Disqus - Latest Comments for Ian_Middleton

Re: 3 (Three) outage or service down? Current problems and outages

Ian Middleton — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 16:20:40 -0000

I connect to Three via Smarty and the data speeds in Kidlington have been virtually unusable for the past week. No sensible answer from Smarty/Three other than they are doing some work. No idea what or how long it will last. It was like this for about a week at the end of last month and then came back again for a few weeks. Now it's just terrible. Fluctuating from 0.5 Mbps to 3 or 4 if you're lucky. How can it be so difficult to fix something over this period of time? This company should not be allowed to continue selling contracts with this poor level of service.

Re: Does Labour really have an “alternative” Brexit plan?

Ian Middleton — Fri, 21 Dec 2018 13:47:42 -0000

There is a 4th option, the government does its job properly and simply cancels Brexit as it would be damaging to the country. It is, after all, the job of the government to protect our interests, even if that is in spite of ourselves. The 'will of the people' is an irrelevance if that will calls for something that is either impossible or potentially dangerous.

Re: SimplyCast 360

Ian Middleton — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 15:25:20 -0000

We used Simplycast for around 4 years and it was torture from start to finish. Firstly the interface is clumsy and clunky. even when you do manage to work around the frequent screw ups it produces, it often just junks your entire email campaign with no way to recover it. You can spend hours trying to figure out ways of getting the GUI to actually render something that approaches what you're trying to achieve and then you find out after testing that it simply doesn't work. On other occasions you'd make one small change to a layout and it would break everything else you'd spent hours trying to get right.

On one occasion I discovered that the email we'd composed missed out huge chunks when sent to an Outlook mail client. I contacted support to be blithely told that their system doesn't support Outlook, even though it's the single most popular email client on the planet!

The final straw was when I scheduled an important campaign to run a week or so before Black Friday. After realising it hadn't gone out I again contacted support to be told they were having 'issues' (a familiar story from Simplycast). Not only had the campaign not gone out, it was stuck in their mail queue meaning I couldn't send anything else out. After several days of this we gave up and signed up with a different company.

After explaining all this to their support guy he offered to refund us back the outstanding credits on the account (approx. $50). Another 3 months went by and we never received the refund or even any contact from them. When I called them I'd get another litany of excuses about the finance department having 'issues'. Finally I was told they'd basically changed their minds and weren't going to give us the refund after all. Although they never bothered to tell me any of this as they were apparently not able to email or call me. That's from a company who are supposed to be communications experts.

The only reason we had such a large credit on the account was that their pricing information was misleading in the first place which led to us racking up huge bills on an account we rarely used. They offered a 'roll over' service on unused credits for an extra $0.99 a month. But somehow this meant we still paid for the rolled over credits every month. A small bill of around $16 a month ballooned to around $75 a month before we realised what was happening. After complaining they agreed to convert the outstanding credits to pre-paid and we assumed we'd eventually use them up. But as each email campaign was so difficult to launch we rarely bothered. The $50 refund wasn't even close to what we'd lost during this fiasco but it was an historical debt so I accepted the offer as a good will gesture. Although ultimatley even that was screwed up!

The whole experience with Simplycast is appalling from beginning to end. From their terrible system, to their laughable customer care department. We moved to another service and it's like night and day. Everything works, it takes around and hour to set up and test a campaign (as opposed to a couple of days with Simplycast) and we're also seeing massive increases in our opening ratios. Something like 10-12% as opposed to 3-5% with Simplycast. So its not just an awful experience for you as the user, your customers don't see half of the messages you pay for anyway!

Basically avoid them like the plague and check out one of the plethora of much better run and much more responsive services out there.

Re: Revealed: David Cameron’s plan to bring back hunting

Ian Middleton — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 07:34:19 -0000

So do these altruistic farmers need a pack of dogs, several horses and a gang of hunters to find these sick animals?

Re: Revealed: David Cameron’s plan to bring back hunting

Ian Middleton — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 07:30:32 -0000

There were very similar arguments made against the abolition of slavery.

As for the "we all harm something argument" if that's a reason not to bother trying to reduce that harm, I suppose we may as well not bother with any environmental protection measures at all. And next time I see someone in my path on the road I'll not waste the energy to do anything 'holier than thou' like hitting the brake. We all exist at the expense of others after all.

