Justgiving.com is a business that was set up with one goal: to make it easier for people to raise money for charity by letting individuals create their own online fundraising pages. To date, they have helped 8 million people raise £476m for 7,479 charities. This is great work.
They have received criticism before, from ignorant fools that don’t understand how businesses work. They do charge fees, but they are tiny really when you think about it. In addition, the tedious process of claiming gift aid is done by justgiving, so the charity can use its time being more charitable. When someone that complains they charge talks to you, ask them how they would live if they didn’t receive any money from their employer. Or, if time is short, call them a stupid cunt and be on your way.
Unfortunately for justgiving, they had an upgrade, and it went awry. They totally overhauled the site, and rewrote it with entirely new code. This was on Saturday 20th June. Bear that in mind for the highlighted fucktards later. After the upgrade, some 20% were not able to donate, the paypal donation system went down, and people had difficulties accessing their page, and setting up new ones. This was unacceptable. >Justgiving themselves said so and apologised.
What was good was that they worked their asses off to correct the problems.
A lot of people got frustrated. This was understandable. You would have thought though, that a bunch of evidently charitable people would have been, well, more charitable. Fair enough I suppose, for those that have worked hard and want to raise as much as they physically can for causes close to their hearts. But come on, it’s just a few days.
Given that 80% of donations were going through and that justgiving took well over £2 million when everything was going tits up, it wasn’t as big a catastrophe as some of the comments on justgiving’s blog made out. However, as we will soon see, not everyone should have left a comment. You see, unfortunately for justgiving, they had to read comments from people that were just wasting their time. Their main issue was either: their own incompetence – the fact that they couldn’t be arsed to fundraise properly, got close to their event and used justgiving as an excuse – or that they were just being cocks.
Here are some examples:
Anne C and Jakie highlight their own stupidity. Both have complained about the site not working. The links provided by them on the justgiving blog comments are http://www.justgiving/big_bike_ride and http://www.khhmidnightwalk3/
Perhaps looking in a mirror will help you identify the problem. Before you complain to people who have had a major piece of recoding to do, the least you can do is appear competent enough to get a simple URL correct. Stop wasting busy people’s time. Given your evidently limited intelligence, it would be best served focused on your fundraising.
Others meanwhile have made fuck all effort to fundraise, and have left things too late. Thankfully, instead of letting down their charity, friends and family by failing to fundraise the required amount, they now have someone else to blame for their short comings!
Take Eiona Roberts. She’s admitted to feeling humiliated. Rightly so. Her page has been active since January. Her event is in (as of writing) 4 days. Her target is £2,000. In the six months before the upgrade, she managed £415. So, with just over a week to go, she was still just over £1,500 short of her target. Since the upgrade, she has received £423 in donations any way. Her comments both highlight the fact she fucked up her own fundraising, but also that she has received more donations whilst there were problems than when she was sat on her arse doing nothing. Could it be that the extra attention has brought in more donations, and the problems have actually done her a favour?
Even worse are Mark and Steve. Their event is on 25/07/09. Their first donation on their page was on 10/06/09. They want £1,000. They have £175. Before the upgrade, they had £115. So they were £885 short of their target. I expect, given their challenge, they were busy training. But that’s no excuse to complain to justgiving. Remember, justgiving is there to help with your fundraising, not do it for you. When taking on a challenge, if you want to raise a lot of money, you also have to plan for that side of things, not just the train. Get on your bike.
Richard>, as his name suggests, is just a dick. He writes:
“tried several times to donate
Can’t be bothered to try again.
I cycled 140 miles.
I have all this money from family & friends.
I am goint to spend it at Amerzon.co.uk and on beer.
Cheers !!!”
Either he’s posting this to just highlight the fact that he loves to kick people when they’re down, and isn’t actually telling the truth (a lot of losers that are good at dishing it out but can’t take it, like to boast). However, if he’s telling the truth, then that there is not only fraud, for which he should be arrested, but also shows what a brainless moron he is for not being able to put a cheque in the post, or donate on line direct at the charity’s website. On top of that, it’s a little rich to moan to justgiving, when you’re admitting to actively deceiving people and stealing money from a charity, as opposed to, as in justgiving’s case, having a glitch for a few days. All in all, you’re your just another dick with no balls.
Good luck to everyone fundraising for your causes, and for the challenges you’re undertaking. Just remember: justgiving is there to assist your fundraising. It won’t do it for you. If it goes down, think. You’re fundraising for a charity. Maybe phone that charity. You’ll be surprised to find out that charities have their own bank accounts where they put their money. Also, they receive lots of money direct into those accounts. They visit them, and put cheques and cash straight in. If you can’t grasp these things, it’s best not to bite off more than you can chew. I’d suggest working harder, and getting a promotion so you can afford a direct debit for your cause. However, given your whining “I’m a victim attitude” I suspect you all get passed over for promotions, despite the fact “I do lots of stuff for charity”. My advice, volunteer instead. Nothing too complex, just stuffing envelopes. Something you can’t fuck up.
