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Rainbowfire

Listed below are comments made by Rainbowfire between Thursday, 28th August 2008 and Wednesday, 9th December 2009.

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MOT failure data: ICO backs BBC request 1:37pm on 09 Dec 2009 Following on.....

VOSA's arguments are exceptionally flawed:
"...for example by publicising that their failure rate is lower than another manufacturer's failure rate for a comparable vehicle model."
Don't manufacturers use the "official government figures" when publicising the vehicles fuel economy? Don't the government allow free and unfettered access to these figures?

and

"[P]ublication of the requested information risked misleading the public as it could lead to the misconception that one manufacturer produces a lower quality of vehicles than another manufacturer when failure rates are compared."
If a particular model is consistantly failing in a particular way, then it's not a mis-conception of lower quality, it's a fact, and one the manufacturers should note, especially in the arena of safety.

From what I remember, in this instance, the government have no bias in recording this matter, and would record the results for every single UK-registered car on the road in the UK today. Efforts such as What Car are limited to the readers who take part. WHat Car is also subject to "editorial review", so certain results can be "forgotten". A survey of 25,000 cars is not representative of the 100,000s that are on the roads today. I don't read What Car, so the cars I use are not part of their survey.
MOT failure data: ICO backs BBC request 12:03pm on 09 Dec 2009 It's easy to see if a part is a user-replacable one (e.g. headlight bulb), so that could be effectively discounted from the data. I would be more interested in seeing any trends that develop, for example suspension spring failures, for any given make/model/year.

Fathertedrules suggests that Renault do not make the seatbelts that go in their vehicles, however the VOSA data would show if there were consistant failures around a certain build-date. This would give the prospective buyer extra saftey information about that vehicle. That cannot be a bad thing, can it?

Bulbs and tyres being the cause of failures is fairly and sqaurely down to the driver of the vehicle. Tyres have "replace now" banding on them, worn brakes usually will illuminate a warning on the instrument panel, and the bulbs are designed to be easy to replace. (Matthew Jones take note: those cars you see driving along with one light dazzling people without their main-beam on, are those who put the bulbs in wrongly, which results in the bulb not sitting in the correct position in the reflector, which in turn gives the wrong distribution of light.) I agree that the driver's inability to follow the instructions does not reflect on the manufacturer.
Steve Jobs Health Hoax - Again 00:55am on 25 Jan 2009 Elliot Carver* would be proud. He always wanted "tomorrow's news today"!!

Maybe if we were a little less "instant" in this world, things like this wouldn't happen. (Or happen again in this case.)

*James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies
Wikipedia is censored 12:28pm on 08 Dec 2008 @74 Tony Byers

"Art and porn very closely linked."

Absolutely!

So Nirvana's Nevermind: Art or Porn?
Michelangelo's David: Art or Porn?

Why do we seem to take it that the male form is art and the female form is porn?

I believe that porn is for sexual arousal and art is, erm, for art's sake.

I have been involved in a case where some photographs of a female were recovered from a computer (I work in IT). An investigation started by Social Services ended when it was found that, whilst appearing to be underage, it was discovered that the woman was in fact 19. Proceedings were dropped. She was one of nature's "smaller" women and had good makeup.

You can't prosecute someone for looking younger than they actually are...... it would but L'Oreal and Olay out of business.
Wikipedia is censored 11:30am on 08 Dec 2008 @47 Tony Byers:

Ok, so she looks, 12-14 - what is her actual age? Many pornography sites have images of women who look under 18 and are dressed in school uniform (oh and not censored by IWF), but are indeed 18+

If the image does in fact break the law, then yes censor it. No-one has challenged this in a bona-fide law-court.

I wonder what the woman (as she is now) thinks of all this? Maybe we should send Rory to do an interview........
Wikipedia is censored 11:23am on 08 Dec 2008 @38 Ginger_Lizard

Ah, but at this moment in time it reads:

"The IWF compiles and maintains a blacklist, mainly of child pornography URLs, from which 90% of commercial Internet customers in the UK are filtered. A staff of 7 people are responsible for this work, and the director of the service has claimed that the analysts are capable of adding an average of 65-80 new URLs to the list each week, and act on reports received from the public rather than pursuing investigative research."

"Act on reports....rather than pursuing invesitgative research."???????

So, I'll take your word that it's "potentially illegal", and shan't check out its actual validity.

My god! if the police and courts acted in this manner, most of the population of the UK would be locked up!
Wikipedia is censored 10:34am on 08 Dec 2008 Firstly:
"Potentially illegal" I would say is the key-phrase here. The image has been around for some considerable time and not been deemed illegal by the law-makers of the UK.

If the IWF want to change this, maybe they should pursue the matter through the UK courts. That way they are either vindicated or defeated. If they are defeated, then they must accept defeat.

I suspect that the IWF hasn't done it's homework either: Have they bothered to find out the age of the model when the photograph was taken?

Secondly:
Also I find it highly offensive that the ISPs involved automatically take what the IWF say as gospell. I suspect that they haven't done their homework either.
Did the CSA need to change? 8:56pm on 01 Nov 2008 Oh and to all "new" non-resident parents:

If you make any payment at all to parent with custardy, never ever ever do it in cash. Make a bank transfer. Have an independant (ie. Bank) paper trail.

