I got a little bit upset by that Register article
I expect the comments this time around will improve on that
Millionaire supermodel Lily Cole has told a national newspaper how upset she was by The Register's coverage of her taxpayer-funded wishing well, Impossible.com. Youtube video of Cole talking about impossible.com Using Freedom of Information laws, we attempted to discover how the wealthy socialite and globetrotter was awarded …
Well I'm not ashamed to say I winced. Not exactly a fair fight this, no matter how bad the site is. I see the griefers love it tho.
Pumping shells into a Government moneyflusher's PR shields? Yeah, sure, pass the popcorn, you go AO! A second armor-piercing shell thru a girl's delirium dream just because she had the temerity to be hurt by the first? I'll pass, El Reg. Bit too much like sniping civilians with a high power rifle. Not nice :(
Might be more inclined to agree with you, Daggerchild, if she weren't getting wodges of tax money for the project. How do I get over a quarter-million to faff around promoting a "stuff wanted" site?
(Need a crocodile tears/ boo-freaking-hoo icon.)
@Daggerchild - if the government wants to piss away £ 200k of our hard-earn taxes then I'd prefer they did that to worthwhile causes than mere hopeless 'wish' matching window dressing for rich kids.
Rather than let these people get away with it using all their 'chums' to support them using our cash I'd prefer the money was given to something more useful.
Keep sniping El Reg, you're aiming at the right targets.
They're suggesting at http://www.impossible.com/toolkit that you go round spamming your neighbourhood with their crappy publicity flyers. Twunts.
and in airplane toilets apparently.
Looking this morning there seems to be some trolling going on
"I wish someone would pull the plug on this site, shut it down so it stops wasting taxpayers money. #somethingelse"
and the greedy
"I wish a #Canon EOS 5D Mark III, a Canon 17-40mm and a MacBook Pro 13" 2,4 GHz. #secondhand #thank_you"
I thought the *actual* problem was the Government twunt who *gave* her the money. *Everyone* asks for it. It's all gone a bit girl-XBox-player in here.
Besides, receiving Government funds for an overblown project that drains cash and eventually delivers something horrible *is* how most large employers of IT professionals operate, after all, so not sure how many of the Reg crowd are without sin here ;-)
@ ElRegUser007 : You're still using an old version of humanity. You need to upgrade to the latest internet-enabled version where they fixed various bugs like empathy, tolerance and regret. You'll see a remarkable drop in caring! This will free up resources for new features like griefing and trolling. They significantly improve the taste of tears!
There's an outstanding bug in 'survival of the species' now but we don't think it affects any current users. It's a long time since anyone's tested that feature so it may be removed in future releases.
"Her" Art Matters series? So she produced it, directed it, scripted it. No, she is the pretty face fronting it. She might like art which is good for a presenter to be interested in the subject they present (like Attenborough), but she hasn't scripted it, or directed it, or produced it - so it's not her.
Obviously not. Then again, presumably being a celebrity she will likely be famous for "being famous" and given we don't receive, read or even pay any attention to that sort of media then we wouldn't care, would we?
People visiting a tech site are likely to have zero interest in her, until or unless she accomplishes something as we define the term, which is quite likely to relate to accomplishment of something in Science, Technology, or (applied) Math.
People visiting a tech site are likely to have zero interest in her, until or unless she accomplishes something as we define the term, which is quite likely to relate to accomplishment of something in Science, Technology, or (applied) Math.
Whilst I am sure that a lot of us do have a *boner for STEM it seems a little reductive to dismiss all other areas of human endeavour and achievement.
*used advisedly
> Success can only be measured in time
Now that's impossible! (dot com)
I wonder how much success she's had with this venture our money? Would it be a couple of months, or a millisecond?
Although investing her own money is a bit of a win-win since any losses just reduce the amount of tax she (or more likely: some company that her accountant has magicked into existence as a container for this venture) has to pay, whereas any profit would go directly back to her.
Maybe they count on blind people to click on them?