Re: Revealed: David Cameron’s plan to bring back hunting

Ian Middleton — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 07:25:08 -0000

As with most methods of so-called pest control, killing a few foxes isn't going to make that much difference to the damage they do if farmers and livestock managers don't attend to their own defence and bio-security measures.

It's exactly the same argument used by dairy farmers who leave water troughs to fester and overflow in field corners and ignore boot washes and then scream for wholesale wildlife slaughter to cover up their own shortcomings.

There are plenty of ways of dealing with foxes at the point where they become a problem, rather than going out and looking for them. And none of them require you to have a horse, a red jacket and a Conservative Party membership.

Re: Revealed: David Cameron’s plan to bring back hunting

Ian Middleton — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 07:10:09 -0000

I think you might find that animals also suffer to produce halloumi cheese. But I suppose it depends on your perspective and your ability to comprehend suffering.

You say 'pest control' I say inefficient method of livestock management being used as an excuse to allow a load of bloodthirsty idiots to ride about in daft costumes looking for an innocent creature to tear limb from limb.

If controlling foxes was that serious a problem, don't you think it would be more appropriate for our Prime Minister to be discussing a more efficient means of doing it? Rather than simply trying to undermine a democratic decision with back-room skulduggery just to assuage the blood-lust of a few Tory yahoos who helped him win a slim majority?

But then maybe we're back in the realms of perspective again. I say democracy, you say 'innate order'

Re: The Green Party are spiteful, malicious toddlers

Ian Middleton — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 16:36:15 -0000

To be fair. You said :

"Disband the army"
Which I've explained she did not say and I wouldn't support.

"Use sky-high taxes to discourage inward
investment" Which she did not say and neither did I.

"Only imprison criminals who are scared of vigilantes"
and
Which we've both agreed she didn't say.

And finally :

"Get rid of all immigration controls" which again she didn't say, she (and I) support the current situation with regard to EU movements both ways, and we both aspire to greater movement between nations in the future.

Your interpretation of her words sounded "a bit mad" but the reality is a a set of slightly radical proposals to change a status quo that quite self evidently isn't working.

Thanks for the kind wishes. Between you and me I have very little chance of being elected, but I think it's worth standing up for something I believe in anyway. Maybe one day.

Thanks for the conversation. I've enjoyed it.

Re: The Green Party are spiteful, malicious toddlers

Ian Middleton — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 15:02:16 -0000

Neither of 1 or 2 are 'mad' they are sensible proposals.

We don't need a nuclear deterrent. What use is it to a tiny island like ours? We can save £100Bn and put it to better use, like the NHS or education. Although I don't agree with the policy of leaving NATO at this point.

Our armed forces should be scaled back to a well equipped defence based force. Although there would have to be a small amount of reserve if we were called on to be a minor part of any NATO action.

Arms procurement is something that does need more thought, but in principle reducing arms manufacture is something that I'd support. Otherwise we're just exporting death to other countries, many of them with highly dubious human rights records and questionable political aims.

A one-off wealth tax would be a useful additional shot in the arm for the economy, although personally I don't support taxes on fixed assets, such as the mansion tax.

We're part of the EU. We can't stop the movements of EU citizens in either direction. Given that the net benefit of EU migrants has been in our favour, I don't see why we'd want to. Other than to assuage the rabid xenophobia of parties like UKIP.

Non-EU immigration may need to be controlled in the short term, but ultimately (and this might be a very long time away) we should be looking at a planet without borders or nationhoods. But I am an internationalist.

None of that is mad. It might be described as radical, but I don't think sticking with the same old plans has got us very far in the past 50 years has it? Unless you're a member of the super-rich elite I suppose.

Re: The Green Party are spiteful, malicious toddlers

Ian Middleton — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 10:05:05 -0000

She wasn't advocating anything of the sort. Her comments are being deliberately misinterpreted. In pretty much the same way that you are doing to mine.

Re: The Green Party are spiteful, malicious toddlers

Ian Middleton — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 06:22:18 -0000

Yes that does all sound pretty mad. None of it is Green Party policy though.

Re: The Green Party are spiteful, malicious toddlers

Ian Middleton — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 15:24:37 -0000

I am a Parliamentary Candidate. Yes.