It could save you a lot of grief, time and money in the future.

Trust on this one.
Did the CSA need to change? 8:52pm on 01 Nov 2008 To Richard Dorset,

Yes the CSA place your payment in a holding account. (In theory) the idea was to collect all the money due by a certain time of the month, and then "flip over" from collections to payments.

However, the system appears to have been designed with a major flaw: whilst the CSA are very happy to delay payment, if your payment had not been credited by 09:00 on the day it was due, the system automatically generated a "non-payment" letter and re-calculated the arrears, usually generating an arrears letter. Then your payment would clear at 10:00 on the day, and the system would perform the same calculation again. Thus resulting in two letters issued on the same day, with conflicting information. The system also generates a letter to PWC saying there's been no payment this month.

When I'm talking about clearing, it's nothing to do with the banking system, it's the CSA's own system. Internally it's in different departments (e.g. collections department, payments department, enforcement department.) Like all government institutions, there is a total lack of communication internally. Essentially the collections department take your money and sit on it for two weeks, usually untill approx 19th of the month. Then they hand it over to the payments department on the day it's actucally due to be paid out. It's based on "just in time" delivery, but like all JIT systems, it doesn't work properly.

I know two things about this "system":
1) Given the letter issued to PWC, the system is designed to create animousity between the parents. (in my case PWC started denying visits, on the mis-information the CSA passed on)
2) Whilst the interest in 200 pounds for 14 days is not much, the interest on 2,000,000 pounds for 14 days is far greater. (That doesn't include what the CSA have "lost in the system".) Where does that interest go?

I have two major irratations with the CSA:
1) Regardless of my parental status, I'm a tax payer and I seem to be pouring vast sums of money into an inept and incomptetant system. (Nice idea, bad implimentation.)
2) During the opening year, I was constantly bombarded with "revised statements" whilst they tried to get to grips with a calculator. Regards of what you think of him, The Taxman works out if you've over- or underpaid your tax. If you've over-paid, he sends you a nice little cheque. If you've under-paid (for whatever reason) in most cases your tax code is adjusted and he collects the arrears in nice equal chunks (effectively: arrears divided by 12 equals repayments.) How easy is that? I child of four could tell you that. The CSA spent a year "recalculating" the "arrears" (the infamous: you're liable from now, but we won't tell you how much for four months.) During the repayment period (everything for 3 to 18 months had been "calculated") the repayment was all over the place. The most digsusting things were:
1) A recalculation on "last month's" payment, to which I was told on the phone "Oh don't worry about that."
2) I received a schedule in a November, doubling my payments in December and January. (You know, Christmas time.) When queried I was told "oh we thought we'd help you clear the arrears quicker" in a rather cheery voice.
3) If I pay (for example) 100 pounds, PWC and I were expecting 100 pounds to emerge at the other end, but on many occasions it would arrive in bits (e.g 60, 20, 20) but no-one could say why. Although it would appear that the individual "actioning" at the CSA office, seemed to take delight in adjusting things to cause maximum disruption and animousity between PWC and I. However, PWC and I had by this time joined forces and there was a lot of communication going on. The CSA cannot cope with the idea of both PWC and NRP working together.

PWC ended up complaining, getting compensation (maybe that's what the interest is for) and opting out of the system to a direct pay one. So far, I pay and PWC gets the payment 2 days later (bank transfer time). No complaints, no worries, no stress and no CSA. If anyone wants to audit, bank statements are available. lthough the parting shot from the CSA was "to make no payments untill we advise on the amount and dates". That was six months ago. Oddly neither of us has heard from the CSA since. I suspect someone will get round to informing me of some phantom arrears (oh yummy more "enforcement"), at which point both my and PWCs MPs will b involved, again.

One thing does make me chuckle though:
If they take away my drving license, I can no longer work. If I can no longer work, two things will happen:
1) My payments will go down
and, perhaps more importantly,
2) I'll be claiming benefit.
Just how does that benefit you the tax-payer, and, how exactly does that benefit my son?

Wasn't the point of the CSA to bring benefit to my son, without being a burden on the remainder of the tax-payers?......

RIP-CSA, no flowers, unmarked grave.
Scrabulous users - stunned, bemused,baffled. 00:53am on 28 Aug 2008 Haven't Mattel just sued the makers of Bratz dolls as well? If I recall Barbie's losing sales to Bratz.

Seems strange how, any threat to an "empire" results in some sort of lawsuit, especially in the United States of Sue-me.

Maybe Mattel, Hasbeen etc should stop trying to beat the entrepaneurs of this century with last century's laws. The world is changing at an astronomical rate, and these "empires" will die, as the music industry is, unless they wake up and evolve: now! Obviously there was an oppourtunity for this application, and someone took it. The internet is not new, Facebook is not new, but they are full of new spins on old ideas.

Maybe some of the industry cartels would be better off losing the old guys in suits, and putting people in charge who are actually in touch with the world in which we live today.

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