Yes, I know the advertisement said "£28 an hour", but we are only paying £10.50 for something we expect written in 40 minutes, which is just £15.75 an hour
"Yes, the advertisement did say "Free TV", but we didn't feel we needed to mention it's only an unboxed, 28-inch customer return, and you do have to buy a new kitchen to get it"
"The brand-new car in the advertisement is indeed only £4000, but we didn't feel we needed to mention the wheels, which you have to also buy, that are £8000"
"Yes, the advertisement does say "50,000 Airmiles free", but we didn't feel we needed to mention it's only valid for a holiday to North Korea.
Be
warned before reading any further. Family and friends have told me on
many occasions in the past to take the bonnet from my head and allow the
bee that often sits there to escape. I am man enough to admit that they
are not too far wrong. But some things do fester. Very heavily. And
this episode is one of them.
Also, should you consider yourself a politically correct frump, please stop reading - some of the content may cause unintentional offence, but it is purely opinionated, caused by my anger, the reason for which will quickly become apparent. And also, bear in mind I am of an age where "binary" was originally just a 101010101010 counting system and not a hijacked word.
It is also a long rant!
Firstly, challenge time. Could you rewrite this in 40 minutes so as to be totally original and plagairism free? https://remapconsulting.com/biosimilars/what-are-the-pricing-considerations-when-launching-different-types-of-biosimilars.
Or for that matter could you do this one? https://uk.sganalytics.com/blog/what-role-does-sports-analytics-play-in-football
Or perhaps even this one https://www.lawcareers.net/Solicitors/the-solicitors-qualifying-examination
No? Really? Oh! That's strange! I know of an intermediary agency that thinks these are possible in 40
minutes each. However, in the persuance of balance and fairness, this particular crew do work in an HR-related field, which not making excuses for them , does explain a lot. As I have alluded to in my book on the subject.
Click on the book-cover image if you require further detail!
PS. As an aside – “XXX” is non-binary and so uses the pronouns they, them and their. They are not easily offended, but if you could keep that in mind, I would appreciate it
*will explain about "bines" later, where it will all make total (non)sense
Rather coincidentally as I wrote this rant, journalist Rod Liddle had written this in his Sunday Times column on 11th December 2022:
I don't believe using pronouns dictated by the marketing agency about "bines" rather than paying me an honest and reasonable rate for the job would otherwise help towards my spiralling cost of living. I stand to be corrected if this is indeed the case. Bring on the "bines" and I'll head to the supermarket with them to fill my trolley with food and pay a year's council tax and British Gas in advance.
Some causes do not do much to help themselves. They are their own worst PR enemies. The "Just Stop Oil" wastrels are a case in point. On 21st October 2022, two victims were hit by a car while waiting in the traffic caused by the Dartford Crossing Just Stop Oil protest. Just Stop Oil’s vapid response was:
"This is a tragic situation and our sympathies are with those who have lost their loved ones and the man who was injured. The truth is our roads are dangerous places, over 27,000 people were killed or seriously injured on the roads last year. That’s four people a day, every day, killed by speeding and inattentive drivers.”
So that’s OK then.
Use blame culture to cover things that were actually your fault. It was not the fault of others or dangerous roads in this instance No. It was you inconsiderate and unthoughtful jerks from Just Stop Oil who caused the death with your stupid and unwanted protest. There was absolutely no one else to blame except you ingrates. Take some responsibility for once in your unfulfilled lives!
And by the way, is the superglue Just Stop Oil use to glue themselves to pensioners and ambulances eco-friendly? Just asking on behalf of the population of the UK.
Back to the email and being pulled up by the pedant pronoun police for not referring to a "he" as a "they". All added to the overall obfuscation for avoiding payment of a reasonable rate of pay for the job.
The reason the email postscript especially annoyed me was that I had emailed the company about the incredibly translucent ways they were using to employ freelancers at a pittance. Yet they attach such importance to the “woke” (another misused word, and incidentally a very stupid term) nonsense that is “binary” and the use of pronouns.
If you are non-bloody binary, and perhaps have an otherwise unisex bar belly preventing you from looking down and seeing precisely what “bine” you are, then, with your lower vestments removed, just look in a full-length mirror! The results should be evident, somewhere under the navel.