I couldn't find any ALT text for the images to save my life. Those who can't quite understand what's going on will probably click a bit all over just to see ( hear? ) what happens...
However, they do efforts to make it as inclusive as possible in different areas:
<!--[if lt IE 7 ]> <html class="ie6"> <![endif]-->
Just in case.
Hopefully the WAP version will be ready soon!
There are four ways to spend money.
1) you can spend your money on yourself, in which case, you are really interested in the results.
2) you can spend your money on someone else, in which case you are interested in the results, but not totally bothered.
3) you can have someone else spend money on you, in which case you are just grateful.
4) you can spend someone else's money on someone else, in which case , who gives a f**k? That's the government for you.
I read that in one of P.J. O'Rourke's books, and it was hollow laughter then too.
P.
El Reg tells it how it is, startlet complains.
A sampling of #wi$hes so you don't have to #gothere yourself:
"I wish I could find someone #who could #help me #plan my #wedding. I'm on disability and have a very limited income so I need things as inexpensive as possible. I'm also a BBW bride."
"I wish I could genuinely #help #somebody with their #startup #company rather than just give them money."
"I wish I could find a cheapish small one bedroomed cottage/studio in rural Norfolk to rent in exchange for creating a beautiful garden and redecorating inside and out. #accommodation"
"A female penpal that is quirky, slightly eccentric, has a love of life, doesn't mind strange random conversations and loves chocolate chip cookies. #things"
"someone could give my daughter a leg-up in the media world - she's just graduated from Greenwich Uni with a 2.1 in Film Studies. She'd be into an internship type thingy - she speaks Spanish and English #creative"
Seriously, how much does web hosting cost in her world?
As I've posted before, it costs less than $10 a month where I live. That's for very generous space, bandwidth and very comprehensive tools and additional software.
And who is getting paid to build it? Every client I've ever worked with was a skinflint who made Scrooge look generous. I see nothing special in the build than warrants 100K+ for development.
So really, just WHERE is the money going? Because if it was for any physical development, she got robbed.
Well, some one did, anyway.
We know ball park how much it would have actually cost to do the coding, because most techs know a small amount of coding or scripting (enough to know how much of a job it really is) or at a minimum will have friend who has a friend who will know. That, or at worst the extended group will end up pointing the person to a developer who could use some cash.
She on the other hand is a celebrity, so will be pointed towards the multimillionaire who attends the sort of social circles that she moves in who owns a group of companies including a web design outfit. She'll be being charged at least £400 per developer hour spent without realising that they don't pay the developers that much per day.
Come on now, folks, she reads The Register! Now, isn't that just significant? In just a little bit she'll be able to correct her website by reading all of these erudite articles and comments.
So let's see the business plan here: collect gnomes, ... something else ..., and no profit at all.
OK, so I guess the whole idea needs work yet. Don't worry, the comments section is on the job! Don't worry, Lily, we'll definitely tell you how to do it right!
I personally know 3 or 4 people that run voluntary things for various types (theatre groups, disabled groups, one off child care (go to the beach for the first time in your life sorts)) who could have made far better use of the money. Let alone what the handful of unable to get back into work mentally ill or physically handicapped people I know could have done with the money.
Well, Really if you think about it £150k isn't that bad.. the issue is where the money came from.
That £150k will have paid for Developers, Designers, Testers, A project Manager as well as hardware, hosting agreements software licences.
Not to mention if its a start up with its own staff all of the people above will need hardware and software to do their jobs.
As I said the sum isn't really the issue, large commercial sites often cost a lot of money, the issue in this case is where the money came from (And perhaps from what I read in the article that most of the publicity seems to have been aimed at the US, which if it was set up with UK taxpayers money makes it a little worse!)
Everyone that is visiting impossible.com to wish [beg] for something they need [want for free] would list their computer/tablet/smartphone on Craigslist-- since nobody is using impossible.com --for cash. This way they could use the money towards whatever it is they want, and they can stop turning the Internet into a cardboard (why is it always cardboard?) sign with black marker (why is it always black marker) that says "anything helps."
