Over in the US of America, fast food restaurant Chick-Fil-A has been snubbed by The Muppets, over the former’s openly homophobic stance on gay marriages. A deal for the Jim Henson Company to provide toys for Chick-Fil-A kids’ meals has been scrapped as a result.
Okay, not the most exciting consumer story ever. Helpfully, Taiwan’s bonkers NMA CGI news channel have brought it to life in their own inimitable style…
The new iPhone 5 will be on sale in Autumn and will come with a 19-pin connector port at the bottom instead of the 30-pin port “to make room for the earphone moving to the bottom”, apparently. You might think that’s boring, so let us put it another way:
All those accessories you bought for your iPhone and all those things you connect with your phone, won’t work if you get the latest Apple phone.
Speakers, power chargers, iPods, iPads… they’ll all effectively be obsolete as far as your new phone is concerned. Bad news, unless you’re the owner of a company that will be making adapters to link your old leads with the new socket.
“Apple needs to find a solution not to disappoint their current clients who want to upgrade to the new iPhone but are tied to an expensive accessory that have bought,” said Franciso Jeronimo, a tech analyst. ”I believe Apple will come up with some sort of adaptor so the new iPhone can be used with previous connectors.”
So will Apple do the right thing and ship the iPhone 5 an adaptor, so you don’t have to re-buy all your accessories, or will you have to wait for some other company to bodge some together for you?
Booze comes in all kinds of shapes, sizes and flavours and if you’re into getting off your head, there’s almost certainly something on the market for you. But what if you’re the alcoholic equivalent of a fussy eater, and nothing is quite right for you?
You need Air instead. It’s the upcoming drink that will launch in the US of America soon and is simply a mixture of water and alcohol (with some carbonation) to give it added fizz. Boozy water then. 4% ABV.
The company behind it, Fourloko, are also planning berry and citrus-flavoured versions as well, but that’s a bit too extreme if you ask us. So, would you forego the taste of lager and cider to sup yourself pissed on something that tastes of nothing?
We all know someone who seems a little bit dodgy. We might even know they are taking “morally wrong” cash in hand. Generally, however, our dislike of the taxman outweighs any personal antipathy towards neighbourly tax dodgers. After all, they’re unlikely to be on Goldman Sachs’ level are they?
However, times is hard, and the latest figures from HM Revenue and Customs reveal that they made £374,000 worth of ‘thank you’ payments to members of the public who had been kind enough to grass up their friends, relatives and neighbours.
Investigative website Exaro also revealed this is not a new thing, with over £1m in palm greasing paid out in the last three years. Last year’s figure wasn’t even the highest figure to date and the last five years amounts show a general upward trend- £309,620 in 2010-11, £384,110 in 2009-10, £281,000 in 2008-09, and £155,950 in 2007-08.
John Whiting, the director of tax policy at the Chartered Institute of Taxation, told The Telegraph: “While many people do not realise that they can get money [for informing], the Revenue does have the power to pay.”
So could you do it? Payments range from around £50 up to several thousands, depending on how much tax is recouped as a result of the information provided. HMRC does not promote these bounty payments openly, and you are advised to ensure that any request for payment for informing is made in writing and a record kept. Payments are at HMRC’s discretion and depend on “the value of the information and the quality of the result”, according to an HMRC spokesman, although he confirmed they are not necessarily a fixed percentage of the tax recouped.
And you can inform on just about anyone. Popular informees are former business partners, former spouses and employers, but you can just as easily grass on “someone bragging in the pub” or your really annoying neighbours.
A total of £42 million of unpaid tax was recovered between 2005 and 2009 as a result of information received from members of the public, according to HMRC, who declined to provide more recent figures. Clearly they did not want anyone working out the percentage of bounty fees to tax avoidance.
HMRC “would expect individuals to think first about the wrongdoing rather than about how much they might make” but at Bitterwallet, we are all in favour of killing two birds with one stone. However, before embarking on a bounty career and spending your life in pubs waiting to overhear some snippets of tax avoidance, note that any cash payment for information is only handed out once any tax has been recovered. And that could take years.
Better get started now then.
