Lord Immaculate's Manifesto

Having fallen upon hard times, Lord Immaculate has taken to broaching the odd ream of internet competitions. Nowt too taxing – enter your particulars here for a chance to win a five star trip to Pluto, that sort of thing. What y’Lord has actually won so far is, of course, a constant stream of sales calls. Like many of my fellow citizens I’ve learned to answer only numbers I recognise.

In this squalid day and age I can’t blame my suffering solely on the competition sites. Every Tom, Dick and Harry Ltd. is under suspicion when it comes to hawking potential marks around. (I promise you on my dear grandmother’s life this isn’t one of those pesky) sales calls are a menace governments have been reluctant to crack down on, otherwise we could by now, if we wished, go ex-directory as far as unsolicited overtures are concerned – a list of addressees that corporate peddlers are forbidden to contact, by decision of the would-be recipient. Neither have the powers that be put a halt to phantom ringers, those automated buggers which treat your ears to a prolonged burst of silence. One may assume various authority figures are being enriched in some way by their continued inaction.

The very least our lacklustre leaders should do is bind businesses to perform two obligations as soon as their victim is on the line:

A, announce immediately that they absolutely are after your dosh. No denying the truth (repeatedly) until you have struggled to politely extract yourself from the whirlpool of their waffle for a full five minutes. This rule can also be applied to the increasingly aggressive street merchants, door-steppers and fundraisers, who ought to be required by law to admit that they are in fact going to ask you for money, rather than lying brazenly to your face.

B, inform you at the beginning which firm or individual supplied your personal information to the dreaded database.

Therefore the wretched life-interrupters, be they human or automaton, must open their gambit with, “Hello, this is a sales call. Your number was listed by (insert name of bastard)…”

As for the aforementioned software, the kind that offers you the opportunity to opt out simply by pressing a said digit, it must be programmed never to bother the same person twice, as the damned opt out button is about as effective as a chocolate kettle.

The purpose of this legislation would be to name, shame and embarrass the companies who sell your details on. You never know, some of the more ‘reputable’ establishments might knock this pernicious practice on the head.