Now, if only someone would post that on impossible.com for me; I wish they would. Please. Really. Thanks. If you can.
Looked at the site, it held my attention for oh maybe 90 seconds not that I get hash tags as a non social networker but it appears as if they have just discovered the idea and are trying to work it to death.
As for the luscious? Lily she reminds me somewhat of Black Adder's Queenie in looks and petulant vacuosity.
Give me a hundred thousand with the access code and I will improve the site immeasurably!
Future listing:
"One fleece--figuratively taken off Britsh taxpayers. Approximately 58 million very careful previous owners. Quite warm. Seeking new, needy homeless person having problems keeping out the night's chill. Also makes decorative throw rug in orphanage or substance abuse treatment environment. Inquiries to L. Cole, Islington, London"
Is that this is only a newsworthy story because the recipient of the NESTA cash is fairly high profile. How many other absolutely worthless projects have had taxpayer money thrown away on them? The funding system is quite clearly broken and needs to be fixed... or binned. I'm sure there must be examples of successful government assisted startup schemes that can be aped? I've heard that Finland and Israel have successful scenes despite not containing silicon valley within there borders.
Never heard of her? Sure, just fishing for upvotes, even I've heard of her and I'm a million miles from a celeb culture mindframe. And you don't know what she does, whoever the hell is reading the articles for you is not doing their job, it plainly says in the headline she's a super model.
Next, she got funding for a web site. Why take it out on her? It's the funding body that should be under scrutiny. Doesn't look as if she's spent the funding on herself, maybe some bad publicity stunts but at least her heart's in the right place, she's just out of her depth.
While it's amusing to bash on about the "taxpayer" giving £ 200,000 to this "poor little rich kid" for a useless website, I think it's a bit of a mistake to focus on the money. For a start, if she's got good accountants, she's probably costing the country more through (perfectly legal) tax avoidance schemes. In the subsidy stakes (such as those given in the energy industry) £ 200,000 doesn't even figure as a rounding error.
Let's take Miss Cole out of the equation and focus on the role of Nesta and whether it's doing its job properly - what are the expected tangible (ie. the number of employees) and intangible benefits of the site? How will they be measured? And how will those allocating the money be held accountable (not necessarily sacked)?
As things stand I think it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that the whole thing was a vehicle to benefit Freud Communications - weren't they associated with another waste-of-time, celebrity (political) website? What is the ownership of the website? What is the proposed business model? More digging along those lines, please.
Oh, and good to see the Freedom of Information Act doing its job.
Charlie, Nesta is not subject to FoI requests any more - otherwise you would know a lot more about how this decision was made.
It was the Cabinet Office which gave Nesta the money and administrative duties, which is why I focused so much on the Cabinet Office in the original article. The enthusiasm of the bureaucrats there for accountability and transparency should be evident from the FoI replies.
Sarcasm about our wonderful Civil Servants. I don't know.
Seriously, I agree that some sarcasm is required. But then we read about people like that one who ran a Scottish bank who acquired a corporate jet with a private bedroom just for him on the bank's money, and we know who really despises ordinary people and is just taking the piss.
Andrew, thanks for the clarification. I'm in Germany and I'll admit to not keeping up to date with the shenanigans in Whitehall. As I said, I think focussing too much on Lily Cole detracts from the argument which would be the unaccountability of Nesta. What other bollocks things have they been involved with? More "community service" engagements for the well-to-do?
Not to worry, we have our own share of investment catapults here. And the bureaucrats and politicians dislike FoI provisions just as much as anywhere else.
I set up a new charity website aimed to helpline other 'charities' scam money from the taxpayer in order to pay exorbitant wages to their board of directors.
It's called www.gilding-that-turd.org
My plan is not to actually do anything except getting a celebrity model (preferably on with a bit of a pus on her, seriously a model?) to wax lyrical about it to celebrity fondling magazines.
Can I have my £500k now?