Fancy a nice little earner? Grass someone up to the taxman. | BitterWallet
Hands up if you want to see some bankers thrown in jail? Well, you’re in luck because it could well be happening thanks to the Serious Fraud Office confirming that they’re ’satisfied’ that existing laws can cover manipulation of interest rates.
The announcement, made by SFO director David Green QC, means that traders could well end up thrown in the clink… for 10 years! Crivens. It’s all getting a bit serious now.
In a statement the SFO said it was ’satisfied that existing criminal offences are capable of covering conduct in relation to the alleged manipulation of Libor and related interest rates’.
Eight financial institutions are being investigated by the Financial Services Authority and the SFO is also looking at a number people. The government want a fast turnaround on it too.
RBS chief, Stephen Hester said his bank were being investigated by the FSA over their role in attempting to manipulate borrowing rates, adding: “RBS is one of the banks tied-up in Libor. We’ll have our day in that particular spotlight as well. Even though when all the Libor (fines) are out most of it is going to be around the wrongdoings of a handful of people at a number of banks. Those wrongdoings taint the whole industry beyond the handful of people and that makes it a huge problem.”
Implying the referee or his assistants need glasses is a well-worn joke, but Specsavers have put a cheeky twist on it with this Euro 2012 advert. Of course, it celebrates England being hugely jammy against Ukraine… would they have had the nuts to do it if the shoe was on the other foot?
Let’s start today with a rhetorical question. Has there ever been a better trilogy of movies than the Back To Future ones? As it’s a rhetorical question, there’s no need to answer that.
Instead, we should take a moment to wallow in the magic of the adventures of Michael J Fox as he travelled through time in his magic shoes, adding people like Doctor Who and his own mum to his gang as he went.
The 45-minute orgy in the back of the silver car they all nick at the end of the third film is one of the most terrifying and erotic things we’ve ever seen. Anyway, Blu-ray trilogy for £12.00 delivered – fill your boots.
WAIT! THERE’S MORE!!!
• Vaio 17” 1920 x 1080, 4GB RAM, laptop – only £566.36.
• Pizza Hut pizza for a pound!
• A suit! For only £75.
• Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S – just £179.95.
• Ann Summers sale – up to 70% off and free delivery
• Nintendo 3DS console – only £119.99.
• MP3 car stereo – only £19.99 delivered.
• TP-Link 200Mbps mini powerline ethernet adapter (twin pack) – just £31.79.
• NATPC M009S RTB Ultimate 8GB 7″ capacitive Android tablet – only £69.99.
• Samsung Galaxy Y – £7.50 per month (24 months) – only 27p via redemption.
• Panasonic Viera TX-P50S30 plasma HD 1080p smart TV, 50” with Freeview HD – yours for £549.95.
• Motorola Xoom2 media edition – yours for £207.90.
All those and more can be found over at HotUKDeals…
Do you drive? Well, firstly, congratulations on being mental and broke. And secondly, 32 hours of your vehicular year is spent sat in your car completely stationary, wishing you were dead.
According to research by Inrix, London, Manchester and Liverpool have some of the most appallingly busy roads on the continent and that, say the figures, the average London commuter wastes 66 hours in traffic, 45 hours in Manchester and 39 hours in Liverpool.
Oddly, if you live in Birmingham, the time spent in traffic has decline from last year. Sadly, the downside is that you live in Birmingham, which is like the biggest Dignitas in the world.
‘So goes traffic, so goes the economy,’ said Inrix Europe senior vice president Stuart Marks. ‘Traffic congestion is an excellent economic indicator telling us whether people are going to work, businesses are shipping products and consumers are spending money.’
Here’s some majestic use of social media from Smart, the big-brained folk who make the teeny-tiny cars. It sort of goes like this…
(1) Twitter clever-clogs posts tweet about a Smart car being destroyed by a piece of bird ‘crap’.
(2) Smart deny his claim, accompanying their reply with an infographic which shows EXACTLY how much bird crap it would take to realistically destroy one of their cars. Pigeon, turkey and emu crap is featured in the infographic for purposes of comparison.
(3) Twitter clever-clogs is ‘pwned’ (as we believe ‘the kids’ are prone to say).
Et voila…
Are you a traveller? Chances are, you won’t be going to an Ikea store anytime soon after it was reported that ‘your kind’ aren’t welcome. Astonishing, huh?
