M&S TELLS MUSLIM STAFF THEY CAN REFUSE TO SERVE CUSTOMERS BUYING ALCOHOL OR PORK
This is in Great Britain, not Saudi Arabia!
Marks & Spencers (M&S), an old British firm on the UK’s retailing market, has told its Muslim staff they can refuse to serve shoppers buying alcohol or pork! The chain has granted its checkout workers in more than seven hundred stores permission to decline to serve customers on religious grounds. Instead, shoppers are being asked to wait to pay for certain items at a different till!
This seems quite out of the ordinary, a tad wee bonkers, and just plain craven acquiescence to a foreign religion on home turf, when the same is NOT reciprocated in any mild form in such Muslim states.
Last week, shoppers buying alcoholic drinks for Christmas at a M&S store in central London were asked by a Muslim checkout worker to wait to be served by another member of staff. One customer – who wishes to remain unnamed – told a newspaper she was “taken aback” by the M&S store worker’s request.
Britain, like a couple more other European states, seeks to appease every other religion or ethnic group, but there is no reciprocal move by those Muslim countries to accommodate other (Western or non) customs and religions. For example, despite the presence of thousands of Saudi funded mosques in Britain, there is not a single Christian church in the whole of Saudi Arabia!
In contrast to M&S, Sainsbury’s has told Muslim staff that there is no reason why they cannot handle goods such as alcohol and pork – even if they are not allowed to eat or drink the products.
UPDATE:
M&S apology over Muslim staff policy
Marks and Spencer says shoppers won’t be refused alcohol by staff as it claims a failure to follow internal policy led to a shopper being told to queue elsewhere because a Muslim worker couldn’t serve them alcohol
A Marks and Spencer customer chooses a bottle of wine Photo: Kumar Sriskandan / Alamy
Customers at Marks and Spencer will not be refused alcohol or pork by Muslim staff after the store reacted to a massive backlash by customers.
Thousands of shoppers threatened to boycott the retailer after Marks and Spencer said it would allow Muslim staff to refuse to sell pork and alcohol because it was against their religious beliefs.
But now Marks and Spencer has apologised and said that Muslim staff who did not want to handle these products would not man tills and would work in other roles such as in clothing or in the bakery.
The Vatican has hired two international consulting firms to modernize Holy See communications and to improve financial procedures throughout the Vatican’s agencies.
“An advisory role has been entrusted to McKinsey & Company for the development – in close collaboration with the heads of the relevant offices – of an integrated plan to render the organisation of means of communication within the Holy See more functional, effective and modern,” the Holy See press office announced Dec. 19
The decision was made the previous day, on the initiative of the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organization of the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See, after a bidding and selection process. The commission was established under Pope Francis to study and streamline Vatican administration.
“The consultancy project will aim to provide the Commission with the information needed to make appropriate recommendations to the Holy Father,” the press office’s communique noted.
Won’t get the chance to wish each of you all following me on Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Linkedin a Merry Christmas! So here it is: a message en masse…. Be safe and be merry, have a Happy New Year too 🙂
Here’s an awesome CGI twist to a Van Damme advert that went viral, but this takes the mickey at Chuck Norris:
It's at this point that you reconsider your status update.
Photo by Slate
On Second Thought …
Facebook wants to know why you didn’t publish that status update you started writing.
By Jennifer Golbeck
The code in your browser that powers Facebook still knows what you typed—even if you decide not to publish it. It turns out that the things you explicitly choose not to share aren’t entirely private.
Facebook calls these unposted thoughts “self-censorship,” and insights into how it collects these nonposts can be found in a recent paper written by two Facebookers. Sauvik Das, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon and summer software engineer intern at Facebook, and Adam Kramer, a Facebook data scientist, have put online an article presenting their study of the self-censorship behavior collected from 5 million English-speaking Facebook users.
This is a reminder to those poor souls IN FRONT of the damn camera, when live and on air: wait for the PRODUCER or the FLOOR MANAGER to signal you are flippin’ clear !!!
Sospesa la giornalista di Rainews24 Laura Tangherlini: ‘Me so rotta er ca…’
Laura Tangherlini, giornalista di Rai news 24: La bella e brava giornalista di Rai News 24è incappata in una gaffe tremenda durante un fuori onda del telegiornale che in pochissimo tempo ha fatto il giro della Rete
La gaffe della giornalista di Rai News 24 Laura Tangherlini (“Me so’ rotta er c….o!“) ha fatto il giro del web, e il video del suo fuori onda è stato cliccatissimo negli ultimi giorni. La trentunenne jesina, però, è stata sospesa dall’azienda, visto l’evidente danno di immagine causato. Ma che cosa è successo nello specifico?
