Amongst the many advertisements Sky are currently running is one extolling their green credentials. It has a sombre Ross Kemp imploring us to support Sky's efforts to plant trees (or something). For those interested the corporate flannel is here. You know the sort of thing. green this, recyclable that, carbon footprint blah blah blah.
Of course action speaks louder than words. But what you actually see and what you actually experience speaks even louder. So when Sky Corporate are saying one thing and Sky News are doing something else you have to wonder. Now whether you believe in the human contribution to global warming or not, I think it's hard not to be cynical when, on one hand Sky News are reporting from the Copenhagen climate conference on the dangers, and on the other hand have flown reporters to remote parts of the world to report on the effects. Sorry? Aren't we repeatedly told that one of the main contributors to global warming is commercial flights? So what do Sky do? They send a reporter to a swamp in the Brasilan rainforest to report on the environmental damage global warming is having. And, in the interests of balance they send another reporter (who's normally seen sitting in front of their mid 90's Aiwa Hi-fi system inspired studio) to India to report on the damage caused there. Sorry? Am I missing something? How green (the other one) do they think we are?
Of course what makes this more ironic (to the point of parody) was a little rolling demo they used to have on the Sky customer channel. Basically it said that in order to save energy you should switch your Sky box to standby. That's right, don't turn it off at the mains, just switch to standby. Funny that. I thought the existence of a standby button vexed the environmental lobby almost as much as flying. Now there maybe good technical reasons for leaving the Sky box plugged in. For example it takes to reload the EPG when the mains supply is interrupted, adding to length of time the box takes to reboot. But, and this is the key, if they are as concerned about the environment as they claim why didn't they recommend people turn their boxes off. They just need to educate their customers that although there is a short delay as the the box reboots, the overall environmental benefits could be huge. They could have plugged it as "a short delay to save the planet" or something. That they didn't do this is a puzzle. (Now when I say "puzzle" I don't actually mean "puzzle". Rather that I haven't been able to prove my suspicions. Yet.) Of course what is completely baffling is that if you do switch your Sky box off then the first thing you saw when the box rebooted was the same customer channel advising you to put the box on standby to save energy. So the only people* who'd ever have seen this well meaning information were those who were already saving more energy than those who don't know they were heeding Sky's advice.
I don't think you need to look up the word "pointless". This is it. Writ large.
*Apart from people shopping in electrical retailers or Argos. They get to see it as well. Typically no-one can find the remote to change the channel or the Manager / owner has "borrowed" the Sky card** so you get stuck with this. All day. Everyday. Of course the poor sap standing there will still try to persuade you of the benefits of Sky by drawing pictures on a bit of paper, or by showing you a Panasonic demo DVD of long replaced Camcorder as a substitute. Ditto with HD. "No we don't have HD to show you, but I do have a picture of a blu-ray player we don't stock to give you an idea what it's like. Isn't it fantastic?"
**Of course this doesn't apply any more. Sky cards are locked to specific boxes, meaning that, unlike the glory days of the analogue Sky, when cards would "vanish" at the start of the football season, a card from one box doesn't work for the premium channels on another.
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