Spam

Seen on a "for sale" sign on my ride home from work yesterday: "Farr... Joe Farr -- (07) 55 007 007. 'Licenced to sell'. I am not making this up.

In other news, I see we now have a "do not call" list to supposedly get rid of telemarketers in Australia. Typically for an Australian Government "initiative", the website was down when I went to check it out. Then I saw the list of "exceptions" which includes religious organisations and political parties. Given that most private companies are set up overseas now anyway, and can easily register an overseas-based shelf company to do their marketing work for them (which would consequently not be subject to Australian laws), the whole thing just looks like a complete waste of time. Still, as they say, the political imperative in a "democracy" is to "be seen to be doing something about it".

Sure, one can argue that telemarketers don't want to call people who are only going to reject them anyway, but having worked in that field, the fact is, they aren't the ones calling the shots. It's the people upstairs who have read too many "mission statements" and think that nobody could ever possibly reject their product who need to be convinced, and this won't do it. I think I'll stick to my tactic of only bothering to answer the phone when it suits me, and letting message bank take care of everything else.