they plan to enforce it, since the Internet is an international operation and it's only a US government agency that has authorized this thuggish stupidity. Not that it'll stop the RIAA from trying to operate like a pack of mobsters, but it'll be interesting to see what happens when someone decides to take them to court over this.

It's hard to imagine courts will uphold the scheme for long though I expect some judge somewhere will think it's a wonderful idea, so arguing it in court doesn't seem in the RIAA's best interest, but if they back down on any threats of legal action they'll be backing down on all of them. Most likely they'll face any legal challenges with the standard corporate practice of driving up legal costs for the opposition and trying to keep the case from ever coming to trial.

Reading further into this, I'm bemused to discover via BoingBoing that The RIAA is the most hated "company" in America, according to a recent poll on the Consumerist. The RIAA's campaign of suing thousands of American music lovers has been the single biggest PR disaster in recent industrial history -- which is why Engebretsen's employer beat out Halliburton, Blackwater and Wal-Mart for the coveted "Worst Company" slot.

Seems the Performing Rights Society in the UK just isn't trying hard enough. :)

The Prying Eyes of Britain

Since I'm in a ranty and probably overly paranoid mood, did you know that here in Britain, government agents still have the right to enter your house to enter your house and search for materials used to produce "horror comics"?

The powers are just part of a much wider law first introduced in 1955 to combat the perceived menace of horror comics imported into the UK from America, and is, according to CBS reporter Larry Miller, one of more than 250 reasons the state can use to enter your house.

Combined with other laws, it means the British have become one of the world's most officially spied upon people, and what the record number of closed circuit TV cameras don't catch outside, the house invading inspectors will inside...

ParcelWorst (or ParcelFarce)

I've just sent an e-letter to Parcelforce regarding their appalling service in delivering a parcel to my work address. The parcel’s finally arrived, three days late, banged about and only now reached me because the driver “found it in the back of the van mixed up with other stuff”.

Sheesh!

Of course, they may well have delivered it now only because I’ve phoned no less than two depots to complain about its non-arrival, several times. Apparently (and this has to be one of the best excuses for incompetence yet) the regular delivery driver had cracked a rib, so he's off work, and some of the relief drivers didn't know where the company I work for was.

Peculiar, since they deliver stuff to us almost every morning. You’d expect Parcelforce, a division of the Post Office, to know the location of a business (albeit a new one) and certainly the location referred to in the postcode.

Using Parcelforce’s tracking site it seems the package has gone everywhere but Lancaster – even going to the Liverpool depot at one point – before arriving here.

Perhaps the most galling thing about all this is that I had to call no less than three 0870 numbers to try and get some human explanation for what had happened to the delivery.

Other than having used Parcelforce to deliver my goods, even if they do use an 0870 number, I can't fault Pet Supermarket who have been extremely polite and tried to help me out in explaining where the package is. (They realised I'd put the wrong postcode on my order, for example, and corrected the delivery address before giving it to Parcelforce).

Parcelforce on the other hand — or ParcelWorst, as I like to call them — beggar belief: an automated 0870 voice identification-driven system that took me over four minutes to get through to anyone in the Newcastle office and over eight minutes to reach someone in the Preston depot. That’s almost 15 minutes of national call rates at 8p a minute minimum to try and track something I had already paid for. Which doesn't sound a lot, but since I chased yesterday, too, the call costs quickly mount up.

Incredibly, Ofcom have only just started to act on the “mis-use” of 0870 numbers, despite beginning a consultation back in 2004. According to a statement on their web site it’s still going to take some 18 months before they actually do something. The changes are actually quite positive but goodness only knows why they're taking so long to bring in.

This isn't the first time I've had a bad experience with Parcelforce: they managed to almost loose a valuable and irreplaceable package I sent to the continent, so it was very irritating that they were proudly touting this service while waiting for a human to pick up the expensive phone.

Apparently, the regular Parcelforce driver’s going to be off for six weeks. He has my sympathy, but I don’t think I’ll be ordering much over the Internet for a while...