Or I'll settle for My F**KIN MONEY BACK
Firefox can't find the server at www.gilding-that-turd.org
Failed retrieving record type from a name server.
Hope it didn't cost you £200k, best speak to Lilly's mates!
Whilst El Reg readers have helpfully generated a spike in her traffic and some are worried about us giving her free publicity, the other side of that coin is that if she's been publicly grumbling about El Reg in Vogue (etc), perhaps we can look forward to loads of vacuous slebs coming here and giving us the benefit of their inane ramblings. Well at least it will be a change from my inane ramblings!
That celebs who actually contribute something more than their physical image to culture get slated for legitimately reducing their tax input through benevolence schemes, yet Ms. Cole takes money out of the treasury to prop up her do-gooder credentials and that's supposed to be better?
She's a bigger parasite than knuckledraggers on benefits in terms of net cost.
Just curious - for 200k I'd expect it to be impenetrable...
And is no one reviewing this stuff?? Scientologists must be really stuck for advertising ideas if they're now using Impossible as a religious platform, but what's worse is that they're being allowed to...
Ever think that maybe she was smart enough to try out a website on NESTA's money? In stead of being stupid enough to sink her own into it when star-struck and dim NESTA folks would hand it over in buckets?
Having had a close encounter with NESTA myself some years ago, they would hand money over to a turnip if the pitch was right. Why shouldn't someone roll up to the trough? Those who think that Starbucks etc are entitled to pay the tax legally owed, as opposed to voluntarily paying more tax not legally owed, should in the same spirit see taking NESTA's money.
If she's got £7m+ in the bank and so desperately wanted a "web-toy" to play with, why didn't she get some celeb mates to chuck £100k each into a pot and launch it themselves? Why the f**k do I have to pay taxes to fund this vanity project? I want my money to go on hospitals, education and council cleaners to clear up the dog-shit that litters town pavements up and down the country!
>>If she's got £7m+ in the bank and so desperately wanted a "web-toy" to play with, why didn't she get some celeb mates to chuck £100k each into a pot and launch it themselves?
Beacuse then she wouldn't have £7m+ in the bank.
All wealthy people do this - it's always Other People's Money that takes the risks.
In all (limited fairness) I suspect the following is true :-
Lily attached sycophant has idea that is pure "gold", sells it to Lily who frankly has no real idea about this shit.
Office of Lily Affairs goes to NESTA which promptly wets it self at the idea of being associated with a vaguely famous pretty girl.
NESTA cons wodges of cash out of Cabinet Office frantically pointing to a picture going "look, she's pretty and we know her... also can we have another 10K to spruce up the buffet table for when she's next in".
Office of Lily Affairs hires NESTA sycophant "webbie" to design (and I use the term in the loosest sense) a website.
....and they saw a Powerpoint Presentation and it was good, so they all had tea and scones and Lily still has no clue about what's been perpetrated in her name, but she's been told it is so cool, so she defends it.
She's hardly going to go "yeah, it's a crock of shite, I regret listening to those dickheads I hired to organise my affairs, they're now all f**king fired, oh and those guys who gave us all that cash, total muppets" now is she? Although we can hope...
As has been said before, lynch the muppets at NESTA and the CO because frankly they should be a lot more responsible and careful with our cash. Sadly however, as History seems to scream at us, some of the people least responsible with money that isn't theirs are Bankers and senior Civil Servants.
My favourite foot in the mouth comment from Lily recently was in the Observer article on 8 June when she sought to defend herself against criticism of the Nesta award by saying 'the government give money to rich people all the time' and that she had put in A WHOLE 200k of her own fortune (in a year when she was named in the Sunday Times Rich List). She also mentioned her closeness to Cabinet Office special advisor Jimmy Wales. No apologies from her for taking money which could have gone to people who lack celebrity resources and special influences. As David Coleman is no longer around I suggest the intro of Cole-Balls and good on you Register keep up the monitoring as the rest of the press is being manipulated by the Freud communications machine (and Cole's own PR advisor is married to Wales).