Socialholic

Is there anything funnier than a bit of old fashioned rape?

Sorry. Did that shock you? It’s a serious question. Believe it or not, there is a steady trade of amusing rape-based t-shirts in this country at the moment.

Marketed as ‘funny’, they are aimed at the assortment of weirdos who would not think twice about wearing them down the pub on a weekend where they would be joined by other halfwits who think that wearing amusing ‘rohypnol’-based t-shirts is a jolly jape.

I noticed one of these companies, 1stoptshirtshop, on Saturday. After a very short period online where fellow tweeters started pointing out who their commercial partners were, 1stoptshirtshop decided to remove their selection of rape tshirts from their website. Which was a shame because I had not taken a screenshot to prove that they were on sale. Rookie error on my part.

And it puts me in a difficult position because if I started to call 1stoptshirtshop sick and weird for selling them, what proof do I have? I could get in all sorts of trouble. Especially as I thought it might be an idea to contact some of their suppliers including Play.com, iWoot, Sky and others, to let them know who they were being linked to.

Shame.

Anyway, fear not because you can still buy your rape tshirts online! I found them! (I can hear your sense of relief!)

And you can still get them from 1stoptshirtshop (or at least on their Amazon store)! Yep, you too can be the proud owner of a “Funny Rohypnol can be persuasive baseball style t-shirt white with black sleeves“. Or, for the ladies, there is the “Funny Rohypnol can be persuasive ladies fitted t-shirt – Black“.

Incredibly, 1stoptshirtshop has a list of ‘partner’ companies that it displays on their website. For ease of reference, these include:

Expedia

iWOOT

Comet Electricals

InterFlora

LoveFilm

SkyTV

Play.com

Red Letter Days

CD WOW

Zavvi

You may know that the co-owners of Red Letter Days are Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones. We think that Peter, being a massive name on Twitter, would be a great person to help us spread the word about this company and maybe put a little pressure on 1stoptshirtshop to stop selling these tshirts. If you are on Twitter, you can send the following tweet to Peter Jones just by clicking it: “@dragonjones Did you know that 1StopShirtShop sells ‘rape’ tshirts and says that Red Letter Days is a partner company? #Stop1Stop”

If you can follow up with “@DragonJones You can see the rape tshirts here http://amzn.to/pl1cYd and the partner page here http://bit.ly/qvOcmp #Stop1Stop”

There are other companies who are selling these. Chargrilled have a selection of rape tshirts, there’s a rib-tickling “It’s not rape if you shout surprise” from Offensive TShirts UK and there are others too. They are next on the list…

It is too long since I was last here. In fact, so engulfed have I been doing things all over the place that I’ve only had time to move servers on this blog.

Mongolian Flag by Nick Farnhill

Social Media around the country and beyond

I seem to have been doing things everywhere – at one point, it felt as if I was living on trains to or from London or around the south east. If I can have one slightly unconventional highlight, it will be seeing the Mongolian flag at the University of Hertfordshire where I was doing a talk on libraries using social media at CILIP’s annual conference, Umbrella. The flag was up because the University has a walkway above which is a flag for each different nationality student they have studying there at any particular time. How nice is that?

Anyway, Mongolia’s a stunning place with wonderful people – you should visit it. Seriously!

My only regret when going to Mongolia was that I was not able to spend more time in Russia during my stopover in Moscow. As it was, the stopover was only a few hours. I would have liked to have been there for days not hours!

Which links nicely to an interview that I did with Vitaly Alexandrov, a Russian journalist, when I was in London doing another talk. It is a long time since I have done an interview like Vitaly’s – which is a worry! Vitaly put me at ease far too easily and we talked for hours about social media and culture – the interview should be out soon – I hope I didn’t say anything too controversial!

Exeter’s where it’s at… and Birmingham

But I’m now back in Topsham ploughing through a mountain of things, working out plans for world domination, putting together proposals, working on websites, working on training courses, running social media campaigns, doing PR and more.

