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As of 01:35Hrs UK time, Lloyds TSB Personal banking has gone tit’s up again. As usual LloydsTSB is giving no feedback as to the reason for this outage.

Would you be concerned if somebody cooked a burger pattie, placed it ready for serving. Once it had gone completely cold they then put it back on the hot plate to reheat again?

Here in the UK most peeps would be concerned because not only is it an illegal practice, it is taking very serious risks with the health of Customers.

So would you be concerned if I said that I stood in a McDonald’s Franchise in the UK and observed Fries being Stacked for over 15 minutes, then being tipped back into the tray with freshly cooked fries (too be stacked up again).

When questioned about this and the almost cold dried up burger patties being served, the manager proceeded to hand me more recycled fries and another colder 1/4 pounder with cheese. When I went back to complain again fresh fries where then cooked and served, but as the manager walked away with the burgers (not disposing of them) I observed her handing them to a member of staff to reheat them on the hot plate. An action she later denied.

OK so McD’s are not known for being that customer friendly when it comes to issues about the day to day running of the front-line businesses, however what followed when I raised these issues with McDonald’s Customer services even took me by surprise, as most of you know the actions of big corporations do not normally surprise me.

First instance, customer services, was told the usual spiel from the set list, told I would be contacted within a few days as this is a very ‘serious issue’

Out of interest I waited a few days and low and behold I received a ‘standard issue’ letter and a token for £5 off at McDonald’s.

When I tried to address with customer services just how inappropriate that response was in this type of matter, they raise the matter to their head of Customer Services in the UK.

Who response was, she would not state how big her department was or how many staff she was in charge of (Its a usual question I ask as so many organisations love to call supervisors or line supervisors, senior managers).

She then proceeded to make derogatory remarks about my family heritage, my title and the very existence of the NCA.  Obviously I terminated that call and contacted McD’s press office to see if I could get an off the record response as well as see if we could get this resolved before it escalated into the public domain.

After all McD’s does employ a lot of people in this Country. Basically this is a non confrontational response so not to damage an entire industry on the basis of one rogue outlet.

It appears that McD’s has a lot more too hide, They now say;

• There is no evidence of Stacking fries in the excess of 15 minutes/recycling them back with fresh fries.
• There is no evidence of a Manager instructing staff to reheat patties on the hot plate (Also said had no reheating facilities, referring to Microwave although this was never mentioned by myself).
• We have no statutory Complaint procedure (Basically customer services staff can say anything including very abusive remarks and they answer to nobody for their actions).
• We have no statutory or internal complaints procedure (beyond that of customer services), if a customer raises a serious matter about staff, practices or customer health and safety issues in relation to any of their outlets either Directly McDonald’s or their Franchises in the UK.

So I ask you, would you eat in a fast food restaurant chain that considers serving potentially poisonous food too their customers as an issue that you palm off with a token for £5. Then get verbally abusive if you are unhappy with this.

Concerning reheating of Burger Patties: The reason why this is illegal in many countries is that the manner in which is is stored allows the bacteria to grow to a level that it becomes almost impossible to reheat them sufficiently to kill that bacteria. Meat served in this manner has the potential to cause very serious illness or Death!

” very serious illness or Death” I don’t know about you, but I find that serious enough to warrant a real response from MacDonald’s. We will will have to wait and see if they respond.

Update: McDonald’s have been notified of this article.

Anonymous has issued a warning to the UK government after five young men suspected of being connected to the group were arrested on Thursday.

Anonymous has warned the UK government that the arrest of five people allegedly associated with the group was a ‘sad mistake’. Photo credit: Anonymous

The group, which has claimed responsibility for a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks launched in support of whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, said it viewed the arrests as “a declaration of war” by the British authorities.

“Anonymous believes… that pursuing this direction is a sad mistake on your behalf. Not only does it reveal the fact that you do not seem to understand the present-day political and technological reality, we also take this as a serious declaration of war from yourself, the UK government, to us, Anonymous, the people,” the group said in a statement (PDF) on Thursday.

“Our advice to you, the UK government, is to take this statement as a serious warning from the citizens of the world,” it added.

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Students in universities in England face tuition fees of up to £9,000 per year from 2012, as the government reveals its plans for higher education.

The coalition’s response to Lord Browne’s funding review will be published on Wednesday.

Universities will be able to charge £6,000, with a higher tier of £9,000 – nearly treble existing levels – if they promote access for poorer students.

The National Union of Students dubbed the plan “an outrage”.

Much of the proposed fee rise, up from the current £3,290 per year, will replace public funding withdrawn from universities in last month’s Spending Review.

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Facebook has clamped down on the selling of user IDs

Facebook has taken action against developers it caught selling user names and contact lists.

The sales were uncovered as Facebook investigated a web browser bug that let user IDs be shared inadvertently.

The user details were sold to data brokers who used the information to target adverts more precisely.

The developers have been banned for six months from connecting to Facebook and must be audited to check they comply with the social network’s policies.

Facebook started investigating what was happening with user identifiers (UIDs) following media reports that the information and lists of contacts were being sold on to advertising firms.

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The mediation service could see disputed data removed from the web

Britons keen to remove inaccurate information held about them online could soon turn to a mediation service set up to deal with data disputes.

The idea for the service was floated by business minister Ed Vaizey during a debate on the net and privacy.

He said the service would be an easy way for citizens to change data that is wrong or invades their privacy.

The UK’s ISPs were wary about the idea, the burden it could place on them and how effective it would actually be.

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