And this is exactly what Luke Massey found out when he paid a visit to the Valley Park outlet in South London. Arriving at the store with his girlfriend and mother in a camper van, one security guard challenged them, asking if they were Gypsies and, if they were, they wouldn’t be allowed on-site.
Ikea is saying that they’re not being prejudice, but rather, that they’re protecting their business interests. Luke Massey said: ”We were just aghast and my partner said ‘What? Are you serious?’ We argued with him there for about a minute before he said ‘OK go on’, it was like he was convinced we weren’t gipsy so we could go on. I know this kind a camper van is slightly unusual, but it is not exclusively used by the travelling community.”
The guard in question was caught on tape and said: “A lot of them are coming in similar cars. If you had said yes, I wouldn’t have let you into the premises,” adding: “We are stopping them because they are coming in and taking things of our loyal customers, that is why I’m here in the car park.”
Massey added: “Even if they have had problems with travellers using their electricity supply or parking there at night it doesn’t justify the racial profiling of customers at the front door. It is not acceptable, I’m disgusted.”
Garry Deakin, the Ikea store manager at Croydon, defended the stance, saying: ”Over recent months the travelling community in the Croydon area have been attempting to access the customer car park to set up their mobile homes. (It) not only has an impact on our customers’ shopping experience, but also poses a health and safety risk due to the build up of human and animal waste.”
“After discussions with both the local traveller liaison officer and Croydon Council, Ikea Croydon implemented preventative procedures to secure the car park, including a security officer to patrol the entry to the car park to prevent the mobile homes entering the car park.”
As you might know, Apple came out from under their techno-rock the other day and announced some upgrades to their MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops. All well and good, if you want to stay up to date.
But, if you’re not bothered about the state-of-the-art gear and want to get your hands on an Apple product, now is the time to take a look at some hefty reductions in the price of the soon-to-be-defunct versions of the wonder machines. Currys have knocked down prices starting at £150 off an 11.5” entry-level Air (down to £699) right through to £500 off the cost of a top-range 17” Pro (now only £1599). Perfect for that much-sought-after ‘just behind the curve’ look….
WAIT THERE’S MORE…!!!
• Free Xbox Live Weekend 15th – 17th June
• Hercules Eplug 200Mb mini twin pack powerline adapters – only £24.99.
• 3 ready-to-use 1GB/one-month preloaded mobile data SIM – just £3.96.
• Xbox Live Games On Demand reductions – 400 points per game.
• Free delivery on all orders at Mothercare.
• 4-slice toaster – only £19.99.
• Dead Island for PC (download) – only £7.98.
• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition (Xbox 360) £24.95 delivered.
• GT Aggressor 1.0 (2011) – only £294.99 delivered.
• National Geographic land and sky telescope – now only £6.99.
All those and more can be found over at HotUKDeals…
Faster payments in shops is the holy grail for lots of retailers, and now Paypal have busted on to the scene to offer their own inimitable service. It sounds amazing and quick as well – here’s what you have to do to get involved…
• Download and fire up the Paypal instant payment app.
• Tap in a security code
• Present the barcode that the app generates.
• Find a shop assistant who has the relevant barcode scanner.
• Get them to scan the item and the barcode on your app.
That’s it! You’ve made your purchase! MUCH quicker and simpler than handing over cash or a credit/debit card, eh? Oh.
At the moment, the service is only available in Oasis, Coast and Karen Millen stores but i’m sure it’ll soon spread like wildfire and become the new standardised way to pay for stuff in the UK. Oh yes.
What do YOU plan to do once your poor, beloved cat kicks the bucket? Bury it in the garden? Cook it and eat it? Erm, BORING.
Wacky Dutch artist Bart Jansen had his late moggy Orville stuffed and turned into a helicopter – obviously. Take a look at THIS….
I’ll be closing this website down shortly as I move into the dead animal helicopter business instead – it’s clearly a much better way of helping people than a few consumer tips here and there…
One onlooker described the fight as "brutal" as Lembit Opik took several blows to the face from the fist of his opponent Kade Callous Photo: Lawrence Looi/Newsteam
10:42AM BST 03 Jun 2012
The former leading Liberal Democrat, who has attempted a career as a stand up and appeared in a music video since he lost his seat for Montgomeryshire in the 2010 general election, stepped into the wrestling ring to make his professional debut on Saturday night.
