Three years ago, I blogged about Dominic Sandbrook’s BBC series The 70s. I reminisced about Cadbury’s Supersonic Seventies TV advert and lamented that it was sadly missing from YouTube.
Happily, it’s now there. It was pure nostalgia watching this over 40 years later. Curious how I remembered the ending so accurately: ‘One of today’s great tastes, ooh ooh!”
Charting the dawn of democracy: Magna Carta memorial, Runnymede
You expect revolutions to take place in crowded cities. Yet the event that marked the dawn of modern democracy took place in a peaceful meadow next to the River Thames at Runnymede, Surrey. This is where King John sealed Magna Carta, the agreement that forced rulers – in those days kings – to obey the rule of law.
No surfing today: could not activate mobile data network
It was so frustrating. As soon as I reached an international destination, I’d get a text from O2 telling me that I was on O2 Travel so paid just £1.99 a day for using the internet while abroad. Yet when I tried to surf the net I got this error message: “Could not activate mobile data network: you are not subscribed to a mobile data service”.
I complained several times to O2 (after trips to Dublin and Luxembourg) but each time they told me I was signed up for O2 Travel, so it wasn’t their fault.
When this happened yet again when I arrived in Madrid on Thursday I resigned myself to another fruitless call to customer service. I checked the iPhone settings – and yes, all was set up for overseas mobile data roaming. What was going on?
It’s fault of the EU (Internet)
Then I had a brainwave: try changing some of the less obvious setting and see if that made any difference. I spotted a setting (Settings/Mobile) called EU Internet (above). It was on. I turned it off, then tried to load a webpage. It worked! Problem solved.
So if you’re blocked from getting online overseas on your mobile, check whether this option is turned on. I’m assuming that this doesn’t affect the £1.99 O2 Travel deal. After all, I’m using an EU smartphone in the EU on an O2 EU contract.
The only remaining mystery? What on earth is the point of this iOS EU Internet option in settings? And is this new to iOS 8?
Sorry O2 for blaming you…
Bryan Henderson is famous – as a pedant. The world’s media put him under the spotlight last week for correcting the same error 47,000 times in Wikipedia. He hates the phrase ‘comprised of’ – arguing the ‘of’ is unnecessary. The story took me back to my days reading Ernest Gowers’ The Complete Plain Words in university in 1984: it was one of the phrases Gowers singled out as a howler.
I’ve never edited a single Wikipedia entry. But I felt a tremble of recognition when I read of Henderson’s obsession. As I get older, I get more irritated by language (and number) howlers. Here are some of my pet hates.
Language inflation. Build out; test out; off of. Just a few phrases that have suffered parasitic appendages.
Doppelgängers: words that have been replaced by identical sounding cousins: it’s/its; your/you’re; there/their/they’re. Years ago, it’s/its was the most common error, but your/you’re seems just as common now: ‘Your welcome’…
Talking telephone numbers: companies that spend money on beautiful shop fronts and signs, but don’t know that the area phone code for London is 020 and Cardiff is 029. I’ve lost count of signs giving numbers starting 0207, 0208 and 02920.
Don’t try dialling 724 0055
This Marylebone shop can’t get its own number right. Anyone dialling 724 0055 will get an unobtainable tone. The 7 in 0207 is actually part of the number, not the area code.
Does it matter? No, not compared with life’s real horrors. But accuracy does matter. Hats off to Bryan Henderson. Or hat’s off as some would say….
Ertblog 