Eat your heart out Susan Boyle

The Russians never like to be outdone so here they are with their local talent show. The funniest thing is the predictability of the whole thing.

So what does it all mean?

If we need reminding of the pace that life is moving at, take a quick look at this video.

It certainly conjours up some interesting questions. If there are 31 billion searches on Google per month, what did people do for answers in the world BG (before Google)?

During the just under 5 minute duration of the film there are 67 babies being born in the United States, 274 in China and 395 in India whilst there were 694,000 songs downloaded illegally.

So I guess I´ll have a BBQ tomorrow and pop to the beach on Sunday, somethings don´t change.

Why look after your customers?

Another interesting David vs. Goliath story as Dave (not David) Carroll gets his own back on what seems to be the easiest industry to have a stab at these days, represented here by United Airlines.

He was travelling with his band when they saw the ground crew throwing their guitars accross the tarmac through the window of the plane. On arrival his guitar was in pieces and United refused to admit responsibility or pay for repairs even though he tried speaking to a number of people during a year of complaints.

What better way to exert revenge than to write a song, "United break guitars" which has become the 20th downloaded music on iTunes (presumably the first 19 are all Michael Jackson songs)

So now, Dave is rich from selling the songs and United has lost 10% of it´s share value around $180 million, they have now offered to pay for a guitar, post song, but been told to donate the money to charity. Tailor the guitar makers are giving Dave a new guitar so he can use them in his next 2 songs about United.

Forget casual Friday

How do you get your numbers up? Naked Friday.

Well this company in Newcastle had been suffering with the recession and hired a consultant to give them some ideas of how to pull the team together and get them back on a winning track.
The solution was to all go to work with no clothes for the day.

Apparently this breaks down barriers between people and departments and leads to a much better working relationship, which in this case has apparently turned the company´s fortunes around.

A few of the staff were a bit shy, but there was an introduction process leading up to Friday including photocopying body parts one day and sketching a nude model on another.

Perhaps we should think about implementing this strategy, although maybe we could wait for warmer weather and one or two changes to the headcount might be wise.

People we trust the least

Having just participated in a recent poll I found the results interesting, predictable and worth sharing.
A leading newspaper (not the sensacionalist rag I normally peruse) has managed to break away from Susan Boyle and is addressing one of the crucial and timely questions.

Who do we least trust; politicians, bankers or journalists?

Obviously the bankers have been in for a lot of stick recently, particularly Fred "shredder" Goodwin from RBS, who have been seen by many as responsible for most of our current problems - world crash, unemployment, poverty, global warming and the recent cold spell etc. - but in an anonymous poll that doesn´t seem to be the case.

The bankers came in 3rd place with 21.4% of the mistrust vote closely followed by journalists in 2nd at 30.7%, no surprises to see that politicians are there with 47.8% of mistrust.

One of the comments I found most interesting was the conspiration theory (there always seem to be people who credit government with the intelligence and organization to implement clever but naughty stuff) that politicians and journalists have colluded to make the most of the current situation to sort out their finances.

So the theory goes that with the credit problems, governments have been able to take over financial institutions for a fraction of their true worth in order to make a large killing when share prices rise again. Not being much of a believer in conspirations, I always think these things are caused by random luck and coincidence, however this could be a golden lining to the cloud we seem to be in at the moment.

This takes me on to another half baked theory I have been working on after seeing a bunch of companies backed by their national governments buying up other companies.
I am now of the opinion that the US led capitalist bubble has burst and that we will see companies such as Fiat etc. helped by their governments in order to grab share of world commerce.
Seems to make sense that when the world is "on sale" now is the time to extend your boundaries, most empires have historically fallen under similar circumstances.

A taxing experience

The usual story of boy meets girl, Romanian student needs €60.000 to pay for her college tuition, a computer studies course in Germany, and decides to sell her virginity on line to the highest bidder in order to raise the cash.

After the initial setback of the advert being pulled, not for any moral issue regarding selling sex but beacause her old school teacher announced she is not a virgin (no mention of exactly how he should know this) the advert went back up and an Italian won with a bid of €10.000.
Not exactly what she, Alina, was targeting but still a reasonable sum, enough to buy 3.268 big macs in the Euro area according to the famous Big Mac index.

Now the problem, under German law selling sex or prostitution is perfectly legal, even on a student visa, however there is a special 50% tax rate levied, also she could be liable for sales tax currently at 19% and the German inland revenue are obviously anxious not to miss a trick...no pun intended.

Therefore from Alina´s initial €60.000 target she received €10.000 which will be reduced by €5.000 prostitution tax and possibly €1.900 sales tax leaving her with €3.100 for her labours.

Interesting that a Romanian girl has sex in Italy and pays 70% of it to the German government, you have to take your hat off to this kind of legislation.

Perhaps more relevant is that selling sex is illegal in Italy since 2008 although they seem to have a reasonably relaxed attitude on the issue, a top down culture one would imagine.
Less relaxed is the Italian taxation system which on these values charges 25%, if cumulative the poor girl could pay another €2.500 leaving her with a paltry €600 to remember the weekend by.

Too many fingers

They say history repeats itself and certainly my password frustration seems to be doing so. Having suffered many years from an excess of passwords; banks, creditcards, internet stuff, airline programmes, elevator security etc. you name it, I was hoping that modern technology might ease this load.
But no, recently I have uncovered a new frustration just as inconvenient and vexing as this, finger identification.

In a perfect world we could all be recognised by proximity or eyes etc., but the finger identification seems to have been made as complicated as possible.

So there I am trying to get into the office in São Paulo and I forgot that it is standardised, everybody pushes the asterisk and places the right thumb over the laser, the door magically pops open.
As we have a lot of security you have to do this on 2 doors to get to my desk, there is a further door but my thumb doesn´t have the relevant clearance, database companies are up there with MI5 and Mossad for security you know. (Actually ours is better than MI5 as they have reportedly lost 5 laptops and a Blackberry this year so far, although if I had to use a Blackberry I would have chucked it somewhere by now too)

Back to the fingers, I couldn´t get into the office, I simply forgot the sequence and correct finger. At my gym I have a code number followed by a button with no sign, obviously used so much it rubbed off and then the left thumb, also standardised for all. So there I am, trying all the fingers, looking bewildered until a good samaritan buzzed me in.

After a frustrating day forgetting fingers then I get back to the condominio and have to place the correct finger over the laser, if I get this wrong it triggers a kidnap warning and previously smiling men get angry and run around waving guns.
A close relative on the first entry managed to put the wrong finger on the laser, luckily she realised and screamed out false alarm, prior to an international incident occurring.

Perhaps I am the only one troubled by this so far, but am sure that as more places implement these systems there will be an almighty cock-up at some stage, maybe I should tattoo the info on each finger to get it right first time.