Simon Perry: Schemes, dreams & trivia

It was with some trepidation that I made the trip to the tube station today after hearing endless press about how it was going to be completely closed down.
I’d looked at the Tube Web site and was pleasantly surprised to see that trains were running on the Northern Line and indeed they were. I waited […]

BT has recently pushed one of my home phone lines on their Option 1 call plan, which is now costing me considerably more money than previously.
I called them today to transfer it back to something less expensive, their Light user scheme, where you are rebated if few calls are made. I learnt that if you […]

I’m chairing a panel reviewing the speed of take-up of Digital TV around the world for the Royal Television Society, London Centre this Thursday (1st July). The speakers are some of the leading experts in their fields, so it should be highly informative.
Of particular interest will be getting the inside view of the UK government-sponsored […]

Following Dawn Airey, current MD of Sky, ruling herself out as Chief Exec at UK Channel 4, attention has passed to Peter Fincham who is currently at TalkbackThames.
What makes it interesting is that he was executive producer of the visionary comedy show by Christopher Morris, Brass Eye. This caused a huge, unnecessary, but typical fuss […]

Just back from Barcelona after having gone to the thoroughly enjoyable wedding of Estefania & Max last Saturday. Calvin and I were Best men, which felt like a huge privilege.
Sal & I had a flat in Barcelonetta for the rest of the week and had a opportunity to (mostly) relax. On Friday, we went to […]

Spending a couple of days in a flat in Barcelonetta, the beach/port side of Barcelona and very pleasant it is too. Despite having arranged to have a flat with DSL access, I´ve had a real headache trying to get Internet access. The DSL is the really stupid USB-type, that needs the supplied software installed on […]

I’m in Singapore currently for Broadcast Asia 2004 and I saw on the local news that they will be stiffening the health warnings on packets of cigarettes.
Currently 20% of the pack is covered with a health warning, but soon it will be 50%. The top half of the pack will have a photo showing the […]

As early indication of poll results from the Local elections in the UK are coming through and it looks like the Labour party is getting seriously hit.
With 72 councils having reported, Labour had lost a net 191 seats, closing in on the overall net loss of 400 or more which analysts said would amount to […]

Wow, I’m in a slight state of shock.
I called BT today to sort out a query and got a “We’re really busy … long queue … blah, blah, blah” message from them as normal, but then the automated attendant informed me that I put in a phone number that they could call me back on. […]

It transpires that two music labels are being taken to court by the London Borough of Camden, for fly-posting their bands. Camden claim that BMG & Sony are using this illegal form of promotion (and this is illegal, as in against the law, not as in it suits us to call it so) and in […]