It’s "he", "she", or, in the case of a nasty accident with industrial equipment early in life, "it". End of.
There was still the fact that while they may have had their "bines" in a twist, they had neverthless paid an insultingly derisory rate for the job. Incidentally, they removed their original advertisement within around 20 minutes of receiving my email complaining about it - quelle surprise – now, if that’s not an admission of guilt on its own, then I’m not sure what is! Said redacted advert can be seen below. (And yes yes, I still have the unredacted original stored away in the depths of my hard drive).
Now, I must immediately add that, very ascerbic tone aside, I do have great sympathy for those people who do indeed have genuine, non-Izzard gender identification problems. I do know two very wonderful people who are now no longer the gender they were born. The lady I have known for over 35 years now and she is very active on the public speaking circuit and a total joy to listen to. The gent I met some 10 years ago.
Neither ever went on and on about their own situation like the current, offensive and often ill-informed “trendies” do. They never cited pronouns that had to be used where you would be otherwise approached gently with a lump hammer; they never debated whether they were binary, non-binary, or indeed whether they even actually had any “bines” at all; and certainly, like cod-liver oil stories from somewhat before my time, it wasn’t ever forced down my or others' throat by them.
Yet the current trendies use it like a wet fish to pummel us, the seemingly stupid populace at large, who are assumed to be uneducated in all this stuff; yet it is us who have to put up and shut up with all this Izzardy crap.
By the way, I find Eddy Izzard and his carrying-on extremely offensive. And in his case, it is not for being one of many current piss-poor comedians who can’t function without every sentence containing profanity. He’s a somewhat very clever man, although one who seems to, at the same time, lack any form of intelligence. A roll model for Greggs.
He's a bit like Stephen Hawking. The great professor, RIP, was a very keen supporter of the very antisemitic Nazi-style BDS boycott movement, a Qatari misadventure started by the Tel Aviv university-educated Qatari multi-millionaire Omar Barghouti. Now if that is not abject hyprocisy in itself, the OED needs to change its definition of the word). The BDS singles out only Israel and its products for a boycott.
Very deeply hypocritical, given how the likes of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and even Qatar (remind me, how many immigrants died building the World Cup stadia in Qatar, and how many had their passports confiscated by their taskmasters?) all treat, for example, women, and how China and Myanmar have treated Muslims.
The incredible irony never struck Hawking that the machine and software that enabled him to speak was designed, developed and manufactured in Israel, proving the brilliantly clever can, at times, be so unbelievably ignorant and also incredibly stupid.
At the time of writing, Eddy Izzard now identifies as a woman, because he claims to have female DNA. And the media fall over or even wet themselves to call him a "her", despite the fact, yes, he may claim he is going to have the operation, but he nevertheless still has that all-important trait of being a male, namely, a John Thomas (OK, ye of the "bines"; a Jane Thomas). Something he has possessed with little complaint for well over 50 years. Personally, if I'm honest, Izzard doesn't float my boat as a potential date to the same extent as, for example, actress Jennifer Connelly from Top Gun Maverick does. By all means, become a woman, but don't besmirch other transgender people or those who have trouble with their "bines".
By the way, Izzard wasn't deemed electable by the Sheffield Labour luvvies, having fallen at the selection fence during the first week of December '22. Having worked in Sheffield myself during the decades past, I'm not too surprised really. For Yorkshire people, a spade is a spade and not a "binary or non-binary mechanical digging implement for upturning or returning amounts of substrate predominantly for repurposing the ground for potentially constructional reasons, and from where it was originally located to this now new location".
It's just a bloody spade!
If you have what is claimed by manufacturer Ford to be a car, having as it does, four wheels and a steering wheel, you cannot claim it is a motorcycle just because it shares some popular motor-cycle features such as wheels, an engine and oil. Bines or no bines!
But me, well I’m an Ed. I’m a man. I’m not a "they", a "them" or a "their". My "bines" aren't of the least interest to me, my family or my friends.
My late father was a Michael. He was also a man and not a they, them or their.
My late grandfather, whom I sadly never met, was a man, not a grandthey, grandthem or grandtheir.
And I suspect that my great-grandfather was also not a great-grandthey, great-grandthem or great-grandtheir.