Qualche giorno fa la Tangherlini, trentunenne marchigiana, durante la diretta del canale all news Rai dopo avere annunciato la pubblicità è incappata in un’esclamazione ben poco urbana, pensando di non essere più in onda. E così, dopo il garbato “Ci vediamo tra poco con gli aggiornamenti e le notizie. Restate con noi“, credendo di non avere più il microfono aperto si è lasciata andare a un commento (indubbiamente divertente) poco rispettoso della Rai: “Restatece voi, perché io me ne vado, può esse. Me so’ rotta er c….o!“.
Jesina di origini ma stabilitasi a Roma da ormai sei anni (dopo aver frequentato l’università anche a Bucarest), la giornalista di Rai News 24 ha evidentemente lasciato trasparire l’accento romano acquisito negli ultimi tempi. A dire la verità, l’errore – al di là della gaffe della giornalista – è stato della regia, che ha lasciato il microfono della Tangherlini aperto per molti secondi dopo il lancio della pubblicità. Il video della gaffe, come detto, è stato ripreso dai più importanti siti Internet, venendo visto da migliaia di persone.
La Rai non poteva che adottare un provvedimento disciplinare nei confronti della Tangherlini che, contattata al telefono dal Resto del Carlino, ha preferito non commentare la notizia. “Scusatemi, ho già avuto parecchi guai, non posso dire nulla“.
Autrice di un libro dedicato alle storie di profughi siriani (Siria in fuga, edito da Poiesis) frutto dei suoi viaggi in Giordania e Libano, la giornalista marchigiana ha conosciuto una popolarità inaspettata, e forse non voluta, negli ultimi giorni, come dimostrano i tanti commenti postati su Youtube sotto il video. Non solo: anche la sua pagina Facebook è diventata visitatissima nell’ultimo periodo.
Laura Tangherlini, tra l’altro, è anche in corsa per vincere il premio di telegiornalista dell’anno (concorso virtuale, avviato su Facebook), in una sfida all’ultimo clic con Barbara Capponi: chissà che questa sua gaffe non contribuisca ad aumentare il numero di voti per lei.
Once unheard of, it soon will be the practice of more than 40% of U.S. dailies
“The New York Times” now has 727,000 digital subscribers.
(Photo: Angus Oborn, Getty Images/Lonely Planet Images)
Charging for digital news — erecting paywalls — is not a panacea for the many problems newspapers face as they struggle to adapt in the Internet era. But it’s an important arrow in the quiver. It’s a critical new source of revenue for news outlets that desperately need them in the wake of a steep decline in ad dollars.
Some early attempts to charge for digital content were short-lived, among them TimesSelect, which placed New York Times columnists behind a paywall, so there was much skepticism when the paper began charging for digital content in March 2011.
The New York Times now has 727,000 digital subscribers. While advertising revenue continues to shrink, the newspaper industry’s circulation revenue rose by 5% last year, thanks to those digital pennies. It was the first such increase since 2003.
Change had come so quickly that it’s hard to remember how bold and against-the-grain the Times’ move was. For years, the prevailing mantra was that on the Internet, information wants to be free. Digital enthusiasts portrayed it as virtually the moral equivalent of a constitutional right.
Newspaper companies, understandably baffled by the digital maelstrom engulfing them, figured they better get in on the action. They started posting their expensively gathered news content on the Web, for free, all the while charging for it in print. The hope was that their handiwork would attract lots of digital readers and that advertising dollars would follow.
The EBRD is helping Latvia to enter the Euro currency by fraud, take a look at this video “Lettonia”, by Italian journalist Mauro Caterina.
During the global financial crisis, which erupted in 2008, Latvia was on the verge of bankruptcy. In 2009, the country’s second largest bank, Parex banka, was nationalized and Latvia asks the Troika (IMF, World Bank and Eu) a loan of 7.5 billion euro. Even the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) participates in the rescue of Parex banka. Indeed, in 2009 the EBRD decide to buy 136 million euro in shares. This is the story of a fraud which has as protagonists the EBRD, the Latvian government and Parex banka. All this has been publicly denounced by the whistleblower John Christmas, American banker who worked for Parex banka and now accuses the EBRD to have used the money of European taxpayers for financial fraud.