But all did not go well for Opik as St John's Ambulance paramedics had to come to his rescue after a bruising encounter with another wrestler.
Opik had previous experience in the ring, having been dragged into a fight, still wearing his suit, back in April after he decided to pick a fight with an 18-stone pro fighter.
This time he lined up for a rematch in Welshpool, Powys, wearing an ill-fitting T-shirt, tracksuit trousers and kneepads.
Today is a great day to be British. Just ahead of a glorious four-day weekend, what could we Brits possibly have to complain about? Perhaps the fact that we are top of the euro-leader board for getting shafted and paying over the odds for just about everything.
But this isn’t just good old fashioned whingeing, oh no. Our friends over at the European Commission have produced a report pointing out all the ways in which the UK is paying through the nose, while our European neighbours look on and sniff. Forget the Eurozone crisis, our shocking consumer prices will hamper economic recovery and have caused the EC to revise down its forecasts for British economic growth to just 0.5%.
The EC report found that “a combination of relatively high prices and margins….suggests that parts of the UK economy suffer from weak effective competition. In both manufacturing and services, gross operating margins in the UK are among the highest in the EU.”
So we are expensive producers. But we can’t get anywhere cheaply either- the report was shocked at the cost of our rail fares. Tell us something we don’t know. “The total cost per passenger kilometre of the rail network in the UK is around 70% higher than the average cost in a sample of four comparable rail systems…However, rail fares continue to be raised from already high levels…” And air travel isn’t much better “Aviation is taxed [in the UK] more than in any other member state via air passenger duty.”
So let’s all throw carbon polluting caution to the wind and just drive everywhere instead. So long as we can get past every other person doing the same thing, that is “for each kilometre of motorway, 113 million passenger vehicle kilometres are driven nationally each year, against 47 million in Germany, 39 million in France and 36 million in the US. In addition, UK roads carry more freight per kilometre of motorway than any other major economy apart from Japan.”
To be honest, we may as well all stay at home- then we don’t have to be expensive workers, paying a fortune to get to work. Not to mention paying for someone to look after the kids while we’re at work…“full-time pre-school childcare is still rare, insufficiently flexible and expensive. Alongside Ireland, childcare costs in the UK are higher than in any other EU country.”
So it looks like rip-off Britain is alive and well and encouraging us all to sit on our bottoms and do nothing productive. Why don’t we all go to the Olympics instead?
Well, rip-off seems to be the unofficial motto of the games, with the official food and drink prices having now been announced. While the range of foods have been chosen to reflect the diversity of Britain, the drink prices are certainly only indicative of the Chelsea set. Heineken ‘beer’ is set to cost £7.23 a pint and wine a mere £19.20 a bottle. Other official drinks prices are as follows:
Bottled water – £1.60
Fairtrade Tea from £2.00
Fairtrade Coffee from £2.60
500ml bottle of Coca Cola – £2.30
330ml bottle of Heineken – £4.20
London 2012 red wine 18.7cl – £4.80
However, Games caterers Locog’s chief executive Paul Deighton said the pricing was reasonable. Well he would, wouldn’t he.
“We want everyone who attends the Games this summer to have a fantastic experience and central to this is the food and drink that’s available,” he said. “We believe that our prices are more than comparable to those found at other major sporting events which because of their temporary nature are often more expensive than the high street.”
The full list of Olympic food and drink prices can be found on the Telegraph website.
Here’s a pretty good reason NOT to upgrade to upper class the next time you fly with Virgin Atlantic – there’s every chance that your complimentary drinks could be ‘enhanced’ with an ice version of the airline’s fuzz-faced founding father Sir Richard Branson.
Yes, it’s your actual Richard Branson ice cube and high-end flyers can now have a couple of them dropped into their drinks in a move that will almost certainly deter passengers from dropping acid before they get on the plane if nothing else. Apparently the ice cubes were created by four skilled designers over a period of six weeks – and how lucky we all are to be able to enjoy their efforts.