Heaven knows what they would have made of all this modern-day, hyperbole that is unwanted by 98% of the population, the majority of whom are probably quite sympathetic and respectful until, like me, the pronoun police, plainly with nothing better to do (welll certainly not open their banking app to may payment for work in a fair and ethical manner), rub them up the wrong way!
Like recovering from the purchase of a cut-and-shunt car, the cat clawing at your priceless Renoir or despite living in Truro, Yodel insists on delivering your fridge-freezer to a “safe” patio in Aberdeen, unnecessary pronoun policing should be left at home and firmly out of business emails.
If it can be of confusion what I need to call you, that's your fault, not mine! If it is not obvious what I need to call you, then there is plainly something very amiss on your part, not on mine! If "Dear Sir/Madam" doesn't do the job, don't come blubbering to me! As I mentioned, your fault, not mine!
Presumably, if you are in any way sentient enough to hold down a respectable means of employment, you should also be able to understand that those of us who clearly know that we are either an Eddy, an Edith or E=MC2, we do not need to be brought to book over non-grammatical pronoun usage during the working day. It is as tiresome as it is irritating.
As I have mentioned. This blog is not aimed at belittling those of undecided gender who may have struggled all their lives in the wrong body. There are many males trapped in female bodies and vice versa. And they need any sympathetic and relevant help they request or need. It just happens that you have been the catalyst for my anger.
My heart genuinely goes out to those who have a gender confusion. It is in the genes. However, some fried tofu-munching, dreadlocked (despite not being in any way remotely connected with Jamaica) vegan in ill-fitting wellingtons and ridiculous clothing who names their male child after a constituent part of an 18th Century printing press, yet shoves him in a dress, aged five, on the off chance they are of undecided gender, or even “just in case”, plainly should not be allowed to take charge of an impressionable child. Or take charge of heavy industrial kitchen machinery such as a tin opener or something very complex for their brains to engage with, like a kitchen door.
If Jonathan wants to join Beavers, or kick a football around with other boys, Jonathan needs to be treated simply as a Jonathan and not as a Jonundecided, shoved inexplicably into a floral dress.
So, when you are paying a less than derisory price for a job, don’t lecture me on the choice of pronouns I have to list as “usable” and then make me choose which one to use. That just adds more work for the derisory fee you have paid. I have far more important paint to watch dry. Life is difficult enough. Especially when you are taken advantage of and immorally underpaid for your work by what my journalist friend described as a "predatory marketing agency".
Now, back to the actual job in hand.
I was provided a link to an existing article from that great internet ether in the sky,
around 800 or so words, with the brief being to “spin” it into something similar
but original. To give an example of what this might entail, take a random 800 word editorial from, perhaps the Sunday Times, and try to rewrite it, turning it into a new, plagairism-free article, yet at the same time maintaining the original meaning/message.
Now if the original blog is total crap or otherwise very simplistic, yes, you can perhaps achieve this in potentially around an hour, that is if you are not too worried about the quality. Maybe.
However, if the original is somewhat authoritative or niche, makes not much sense, and has information in it that needs to be checked carefully, otherwise the client would be down on the agency like a ton of bricks, it’s a couple, if not a few hours work.
Try it yourself! I provided some nice samples for you to practice on at the start of this rant.
Here's a quote from one of the agency workers: "Thanks Ed, sorry about the dodgy source article!" who was otherwise quite happy to provide total crap as a source and yet have me naively work on it for almost three hours just to receive £10.50 for my trouble.
And to prove I was not being paranoid, I asked a journalist friend from the Guardian how long it would take her (yes, "she" is a definite “her”). For the original article I showed her, she said it would take her at least two hours at the very minimum as research would be needed to both fact-check and also to “delete and replace”. And she also said to me "you can bet that the agency damn well knows it too".
There were several of this latter type among the blogs I had been charged to write. Others were total Americanised crap (which the marketing intermediary admitted) completely unsuitable for an English audience, with much work needed to produce something of equivalence for the UK market.
Guardian readers keep an eagle eye out. The subjet may appear as an article!
So, for the three items I sent to my journalist friend, she said it would be an absolute minimum of around five to seven hours in total, which was the approximate time it took me. Now, the original (and removed) advertisement claimed £28 an hour, which although not a fortune for the work required, was better than nothing when work is otherwise a little slow.