Here’s a quick tip, if we continue to fuck about with foreign politics we’ll end up being hated by other nations and people will feel the need to blow shit up to make their point about how we need to stop fucking with foreign politics.
Oh, fuck, too late.
We seem to like to think that we are the motherfucking masters of running a country because if we see someone doing it in a way that’s not 100% how we’d do it then we like to just wade on in there and tell everyone how they need to get their act together and get their democracy on. America is the same, only they have a massive socialist welfare state military industrial complex* which needs something to do and that something often involves sending in mercenaries hired by nameless agencies to meddle with the hearts and minds and where possible start nice little wars that the US can wade in to as peacekeepers.
Can we just stop cocking about with other people and sort our own houses out already?
So Iran had some elections. They may or may not have been bent. Is this a problem for us? Not really, it’s a problem for the people of Iran. If they feel strongly about it then they will sort their own fucking house out by taking to the streets with big pointy sticks and flaming torches (or AK-47 assault rifles) but it is 100% not our fucking problem. Iran is a soverign nation and you can just imagine how well it would go down if the Swiss (one of the closest to a true democracy) were to start making a big fuss about our Prime Minister who was not elected in a democratic election; and don’t even get me started on George Fucking W Fucking Bush because that despotic cuntbag needs to be in in the Hague before I get home or there is going to be trouble. The Iranian people have spent a lot of time being fucked about with by the British and Americans, mainly because we didn’t like the fact that their democratically elected parliament was going to nationalise the British owned oil industry in Iran. We meddled a bit and actually helped the military overthrown the prime minister so the Shah (a bit of a buddy of the British) could run the country as an autocracy.
So yeah, let’s stop cocking about in Iran. The country is in a bit of a mess and that’s got quite a lot to do with us fucking about in the fifties. The country chose a religious state over the autocracy we left them with after destroying their democracy so we are not in any position to be mucking about now. Let’s just let them sort their own shit out and once that’s done we can say sorry for being a bunch of shitbags in the past and could we all just get along again, ta.
*That’s a whole other series of posts.
Oh noes! The American gay movement doesn’t like new Sacha Baron Cohen film Brüno because they claim it enforces gay stereotypes and will actually confirm and entrench the prejudices of those who think gays ought to die a fiery death morally object to man-love (because let’s face it, it’s never the lesbians people have problems with, is it?).
Maybe. But then what do you thing these people do?
Scary Mary!
And these people:
Holy Homo, Batman!
And these people:
I don't even fucking know.
Why?
Quite frankly (and yes, for those of you who are interested, I am queer), they’re fookin’ wierd looking. Now, I’m a veteran of a fair few British Pride events; I’ve marshalled at a few, been in the parades of a few, and run a fetish stall at most. So I’m pretty broad minded and can appreciate, even embrace, the variety of the queer identity. I love the identity in all its forms. But others don’t and no amount of wishful thinking is going to change that.
It isn’t films like Brüno that reinforce the stereotypes and prejudices of the homophobes out there; it isn’t even the sheer aggressiveness of the bolder elements of the queer identity; it’s the fact that this aggressive and colourful edge of homosexuality is the one that is most visible to society. It’s the only slice of queer life that the homophobes see, because everyday, workaday gay couples living a life together in quiet harmony just isn’t exciting enough to be celebrated, apparently.
If all a born-again homophobe sees of the gay culture are examples such as the pictures above, is it any wonder they back away in horror? The only time they come into even remote contact with the queer lifestyle, they’re having sex, S&M and transvestism pushed in their faces.
Now I like all 3 of those things, but that doesn’t mean I want it (metaphorically) shoved down my throat. Brüno not only sends up the prejudices and outright nasty attitudes of homophobes in America, but also the prevailing attitudes of the queer community. We can be camp, gauche, shallow, effeminate, and obsess over our hair and nails. There are gay people out there who embody the character that Brüno mocks.
When Kathy Burke as Waynetta Slob declared that she wanted a brown baby just like all the other mums on the estate, was anyone up in arms at the implications of someone wanting a brown baby? No. Why? Because it was funny; it played off against the stereotypes of “broken” families with absent black fathers. It sent up the women idiotic enough to say “I want a brown baby”. It mocked the serious underlying political situation as much as it did the people causing it. That’s what satire is, people; at least try and remember that.
True, we’re not all like Brüno; but some of us are, and we’re fucking hilarious, quite frankly.
Oh, and see this site for genuine gayby accessories. Brüno didn’t make it up – the gay community did, and Baron Cohen is sending us up.
Brüno just plays off an already-existing culture and vocabulary. So don’t blame a satire for poking fun at a culture already notorious for its camp, flamboyant, effeminate, gauche, appearance-obsessed members.
If you think that such stereotyping is harming the gay agenda (which as everyone knows is 1. be allowed to marry and 2. have fabulous hair), then take a good long look at the people in the queer community who are propagating such an image.
Blaming a film for an already existing culture is cowardly and pointless. Just because gays are in the news for gay marriage and gay adoption and general gay rights doesn’t give us automatic privilege to be offended just because someone makes a joke involving our lifestyle.
