Marketing by Permission

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month I will not be online

2009-11-06T23:55:00.001Z

So, in advance, I give to you a singer and a song, sung for the soldiers of all nations who have died or been injured doing their duty I saw Harvey Andrews perform this live in a small folk club in the late 60s or early 70s. He brought the room to silence. Applause was not possible through the tears. And none of us had been soldiers. We were living, simply, at the height of the IRA campaign of

While being a pedantic bastard...

2009-11-06T23:05:00.001Z

It is not, not ever, 'Different to'. It is always 'Different from'. It is just about acceptable to use the US 'Different than', but it is bad English. Things diverge from each other, thus the from. They never diverge towards each other, so to is incorrect. Things are 'Similar to', and you would never consider saying 'Similar from', so why the blistering blue blazes do you say 'Different to'?

Bracknell Folk Club is Back

2009-11-06T19:24:00.007Z

I had an email from Steve Primarolo about the newly resurrected Bracknell Folk Club. They've had a rotten time looking for a new venue. They almost clinched it with the Stag and Hounds in Binfield, pretty much ideal for a club, but the deal fell apart. The Stag and Hounds must be nuts. The amount of beer drunk in a Folk Club is enormous! Steve was sure I'd blogged about the demise, in July, but

That New Militancy in The USA - This time in person

2009-11-06T13:45:00.004Z

A comparison of Human Rights in the USA for Black People, and Homosexual People. The full text of this story may be seen here. The blog article by David Mixner referred to in the story may be see here.

Let's All Go Guerilla Gardening

2009-11-06T08:21:00.006Z

Where public land or land with no obvious use but public access is nude, let's plant a meadow! In and around Bracknell we have just had our section of the Bray Pipeline project finish, and it's been done hugely well. They minimised the ecological damage, and the land is coming back to the way it was. But we need more meadows, more wild flowers, more variety of plants, and they've simply set

A New Militancy in the USA

2009-11-05T20:51:00.002Z

Not since the days of the 1968 Olympic Games have we seen the bursting onto the public stage in the USA of a major political controversy involving a minority group. Back then it was a highly emotionally charged event making a substantial political statement on the Olympic medal podium, under the unwavering gaze of the world's media. According to Wikipedia, from where the picture is taken: On

Ask a Blogger to Promote you and you take your Brand into your Own Hands

2009-11-05T17:43:00.011Z

Look up for a moment, at the title of this blog. Yes, it's a blog about many things, but based around marketing, and Permission Based Marketing at that. Now look in the right hand margin for the contact details. I give out my email address because Gmail has a great set of spam filters! But I prohibit, as you can see, that email address being used on mailing lists. I still get people with a

The Marketing of Bigotry - Where the Gay Marriage Campaign Derailed Itself

2009-11-05T14:16:00.002Z

I have asbestos underwear. I know I'm likely to get some flak for this, so go for it. Flame away. Let me nail my colours to the mast. I am wholly in favour of those ladies and gentleman who wish it, for them to enter into a contract not unlike a contract of marriage that ensures that their same sex commitment to each other is registered as a contract and that they have the same partner and

Gordon Brown, The Lie, and The Petition

2009-11-04T23:12:00.003Z

We've had a referendum anyway. And Gordon has seen it. There was a glorious, simple and delightful petition on the Number 10 website. "We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to resign." Details of Petition: "There are many reasons why we might want Brown to resign, but rather than having lots of narrow petitions on this topic (most of which have been rejected), I wanted one for all of

I, personally, thought to myself

2009-11-04T20:48:00.002Z

Just how bad's your self image? "I... personally" What's that all about? Are you ever impersonal? Do you need to reinforce the fact that you are you? Don't you have the guts to say just "I"? While we're about it, "Myself and Fred thought you might like to..." Who the heck is "myself"? It's a reflexive pronoun. The French use them a lot. "Je me lave" - "I wash myself." They understand them.

The Lisbon Treaty and Foreign Policy and Hypocrisy

2009-11-04T07:23:00.000Z

UK power has now devolved to Brussels. President 'unelect' Blair is heading for another hugely high profile chance to feather his nest. Brussels may now tell us, because it's Lisbon Treaty Foreign Policy where to send our troops. Gordon Brown lied as usual when he promised a referendum. His moral compass must allow lies. I bet he still wears a poppy to show how much he cares about our wounded

I hate to say it, but some moron in marketing just ruined a salesman's day

2009-11-03T18:03:00.003Z

I've been a salesman and I've been a marketing man. I'm good at both, but I prefer marketing. I like the challenge of providing a pipeline of business six months down the track. I find it harder than selling. Maybe that's because I have never been shy of asking for the order. Marketing must work in harmony with sales. If that breaks down things can go horribly wrong. Today I saw an example of

Do I trust The World Health Organisation?

