A new law firm specialising in multi-jurisdictional online divorce has been set up on the popular metaverse, Second Rate Life.
For just a few Linden Dollars, convertible into US currency and easily laundered on e-Bay, Panama-registered Virtually Not Yours Anymore, Inc, will assist in all your multi-jurisdictional online divorce needs. Their legally trained, fully qualified avatars will advise that the ground for virtual divorce remains the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage in every country in the world save for Newquay, but that it can be proved by any of the following: having virtual sex with virtual prostitutes, not doing enough virtual, real or imagined housework and playing rival online role play games such as the highly controversial but mind-numbingly dull World of Borecraft.
If you would like to learn more about Virtually Not Yours Anymore, Inc – and to see what Daily Mail readers think of the pioneering, precedent-setting ventures of two overweight people on state benefits – click here.
Pictured: the senior partners of Virtually Not Yours Anymore (Inc) on their honeymoon.
[...] revealing how two South West News’ journalists deployed avatars on Second Life to track down Amy Taylor and David Pollard, who made the news last week for their innovative virtual/real divorce. The couple were initially [...]
Interesting times, these, in the life of Joey Barton.
If the violence displayed by the QPR captain at Manchester City last Sunday was remarkable, his subsequent conduct on Twitter has been astonishing. Barton appears to have radically reinterpreted the notion that attack is the best form of defence, lashing out at all and sundry via a series of tweets whose ultimate effect is entirely self-destructive.
In the past 24 hours, Barton has accepted one charge of violent conduct at the Etihad Stadium but denied another. The FA seems set to throw the book at him, and his club has declared that it will deal with the matter after the result of the FA investigation. Conspiracy theorists might conclude that QPR’s management team and board hope that the FA ban Barton for so long a period (four months and more) that their reported desire to rip up his contract can only be bolstered.
What, then, should Barton do? Should he:
(a) Keep his head down and say nothing, or
(b) Issue a sensible statement in which he acknowledges that both his conduct at the Etihad and subsequent tweets have brought QPR into disrepute, and
(c) Add an apology to said statement, or
(d) Go to Portugal, log onto Twitter and tweet that the world is against him but that he doesn’t care because everyone is a moron and he’s worked really hard to get where he is and if anyone is nasty to him again he is going to expose their secrets.
The answer is not (d).
The moral of the story is that if you’re a loose cannon, when you turn attack into defence there is a danger that you will blow yourself up.
A fine piece, this, on Winston Churchill’s gift for language and the obscurantism that goes with so much corporate communication.
But wait, what’s this? Could this injunction have been phrased rather more successfully:
Be concrete, not abstract. Use metaphors to get your message across.
Metaphors are, by definition, not exactly concrete. But be that as it may: there is a lot of sound advice in Clare Lynch’s piece and a revelation, too. We had never heard of the Gunning Fog Index. But it exists, and reveals the age at which someone would have to leave full-time education to understand given text.
We’re pleased to display our own Gunning Fog rating for the above words. That of the Churchill speech cited by Ms Lynch was 9.698.
The idea that Lord Justice Leveson and his Inquiry’s QC, Robert Jay, are in need of PR advice is intriguing.
Surely their respective tasks ought to be immune from spin? Then again, perhaps the way in which they execute them is deserving of some communications advice. Either way, times have changed. A similar inquiry from yesteryear (and such do exist) would surely not have been accompanied, albeit informally, by communications advice.
Pictured courtesy of this Flickr user: a portrait of the Leveson Inquiry.
Is there a geek inside all of us?
Excellent Nike ad
Memo to would-be hacks: good writing is no longer a tool of your trade
Released almost a year ago, Spada’s groundbreaking research report, British Professions Today, is available for free download
This bank is so well designed that many of its staff never go home (allegedly)
In the latest of our series of white papers, Spada Research examines trends in environmental reporting.
If you become a star, you don’t change – everyone else does. Kirk Douglas, 1916 – present, American actor.