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Got this story from a Telegraph Tweet

Furniture seller, made.com allegedly sent out the wrong marketing email as soon as the Scottish Referendum result was announced.

It then subsequently followed up with a Union Jack themed message offering apologies and welcoming Scotland back to the UK.

So incompetent marketing bod, or shrewd and clever marketing god?

The Telegraph and Brand Republic were quick to jump on the story shouting epic marketing fail, and the story has been picked up by plenty of others.

So is all publicity good publicity and in this age of trying to build links, what better way of generating some top quality links from various news outlets.

Or is it just an embarrassing marketing mistake....   hmm cynical radar on full power....

Well I've got to be honest, personally I thought it was a good result and am happy the Union is going to remain. Plus the new flag would have looked a bit bare without any blue!

But I think the referendum has been good for the UK as a whole, it has polarised opinion, made politics interesting again, and forced the issue on debates which would have been buried for years.

I think there has been quite an English surge of nationalism as more powers have been promised to the Scots, with Welsh and Northern Irish noses pushed out a bit as well.

But listening to Cameron on the news this morning I was actually quite impressed with his response (assuming he keeps to it) and confirmed we will have major constitutional change, with more powers to the Welsh Assembly, Northern Ireland and the promised increase in self governance for Scotland. But the bit that hit the spot for me was the recognition that the English should have the ability to decide certain decisions for themselves.

I think this is the way forward, a United Kingdom, but made up of individual countries that have the right to set local laws, taxes and make local relevant policy, specific to the population.

It all sounds a bit utopian at the moment and we need cross party agreement that whoever is in power will honour and take this forward.

But for my 5 pence worth, politics seems to have become interesting again, we've shown the world the power of the ballot box and democracy in action and it feels good to be British 

What does anyone else think?

Well would you believe it! So who won the pot?

That's a fair point. My beef is that a lot of business owners are mistakenly told it is a legal requirement, which it appears it's not. Agree 100% employers have a duty of care, common sense visual checks should be as a matter of course. Any device that goes live should pop a fuse, so a bit alarming about the live kettle!

But as a counter argument £27 to ensure your employees are safe and you have ticked the box if something did happen you can't really argue with.

But then maybe it should be mandatory and maybe we should have it done at home? Think I'll go and look at our kettle!

Fantastic! Found it on You Tube so have added it into your post 

I came across this article from CNN and proves the theory that human beings will just about argue about anything, nobody understands irony or humour any more, and Godwins Law is alive and well...

"If Scotland votes to secede, does that open up a spot for another country? And if so -- Scotland, can we take your place?

I realize that Americans fought a bloody war of independence from England in the late 1700s, but our rifts have healed over the past 240 years. In 2013, the Pew Research Center reported that England topped America's list of favourite nations, in a near-tie with our beloved northern neighbour, Canada.

In the past few years, as America has degenerated into political and economic chaos, it has become increasingly clear that we would be far better off if we apologized for our revolt against the Crown and requested to rejoin the United Kingdom.

There are four main ways America would benefit from unification with the UK: Brits have better health, less inequality, excellent manners and -- let's face it -- a superior culture. Let's improve our quality of life by joining them.

Want to live longer? Then let's become Stateland — the 50-state replacement for Scotland."

Full article: Scotland, you want out? We'll take your place - CNN

Stateland! I love it

Obviously the author David Wheeler knows what he's talking about and there's not much to disagree with 

But if you have a spare couple of hours, wade through the comments and they are even more entertaining, from chest beating USA patriotic fervour, anti English rhetoric to those that can actually work out a wind up when they read one...

The Volkswagon Group, Mercedes Benz and Google have been issued self driving car permits by the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

But there are concessions to safety, cars have to have a human driver capable of stopping and steering the vehicles in an emergency.

Reports of a secret British prototype have been snapped by operating on the highways of California.

Ok, I made the last bit up...

Full story:

California Starts Issuing Self-Driving Car Permits - pcmag.com

So looks like the technology is starting to mature and develop to a point that they can be used on public roads. No doubt we are now only a few years away from seeing this become mainstream and this technology gaining wide acceptance.

I would imagine there will be plenty of paid hours ahead for the legal industry to hammer out legislation and answer the near endless number of questions people have raised, from speed cameras to drink driving!

An update on this and a thank you to domain registrar www.enom.com for taking our complaint seriously and promptly taking down the rogue domains.

If you ever find yourself in a similar situation and find your details have been scammed, report the incident to Action Fraud so the incident is logged.

Then contact the domain registrar who is hosting the domains and explain the situation to them, asking them to remove the domains. Each registrar will have a different process and they will want a history of the issue and some kind of proof of who you are. In our case, sending them a PDF version of our companies house incorporation certificate did the job.

To find out which domain registrar a domain is registered with, you can use this website:

whois.domaintools.com - If you add the domain name, you will get an output of all the domain registration information, and from that work out who you need to contact.

If you ever need any help, just reply to this thread.

It is odd, the main phone networks have had High Street chains for some time, so have been selling direct, and you're right, you tend to seem them clustered together. So it's not hard for a consumer to wonder in and out and shop around for the best deal, rather than go via a middleman like Phones 4U.

According to the beeb unemployment is at the lowest levels since November 2008, but is the largest annual fall in unemployment since 1988.

No doubt this matches a curve for the growing numbers of self employed and new small businesses! Be interesting to see stats on new businesses that survive past year 1, year 2 etc.

If Scotland decides to breakaway tomorrow, I wonder how that will affect the UK unemployment figures? Already seen some funny stats such as the average amount of UK rainfall will decrease, and apparently the UK average life expectancy will increase!