Here's the task advertisement (redacted), £28 per hour and all.
And lo, the cancellation a few minutes after my needled response to the agency:
Do Tesla advertise their cars for £40,000 and then, when you take delivery, charge you an extra 40% for the batteries without having mentioned the assumed requirement for batteries in their advertisements? Not only I don't believe they do, but I think it would otherwise be illegal.
I was then informed that each rewrite should have taken no more than 40 minutes, and for each, I was paid the princely sum of £10.50 for each, confirmed by a rate sheet that I was sent just before invoicing (but after the disappearance of the job advertisement) for 23 pieces of work already completed.
Yes, OK, I know, I should have checked after I saw the amount of work required to turn the first few into something comprehensible. I should have not relied on goodwill and ethics. Or on an advertisement stating £28 an hour. Which is seriously against the Advertising Standards' Authority code.
So, it was the princely sum of £31.50 for a day’s work! 52
hours of work completed in total over the time I misspent with these sharks and
their “bines”. £317.50 paid for the lot! That's £6.10 an hour. The minimum National Minimum Wage for those over-23s is £9.50 to £10.42 an hour. The National Minimum
Wage for unqualified 18 to 20-year-old manual worker is £6.83 to £7.49 an hour!
Yes, I received £6.10 an hour. As I have just written, the National Minimum
Wage for unqualified 18 to 20-year-old manual worker is £6.83 to £7.49 an hour!
Yet the marketing agency was quite happy. No bloody wonder. They were getting what I consider a professionally executed job for less than the price of an unqualified and first-time 18-year-old inexperienced manual worker.
They were no doubt crossing their fingers that I would complete as many articles as I could and not talk about billing them until the end of the month. They certainly had no intention of clarifying what was required after a mere one completed article from me. Why should they? They were onto a winner with an idiotically naive writer who had faith in their business ethics. Of which it turns out they haven't any of.
As one of their staff members remarked: "Hi Ed, thank you for your hard work yesterday! Would you be able to do this one for XXXXX today?"
Surely "hard work" and being paid "£6.10 an hour" (way under the UK minimum wage as mentioned two paragraphs above) is disingenuous!
The bee was still buzzing around in my bonnet. And it, and I, was very angry. More so than I have been in years. Especially reading through the twee, luvly-jubly marketing agency website content and all their wonderful clients on my second screen.
All those lovely clients of theirs, presumably totally unaware that their blogs were being generated from randomly collected rubbish already out there on the web that could not, even the most forceful stretch of the imagination, be re-written in the claimed 40 minutes to earn the allotted £10.50. (I still cannot work out how this £10.40 for 40 minutes correlates with the advertised offer of £28 an hour). Scientific subjects, legal subjects, accounting subjects and recruitment subjects. Were all clients being told similar, that they were
getting "original" content? Hmmm?
So, I did something I have never done before in my over 40-year career working on and off as an independent supplier for intermediates, because, unlike this particular marketing agency, I consider myself more ethical. And because by now I was on stronger blood pressure medication.
I contacted a couple of the people the blogs were being written for! Yes. I did.
Just for their opinion, I should add. And I told them so. No other reason. Because I was so annoyed. I mentioned (and repeated) to them during my phone conversation that it was not my intention to in any way poach them as a client. I just wanted to assuage my extreme annoyance and get to the bottom of how it all worked financially. Foremost, what were the clients being charged?
The first person I spoke to was horrified and disgusted that I had been paid a mere £10.50 for the almost 1000 words of quite technical content I had researched and rewritten from the appalling, almost non-existent brief I had been given. And taken well over 2½ hours to complete it.
"They" said (I am using “bined” pronouns here so as not to reveal the person’s identity) "they" would immediately take the blog down knowing I had been paid so little for my efforts. However, I persuaded "them" to keep it live (my own ethics vs those of the agency - again, I must be mad) as "they" had paid the marketing agency in good faith and my argument was not in any way remotely connected with "them" as the agency’s client.
