Tag: Things that totally suck

Cheap At The Price

Health

In our rush to save money, we often end up causing ourselves far bigger problems.  Here’s one example:

A common blood pressure drug has been recalled worldwide and production has stopped after it was found to contain a cancer-causing chemical.

The drug Valsartan, made in a factory in China, was recalled in 22 countries including the UK and the US earlier in July, but the warning is now worldwide.

Investigators found a chemical used in rocket fuel, called N-Nitrosodimethylamine, had contaminated the drug’s production at Zhejiang Huahai, a Chinese supplier which ships the medicine worldwide.

N-Nitrosodimethylamine is thought to be carcinogenic, meaning it could cause cancer in humans, so production of the pills has stopped.

China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission said yesterday that the drug must not be used for diagnosis or treatment, and the pills have already been banned in the UK and US.

Experts say the contamination could date back as far as 2012, when the company changed its manufacturing process.

The main manufacturer in China is Zhejiang Huahai, which was founded in 1989 and listed on the Shanghai stock exchange in 2003, was one of the first Chinese companies to get drugs approved in the US market.

Let’s hear it for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration…

Overall, more than two-thirds of all active drug ingredients originate in China and India, industry experts estimate, with China accounting for the lion’s share.

The revelation that the problem with Valsartan likely dates back to changes in manufacturing processes at Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical six years ago suggests many patients could potentially have been exposed to cancer risk.

I’ve been taking Valsartan every day for well over ten years.  At a rough guess, that’s around four thousand pills.

Fucking Weasels

Two-Minute Hate

My loathing for airlines has been well documented on these pages (couldn’t be bothered to find the links, you’ll just have to take my word for it), but even my cynicism about their foul underhandedness was insufficient to prevent a full-blown RCOB when I read this little tale:

British Airways has been accused of leaving customers high and dry after cancelling thousands of flights before hiking up their prices.
Passengers snapped up bargain fares earlier this year after tickets to Dubai and Tel Aviv were being sold for as low as £167.
But the airline claims the cheap offers were a mistake and sensationally cancelled all tickets on Friday – prompting fury among customers.

“Mistake”… yeah, I bet it was, you godless cocksuckers.  Note the unapologetic “fuck you” statement at the end:

‘Errors like this are exceptionally rare, and if they do occur, under contract law, there is no binding contract between the parties.’

I will never forget how BA fucked me when the family flew to India many years ago.  We flew into London, spent the night out near Oxford, then flew out the next day to Bangalore.  Our checked luggage was weighed at Heathrow, and was not overweight (as I recall, the limit was about 50lbs per bag — 22kg?).

Imagine my surprise when I checked in at Bangalore Airport (itself a fucking nightmare) for the return journey, only to find that BA’s “allowable” weight for the return trip had shrunk to 40lbs.  The choice was to pay the (exorbitant) weight penalty, or call The Mrs. to catch a cab to the airport to fetch the stuff that constituted the excess.  (She was staying on for a week to finish her training gig.)  Of course, option #2 was never going to happen because in Bangalore’s notorious traffic, it would have taken her two hours to get to the airport, and our flight was leaving in one hour.  So I paid — I forget how much, but $400 per suitcase (three) seems to come to mind.  And when I complained, I was simply told to fuck off and die that I should have read the small print in the ticket “contract” — and when I did, I found that the smaller return allowance was indeed noted — on page 12, in tiny print.

I have been angry with airlines on many occasions, but nothing beat my ire at BfuckingA on that night, and I swore never to fly them again.  I managed to keep that promise for many years, but last year I was forced to fly with them (twice!) because I had no choice.

No doubt I’ll have to use these amoral fucks again in the future, but I am going to be extremely wary.

Considering that all airlines nowadays seem to treat us oh-so-inconvenient passengers not as human beings but as self-propelled cargo, it seems as though we have little choice in the matter.

A pox on all of them.

Working Dogs Revisited

Deep Thoughts, Essays, Guy Stuff

I received an email over the weekend which asked me to re-open Comments to my Working Dogs post from way back (okay, February).  He asked me this because he wanted to add to the conversation, but couldn’t.

