Nestlé don’t want you to see the video above, because they complained to Youtube that Greenpeace were infringing their copyright. Youtube removed the video but now Greenpeace would like to offer it to you, as a gift. Download the video and put it on your favourite video sharing site. The more people who join in, the more interesting it’ll make things for Nestlé.
We all like a break, so it’s time to give orang-utans one. Nestlé uses palm oil in Kit Kat and many other products which is bought from suppliers that destroy rainforests in Indonesia to grow their plantations.
As a result, threatened species like orangutans are being pushed into extinction and huge quantities of greenhouse gases are being released, accelerating climate change.
Nestlé have so far refused to stop buying palm oil from the worst suppliers, so it’s time to make them change their minds.
Write to board member André Kudelski to demand they act responsibly and cease trading with companies that are destroying Indonesia’s rainforests. More info here and an in-depth piece here…
A quick update on the #hulldailyfail fiasco (as the delightful Twitter hashtag puts it) with a very positive note.
It’s not clear how long things may take to get resolved over the newspaper’s original sleazy and hypocritical trashing of local online newspaper competitor Paul Smith, but it’s good to know that the Press Complaints Commission are investigating the matter.
They say that that have received “numerous complaints” from across the UK – including one from Mr Smith himself, which means they can properly investigate it. Although the others who complained cannot be regarded as genuinely legal or legitimate complainants it can only be hoped that the level of revulsion at the Hull Daily Mail’s actions will therefore not be lost on the PCC and will be a factor in assessing the impact of their articles.
This nasty little farrago tends to suggest that the Hull Daily Mail may well not be the best people to carry the torch of online community news in the city, the area and the region. And that may be where the Hull Free Press comes in…
If you like the idea of a news and community project by the people for the people then I’d strongly suggest you take a look at the Hull Free Press startup page.
I think that a genuine enterprise that is guided by and existing for the community, and which is less likely to lose its way in the mire of thrashing around at commercial objectives, can only be a good thing for all.
Very best of luck to the project: If I still lived there it’s something I’d love to be working on, and so I’m really looking forward to seeing how this shapes up and I really hope it takes off in a big way.
The Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup is superb – well worth catching up on if you don’t know too much about it. It’s effectively a feeder series for the higher MotoGP classes, and always provides some cracking action featuring excellent Brit talent like Danny Kent (Check out this iTunes link for video podcasts of last season’s races) and although the 2010 season itself will be underway before too long, the organisers are already looking ahead towards the selection process for the 2011 championship, and applications are now open for the 2010 Selection Process.
As the level of the Rookies Cup has got higher and higher the organisers have had to make the selection process ever more stringent. The competition to get into the Rookies Cup has become as intense as the Cup itself so they are now giving it a well deserved title: “Road to Rookies Cup”.
The Road starts with the online application through the website at www.redbullrookiescup.com
Applicants will fill in a good deal of information about themselves and their motorcycle experience. Once accepted onto the Road they will send in their competition results through the 2010 season to further inform the Selection Panel about their progress during the year. The top performers on the Road to Rookies Cup will be featured in a special section on the Rookies Cup website so that everyone can see who is likely to be invited to the Selection Event, planned for early October.
The very best of the riders who take the Road to Rookies Cup will be invited to that crucially important Selection Event and this year the Selection Panel will have more information than ever before about the prospective Rookies to make sure that the future World Champions get a chance to prove themselves in the 2011 Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup.
So if you have your heart set on Grand Prix stardom – or of course if you know someone who could be ideal material for this championship, then get on the case now…
A couple of days ago I got sent a link from an old colleague in newspapers which horrified me for a couple of reasons…
It was for a Facebook campaign to boycott the Hull Daily Mail, and the more I looked at what they were up to the more disgusted I was, because 1 – I used to work for the HDM and held it in high regard and look back on my time there with great affection, and 2 – because I’m a web designer who knows how hard it is to keep afloat these days.
The Hull Daily Mail is essentially campaigning against a guy called Paul Smith who runs a local community newspaper online called HU17.net and is – without actually making any kind of genuine charge or accusation – simply calling him unfit for this. He has a past in building websites in the ‘adult’ (that’s posh for ‘porn’) industry – though he apparently only owns some hundred or so domains, which seems slightly at odds with the Hull Daily Mail’s shrill accusation that he’s responsible for “thousands” of hardcore porn websites (which would surely make him a lot wealthier and busier). But, as I say, no actual charge of any actual wrongdoing or illegal activity. Just smear and innuendo. Read the rest of this entry »
In short, my name's Gareth and I'm the Director of VROOM MEDIA Ltd. I'm a designer, writer, musician and MotoGP nut. I'm a shameless fanboy for Alvaro Bautista & Apple. I go moist over Spanish band El Canto Del Loco, and I'm a total Mac geek. This blog is an ongoing journal of random notes, thoughts and bits of stuff...
...And things.
The latest recordings by my solo music project, The Rain Dogs. These are tracks I'm pulling together over a period of time - some old and some new - and just putting out online for sharing.
My 'formerly industrial' band with my mate Rob.
We grew out of wanting to be another NIN some time back and have developed into a far more interesting, singular, challenging and fun.
With Rob's emigration to the USA, our way of working and creating was fundamentally altered, but we continued to push the boundaries of possible musics as we always have.
Rob's return holds promise to pick things up some more - to develop more ideas, sketchpads, rhythms and approaches to keep us on the cutting edge - and maybe a refreshed approach which might even see us revisit and complete our unfinished masterpiece "BACKLASH".
Yeah, right...
Fifteen minutes into the future, a hot, dry summer in Hull: Coates, a researcher and investigator, is hired to trace the whereabouts of missing adolescent Dominic Russell.
Is he the latest in a number of gruesome blood-letting murders attributed to the city’s “Marginals” that exist somewhere in the underbelly of the population?
That’s what the Police say, but it’s not what the boy’s mother believes - and as Coates digs deeper into that underbelly he discovers that Dominic’s disappearance is just a tiny part of a much bigger story: one that will bring his world crashing down and endanger all those around him...
Rivercity is a book that can be read at many levels, weaving a main plot - a clear homage to the “noir” detective genre - with a vampire story and a myriad of strands about perception and reality, human nature, signs, superstitions, the histroy of Hull, aesthetics, the occult and political expediency. Above all it's a novel about philosophy and the nature of truth and knowledge in the electronic age.
