Is it suspicious that just a few laps from the end of the Monaco Grand Prix, the F1 star driving a posh red Fiat drove straight into the back of the Force India car in front, which was beating him? A car which is, coincidentally, also powered by a posh Fiat engine and is normally found lurking around the back of the grid. If Fiat’s star had been beaten by Force India he would have dropped way down this years driver’s championship, below his own team mate, probably to end up among the mid-field also-rans. One hopes that Force India gets a good discount on their next engine delivery from Fiat.

Why is it that when you go to ITV’s F1 website, an annoying dialogue box jumps up inviting you to complete a survey that will only take ten minutes and in return give you a chance of winning a valuable prize? It’s not limited to ITV’s site, the darned surveys are springing up across the web. Even clicking “no thanks” doesn’t prevent them reappearing the next time a site is visited. The only solution seems to be opening your browser’s cookies to all and sundry in the hope that rejecting the survey is noted in a cookie.

That’s on a par with getting cash from an ATM at midnight when you are surrounded by all those nice young men in hoodies. Or walking through certain London estates, with a MacBook Air under your arm and chatting on your iPhone. Before you know it your computer will be infested by Mexican drug dealers, Jonathon King and Gary Glitter.

6,200,000 hits
Actually taking part in the surveys doesn’t help. After completing ITV’s, the invitation still appears when the site is revisited. With six and a quarter million hits in Google for ‘Web Surveys’ it looks as though this is a growth industry.

And who is among the worst for asking you to complete surveys in return for prizes? Dennis blinking Publishing, purveyor of finely written words as in ITPro. By my reckoning they owe me five laptops, three monitors and bags of assorted goodies because I enter them all using my browser’s auto-complete.