It is a huge Russian Mafia crime in Europe involving the “EBRD” (“BERS” in Italian). The victims include all people of Malta and Italy, because the EBRD is helping Latvia to enter the Euro currency by fraud. This fraud is so large (billions of euros affecting millions of people) that it should be in the “Wall Street Journal” and “Financial Times.” The main challenge in bringing this to public attention is that 99% of journalists cannot understand the fraud.
The fraud is very similar to Enron, except it is in Europe and the victims are taxpayers. Journalists almost never understand the technical details of the Enron fraud, but it got huge media exposure anyway.
Background: EBRD helping Latvia and Lithuania to falsify financial statements
John Christmas is the whistleblower from Parex Bank of Latvia. Parex was a specialist in offshore deposit services for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Central Asia. Parex employees discussed links to the KGB and Parex was intermediary in major corruption cases throughout the region. John Christmas has been threatened and exiled since 2005.
The threats and most of the whistleblowing have never been investigated except for a limited investigation by the FBI in 2007. The United States Department of Justice collected a record-breaking settlement from Daimler in 2010, and one of the frauds from my whistleblowing tied in with the case. That fraud is explained on the website www.LawlessLatvia.com and can be confirmed, however Latvian officials did nothing until 2013 when they announced nobody would be prosecuted because the “statute of limitations” expired.
Meanwhile, the Latvian government has worked in cooperation with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to cover-up the truth about Parex. Parex collapsed in late 2008 and got bailed out in 2008 and 2009 by the Latvian government (funded by the IMF and European Union) and EBRD. Evidence indicates that the EBRD transaction was fraudulent – an announced stock “sale” that was reversible with an undisclosed “put option” thus making it effectively a “loan.” Because of this, the financial statements of Latvia are currently fraudulent.
The fraud is explained on three videos on the “LatviavEBRD” Youtube channel. The videos have over a quarter-million views. Also, an independent journalist Mauro Caterina produced the video cited at the top of this blog entry, about the fraud. The EBRD refuses to respond.
John Christmas has a background in banking. He has been employed by commercial banks in the United States and Europe in a variety of functions ranging from commercial lending to capital markets and investment banking. As a self-employed property developer, he initiated the Riga International Business Park project in Latvia. He is a citizen of Latvia, and has been a resident of Malta since 2009. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics at Dartmouth College and a Master of Business Administration degree in Finance at Cornell University. He currently holds positions in Malta and the Cayman Islands. He is a member of the UK CFA Society with an Investment Management Certificate.
John Christmas believes EBRD employees refuse to respond because they want to pretend that they don’t know about the whistleblowing. It is a strategy of maintaining “plausible deniability” for when their actions inevitably blow up in the future. While the EBRD remained silent, it was interesting for John Christmas to receive information about a new similar fraud in Lithuania.
A journalist interviewed him about Parex and the EBRD a few months ago and claimed that senior people told him during interviews that the EBRD’s 2013 bailout of Ukio Bank in Lithuania was similarly fraudulent. He never published the interviews, and he made it clear that he was afraid for his personal safety. A pattern has emerged.
EBRD officials are conspiring with bureaucrats in Eastern Europe to help them to temporarily cover-up frauds so that these countries can sneak into the Eurozone and issue bonds without cracking down on the corruption that
is burning up their tax revenue.
Can the European Central Bank and Eurostat please contact the EBRD and the finance ministries of Latvia and Lithuania to ask them to explain the EBRD bailouts of Parex and Ukio? Are the allegations true that in both situations, the EBRD conducted false/reversible “investments” in worthless assets using money from unknowing taxpayers to protect local oligarchs and falsify national financial statements?
The integrity of the Eurozone is at risk if this problem is ignored. John Christmas fears a repeat of the situation in 2001 when Goldman Sachs helped Greece to hide part of it’s debt so it could enter the Eurozone. The result was disaster for all Europeans including Greeks. This information needs to be distributed to hundreds of relevant people and John Christmas asks all of them to write to the EBRD.
The social network monitors what you say — and what you don’t say.
Chances are, Facebook doesn’t really care what you almost chose to post on your ex-boyfriend’s wall one drunken night before deciding you really didn’t want him to read it. Unless, of course, your ex-boyfriend works at Facebook.
Read more: Facebook Self-Censorship: Posts You Write But Don’t Publish Tracked | TIME.com
The Cons's Nook: www.ivanmconsiglio.com 