The three Daily Mirror financial journalists who tipped shares they owned have been convicted and may go to gaol. The odd thing is that this kind of thing has been going on for as long as I can remember. But these guys were small fry — they only netted between £17,000 and £41,000. If they’d made serious money they would probably have been safe.
Category Archives: Asides
Dear Santa
Alan Coren in The Times, imagining the kinds of letters which might be arriving in Lapland this year. Sample:
dere snata
i am riting on behalf of my partnr, nicklas, 8, on acount of he wares this micky mouse wotch, and i am ashamed to be seen out wiv him, it is not sheek like yu see in mens magzines, i wuld like him to ware sunnink cool and fashnibble such as a wane roony wotch, wich he wuld do if yu brung him wun for crismas. if yu felt he woznt reddy for that, praps yu culd meet him half-way, with, frinstance, a micky roony wotch. for miself, i wuld like a DVD of teddys bare piknik
yuors
cheryl
Barcode magic
Here’s a neat little scam. Print your own barcodes (using the Barcode Magic program), then stick a $4.99 code on a $150 iPod and pass it by a dozy checkout operator. Tut, tut!
The Yellow Press
Uncharacteristically sunny and almost nostalgic piece by Christopher Hitchens about the portrayal of journalists in novels and film. Waugh, Orwell, Frayn, Powell, Greene — they’re all here. Sample:
In the opening pages of Scoop, as William Boot is still in the train from Somerset to London and as yet has no idea what awaits him at the offices of the Daily Beast, he recalls that:
“He had once seen in Taunton a barely intelligible film about newspaper life in New York where neurotic men in shirt-sleeves and eye-shades had rushed from telephone to tape-machines, insulting and betraying one another in circumstances of unredeemed squalor.”
One of the most disorienting things about modern newspaper offices, by the way (for those of us who remember the good old bad old days), is that the squalor has disappeared. Too many newspaper premises now resemble Toyota dealerships. And nobody drinks at lunchtime any more. Sigh.
The message
Can’t see what a supermarket trolley has to do with it, though.
Keeping the torch of communism burning
But perhaps not quite in the way Comrade Vladimir Ilyich envisaged. A friend with a macabre sense of humour picked this up in a shop in Budapest!
What Tony Blair needs for Christmas
Yes, you guessed it — a Virtual Air Guitar! It’ll transport him back to his Oxford student days.
Skin your car
Er, from Gizmag:
Auto Skins is a product that has been on the Australian market for several years. Developed by the aptly named promotional company Decently Exposed, the AutoSkin is a digitally coloured skin for automobiles. You can have high resolution artwork emblazoned on the skin which is then bonded to the car and indestinguishable from normal paint other than its at photographic reproduction quality. The AutoSkin has the double advantage of forming a protective coating which can be stripped off to reveal the original, as-new unblemished duco the car came with. Over 2500 cars have been reskinned to date with corporate branders the logical first-movers, but an increasing number of innovative marketers and consumers keen to individualise their most public personal expression.
Hmmm… Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to go round putting new skins (bearing environmental messages) on SUVs…
That ‘special relationship’
Nice quote from Martin Kettle’s review of Christopher Meyer’s memoir, DC Confidential…
Meyer is wisely unsentimental, too, about the so-called “special relationship”. The phrase was banned from use while he was ambassador, quite rightly, and he smartly observes that the only countries that can truly lay claim to such a status in Washington – in the sense of being able to have significant influence on US politics and policy – are Ireland, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan, and certainly not Britain, even under Blair or Thatcher.
Martin was the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief from 1997 to 2001.
H2O
My spam filter, bless it, catches 99.9% of the usual crap, but this one got through. Who says water and snake oil don’t mix?
Did you know that there is a little-known secret about water that has
existed for thousands of years?And it has been carefully hidden from you!
-The Japanese know about it.
-Scientists and non-traditional doctors know about it.
-A NASA lab has examined it up one side and down the other.The powers that control the Pharmaceutical Markets know about it.
Yet, 99% of the world has never even heard of it !What if I could show you: “The World’s Most Perfect Water”.
-A Perfect Water that energizes and Ph balances your body naturally.
-A Perfect Water that allows you to create massive wealth?
(I am dead serious; I can verify everything I am telling you.)The code has been cracked, the Secret is out. This product has (2) US
Patents and is closely guarded with exclusive-global rights.
* You can finally learn what only the most-informed health & wealth
insiders know.
* There is nothing like this product anywhere.
* You can make money over and over every day with a hands-off system
with just a push of a button!Learn how you can receive phone-in leads from across the USA.
The Secret Code of “The World’s Most Perfect Water” will be aired on
ABC, CBS, & FOX TV Networks on October 18, 2005.The opportunity to become wealthy as a distributor of this new
product is enormous!
-Are you serious and not just curious?
-Are you truly seeking health & wealth?If you answered: YES, Then You Deserve The Truth NOW.
The code for Xtreme Water (X20) has been cracked:
There then follows the usual address-confirming link. Wonder who falls for this stuff.