Re: The Green Party are spiteful, malicious toddlers

Ian Middleton — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 14:42:50 -0000

There are a few howlers in our last policy document (now 5 years old) as there are in many party policy statements. Especially those from the newer, younger parties.

Our 2015 Manifesto hasn't been published yet, so to be fair to Natalie, she couldn't really answer questions on it with any authority.

Re: The Green Party are spiteful, malicious toddlers

Ian Middleton — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 13:43:22 -0000

I must admit the local Green council hasn't exactly covered itself in glory of late. But much of their problems are a failure to get their point across, rather than actual mismanagement. Which in a way was the same with Natalie's interview yesterday.

Re: The Green Party are spiteful, malicious toddlers

Ian Middleton — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 13:26:02 -0000

I wasn't really making one. As there was little in the article that I'd dignify with a response.

It's a character assassination click-bait piece using half truths and straw men. I really wouldn't know where to start.

As I'm apparently reduced to the level of a spiteful, malicious toddler, I guess my best option would just be to retrieve Graeme's dummy from the other side of the pram.

Re: The Green Party are spiteful, malicious toddlers

Ian Middleton — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 13:14:05 -0000

Hardly a surprising stance from the Torygraph I suppose.

At least we can be sure that some things will remain ever changeless, rooted as they are in a simplistic smoky diatribe wafting from the pipe clenched firmly in the teeth of middle England.

Heaven forfend if anyone should challenge such received opinion. Whatever next? True democracy and freedom of speech?

Those aren't British values! Leave that to those pesky foreigners and Greeks bearing gifts.

Re: My week as a vegan

Ian Middleton — Sun, 11 Jan 2015 13:29:51 -0000

"Cheese was out, so was yoghurt, so was
pasta and probably cake – and if I found myself at a kid’s party, there
was no jelly for me"

There are very good vegan alternatives to all of those. This is the 21st century you know, not 1962.

Some vegan cheese is now very good and you can even make it yourself. Pasta is vegan as long as it's not egg based (and most aren't), and if you think cake is out, you're really not looking hard enough.

Palm oil is vegan as long as it's from a sustainable source. Considering you mention 'welfare' meat, which is an oxymoron in itself, I'm surprised that you'd not realised that. The production of palm oil doesn't exploit animals, but it can have an impact on them, and on the environment, as can so many other human activities. As someone else says below, it's not exactly a starting point for your vegan adventure, but well done for noticing. Hope you'll remember when looking for ingredients in the future, as palm is in virtually everything now and much of it isn't sustainable. Happily though, one of the biggest manufacturers of peanut butter - Sunpat - don't use it.

As far as spag bol goes, sorry to burst your bubble but Quorn mince isn't vegan. It contains egg. But I make a wicked one with soya mince, vegetable bouillon, red wine (vegan of course) and all the usual ingredients. It takes me 15 minutes tops and tastes fantastic, I've even fed it to meat eaters who haven't even realised that it was vegan. I also freeze it in batches so it makes the perfect 5 minute meal when I haven't got time to cook. Surely as a chef you can match or beat that!

Overall this post does come across as the usual vegansim = deprivation rhetoric which, as a food writer, I'd have expected you to moved on from by now.

Veganism is a fast growing movement on ethical, environmental and health grounds. It's great that you've tried it, but perhaps do your research a bit better next time. or better still, just ask some vegans! You'll then enjoy it more and hopefully write a more positive article as a result.

Re: Nigel Farage v Russell Brand: panto has arrived on BBC Question Time

Ian Middleton — Thu, 11 Dec 2014 08:07:20 -0000

I was with you up until the bit where Brand was less deserving of attention than Farage. Since when was the right to be heard based on your support base? If either of these people have something relevant to say then we should listen to them.

Trouble is they mostly don't. Brand and Farage both pander to pretty much the same reactionary click-bait generation, but in slightly different ways.

Farage wants votes from people who think we'd all be better off if the Victorians had never embraced the industrial revolution and we still had the Raj. Whereas Brand just wants attention and subscribers to his various online ventures to prop up a career that bombed spectacularly after he berated an old man on live radio.

Neither are any more deserving of attention than the other. As for Farage's party having 2 MPs, it's arguable that he wouldn't have if it wasn't for the attention he's already garnered via good old Auntie BEEB.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see the Brand party emerging as some point, although of course that will involve cuddly Russell dropping his messianic calls for a velvet jacketed revolution.