Well, I don’t want to do that (reopen Comments), but instead let’s just use this as an extension.

So go back and read the piece and the Comment section, and if you’re one of the original commenters and have something to add, or want to post a different thought, please do so.  And if you’re a “newcomer” and want to comment, please do so too.

This is not a topic I want to let slide.

Hammer Down

Bad News, Grief & Loss

Oh, bugger it all:

Fox News star Charles Krauthammer reveals he has weeks to live

It’s cancer, that vile illness.

And on a personal note:  I just learned this very morning that my closest childhood friend Mark Pennels is also in the final stages of cancer, with maybe a week or two left.  I spoke to him in December when I was in South Africa, and he was cancer-free then, so this latest episode has been a total bastard.

And you all know about Connie, taken from me just last year by the same ailment.

I think I’ll just go to my room and pull the covers up over my head for the rest of the day…

Not In The Narrative

Two-Minute Hate

I guess that this guy hadn’t seen the memo from The Man which says that White cops can only kill Black kids, not save their lives.

Needless to say, Black Lives Matter and their soulmates in the liberal media won’t have diddly to say about it, the racist assholes. I had to read this story in Britain’s Daily Mail, which says it all right there.

Excuse me while I spit.

Loose Lips

Business, Ethics

…and I’m not talking about the Kardashians, Lindsay Lohan or the cast of Jersey / Geordie Shores, either. I’m talking about “leakers” — those Snowden types who are entrusted with confidential information, but can’t resist telling other people about it.

I’m going to make a clear distinction between leakers of State secrets — who deserve imprisonment regardless of their motivations, and whom we can discuss some other time — and commercial leakers, such as those addressed in a (leaked!) memo from Apple. I think the Apple folks are precisely correct:

Apple explains that leaked information about a new product can negatively impact sales of the current model, give rival companies more time to build a competing product and hurt sales of a new product when it hits the shelves.

I am unmoved by the apologists who point out that in Apple’s case:

Consumers continue to be in a frenzy each time a new Apple product is rumored, while the tech giant’s stock price has catapulted higher in the past year.

That’s not the point. The point is that when you work for a company, you are privy to information which, as the word “privy” specifically denotes, is privileged information. When you abuse that privilege, the company has “cause” to terminate the leaker (which is spelled out in just about every employment contract, and is implicit in all employment hiring). In extreme cases, as Apple adds in the memo, revealing confidential information can be and has been further grounds for arrest and indictment — which is precisely as it should be. Passing information directly on to a competitor is definitely criminal, and for leaking to the Press, a “scourging” rider should be attached to the criminal penalties.

At best, leaking confidential information is indiscretion; at worst it’s actual espionage. And leaking information just so you can feel important should translate to that feeling of importance as Jamal’s favorite plaything in Cell Block D — and Apple has given its assurance to its employees just how far they will go to making the latter part come true if employees are caught and identified.

I’m no great fan of Apple, but in this case: good for them.

Let us all be perfectly clear about this. We are talking here about ethics — when you are asked on your word of honor to keep a secret, whether on paper or by handshake, you keep your fucking mouth shut.

Lawyers have “client confidentiality” tattooed on their foreheads (metaphorically speaking), and quite frankly, I see no difference between those ethics or any other agreement concerning keeping your mouth shut.

And I don’t care if indiscretion doesn’t lead to any actual harm — e.g. lives being lost as a consequence — because breaching trust of any kind is just plain wrong, regardless of the penalties thereof.

Is that too high a standard? It better not be.

They nailed it perfectly in a bygone era:

…and Apple has simply extended the concept:

I am fully aware of the irony involved in discussing a topic which has arisen from a breach of confidentiality — i.e. a leaked memo from Apple in this particular case — but I could have written this post without any prompting at all. The leaked memo simply provided the spark which resulted in the above. Had I been CEO Tim Cook, I would have posted the memo on the front page of Apple’s website, to inform not only Apple employees but the whole world of its contents. It’s long overdue.