Virgin Atlantic’s chief executive Steve Ridgway crowed: “While Richard would love to be able to sit and enjoy a drink with all of our passengers, his schedule means that it simply isn’t possible. Now he is able to join our guests “in spirit” on one of the upper class cabin’s first flights as they raise a toast to their trip and the exciting times ahead.”
We await Ryanair’s response – peanuts carved into the shape of Michael O’Leary? Only £11.99 a bag?
Ask the average man/woman in the street what they think of Waitrose and you’ll get the same stock answer – “Weeuurgh, it’s so posh and pricey and the meat comes from unicorns and the custard is made from angel milk and you need a masters degree in feng shui before they let you in the door and the security guards all talk like Tony Blair and weeuurgh….”
But absolutely none of that is true, and Waitrose are at pains to prove that with a new branded price-match campaign, which they might have announced from inside a yurt. Or might not have. Anyway, the upshot is that they’re vowing to price-match Tesco on 7,000 branded grocery items and will make the supermarket chain one per cent cheaper than Sainsbury’s. Take THAT, Waitrose-haterz.
The John Lewis-owned offering has been the fastest-growing supermarket of the past three years, and launched an ‘Essentials’ range back in 2009 in an attempt to ‘reposition’ itself or something. Looks like you don’t need to be a personal friend of a peer of the realm now if you want to nip in and buy some organic artisan bread….
Don’t monkey with the Pirate Bay
Don’t monkey with the Pirate Bay. Days after Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Sky, Everything Everywhere and O2 were basically ordered block them, we’ve seen something of a Streisand Effect, with the site claiming 12 million more visitors than ever before.
A spokesperson for the site said that “the free advertising” from hundreds of news stories across UK media had dramatically boosted traffic to the site.
“Thanks to the High Court and the fact that the news was on the BBC, we had 12 million more visitors yesterday than we had ever had before,” the spokesperson said. “We should write a thank you note to the BPI (British Phonographic Industry).”
And then, as a thumb in the eye, they celebrated not with cake, but rather, publishing advice on how to get around the block: “As usual there are easy ways to circumvent the block. Use a VPN service to be anonymous and get an uncensored internet access, you should do this anyhow. Or use TOR, I2P or some other darknet with access to the internets. Change your DNS settings with OpenDNS. Or use Google’s DNS servers… We could go on…”.
If you squeeze one spot, two will emerge in its place, clearly. Not that this will stop the powers that be from trying to put an end to sites such as these.
The Pirate Bay adds: “Don’t forget that we can’t allow this shit to happen. Next time they’re coming for something else. And yes, there will be a next time if we don’t stop them. Write to your ISP and tell them to appeal the case. Write to your local MPs and tell them that this is not allowed. Make sure your voice is heard. Remember, we’re all the Pirate Bay, and we must stand united against the censorship from our opponents!”
Days after Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Sky, Everything Everywhere and O2 were basically ordered block them, we’ve seen something of a Streisand Effect, with the site claiming 12 million more visitors than ever before.
A spokesperson for the site said that “the free advertising” from hundreds of news stories across UK media had dramatically boosted traffic to the site.
“Thanks to the High Court and the fact that the news was on the BBC, we had 12 million more visitors yesterday than we had ever had before,” the spokesperson said. “We should write a thank you note to the BPI (British Phonographic Industry).”
And then, as a thumb in the eye, they celebrated not with cake, but rather, publishing advice on how to get around the block: “As usual there are easy ways to circumvent the block. Use a VPN service to be anonymous and get an uncensored internet access, you should do this anyhow. Or use TOR, I2P or some other darknet with access to the internets. Change your DNS settings with OpenDNS. Or use Google’s DNS servers… I could go on…”.
If you squeeze one spot, two will emerge in its place, clearly. Not that this will stop the powers that be from trying to put an end to sites such as these.
The Pirate Bay adds: “Don’t forget that we can’t allow this shit to happen. Next time they’re coming for something else. And yes, there will be a next time if we don’t stop them. Write to your ISP and tell them to appeal the case. Write to your local MPs and tell them that this is not allowed. Make sure your voice is heard. Remember, we’re all the Pirate Bay, and we must stand united against the censorship from our opponents!”