I am not trumpet-blowing here, but I was delighted to be told that the quality of the article had very much surprised them and that they felt it was so well-researched and written that they uploaded it as they had received it without changing a word (something I pride myself on trying to achieve for any client I write for!). And yes, they all shared the expectation of receiving original, rather than rewritten stuff. Two said if it was the case they were to just receive rehashed rubbish, they could simply rewrite existing stuff themselves.
And to add insult to injury, I was told by one that, had they come to me directly, they would have paid very much higher (very much higher in fact - almost 40 times higher to be precise!), saying that they considered it must have been a lengthy job to get it to the quality they had received. They asked me once again, very ethically and well-intentioned, if I wanted the offending blog taken down to which I confirmed a “no”, which they very much appreciated. (On reflection, I should have taken them up on their offer to take it down - then if anyone asked, they could tell them why).
And yet all I had been paid was £10.50. Two days worth of British Gas at minimal usage. A return, off-peak Manchester-Wigan train fare. Around 6 lires of petrol.
In the ensuing communications, I was accused of over-providing and that research and fact-checking was not required - I did notice, however, that I wasn't pulled up on that one after the first one or two articles, that is, if being meticulous and correct with appropriate fact-checking research wasn't required!
Did they tell me and save me time and effort after my first couple of submissions? Did they tell me to haul back on the quality and time I was spending on them? No they didn't? Not once. Very strange not to write to me about that, eh? All it would have taken was an "Ed, don't be so fussy. Just spend 40 minutes. Any old crap will do, providing it's original."
They were quick enough to contact me on other aspects caused by their piss-poor (well non-existent) support briefs (no, nothing to do with cricket underpants!).
And they also told to watch my “unbined” pronouns. Now this DID really wind me up. Big time. No, it doesn't matter we are paying you peanuts. It doesn't matter that all your hard work won't pay an ethical rate for the job. Just make sure you don't offend the undecided of gender.
Right, I’ll end now. I have now got this sufficiently off my chest. I feel better now. Especially knowing from a seasoned Guardian contributor, as well as from two of the agency's clients, that I was 100% in the right to feel crapped upon.
It's also very sad to think that for a period of 8 years, I presented an irreverent, off-the-wall community radio rock show with a host of many ridiculous characters I invented (sorry, all were either male or female - this binary nonsense hadn't taken root yet) who inputted idents (those short show identifiers used during a radion programme) as well as comments on some records and current affairs.
Three of my most popular characters were "Man with a stick" who was a very ebbulient and opiniated character; there was "Man with a red nose" who was similarly opiniated, but a lush, and, like the average modern social influencer, knew nothing about anything and everyting about nothing; and there was "Man in a dress" who was a homage to Stanley Baxter, Dick Emery and Kenny Everett all rolled into one.
Guess which one would now be condemned by the "bines" brigade! Not to mention the requirement to keep the luvvies happy by changing the word "man" to "person". I'm not sure former Welsh rockers "Man" would agree to reprinting all their album cover to feature the name "person" rather than "Man". That is how facile it all gets.
No doubt "Persons at Work" will continue to "come from a land down under", Vegemite sandwiches and all!
I may include this rant in the next update of my book, “The HR Cynics Reader” (current 2022 version available on Amazon here https//shorturl.at/boY45). It deserves it.
The message here seems to be, rather sadly, never assume people you work for have a sense of morality, fair play and ethics. They are out to squeeze you. Dry. That is, after all, how they have a top-of-the-range Mercedes sitting in their paid-for corporate parking space while I rely on public transport. So assume not everyone is a goodie (except Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graham Garden).
As my Guardian journalist friend asked me, "I wonder what all the agency's list of "wunnerful" clients would make of all this".
Indeed. Not a lot*.As I found out from a couple of them. * © The late, great, Paul Daniels
By the way, one of the clients I tried to contact operates via an answering service that, after 8 phone calls and a couple of emails, they never returned either. How were they to know I wasn't a client ready and willing to part with £5000 for their services - birds of a feather, eh?
But I suppose I will never learn. You can't teach an "unbined" dog new tricks.
Right, I have an "unbined" receipt from Asda which "identifies itself" as a TV Licence, so I'm off to see if the licence people are happy with that. Oh, and here's the agency's website address (PTO).
And yes, good suggestion from some to contact "Rip Off Britain", but that could "out" some innocents who simply just suffered the gullibility I did.
Wow. You told them, alright!
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