Relax, fellow gays – be fabulous.
Let’s talk about browsers and the news that Microsoft will be selling Windows 7 (or Windows Vista Service Pack 2 with added XP as it should be called) in a special EU flavour that does not include Internet Explorer.
OK, I know it’s not the most thrilling of things to talk about but it’s a fucking Monday and my head is throbbing because I want to stab this woman in the face with a pencil.
The EU have gotten this fucked up idea that they should be doing laws and shit so Opera (people who make a browser that is so good almost nobody uses it) decided a little while ago they would try to get more people using their browser by asking the EU to tell Microsoft to stop being ‘anti-competitive’. It’s all a bit tragic really and just shows how completely fucking pointless the EU is because they are busy fighting stupid battles like this rather than taking the US and UK to task for invading Iraq or sorting out the vast moneygeddon bank fucktardery. What’s even more tragic is that they haven’t actually gotten very far with sorting out the problem, mainly because no problem actually exists.
To recap on past events*:
- God and Al Gore made the Internet. It was better than everyone else’s internet so everyone started using it to get their porn.
- A fine upstanding Brit decided that porn would be better delivered if some stupid spider web analogy was used. He bastardised existing protocols to make the world wide web.
- In order to get at stuff over the Internet tubes the users needed a bit of software called a browser so a few sad fuckos with nothing else to do started making them and giving them away for free. The guys at Netscape wrote a pretty good program for getting at porn and it was the least shit for a while.
- Microsoft figured that as everyone was starting to use this free shit that made the porn easier to get at, maybe they should make their own and give it away for free too.
- A period ensued called the browser wars. Nobody actually fought; it was less interesting than the supermarket wars and I couldn’t get a loaf of bread for nine pence.
- Everyone else apart from Microsoft gave up because they realised that if you give someone something that is good enough and it’s free they are not going to invest effort in something that is marginally better and also free.
- The Netscape people returned to their collective mothers basements and masturbated furiously for a decade while chanting ‘we will have our revenge’.
- Microsoft got distracted by other shiny things like the fact that they were getting fisted by Google on the search market and so stopped making their browser any better.
- Some of the Netscape people started making a new browser which was in fact pretty much the same browser but with new features; they called it Firefox. Meanwhile Opera made their browser with some interesting features that were slightly useful.
- Microsoft suddenly had competition again so looked at what was good and stuck it into their browser.
- Google weighed in with their own browser which didn’t turn water into wine, didn’t part the Red Sea and didn’t make porn any easier to get (although it did make it easier to hide the fact that you had been looking at porn from your wife mom).
So this brings us more or less up to the present day. Around 90% of people continue to use the browser that was installed as part of their operating system and the rest, the people who either
- Care
- Know someone else who cares and who generally fucks around with their PC
have got some other browser such as Opera, Firefox or Chrome installed.
What the EU wants is for Microsoft to level the playing field a little by shipping Windows Vista Service Pack 2 with added XP in a vanilla flavour sans IE sort of way, well actually that’s bullshit they want something that they have not really defined but Microsoft have offered to jump the gun by offering this as a compromise**. The problem is that what will then happen is that various vendors will be offered cash by different browser makers to put their particular browser on PCs before they are shipped to the XYY chromasome people who shop at PC World***. Of course in reality the people who have the cash to do this are not Opera or Mozilla (the rapists behind Firefox) but Microsoft and Google. Google owns the Internet now and all your PCs are belong to Microsoft so you’ll have a fifty fifty split between which giant American monolith has pwned your browser and your porn viewing.
Now, why is this important?
IT JUST FUCKING ISN’T.
Nobody cares what browser they have, so long as it shows the porn right, just as girls don’t care what car engine they have so long as they can have a pink fluffy steering wheel cover and it gets them to the shops so they can buy shoes. It’s for the same reason nobody**** cares about Linux other than Linus Torvalds and the basement dwelling self-pleasurers that actually do care far more than is really healthy. When Joe Sixpack goes to buy a computer they just want to be able to browse the web for porn, write letters and play some games; they don’t want to do a computer science degree or learn about anything other than the look on Pammy’s face when Tommy Lee fired a gob load of man juice down her gullet. I bought a DVD player last month and I didn’t care what chips were in it, what frequency the laser was or what buffering algorithm it used; all I gave a toss about was if it would play my DVDs that I bought in Amsterdam and would it work with my fucking huge jizz-stained tele. The cunts that tell you that Firefox is better than IE are missing the fact that both of them display sites like Facerape and Porntube so either is good enough for the average computer using wankmonkey and the cunts that tell you that Ubuntu is better than Windows are missing the fact that Call of Duty 5 runs 100% better on Windows than on Ubuntu.
Now get the fuck over what browser you use and what OS you like so you have got a bit more time to email a friend and go get a less shitty life.
EDIT:
As a reward for sitting though this frankly quite shitty post here’s some boobie.
* Some or all of which may be made up.
** For specific values of compromise
*** If you are in the US read this as Best Buy
**** For specific values of nobody