Re: Just how beautiful was Karen Carpenter's voice? Listen to her isolated vocal tracks and find out

Ian Middleton — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 11:23:13 -0000

She had a great voice but it's no more special in isolation than it was in the mix. In fact much of The Carpenters magic was in the vocal harmonies, both with herself and with her brother.

Superstar for instance is robbed of it's soul by the removal of the multiple harmonies during the main verse sections. Not to mention playing it with just the drum and bass track highlights just how boring the performances by those instruments were.

Re: What Do You Call a Bacon-Wrapped Alligator with a Whole Chicken in Its Mouth?

Ian Middleton — Fri, 09 May 2014 14:10:40 -0000

Think I'd call it a serial killer's fast food wet dream. A serial killer who has blood cholesterol like wallpaper paste and expects not to live past 40 of course.

Re: house-of-fraser-launches-competition-for-start-up-retail-brands-2014-03-04

Ian Middleton — Wed, 05 Mar 2014 06:23:10 -0000

Isn't trading on the high street a challenging enough competition on it's own right now?

Re: “They say my glass eye is a ‘slap in the face to God’”

Ian Middleton — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 13:33:39 -0000

Speechless and with a little tear in my eye that I'm now even more grateful to have. I know kids have to do this boundary thing at certain ages but I really can't believe this sort of behaviour would be tolerated now. At least not in the UK. Well I suppose I hope that's the case.

Re: Business rates 'cripple’ start-ups

Ian Middleton — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 08:34:08 -0000

It's not just about rates though. Let's not forget that rents have the been the main driving force behind the massive rates bills paid by retailers today. Yes some landlords may be getting a bit more real in their expectations now, but that's by no means a given across the board or a long term strategy.

We have a small (270 sq ft) store in Covent Garden that we pay £94K for in rent, then the landlords add another £12K in service charge, the business rates are £45K and then another £3K is added on for the Crossrail Levy. Then remember we have to pay 20% of all our takings in VAT and then find the money to buy stock, pay wages, electricity bills, insurance and all the other things that we need to keep a store running. We have fairly generous margins on our products but we still struggle to make a profit.

The rates are actually on the low side compared to many areas now, and we are probably one of those stores that will benefit from the rates revaluation delay, but our landlords won't entertain a reduction in rent, even though we know they're letting other properties on 'soft' rents to other companies and many of them don't usually last that long.

Our rates will probably go up another £3K next year yet sales continue to fall. So after 13 years we're closing down.

All this has been fuelled by a crazy runaway commercial property market that is largely fiddled by the property industry to keep valuations high in order to leverage more debt or sell developments on at a higher yield. Some landlords may be temporarily reducing rents at the moment, but as soon as there's a sniff of a recovery you can be sure they'll be heading north again.

Yes, the business rates system is an anachronistic dinosaur, but without a full reform of the entire commercial property proposition in the UK I can't see any future for small independents.

As has been shown in this article, it's pointless for them to take on a store in a down-at-heel location and bring it back into use. Whole areas that are revitalised by hard working entrepreneurs, like what is happening in Margate old town now, will eventually see the big boys move in, allowing landlords to cash in on their enterprise. As soon as things are on the up again the landlords will hike the rent and the VOA will be on their heels with a rates increase.

This is what's behind the crippling overheads that are putting more and more retailers out of business. It's a situation that has been brewing for some time and the credit crunch, the internet, parking charges and virtually uncontrolled out of town developments just served to bring it all to boiling point.

Re: The vegan carnivore?

Ian Middleton — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 21:36:34 -0000

Good question!

Re: The vegan carnivore?

Ian Middleton — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 21:35:29 -0000

There is an element of re-training of your taste-buds and expectations required I suppose. I haven't eaten red meat for over 25 years so perhaps I'm not fully qualified to comment now.

I was a huge fan of burgers back in the day (I LOVED Wendys) and if you'd told me then that I'd eventually turn vegan I'd have laughed all the way to the barbecue.

But as I gradually weaned myself off meat and dairy onto other alternatives I realised it's all about what you're used to, and what you're prepared to get used to. Eventually your body no longer regards things like 'real' meat as being something you can't live without.

You sound like you have a sensible approach to meat consumption. I hope you'll continue to consider alternatives. You never know, one day you might end up where I am now.