Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Vulture Culture
Help stop the vulture funds!
Commercial companies called 'vulture funds' are making rich pickings from desperately poor countries by buying up bad debt. One of them, Donegal International, bought up $15 million of Zambia’s debt at a knock-down price of $3.3million (just one month before Zambia qualified for debt cancellation). In February 2007, they attempted to sue Zambia for the full cost of the original debt, plus penalty payments, plus interest - a staggering $55 million.
Take Oxfam's online action to stop vulture funds preying on poor countries.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
Mailing Preference Service (UK)
You can register with the MPS to reduce the amount of junk mail you receive through the post. Visit their site HERE, it only takes a few seconds.
Weight of junk mail
Junk mail. Don't you hate it. Its an incredible waste of resources. Its usually vague broadcast marketing with only minimal targeting and therefore minimally successful. All of mine ends up in the recycle. What a total waste of time, effort and energy. So this week Phony11 has collected all their mail and separated it into two piles so that it could be weighed. Pile 1: unsolicited junk and advertising (consisting largely credit cards and loans) and mail that we actually wanted to receive (eg bank statements). Some junk actually came in the envelope with the non-junk mail; typically from banks.
The week of the test was quite low in overall mail, but here are the results:
Non-junk mail total weight (including envelopes): 19g
Junk mail total weight: 400g
Note that we had to use a special super-fine scales to weight the non-junk mail and heavy-duty kitchen scales for the junk!
We're going to start by ringing the bank and credit card companies to tell them to stop sending all this unwanted crap. We'll let you know how we get on.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Goodbye credit
I lost my credit card about a month ago. It was picked up by staff in the shop I had been in and they returned it to the card company before I had a chance to pick it up. I never used the 'credit' as such because I always paid the card off every month, nevertheless I've not gotten round to ordering a replacement and have been using cash instead (though I did just use a debit card to order my TV B Gone online). I found I've been spending less as a result, so I still haven't ordered a new one. I don't think I'm going to either...