Then I’m speaking at LikeMinds in Exeter on 19-21 October and CILIP’s Marketing Excellence event in Birmingham on 11 November. Oh and there’s a course on Social Media for South West businesses to fit in on 4 November too.

So, that’s what I’ve been up to. What about you?

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I have taken a long time before settling down to write this piece on Lord Carter’s Digital Britain Report. I’ve done that because I was conscious that my initial reaction would be something of a kneejerk one which might, if I sat down and thought about it a bit, mellow over time. I’m not sure it has.

The Report, which Lord C is keen to point out is a draft and a discussion document, has been roundly criticized in all quarters. The occasional person has put their head about the parapet to defend Lord C but, if we are being honest, there hasn’t exactly been a rush.

The main charge is that the Report, in recommending a minimum 2 meg broadband speed for every household, lacks ambition. Personally, I do not think that goes far enough.

Lord C’s defence is that the minimum speed is a guaranteed minimum available to every single household and it will be difficult and expensive to achieve.

My own view is a simple one – why set ourselves such dull and uninspiring targets? If we are about to spend a massive amount of time, effort and money, why not try to achieve something bigger? Developed nations around the world see 20 meg, 50 meg and even 100 meg connections as nothing out of the ordinary. We plan to give a minimum of 2 meg. And, if we are being honest, we all know that, based on past experience, if you tell people in this country that they are going to get a minimum of 2 megs, they are going to get 2 megs – nothing more.

The Report, for me, underlines all that is wrong with the country at the moment. It lacks any self belief, any ambition, any hope, any drive. It is feeble in the extreme. We no longer strive to win, we strive to provide some sort of minimum level of service. And it’s pathetic.

Back in 1961, President John F Kennedy made a speech to Congress in which he outlined the reasons why they should back his space plan. He said:

“I believe we should go to the Moon. But I think every citizen of this country as well as the Members of the Congress should consider the matter carefully in making their judgment, to which we have given attention over many weeks and months, because it is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing or desiring that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space, unless we are prepared to do the work and bear the burdens to make it successful. If we are not, we should decide today and this year.

This decision demands a major national commitment of scientific and technical manpower, material and facilities, and the possibility of their diversion from other important activities where they are already thinly spread. It means a degree of dedication, organization and discipline which have not always characterized our research and development efforts. It means we cannot afford undue work stoppages, inflated costs of material or talent, wasteful interagency rivalries, or a high turnover of key personnel.

New objectives and new money cannot solve these problems. They could in fact, aggravate them further–unless every scientist, every engineer, every serviceman, every technician, contractor, and civil servant gives his personal pledge that this nation will move forward, with the full speed of freedom, in the exciting adventure of space.”

He didn’t say, ‘Well, this is going be hard and the Russians are already pretty much there. So rather than reach for the stars, how about we reach for Dagenham? We could do that and it still won’t be easy. Many people will get further but we will give you a minimum guarantee of Dagenham. What do you say?’

I do not for a second think that guaranteeing a 20 meg or 50 meg connection would be easy. I also do not necessarily believe that it could be rolled out using current technology. So, here’s my thought – let’s have a guarantee of a minimum speed of 20 megs by 2012 for every household in the country. Let us strive to achieve. If we need to equip a small number of house with fibre or satellite or some other technology, let’s do it. Of course it will cost a lot of money but we’re printing money at the moment, so we can use as much as we want! Seriously, though, if we are to bring the advantages of the internet to every household in the UK that is going to cost money and it will cost money if we strive to achieve a slow speed or a faster speed but the returns for us as a society (and the Government through increased taxes) will be great as the UK takes its place at the forefront of technological advance and of ecommerce.

Lord Carter was meant to dream of a better future and he could only come up with a slightly enhanced present (and I am being generous here). The UK needs to dare to dream because if we do not, we will be left behind by countries with real vision.