To the ICO

 

Hello

I used to have a youtube channel called

http://www.youtube.com/user/PearShapedIraq

It was an active account on Youtube from about 2008-2013 after which no new content was uploaded.

It remained on Youtube's servers until at least the 31st of December 2019

As can be seen by its record print on the way back machine

https://web.archive.org/web/20151109100504/https://www.youtube.com/user/PearShapedIraq/videos

In early 2020 I started to receive complaints that the channel had disappeared.

I therefore contacted youtube to ask what had happened as I had received no correspondence from them warning me this would happen.

It could have been that they tried to contact me but could not but I have a googlemail account so I do not know why they did not use this to contact me.

I have "appealed" the termination of the channel but since I don't know why the channel was terminated it is difficult to do this with any realistic prospect of success.  Youtube are contactable via web form but they will not reply so I have been reduced to trying to contact them on social media.

I would like my content back which they seem to have destroyed without allowing me to recover it first.

However, having failed to get a response from them via their website and email I have responded to them via social media where they have informed me that they cannot give me a timeline on when they will respond to my questions.

More disturbingly Youtube has a policy whereby when a Youtube account has been disabled users are "banned for life". 

It seems to me then that my details are on a blacklist and I would like to know what data Youtube is storing about me.

Attached is my letter to Youtube of the 9th of July (1 month ago) communicated to them via social media because one cannot be sure that they actually recieve emails.  I have also sent it via post.

I would like my lost data returned and to know what data is stored about me with regard to my account.

Please note since this blog was written Youtube have kindly restored my channel although why it was removed in the first place remains a mystery.

https://www.youtube.com/user/PearShapedIraq

The BBC: We flog stuff off, then rent it out again, you are never gonna close it down...

The other day I saw Richard Ayoade standing in front of BBC Television Centre in west London (something to do with the Baftas) ...

Is it just me or does anyone else remember when the BBC told us loudly in 2013 that they were disposing of their entire London property portfolio because due to improvements in technology all TV can now be made in a warehouse in Wales and an office in Salford? 

It seems however that although the smaller studios and central ring have been turned into very expensive flats ... no one really knows what to do with Studios TC1 10,250 ft², TC2 2,400 ft²  and TC3 6,390 ft² and so the corporation has ended up renting them back from the people they sold them to who don't know what to do with them possibly because they have Grade II listed status. 

Funny how the BBC really want this edifice for the prestigious Baftas suddenly when, of course, hardly anyone's allowed to hang out there because of Covid.  A shame.  The highlight of the Baftas for me was always someone who won slighting everyone else by video phoning their acceptance speech in by satellite.  With everyone coming remotely it's surely impossible for people to be snubbed properly...

No replies yet...

Quelle surprise.... sigh

Some good news...

It gets a bit depressing this blog so here's some good news.  St Christopher's hospice have calculated they made £87 out of our donations last year... Mine touch to write personally...

The Moral Maze on Radio 4 – How does this even exist anymore?

The Moral Maze on Radio 4 – How does this even exist anymore?  It’s such a pointless program.  Michael Buerk (a man so boring they wouldn’t even let him read the news anymore) attempts to resolve ethical issues with the likes of chronic unlikable bores like Melanie Phillips and Michael Portillo. 

Worse, none of the contributors share the same ethical frame of reference so they never agree on an ethical solution to any ethical problem because they all fundamentally disagree in their world views to begin with. 

For example if you believe abortion is wrong because the Pope says it's murder and someone else believes that science says that a fetus is just a blob of cells for the first x weeks those are pretty much irreconcilable postitions that are driven more by personal belief than evidence ... so there's litterally nothing to be gained by discussing it.  All that's created is a lot of hot air as hot button issue of the week is pressed over and over again...

The last thrilling instalment that I caught on a drive home the other night was about the number of people in higher education and its role in society.  A load of people who’d had free education were sequentially rude about young people and NVQs or whatever … “If you want to study tiddlywinks to PDH standard good for you – it’s your life ...” said possibly the rudest ageist twit on the planet from the Institute of the Right Wing Twit. 

The program would make anyone scream if it didn’t also suck from them their will to live long before that …and perhaps that’s the secret.

Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Facebook Profile and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead?

I learnt a while ago that you can just deactivate your Facebook profile without deleting it so …I’ve just switched off Facebook for a while. 

A number of reasons.  Firstly, it’s a time sink.  It eats time without one ever thinking about how much time is being eaten.  Its algorithms seem on a mission to throw the most irritating people and opinions at me in order to get a response.

Secondly, the payoff of the relentless arguments on FB is that gigs are advertised there.  One puts up with the misery of other people's opinions because...  there are live gigs.  But there are none and probably won't be till 2021.  So why am I listening to these tedious people and their opinions?  Not that my opinions are worth more than theirs … but with nothing else to do people are just becoming more and more entrenched and repetitive – including me.

Between the people who block me for being a pompous bully and the people I block for that or for being insane the number of people I actually converse with is becoming smaller and smaller and smaller… and I feel my observations are becoming less and less observant if they ever were.  I am turning into a parody of myself...

A lot of people on the right who were amusingly nutty libertarians have recently gone all anti-facemask and anti-vaccine and in the current climate it just isn’t amusing anymore.  It’s just depressing and sinister.  It makes me feel that they all just despise me.  Not that I don’t know people despise me but on the whole I don’t feel it.

The people on the far left meanwhile are shrieking ever louder – it’s like listening to the foxes outside fighting at night.  No hyperbole is too hyperbolic…

The other day I made the mistake of saying “that’s interesting” and someone spent most of the next day trying to pin me down on what it meant.  Truth is it did mean anything beyond “that’s interesting” but people on Facebook are always looking into the beyond.

It’s lovely and quiet here. 

And I have other things to do…

Maybe I should write some poetry...

So R is less than 1 is it?