2009-11-03T13:25:00.005Z

At present we have the exciting H1N1 Swine Flu "am I going to get it or not?" times. And the WHO has helpfully altered some conditions to allow it to be dreadfully sweet and proclaim it to be a pandemic. According to Richard Seah, the WHO spells out three conditions that must be met before a disease will be declared a pandemic: There must be a disease new to a population - or at least a disease

Did I mention pointless widgets?

2009-11-02T23:34:00.000Z

I did, I know I did. There's one. I can't see the point of it, so it goes.

I Blog Therefore I Am (A Brand)

2009-11-02T22:15:00.003Z

Blogito Ergo Sum! It isn't right, of course, and I don't mean just the Dog Latin. Not every fool who starts a blog is a brand, not in their wildest dreams. It doesn't even matter if you've been blogging for ages, a brand you are not unless your ramblings have a theme. And too many who have a theme run out of steam. Look at You Pissed Me Off, You Bastard and, at first, he is a brand. But the

Web Business is Instant or Not At All

2009-10-31T23:53:00.001Z

On the seventh I fly to Israel to visit a dear friend. And I shopped for travel insurance today. Like most tubby blokes in their fifties I have type 2 diabetes, a serious enough ailment, but well controlled by tablets. I shopped through that comparison site made popular by that very tall man with a shopping trolley from Dragons Den, and, at first, it refused to allow me to have insurance,

Obama to lift HIV and AIDS Travel Ban

2009-10-31T12:28:00.001Z

The travel ban to the USA is being lifted. And not before time. How many other nations ban folk who are HIV+ from entering their borders? This has been true discrimination against folk who are ill, almost alwasy through no fault of their own. I thought that the UK also limited HIV+ immigration and inbound travel, so I did some research. I was wrong. Welcome back to part of the global

Halloween Candy

2009-10-31T10:08:00.002Z

It has to be 'candy', the institution is so American. Mind you, I have two images in my mind with the word 'candy'. The first is the book I had as an icle wickle kiddiwink. In my edition the K was a C and the cover looked different, but I will, for ever, think of the cuteums Koala, Candy, in Candy Meets the Bunny Babes. If I had that book now it'd be worth a bit, too. Mind you someone has to

Yes, I gave you permission, but I no longer care

2009-10-30T00:29:00.000Z

I just had an email from an organisation whom I gave permission to market to me. But it's been a decade or six since they emailed me last. I'd forgotten they existed. I'd forgotten about them so much that I wasn't even remotely curious about anything in the email except the 'unsubscribe' link. I used it. Well, that is what Permission Based Marketing is all about. Only it isn't. Permission

Ideas for Power2010

2009-10-29T17:05:00.009Z

I've been tagged in a meme by Reading Blogger, Oran Jepan. Now that sounds desperately exciting and as though I know what the heck is going on! I had to look up who Power 2010 are and work out what, why, who and whether. As far as I can tell it is a place that wants ideas for how we will be governed after the 2010 election. And this is when I'm wondering if kids will be wearing Gordon Brown

We deride, scoff at, or worship things we do not understand

2009-10-29T12:56:00.008Z

Human nature makes us try to make the unfamiliar feel safe. Lightning is the vengeance of the gods; sudden recovery from appalling illness is divine intervention; bisexuality is just plain greedy. We do. Think about it for a moment. We do. We even do the maths on bisexuality. We use Kinsey's oft misquoted 10% as the basis: Heterosexuals get to partner with 45% of the population Homosexuals only

Ares has risen!

2009-10-29T09:32:00.003Z

It looks pretty old technology. Do they use old technology in the capsule too? Ewwwww!

US passes hate crimes law

2009-10-29T08:44:00.002Z

This is a significant and substantial event. The whys and wherefores are for a US person or a directly affected person to comment upon. Yet I feel this was and is a significant event. I'm heartened by the fact that this could never have happened under Shrub, controlled as he was by his own blinkered pseudo-christianity and by the nutters of the religious right. Odd, is it not, with all the

Email - how to make a fool of yourself fast and to thousands!

2009-10-28T20:11:00.001Z

It's been a day for email errors. I even thought one of them was mine. The day started with a distraught colleague calling me to see if an email had escaped her clutches onto a large discussion email list I moderate. People make errors like this all the time globally, but the bowel loosening realisation that it's happened to you and by your own fair hand is ghastly. And her email was a

Appalling, Brutal, Pointless, and just not British

2009-10-26T14:56:00.001Z

I've been heartily sickened over the past few days with the homophobic beatings of two men, one in London, in Trafalgar Square and the other in Liverpool. I'm impressed with the police's reaction, and angered at the nasty, evil little shits that perpetrated it. Worse still the attackers were hardly out of nappies themselves. The thing we have in the UK at present is a Daily Mail and BNP led