Skip to main content

Who's there? Answer friend or foe!

Whenever someone uses a 'rights' defence I get a little uneasy. I have always preferred the concept of responsibilities to rights. Here's one example that drives me crazy.

The phone rings. Who can be disturbing me at this time/at the key point of this really important TV programme/in the middle of a meal? It's okay, I've got caller ID. So I take a look and it says 'Withheld Number' or whatever the message is.

That gets me really mad. It's argued that people should be able to withhold their number because it's their 'right' to remain anonymous. What about my right to know who is ringing me? The only reason I don't have our phone reject all Withheld Number calls is that the telephone company makes it harder to do than to implement any other feature.

Some people will tell you they use Withheld Number because they don't want people making sales calls. What's that all about? How do they think letting me know what their phone number is will result in sales calls? I'm sorry. There's no excuse. It's anti-social, irritating and should be banned forthwith.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Lucy P13 May 2009 at 15:27

    for the last few months in our house, we have taken to religiously ignoring ALL withhelds, no-IDs, confidentials and even numbers we don't recognise (people we want to call us know our mobiles). we thought it would stop the damn things. it has actually made the number of calls increase! still not picking up though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brian Clegg13 May 2009 at 21:27

    If you get a lot of commercial calls and are UK based, the telephone preference scheme is very good - we get hardly any sales calls now (those we get are usually from abroad) - you can register at http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/tps/

    ReplyDelete
  3. laurasdad28 May 2009 at 22:59

    If I'm busy or doing a Victor Meldrew I won't answer any call where the number is withheld. (BTW how many other words have two H's, says the bookkeeper?) For some reason my mother has now decided to hide behind this device and so whenever she gets through to one of the children (who aren't yet wised up to this problem) I get maternal strife for not having been at home whenever she's called.

    The problem now, of course, is that she doesn't know (or understand) how to remove it...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...
122 comments
Read more

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...
25 comments
Read more